admit that I became the very pattern of humility, but when I take my
place in the throne of my arm-chair with the light from the green-shaded
lamp falling on the open pages of my book, I assure you I am decidedly
an autocratic person. My retainers must distinctly keep their places! I
have my court favourites upon whom I lavish the richest gifts of my
attention. I reserve for them a special place in the worn case nearest
my person, where at the mere outreaching of an idle hand I can summon
them to beguile my moods. The necessary slavies of literature I have
arranged in indistinct rows at the farther end of the room where they
can be had if I require their special accomplishments.
* * * * *
How little, after all, learning counts in this world either in books or
in men. I have often been awed by the wealth of information I have
discovered in a man or a book: I have been awed and depressed. How
wonderful, I have thought, that one brain should hold so much, should be
so infallible in a world of fallibility. But I have observed how soon
and completely such a fount of information dissipates itself. Having
only things to give, it comes finally to the end of its things: it is
empty. What it has hived up so painfully through many a studious year
comes now to be common property. We pass that way, take our share, and
do not even say "Thank you." Learning is like money; it is of prodigious
satisfaction to the possessor thereof, but once given forth it diffuses
itself swiftly.
"What have you?" we are ever asking of those we meet. "Information,
learning, money?"
We take it cruelly and pass onward, for such is the law of material
possessions.
"What have you?" we ask. "Charm, personality, character, the great gift
of unexpectedness?"
How we draw you to us! We take you in. Poor or ignorant though you may
be, we link arms and loiter; we love you not for what you have or what
you give us, but for what you are.
I have several good friends (excellent people) who act always as I
expect them to act. There is no flight! More than once I have listened
to the edifying conversation of a certain sturdy old gentleman whom I
know, and I am ashamed to say that I have thought:
"Lord! if he would jump up now and turn an intellectual handspring, or
slap me on the back (figuratively, of course: the other would be
unthinkable), or--yes, swear! I--think I could love him."
But he never does--and I'm afraid
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