month, with perhaps the hope of a fairly careless and idle holiday
at intervals. What I think tends to counteract this for many people
is love and marriage, the wonder and amazement of having children
of their own, and all the offices of tenderness that grow up
naturally beside their path. But this again brings a whole host of
fears and anxieties as well--arrangements, ways and means,
household cares, illnesses, the homely stuff of life, much of it
enjoyed, much of it cheerfully borne, and often very bravely and
gallantly endured. It is out of this simple material that life has
to be constructed. But there is a twofold danger in all this. There
is a danger of cynicism, the frame of mind in which a man comes to
face little worries as one might put up an umbrella in a shower--
"Thou know'st 'tis common!" Out of that grows up a rude dreariness,
a philosophy which has nothing dignified about it, but is merely a
recognition of the fact that life is a poor affair, and that one
cannot hope to have things to one's mind. Or there is a dull frame
of mind which implies a meek resignation, a sense of disappointment
about life, borne with a mournful patience, a sense of one's sphere
having somehow fallen short of one's deserts. This produces the
grumpy paterfamilias who drowses over a paper or grumbles over a
pipe; such a man is inimitably depicted by Mr. Wells in Marriage.
That sort of ugly disillusionment, that publicity of
disappointment, that frank disregard of all concerns except one's
own, is one of the most hideous features of middle-class life, and
it is rather characteristically English. It sometimes conceals a
robust good sense and even kindliness; but it is a base thing at
best, and seems to be the shadow of commercial prosperity. Yet it
at least implies a certain sturdiness of character, and a stubborn
belief in one's own merits which is quite impervious to the lessons
of experience. On sensitive and imaginative people the result of