d and buried and mere sanitary problems.
The new people had new and quite different needs, and the reforms for
which their fathers fought and died more or less uncomfortably, and got
into debt with the printers, so soon as there were printers to get into
debt with, were about as welcome as belated dinner guests. You take
me? Ireland, when Home Rule comes home to it, will simply howl with
indignation. And we are living in the embodied discontent of the
eighteenth century. Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and Priestley would have
looked upon this age and seen that it was good--devilish good; and as
you know, George, to us it is--well, a bit of a nuisance anyhow.
However, most people are like myself, and try to be as comfortable as
they can, and no doubt the next generation might do very well with it.
And then the pioneer people begin legislating, agitating, and ordering
things differently. As you know, George, I am inclined to
conservatism. Constitutionally, I tend to adapt myself to my
circumstances. It seems to me so much easier to fit the man to the age
than to fit the age to the man. Let us, I say, settle down. We shall
never be able to settle down while they keep altering things. It may
not be a perfect world, but then I am not a perfect man: Some of the
imperfections are, at least, very convenient. So my theory is this:
the people whom the age suits fairly well don't bother--_I_ don't
bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn
anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their
ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements
and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last
it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the
progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern.
Your average humanity I figure as a comfortable person like myself,
always trying to sit down and put its legs somewhere out of the way,
and being continually stirred up by women in felt hats and short
skirts, and haggard men with those beastly, long, insufficient beards,
and soulful eyes, and trumpet-headed creatures, and bogles with
spectacles and bald heads, and nephews who look at watches. What are
you looking at your watch for, George? I'm very happy as I am.

"Has it ever occurred to you, George, that one of the most
uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have
all the reforms of your boyish lib