isure is full of varied interests, not only definite pursuits, but an
interest in his relations with others, not only of a spectatorial kind,
but with the natural and instinctive desire to contribute to their
happiness, not in a priggish way, but from a sense of cordial
good-fellowship.

This programme may seem, as I have said, to be unambitious and prosaic,
and to have very little that is stirring about it. But my belief is that
it can be the most lively, sensitive, fruitful, and enjoyable programme
in the world, because the enjoyment of it depends upon the very stuff of
life itself, and not upon skimming the cream off and throwing away the
milk.

My critics will say that I am only appearing again from my cellar, with
my hands filled with bottled platitudes; but if they are platitudes, by
which I mean plain and obvious truths, why do we not find more people
practising them? What I mean by a platitude is a truth so obvious that
it is devoid of inspiration, and has become one of the things that every
one does so instinctively, that no reminder of them is necessary. Would
that it were so in the present case! All I can say is that I know very
few people who live their lives on these lines, and that most of the
people I know find inspiration anywhere but in the homely stuff of life.
Of course there are a good many people who take life stolidly enough,
and do not desire inspiration at all; but I do not mean that sort of
life in the least. I mean that it ought to be possible and delightful
for people to live lives full of activity and perception and kindliness
and joy, on very simple lines indeed; to take up their work day by day
with an agreeable sense of putting out their powers, to find in the
pageant of nature an infinite refreshment, and to let art and poetry
lift them up into a world of hopes and dreams and memories; and thus
life may become a meal to be eaten with appetite, with a wholesome
appreciation of its pleasant savours, rather than a meal eaten in
satiety or greediness, with a peevish repining that it is not more
elaborate and delicate.

I do not claim to live my own life on these lines. I started, as all
sensitive and pleasure-loving natures do, with an expectation of finding
life a much more exciting, amusing, and delightful thing than I have
found it. I desired to skip from peak to peak, without troubling to
descend into the valleys. But now that I have descended, partly out of
curiosity and partly out of