enough for you that this is my wish." That is natural enough. It is the
tradition of the elders, the Biblical, Greek, Roman, savage hierarchies
which, in their time, were sound because, lacking education of any kind,
communities could resort only to the experience of the aged. But a thing
that is natural is not always convenient, and, after all, the chief
mission of the civilizer is to bottle up Nature until she is wanted.
This tyranny breeds in youth a quite horrible hatred, while it hardens
the old, makes them incapable of seeing the point of view of youth
because it is too long since they held it. They insist upon the society
of the young; they take them out to call on old people; they drive them
round and round the park in broughams, and then round again; they
deprive them of entertainments because they themselves cannot bear noise
and late hours, or because they have come to fear expense, or because
they feel weak and are ill. It is tragic to think that so few of us can
hope to die gracefully.

The trouble does not lie entirely with the old; indeed, I think it lies
more with the young, who, crossed and irritated, are given to badgering
the old people because they are slow, because they do not understand the
problems of Lord Kitchener and are still thinking of the problems of Mr.
Gladstone. They are harsh because the old are forgetful, because their
faded memories are sweet, because they will always prefer the late Sir
Henry Irving to Mr. Charles Hawtrey. The young are cruel when the old
people refuse to send a letter without sealing it, or when they insist
upon buying their hats from the milliner who made them in 1890 and makes
them still in the same fashion. They are even harsh to them when they
are deaf or short-sighted and fumbling; they come to think that a wise
child should learn from his sire's errors.

It is a pity, but thus it is; so what is the use of thinking that the
modern family must endure? It is no use to say that the old are right or
that the young are right; they disagree. It is nobody's fault, and it is
everybody's misfortune. They disagree largely because there is too much
propinquity. It is propinquity that brings one to think there is
something rather repulsive in blood relations. It is propinquity that
brings one to love and then later to dislike. Mr. George Moore has put
the case ideally in his _Memoirs of My Dead Life_, where Doris, the girl
who has escaped from her family with the hero say