er
rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
Matthew Arnold:

"But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
That will, that energy, though rare,
Are