To be seen together for five minutes in any
public place might injure her reputation.
It is the drawback of her sex,
in this country. I am sorry. For though she hides it as best she can,
striving to impress me with the immensity of her worldly experiences,
there is an unsophisticated freshness in her outlook. The surface has
not been scored over.
So it is, with the young. From them you may learn what their elders,
having forgotten it, can nevermore teach you. New horizons unroll
themselves; you are treading untrodden ground. Talk to a simple
creature, farmer or fisherman - well, there is always that touch of
common humanity, that sense of eternal needs, to fashion a link of
conversation. From a professional - lawyer, doctor, engineer - you may
pick up some pungent trifle which yields food for thought; it is never
amiss to hearken to a specialist. But the ordinary man of the street,
the ordinary man or woman of society, of the world - what can they tell
you about art or music or life or religion, about tailors and golf and
exhaust-pipes and furniture - what on earth can they tell you that you
have not heard already? A mere grinding-out of commonplaces! How often
one has covered the same field! They cannot even put their knowledge,
such as it is, into an attractive shape or play variations on the theme;
it is patter; they have said the same thing, in the same language, for
years and years; you have listened to the same thing from other lips, in
the same language, for years and years. How one knows it all
beforehand - every note in that barrel-organ of echoes! One leaves them
feeling like an old, old man, vowing one will never again submit to such
a process of demoralization, and understanding, better than ever, the
justification of monarchies and tyrannies: these creatures are born to
act and think and believe as others tell them. You may be drawn to one
or the other, detecting an unusual kindliness of nature or some
endearing trick; for the most part, one studies them with a kind of
medical interest. How comes it that this man, respectably equipped by
birth, has grown so warped and atrophied, an animated bundle of
deficiencies?
Life is the cause - life, the onward march of years. It has a cramping
effect; it closes the pores, intensifying one line of activity at the
expense of all the others; often enough it encrusts the individual with
a kind of shell, a veneer of something akin to hypocrisy. Your ordinary
adult is an egoist in matters of the affections; a specialist in his own
insignificant pursuit; a dull dog. Dimly aware of these defects, he
confines himself to generalities or, grown confidential, tells you of
his little fads, his little love-affairs - such ordinary ones! Like those
millions of his fellows, he has been transformed into a screw, a bolt, a
nut, in the machine.
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