goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I
quote roughly from memory one of the many translations of the
nineteenth century):


'For this the Gods have fashioned man's grief and evil day
That still for man hereafter might be the tale and the lay.'


Well, well, 'tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be
lacking, or all sorrow cured."

He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him. At last
he began again: "But you must know that we of these generations are
strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in
reasonable strife with nature, exercising not one side of ourselves
only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of
the world. So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-
centred; not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is
sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will,
criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility:
we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to
cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other
pleasures besides love-making. You must remember, also, that we are
long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and woman is not so
fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so heavily by
self-inflicted diseases. So we shake off these griefs in a way which
perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible
and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike. As on the
other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-