lution-making
mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our
lives as though we had never looked at them before--freshly, with a
new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full of
experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life,
you would regard it to-day as an experiment, you would challenge each
act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that
showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not
say: "I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it."
The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of
this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than
they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution
for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows
we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your
_volatility_ with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great
importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the
italics.)

IV

SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE

The other day a well-known English novelist asked me how old I thought
she was, _really_. "Well," I said to myself, "since she has asked for
it, she shall have it; I will be as true to life as her novels." So I
replied audaciously: "Thirty-eight." I fancied I was erring if at all,
on the side of "really," and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. "I
am forty-three," she said. The incident might have passed off entirely
to my satisfaction had she not proceeded: "And now tell me how old
_you_ are." That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no
reticences, no pretty little vanities. What an error! Of course I
could not be beaten in candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a
burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not
unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with
me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that
age was telling on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my
movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the
majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself.
It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a
generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love.
Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half
without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet
submerged at the