alongside of another craft with the intention of conducting a
boarding expedition, one pays a genial visit by means of the long-
boat with all the circumstance of courtesy and amiability. instead
of desiring to make conquests, I am glad enough to be tolerated. I
dare, too, to say what I think, not alert for any symptoms of
contradiction, but fully aware that my own point of view is but one
of many, and quite prepared to revise it. In the old days I
demanded agreement; I am now amused by divergence. In the old days
I desired to convince; I am now only too thankful to be convinced
of error and ignorance. I now no longer shrink from saying that I
know nothing of a subject; in old days I used to make a pretence of
omniscience, and had to submit irritably to being tamely unmasked.
It seems to me that I must have been an unpleasant young man
enough, but I humbly hope that I was not so disagreeable as might
appear.

Another privilege of advancing years is the decreasing tyranny of
convention. I used to desire to do the right thing, to know the
right people, to play the right games. I did not reflect whether it
was worth the sacrifice of personal interest; it was all-important
to be in the swim. Very gradually I discovered that other people
troubled their heads very little about what one did; that the right
people were often the most tiresome and the most conventional, and
that the only games which were worth playing were the games which
one enjoyed. I used to undergo miseries in staying at uncongenial
houses, in accepting shooting invitations when I could not shoot,
in going to dances because the people whom I knew were going. Of
course one has plenty of disagreeable duties to perform in any
case; but I discovered gradually that to adopt the principle of
doing disagreeable things which were supposed to be amusing and