inveterately unsociable person; but such is not the case. I am
extremely gregarious at the right time and place. I love to spend a
large part of the day alone; I think that a perfect day consists in
a solitary breakfast and a solitary morning; a single companion for
luncheon and exercise; again some solitary hours; but then I love
to dine in company and, if possible, to spend the rest of the
evening with two or three congenial persons. But more and more, as
life goes on, do I find the mixed company tiresome, and the tete-a-
tete delightful. The only amusement of society is the getting to
know what other people really think and feel: what amuses them,
what pleases them, what shocks them; what they like and what they
loathe; what they tolerate and what they condemn. A dinner-party is
agreeable, principally because one is absolutely tied down to make
the best of two people. Very few English people have the art of
conversing unaffectedly and sincerely before a circle; when one
does come across it, it is a rare and beautiful art, like singing,
or oratory. But the presence of such an improvisatore is the only
thing that makes a circle tolerable. On the other hand, a great
many English people have the art of tete-a-tete talking; and I can
honestly say that I have very seldom been brought into close
relations with an individual without finding an unsuspected depth
and width of interest in the companionship.

But in any case the whole thing is a mere question of pleasure; and
I return to my thesis, which is that the only possible theory is
for every one to find and create the kind of society that he or she
may like. Depend upon it, congenial society is the only kind of
society to, and in which, any one will give his best. If people
like the society of the restaurant, the club, the drawing-room, the
dining-room, the open air, the cricket-field, the moor, the golf-