ur non fit. One sees
young men of irresponsible levity drawn into the interest of a cause or
a profession, and we say sadly of them that they have lost their sense
of humour. They are probably both happier and more useful for having
lost it. The humorist is seldom an apostle or a leader. But one does
occasionally find a man of real genius who adds to a deep and vital
seriousness a delightful perception of the superficial absurdities of
life; who is like a river, at once strong and silent beneath, with
sunny ripples and bright water-breaks upon the surface. Most men must be
content to flow turbid and sullen, turning the mills of life or bearing
its barges; others may dash and flicker through existence, like a
shallow stream. Perhaps, indeed, it may be said that to be a real
humorist there must be a touch of hardness somewhere, a bony carapace,
because we seldom see one of very strong and ardent emotions who is a
true humorist; and this is, I suppose, the reason why women, as a rule,
are so far less humorous than men. We have to pay a price for our good
qualities; and though I had rather be strong, affectionate, loyal,
noble-minded, than be the best humorist in the world, yet if a gift
of humour be added to these graces, you have a combination that is
absolutely irresistible, because you have a perfect sense of proportion
that never allows emotion to degenerate into gush, or virtue into
rigidity; and thus I say that humour is a kind of divine and crowning
grace in a character, because it means an artistic sense of proportion,
a true and vital tolerance, a power of infinite forgiveness.

V. TRAVEL

There are many motives that impel us to travel, to change our sky, as
Horace calls it--good motives and bad, selfish and unselfish, noble
and ignoble. With some people it is pure restlessness; the tedium of
ordinary life weighs on them, and travel, they think, will distract
them; people travel for the sake of health, or for business reasons, or
to accompany some one else, or because other people travel. And these
motives are neither good nor bad, they are simply sufficient. Some
people travel to enlarge their minds, or to write a book; and the worst
of travelling for such reasons is that it so often implants in the
traveller, when he returns, a desperate desire to enlarge other
people's minds too. Unhappily, it needs an extraordinary gift of vivid
description and a tactful art of selection to make the reflections of
on