has cultivated--it is his
mannerism--and which is essentially hypocritical and untrue. _Bonhomie_!
It is that man-of-the-world attitude, that shop attitude, that
between-you-and-me-for-are-we-not-equal-and-cultured attitude, which is
the tone of a card-sharper or a trick-of-the-loop man. That was the tone
of Shaw's article. I wrote an open letter to him which I sent to the
_New Age_, because I doubted that the Dublin papers would print it if I
sent it to them, and I knew that the Irish people who read the other
papers had never heard of Shaw, except as a trade-mark under which very
good Limerick bacon is sold, and that they would not be interested in
the opinions of a person named Shaw on any subject not relevant to
bacon. I struck out of my letter a good many harsh things which I said
of him, and hoped he would reply to it in order that I could furnish
these acidities to him in a second letter.

That was Saturday.

On Sunday I had to go to my office, as the Director was absent in
London, and there I applied myself to the notes and spaces below the
stave, but relinquished the exercise, convinced that these mysteries
were unattainable by man, while the knowledge that above the stave there
were others and not less complex, stayed mournfully with me.

I returned home, and as novels (perhaps it is only for the duration of
the war) do not now interest me I read for some time in Madame
Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine," which book interests me profoundly.
George Russell was out of town or I would have gone round to his house
in the evening to tell him what I thought about Shaw, and to listen to
his own much finer ideas on that as on every other subject. I went to
bed.

On the morning following I awoke into full insurrection and bloody war,
but I did not know anything about it. It was Bank Holiday, but for
employments such as mine there are not any holidays, so I went to my
office at the usual hour, and after transacting what business was
necessary I bent myself to the notes above and below the stave, and
marvelled anew at the ingenuity of man. Peace was in the building, and
if any of the attendants had knowledge or rumour of war they did not
mention it to me.

At one o'clock I went to lunch. Passing the corner of Merrion Row I saw
two small groups of people. These people were regarding steadfastly in
the direction of St. Stephen's Green Park, and they spoke occasionally
to one another with that detached confidence which pr