precariousness of life does not, as a matter of fact, distract us
from the pleasure of it, even though the strands to which we hold
are slowly parting. It is all, then, an adventure and an escape;
but even in the worst insecurity, we may often be surprised to find
that it is somehow sweet.

It is not in the least a question of the apparent and outward
adventurousness of one's life. Foolish people sometimes write and
think as though one could not have had adventures unless one has
hung about at bar-room doors and in billiard-saloons, worked one's
passage before the mast in a sailing-ship, dug for gold among the
mountains, explored savage lands, shot strange animals, fared
hardly among deep-drinking and loud-swearing men. It is possible,
of course, to have adventures of this kind, and, indeed, I had a
near relative whose life was fuller of vicissitudes than any life I
have ever known: he was a sailor, a clerk, a policeman, a soldier,
a clergyman, a farmer, a verger. But the mere unsettledness of it
suited him: he was an easy comrade, brave, reckless, restless; he
did not mind roughness, and the one thing he could not do was to
settle down to anything regular and quiet. He did not dislike life
at all, even when he stood half-naked, as he once told me he did,
on a board slung from the side of a ship, and dipped up pails of
water to swab it, the water freezing as he flung it on the timbers.
But with all this variety of life he did not learn anything
particular from it all; he was much the same always, good-natured,
talkative, childishly absorbed, not looking backward or forward,
and fondest of telling stories with sailors in an inn. He learned
to be content in most companies and to fare roughly; but he gained
neither wisdom nor humour, and he was not either happy or
independent, though he despised with all his heart the stay-at-