fires Exchange and Mart questions at you without the least
provocation. Imagine the other day, just when I was doing my
best to understand half the things I was saying, being asked
by one of those seekers after country home truths how many
fowls she could keep in a run ten feet by six, or whatever it
was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she kept the door
shut, and the idea didn't seem to have struck her before; at
least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner.

Of course, as I say, one never really KNOWS one's ground, and
one may make mistakes occasionally. But then one's mistakes
sometimes turn out assets in the long-run: if we had never
bungled away our American colonies we might never have had
the boy from the States to teach us how to wear our hair and
cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, I
suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China
centuries before we thought of him. England must wake up, as
the Duke of Devonshire said the other day; wasn't it? Oh,
well, it was someone else. Not that I ever indulge in
despair about the Future; there always have been men who have
gone about despairing of the Future, and when the Future
arrives it says nice, superior things about their having
acted according to their lights. It is dreadful to think
that other people's grandchildren may one day rise up and
call one amiable.

There are moments when one sympathises with Herod.