Since we deserved the name of friendsAnd thine effect so lives in me,A part of mine may live in theeAnd move thee on to noble ends.
Since we deserved the name of friendsAnd thine effect so lives in me,A part of mine may live in theeAnd move thee on to noble ends.
Since we deserved the name of friendsAnd thine effect so lives in me,A part of mine may live in theeAnd move thee on to noble ends.
I grant you, peering out of my tub at the world, that there are many to whomthis thought sounds sublimated and extravagant: a poet says this sort of thing because such is his poetic business. We come nearer perhaps to the universal understanding in John Hay's definition that 'Friends are the sunshine of life'; for it is equally true that all men seek sunlight and that every man seeks a friend after his own kind and nature. The best and most intelligent of us admit the rarity and value of friendship; the worst and most ignorant of us are unwittingly the better for knowing some friendly companion. But these afternoon teas are inimical to friendship; and the first duty of a hostess is to separate, expeditiously and without hope of again coming together, any other two guests who appear to be getting acquainted. On this count, even were we not Automaton Tea-Goers, debarred by inherent stability from any normalhuman intercourse, the afternoon tea must prove more disheartening than helpful. We might at best glimpse a potential friend as the desert islander sights a passing sail on the far horizon.
There is, alas, no Universal Reason why a man should go to an afternoon tea!
So the matter looks to me in my tub, but perhaps, like Diogenes, I am a cynic philosopher. After all, when a thing cannot be escaped, why seek for reasons not to escape it? Let us, rather, be brave if we cannot be gay; cheerful if we cannot talk; ornamental if we cannot move. As the grave-digger in Elsinore churchyard might say: 'Here lies the afternoon tea; good: here stands the gentleman; good: If the gentleman go to this afternoon tea and bore himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,—mark you that? But if the afternoon tea come to him and bore him, he bores not himself;argal, he that goes not willingly to the afternoon tea wearies not his own life.'
So, in effect, he that isdraggedto an afternoon tea does not go at all; and when he gets there, he is really somewhere else. This happy thought is a little difficult to reconcile with circumstances; but when one has become thoroughly soaked in it, it is a great help.
The End
Transcriber's Note:Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.