were given us to conceal our thoughts, and with a little practice
and self-discipline will conceal them even from ourselves. A candid
friend once complained to me that in my translation from the Greek
it was sometimes impossible for him to know which of two different
_lectiones_ I was translating. As a matter of fact, though I did
not tell him this, I did not know either. Especially useful is this
when one is confronted with a rude, challenging, direct question as
to any point in religion or politics; I reply with a sonorous and,
I hope, well-balanced sentence, from which the actual meaning has
been carefully extracted, and so escape in the fog. It is indeed
from one point of view a mercy that most people are too cowardly
or too ashamed to say that they have failed to comprehend. Yet if
they had my passion for truth it might be better. Truth is very
precious to me--sometimes too precious to give away.

"It is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice
did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No
Dean--and perhaps no don--who has been in that portentous position
as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice.
It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated
with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception
with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make more use of
your noble gifts for dancing, amateur theatricals, and general
conversation? And yet I'm not grumbling. Only I mean to say, don't
you know? Of course, they all do it--the people in the great world
to which you, and occasionally I, belong. Still, there it is, isn't
it? And you write me such soothing full-cream letters with only an
occasional snag in them. So bless you, my child. I do trust that
the report which comes to me that you are going with the Prince of
Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts to shoot kangaroos in
Australia is at least exaggerated. These marsupials, though their
appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest the conscientious
objector, will--I am credibly informed--fight desperately in
defence of their young. If I may venture to suggest, try rabbits.

"I am delighted to hear that you are not the author of the two
articles attacking Society. The fact that they happen