chief charms of dealing unto oneself a happy lot and portion. No; my
soul abhors tabulation. It would make even six months' life as jocular
as Bradshaw's Railway Guide or the dietary of a prison. I prefer to look
on what is before me as a high adventure, and with that prospect in view
I propose to jot down my experiences from time to time, so that when I
am wandering, a pale shade by Acheron, young Dale Kynnersley may have
not only documentary evidence wherewith to convince my friends and
relations that my latter actions were not those of a lunatic, but also,
at the same time, an up-to-date version of Jeremy Taylor's edifying
though humour-lacking treatise on the act of dying, which I am sorely
tempted to label "The Rule and Example of Eumoiriety." I shall resist
the temptation, however. Dale Kynnersley--such is the ignorance of the
new generation--would have no sense of the allusion. He would shake his
head and say, "Dotty, poor old chap, dotty!" I can hear him. And if, in
order to prepare him, I gave him a copy of the "Meditations," he
would fling the book across the room and qualify Marcus Aurelius as a
"rotter."

Dale is a very shrewd fellow, and will make an admirable legislator
when his time comes. Although his highest intellectual recreation is
reiterated attendance at the musical comedy that has caught his fancy
for the moment and his favourite literature the sporting pages of the
daily papers, he has a curious feline pounce on the salient facts of
a political situation, and can thread the mazes of statistics with the
certainty of a Hampton Court guide. His enthusiastic researches (on my
behalf) into pauper lunacy are remarkable in one so young. I foresee
him an invaluable chairman of committee. But he will never become a
statesman. He has too passionate a faith in facts and figures, and has
not cultivated a sense of humour at the expense of the philosophers.
Young men who do not read them lose a great deal of fun.