who have no particular interests or pursuits of their own.

There is less excuse in a University town than in any other for
adopting this pompous and formal view of the duties of society,
because there are very few unoccupied people in such a place. My
own occupations, such as they are, fill the hours from breakfast to
luncheon and from tea to dinner; men of sedentary lives, who do a
good deal of brainwork, find an hour or two of exercise and fresh
air a necessity in the afternoon. Indeed, a man who cares about his
work, and who regards it as a primary duty, finds no occupation
more dispiriting, more apt to unfit him for serious work, than
pacing from house to house in the early afternoon, delivering a
pack of visiting-cards, varied by a perfunctory conversation,
seated at the edge of an easy-chair, on subjects of inconceivable
triviality. Of course there are men so constituted that they find
this pastime a relief and a pleasure; but their felicity of
temperament ought not to be made into a rule for serious-minded
men. The only social institution which might really prove
beneficial in a University is an informal evening salon. If people
might drop in uninvited, in evening dress or not, as was
convenient, from nine to ten in the evening, at a pleasant house,
it would be a rational practice; but few such experiments seem ever
to be tried.

Moreover, the one thing that is fatal to all spontaneous social
enjoyment is that the guests should, like the maimed and blind in
the parable, be compelled to come in. The frame of mind of an
eminent Cabinet Minister whom I once accompanied to an evening
party rises before my mind. He was in deep depression at having to
go; and when I ventured to ask his motive in going, he said, with