er than what costs a great
deal.

"We all rather tend to be bored by a display of regularity and discipline.
Do you remember that letter of Keats, where he confesses his intense
irritation at the way in which his walking companion, Brown, I think,
always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same
order--first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says
Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at
the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of
strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay and
inconsequent.

"Yet the power of forcing oneself by an act of will to do something
unpleasant is one of the finest qualities in the world. There is a story of
a man who became a Bishop. He was a delicate and sensitive fellow, much
affected by a crowd, and particularly by the sight of people passing in
front of him. He began his work by holding an enormous confirmation, and
five times in the course of it he actually had to retire to the vestry,
where he was physically sick. That's a heroic performance; but we admire
still more a bland and cheerful Bishop who is not sick, but enjoys a
ceremony."

"Surely that is all right, Father Payne?" said Barthrop. "When we see a
performance, we are concerned with appreciating the merit of it. A man with
a bad headache, however gallant, is not likely to talk as well as a man in
perfect health and high spirits; but if we are not considering the
performance, but the virtues of the performer, we might admire the man who
pumped up talk when he was feeling wretched more than the man from whom it
flowed."

"The judicious Barthrop!" said Father Payne. "Yes, you are right--but for
all that we do not instinctively admire effort as much as we admire easy
brilliance. We are much more inclined to imitate the brilliant man than we
are to imitate the man who has painfully developed an accomplishment. The
truth is, we are all of us afraid of effort; and instinct is generally so
much more in the right than reason, that I end by believing that it is
better to live freely in our good qualities, than painfully to conquer our
bad qualities; not to take up work that we can't do from a sense of duty,
but to take up work that we can do from a sense of pleasure. I believe in
finding our real life more than in sticking to one that is not real for the
sake of virtue. Trained inclination is the secret. That is why I should