V.


A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN.

A little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged under the stress of
social intercourse. The talk even of an honest man must often represent
merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather than his genuine
opinion or feeling on the matter in hand. His thought, if uttered, might
be wounding; or he has not the ability to utter it with exactness and
snatches at a loose paraphrase; or he has really no genuine thought on
the question and is driven to fill up the vacancy by borrowing the
remarks in vogue. These are the winds and currents we have all to steer
amongst, and they are often too strong for our truthfulness or our wit.
Let us not bear too hardly on each other for this common incidental
frailty, or think that we rise superior to it by dropping all
considerateness and deference.

But there are studious, deliberate forms of insincerity which it is fair
to be impatient with: Hinze's, for example. From his name you might
suppose him to be German: in fact, his family is Alsatian, but has been
settled in England for more than one generation. He is the superlatively
deferential man, and walks about with murmured wonder at the wisdom and
discernment of everybody who talks to him. He cultivates the low-toned
_tête-à-tête,_ keeping his hat carefully in his hand and often stroking
it, while he smiles with downcast eyes, as if to relieve his feelings
under the pressure of the remarkable conversation which it is his honour
to enjoy at the present moment. I confess to some rage on hearing him