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 SECRETS OF

Harry Lorayne
The World's
Leading Expert
on Mind and
Memory Training

PUSTAK MAHAL
"Most folks are about as
happy as they make up
their minds to be."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Mind is the great lever

of all things; human
thought is the process by
which human ends are
ultimately answered."
—Daniel Webster

"The fountain of content

must spring up in the
mind, and he who has so
little knowledge of
human nature as to seek
happiness by changing
anything but his own
disposition will waste
his life in fruitless efforts
and multiply the griefs
which he proposes to
remove."
— Samuel Johnson

"Thinking is the hardest

work there is, which is
the probable reason why
so few engage in it."
— Henry Ford

"The sorcery and charm

of imagination, and the
power it gives to the
individual to transform
his world into a new
world of order and
delight, makes it one of
the most treasured of all
human capacities."
— Frank Barron
OVER 250,000 COPIES SOLD

by

Harry Lorayne

PUSTAK MAHAL®
Delhi • Bangalore • Mumbai • Patna • Hyderabad
 Publishers
fXJ Pustak Mahal, Delhi
J-3/16 , Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002
S 23276539, 23272783, 23272784 • Fax: 011-23260518
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.pustakmahal.com
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5, Roddell Court, Bath Road, Slough SL3 OQJ, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Sales Centre
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■S 23268292, 23268293, 23279900 • Fax: 011-23280567
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Bangalore: IT 22234025
E-mail: [email protected] • [email protected]
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Hyderabad: Telefax: 040-24737290
E-mail: [email protected]

Published in India by arrangement with

LIFETIME BOOKS, INC.
Hollywood Blvd.,
Hollywood.

The Copyright of this book, as well as all matter contained

herein (including illustrations) rests with the Publishers. No
person shall copy the name of the book, its title design,
matter and illustrations in any form and in any language,
totally or partially or in any distorted form. Anybody doing
so shall face legal action and will be responsible for damages.

ISBN 978-81-223-0060-4
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword 5
1. Organize Your Mind — for Full Efficiency 7
2. Cultivate Your Interest — to the Pitch of Success 14
3. Awaken Your Enthusiasm — Increase Your
Incentive 20
• 4. Think Effectively — to Get Results 31
5. Think Logically — and No One Can Stop You 41
6. Think Creatively — and Climb Out of All Your
Ruts 54
7. You Can Find Time for Everything 60
8. Multiply Your Output with the Habit of
Concentration 67
9. You Can Solve Your Problems — Once You
Know What They Are 71
10. Strengthening Good Habits — Discarding Bad Ones 77
11. You Must Trust Others — If You Want to Succeed 83
12. Curiosity Can Also Lead You to Success 88
13. You Can Learn What You Really Want To 95
14. How tc Improve Your Powers of Observation 102
15. How To Remember Anything — With the Least
Effort 108
4 Contents

16. How To Remember Names and Faces 117

17. How to Make Anyone Like You — The Secret
of Personality 124
18. How To Be an Effective Public Speaker —
Without Fear 134
19. Worry Control — The Secret of Peace of Mind 139
20. How To Conquer Fear — and Overcome
Inevitable Troubles 147
21. Replace Positive Thinking with Positive Doing 152
22. What Kind of Success Do You Want? 158
23. How to Make Your Own Good Luck 166
24. When to Begin 173
 FOREWORD

Since I originally wrote Secrets of Mind Power, back in 1961,

my books on memory training have become and are best sellers;
they have been translated into as many as eighteen languages.
My first book on the subject, How To Develop A Super-Power
Memory, first appeared in 1957 and is still selling — along with
some of my later books on the subject. Secrets ofMind Power was
my second book. I'm leaving most of it exactly as originally
written. I've updated it a bit, and added some material. It's
interesting that the thoughts I had and recorded those thirty
years ago still hold up, are still relevant, today.
The fact that my memory books continue to sell proves
something I've always known — that people from all walks of
life, in every field of endeavor, are interested in improving
themselves and organizing their minds.
In my opinion and, admittedly, I'm a bit biased, a trained
memory is one of the most important factors in mental
organization. There are, of course, many other factors involved.
It is mostly with these other factors that this book is concerned,
although the subject of memory has not been ignored.
There is no doubt in my mind that the person with a well-
trained and organized mind is the happy and successful person.
Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most folks are about as happy as
they make up their minds to be." It's difficult to argue withthat.
The search for happiness need not be a long or difficult one —
you can find happiness within yourself.
Yes — you can be a better and happier person than you are
now! Yes — you can use your mind much more efficiently and
effectively.
6 Foreword

There’s no doubt about it. Just make up your mind that this is
true and you will be able to use the brain power you have to
much better advantage.
Samuel Johnson wrote: “The fountain of content must spring
up in the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human
nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own
disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the
griefs which he purposes to remove.”
 Chapter 1

Organize Your Mind —

for Full Efficiency

Mind is the great lever of all things; human

thought is the process by which human ends are
ultimately answered.
DANIEL WEBSTER

There is only one thing that can help you avoid chaos in
business — in social dealings — in life itself; and that thing is —
organization. Without it everything would fall apart; there would
be no learning, no science, no knowledge, no writing, no creative
thinking, no competitive business — nothing!
This should be obvious to you. One's entire life is built around
organization from the moment of birth — even from the moment
of conception. The world we live in, the universe, everything
about us is organized. All our activities, whether they be directed
toward making a living, or enjoying ourselves, or both, are
planned and organized.
An expectant mother follows a definite regimen suggested by
her obstetrician. After the baby is born, he is fed, bathed and
made to rest according to a definite system. Even his food consists
of a formula of planned ingredients.
8 SECRETS OF MIND POWER

When the child starts school, he is faced with more order,

planning and organization. And so it goes, until he becomes the
reluctant participant in a carefully organized funeral. So, from
conception to death, we must organize our pursuits, or activities,
even our joys and our sorrows. Above all, we should and must
organize our thinking.
I don't mean that you should organize your thinking just to
aid you in business or in your job; although that is quite an
important part of the entire picture. I mean you should organize
your mind in general — for all things, throughout the rest of
your life. If you look at life with an organized mind instead of
through the proverbial rose-colored glasses (although they have
their place, too), you will surely see success and happiness from
a much better vantage point.
If you manage to organize your mind, you will organize and
manage your life, and it is to this end that this book is dedicated.

Be Your Own Efficiency Expert

To organize your mind is to control it, and according to Charles
Darwin, "The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we
recognize that we ought to control our thoughts."
Business, of course, recognized the importance of organization
long ago. That is why the business world uses so many efficiency
experts, "efficiency expert" — another name for one who is an
expert in organization. Just as it is another name for "efficiency
engineer" and "efficiency consultant."
Basically, organization is simply a question of systemization.
Have you ever watched a good short-order cook at work during
a busy lunch hour? Well, when you get the chance, observe one
carefully. Almost every move he makes is done for a definite
purpose. All the ingredients that he may have to use are within
easy reach; the most used, closest to him. He is so familiar with
the positions of these ingredients that he can reach for any one
of them almost without looking.
One of the countermen may order a "B and T down" — bacon
and tomato on toast. The short-order man immediately puts two
pieces of bread into the toaster and places the bacon on the griddle,
and takes out a couple of slices of tomato, almost in one continuous
movement.
If eggs are ordered, he stops whatever he's doing for just enough
time to put out two eggs. The fact that the eggs are out is enough
 Organize Your Mind — for Full Efficiency 9

to remind him of that standing order. If he were to try to remember

every order as it was called, he’d be in a mess in no time at all.
Any competent short-order cook has at least one key ingredient
for every order, which he immediately places on his working
surface the moment the order is called.
That is the organized or systematic way of being a short-order
cook. The same idea can be, and certainly should be, applied to
any other activity. The fastest, most efficient, easiest and best
way of doing anything, including thinking, is the organized way.
The short-order cook example is a good instance of advance
preparation, which is one of the first steps in organization.
Preparation, planning ahead, anticipating and getting ready for
minor difficulties or obstacles are all parts of, or synonymous
with, organization.
This book is an effort on my part to aid you in systematizing
your thinking. I’m taking quite a chance, too, because it has
been said (by Don Marquis) that, “If you make people think
they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think,
they’ll hate you.” Well, I’m willing to take that chance, even
though I know that most of us tend to be lazy and become quite
annoyed at having to make the effort necessary to think clearly
and in an organized manner.
In this day and age when efficiency and organization are
virtually essentials for success, I see no reason for anybody to
tolerate inefficiency in himself. Particularly when something can
be done about it! Fundamentally, there is only one person
responsible for how you think, for what goes on in your mind,
and that person is — You!
The fact that you’re reading this book right now is your first
step toward the goal of an organized mind. You’re interested;
and interest is an essential element for learning anything.
Another essential for learning is to do something about it; and
when you picked up this book, at least you did something!
Unfortunately, too many people in this world are talkers and
wishers instead of doers. And — sad but true — those who need
help most are the ones who rarely will make the effort to procure
that help. People who have a perfect set of teeth will visit the
dentist twice a year. The ones who should see their dentist rarely
do.
Going to a psychiatrist has become the thing to do in certain
circles; but again, many of those who really need psychiatric
help never admit it and, therefore, never get it. Since my
10 SECRETS OF MIND POWER

main business is memory, I meet the "talkers" and "wishers"

almost constantly. After one of my keynote talks, most of those
who already have pretty good memories will be the ones
most anxious to go out and pick up one of my books on memory
training.
Then I always get a few who say, "I have the worst memory in
the world — nothing can ever help me!" Well, nothing ever will
so long as they feel that way about it; and they're the ones who
need it most. Then I get those whose attitude is "Boy, I'd give a
million dollars for a memory like that!" But will they walk into a
bookstore and spend only thirteen to twenty dollars for a book
that would give them a memory like that? Very seldom.
I mention all this, not because I'm trying to sell any of my
books on memory — they do quite well, thank you — but because
I have the feeling that most of the "how to" books written today
rarely get into the hands of those who need to learn "how to"
most desperately. As for those who won't make the effort to get
help — well, as the song says, "That's their Red Wagon" and
they have to keep draggin' it around.’I guess Benedict Spinoza
had people like that in mind when he said, "So long as a man
imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he determined
not to do it; and consequently, so long is it impossible to him that
he should do it."

You Live the Way You Think

Organized thinking really means controlling thought reactions
properly, and solving problems in the most efficient manner
possible at the time. As you will see further on in this book, it is
my contention that most of our thinking is directed toward solving
some problem or other.
The way we react mentally to anything that happens to us,
that we see, hear, touch or experience — and the way we go
about solving the problems it poses — is what occupies our minds
all the time. This being so, it is an obvious conclusion that you
might as well react and solve your problems in an organized
way as in any other way.
There are examples of this throughout the book, but I feel
that it is necessary to give you one or two right now. One example
of proper reaction is described in something I read recently. It is
an instance of reaction to an insult, and it was written by Russell
Lyons. He wrote: "The only graceful way to accept an insult is to
 Organize Your Mind — for Full Efficiency 11

ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top if; if you can't top it, laugh at
it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved."
Now, I admit that this is not a cataclysmic event — being
insulted, that is. But if you're going to have your mind react
properly, you might as well do so with small events as with large
ones.
The way you think is the way you live. Think properly, clearly
and effectively, and success and happiness must come to you.
This is true regardless of the obstacles, disabilities, irritations
and annoyances that must inevitably face all of us.
Pry open that closed mind, and imagination, organization and
creativeness will be sucked into it as air into a vacuum. When
Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he went about discovering the
law of gravity, he answered, "By thinking about it." This, of
course, was a true answer, but obviously not quite so simple as it
appeared.
Many men had witnessed an apple falling to the ground, just
as Newton did. However, Newton "thought" about it; he reacted
to it properly. His mind asked questions: "Why did the apple fall
down? Why didn't it fall up?" His thoughts did not stay in one
groove. They covered and worried the subject from all possible
angles, trying to solve the problem, or answer the questions.
It is not my intention to teach you to discover great natural
laws; but perhaps you will learn the importance of seeing things
clearly, and thinking of these things properly and effectively,
after you've read what I have to say. You may be of the opinion
that you do think clearly about things. Well, maybe you do —
but since early Greek civilization, philosophers have been
suggesting that before everything else we should "know
ourselves." We all spend more time thinking about ourselves than
about any other subject, yet isn't it amazing how little we do
know about ourselves?
When thinking about a problem, you must learn to get out
of the well-worn grooves. Think or observe from every possible
angle. For example: here is the Roman numeral IX. Now for a
little problem — or riddle, if you will. Can you add just one
mark or symbol to this Roman numeral, and change it into the
number 6?
You should be able to work it out in just a few moments. The
reason you won't solve it immediately is because your thinking
has been "misdirected" — it has been steered along a groove; the
wrong groove, of course.
12 SECRETS OF MIND POWER

Misdirection is the greatest weapon of our professional mag­

icians. If they fool you, it is not because the hand is quicker than
the eye, but because they make you think along the wrong lines.
They throw in a few "red herrings" to keep your mind occupied,
while the important machinations that make the trick come off
go unnoticed.
In this particular case, I've led you to think along the lines of
Roman numerals. If you persist in thinking that way, you'll never
solve this simple problem. Eventually, of course, you'll get out of
that mental groove, and the answer will all but hit you between
the eyes.
If you haven't solved it yet — well, simply place an "S" in front
of the letters IX, and you've formed the word "SIX." People who
are accustomed to thinking about things from many angles will
solve a riddle like this almost instantly.

Do You Think — or Do You Merely Daydream?

Organizing your mind also implies heading toward a definite
goal. If your thinking is just daydreaming, in most cases you're
heading nowhere. Don't misunderstand — if daydreams are
constructive, if they act as inspiration, if they lead to action, then
they are productive. But if they take the place of action, that's
bad! Too many of us learn to become satisfied by daydreams;
they become substitutes for the real thing, and we may find
ourselves refusing to make the effort or working toward reality.
The late Richard Himber (musician/magician) was a good
friend, and a successful man. When I asked him to give me one
sentence on how to become successful, he said, "Hard work applied
properly and intelligently, and thinking in an organized manner,
must lead to success."
Well, it's difficult to argue with that. Hard work is an asset,
sure — if it's applied properly; and the ability to think is our
most useful asset if it is organized thinking!
Professor William James said that, "Compared to what we
ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only
a small part of our mental resources." Well, I doubt if, in our
lifetime, we will ever learn to use all our knowledge and mental
resources — but let us at least try to make the best use of what
we have! Attempt to organize and discipline those resources, and
you are on your way to a more successful, happy and creative life.
"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, that maketh wretched
or happy, rich or poor," yet we spend more time on
 Organize Your Mind — for Full Efficiency 13

inconsequential things than we do on organizing our minds. Time

is more important than money; it's the most valuable commodity
we can spend; so if you're looking for a bargain, spend some on
your thinking powers. Just make up your mind that there is
much room for improvement, and you'll make some improvement.
There is no limit to how much we can learn, you know, if we
will only acquire that most important single piece of knowledge,
and that is the knowledge of how little we know!

"Follow the Girls" to Success

In this chapter I've attempted to tell you a little bit of what this
book is to be about. An organized mind will help to get rid of
fears, worries, doubts, indecision — uncertainties, in general. It
will help you to react properly, to solve problems effectively. It
will help you to replace bad habits with good ones, to plan ahead,
to make life easier — above all, to live a happy and successful life.
An organized mind encompasses a myriad of subjects, many
of which I have no space to write about. I've selected the ones
that I feel are most essential.
One of our cliches is: "Live for today only." Well, I agree with
that, except that I would like to change it to "Live for today and
tomorrow only!" I believe in looking ahead, at least until tomor­
row; the day after tomorrow can be planned for, and thought
about — tomorrow.
Just recently, at a resort hotel where I appeared for a corpo­
rate convention, I marveled at the thinking ahead of the propri­
etor. There was a sign at the entrance to the dining room which
said, "To avoid the carrying of fruit out of the dining room, there
will be no fruit served in the dining room!"
Then I was quite favorably impressed one day as I waited for
a friend on New York's Madison Avenue. The wolves in gray
flannel suits were out in droves (I was wearing blue serge). Some
of the most beautiful girls in the world can be seen strolling on
Madison Avenue. I watched some of the men watching the girls.
One man in particular liked to follow them (with his eyes) as
they passed.
I guess he didn't want this to be obvious, so he planned ahead.
When he saw a particularly delectable female approaching from
the direction he was facing, he turned to face in the opposite
direction before the girl passed. In this way, he was able to "fol­
low the girls" without a breach of manners, and without making
it obvious. Now there was an organized mind!
 Chapter 2

Cultivate Your Interest

— to the Pitch of Success

Art thou lonely, 0 my brother1?

Share thy little with another!
Stretch a hand to one unfriended,
And the lonetiness is ended.
WILLIAM ARTHUR DUNKERLEY

We are all, each and every one of us, completely and irrevocably
alone. No matter how many friends a person may have, nor how
close those friends may be, it does not change this thought — or
fact, if you will — that we are each an entity unto ourselves.
I'm sure that many, if not all, of you have experienced the
dismal feeling of being more alone in a crowded room than when
you were actually physically alone.
I've mentioned close friends, but the same goes for relatives;
even someone as close to you as your husband or wife. There is
always something that just cannot be communicated to anyone
— something that cannot be put into words, or just too personal
to confide in others.
Probably a thousand people have greeted you this last year
with the question, "How are you?" Have you ever answered that
question literally? In other words, really told these people how
you are?
 Cultivate Your Interest — to the Pitch of Success 15

Told them about your personal aches and pains, about the
trouble at your job or at home? If you have, you may have noticed
a subtle glazing of your acquaintance's eyes after a few moments.
Perhaps they got a bit fidgety, and probably left you talking to
yourself after a while. Because, don't you see, people aren't really
interested.
Your troubles and problems are yours, my friend, and nobody
else really cares. You know why, don't you? Because they all
have problems of their own. Certainly theirs are more important
to them than yours. And, conversely, nobody's problems are quite
so important or imperative to you as are your own.

Curing the Private’T* Complex

This is all leading up to a very helpful point. I've told you, and
I'm sure you agree, that we are all completely alone. But there is
a way, a comparatively simple way to relieve that loneliness just
a bit.
And that is to overcome the overpowering dictates of the great
"private I". Most of us are so firmly imprisoned in that seemingly
escape-proof cell of ego, that dark, despairing dungeon of self,
that we tend to believe that the entire world revolves around
"me." This is an all-too-common ailment, this "Private I" complex,
but it can be, shall we say, arrested, if not completely cured!
How? Simply by being interested in others.
Now is that such a difficult pill to swallow in order to alleviate
such a painful disease? Of course not — although it's not quite
so easy as it sounds. At first you will probably have to force
yourself to be interested in others. Pulling your interest away
from yourself, your problems, your cares, is like pulling two
powerful magnets apart — but you can do it! Force it for. a while,
and I think you'll be surprised to find that in a short time you
actually will be interested in others.
It may help you to do this if you make a habit of trying to
think of the other person as another "I," instead of "he," "she," or
"they." I know that this is a large dose to swallow; it's a concept
that almost goes against nature, but try it. You needn't be afraid,
you'll never really be able to completely stop thinking of yourself;
and I doubt if it would be a wise thing even if you could.
Selfishness used intelligently can be a good force. But identifying
yourself with others will tend to relieve that momentous
loneliness.
16 SECRETS OF MIND POWER

Yes — this does involve doing things for others, too. If you are
really interested in others' welfare, you will want to do things for
them. Tolstoy said, "We love people not for what they can do for
us, but for what we can do for them." Tolstoy knew what he was
talking about.
Many others, all certainly more knowledgeable than I, have
said repeatedly that the only way to be happy is to try to make
others happy. Dr. Albert Schweitzer said that in so doing we
find "our secret source of true peace and lifelong satisfaction." To
my mind, it all boils down to doing something about that ever­
present individual loneliness. You'll never be so close to anyone
as when you are doing something for them with no other motive
than their happiness or welfare.
Please don't delude yourself into thinking that you're doing
that when you have some ulterior motive in mind. You may
actually be helping someone, or doing something for them — but
if you do it with a secret, selfish motive, it just isn't the same
thing. You may fool everyone else, but you'll find it almost
impossible to fool yourself.
Oh, there are many people who put up a great front of total
altruism. Virtually everything they do is to help others, or so
they would have you believe. But down deep they know that
they choose the people for whom they wish to do things for
purposes of their own. Either that or they have a martyr complex
which they have to satisfy — which is just as selfish a reason for
helping others as any other.
Be honest now — would you go as far out of your way for
someone who meant absolutely nothing to you as you would for
a person who might throw some business your way, or who might
return the favor in one fashion or another? I think not. Don't get
me wrong — I'm not suggesting that every time you do something
for someone it has to be completely unselfish and altruistic. As I
said before, not only is this impossible, but not too desirable either.

Breaking Out of the Box of Loneliness

On the other hand, if you never help anyone without a selfish
motive in mind (and too many of us go through life behaving
this way) you will have a tough time relieving that loneliness.
Forget what you want for a moment, and think of what the
other person wants. If you will only realize, that everyone has
basically the same desires and hopes that you do, you may find
 Cultivate Your Interest — to the Pitch of Success 17

this easier to do. I don't wish to go into a lot of examples of how

certain people attain their own desires while earnestly striving
for others. You can find such examples in the biography of any
successful person; in any book which teaches you how to attain,
or prepares you for, success.
You'll discover the truth of this once you really and earnestly
try doing for others as you would for yourself. No — I don't mean
"Do unto others, etc." I mean do for others. I've always been a
little careful about following the "golden rule" too literally, because
it does not take into consideration the completely different tastes
and preferences of different people.
Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is fine
when you know that the others in question like the same things
that you do. As an extreme example, I certainly wouldn't be too
happy about a masochist applying the golden rule to me! What
he would have others do unto him, I can live without!
To get back on track — I think you'll find that showing an
honest interest, and having an honest interest, in others will
cause others to be more interested in you. This will create just a
little nick in that iron constitution of the "private I" — but enough
to make it just a bit less private.
From here on in, instead of thinking of yourself, or of what
you're going to say next, when someone talks to you, listen to
him! Feign that attention at first, if you have to, it will soon
become real enough.
I have never yet met anybody, from any walk of life, from
whom I haven't learned something. Some part of their experience,
some thought or idea, no matter how minute, was passed over
from them to me. If such a thought or idea did not get across, I
would work to make it happen. I feel a sense of personal loss if I
don't learn something from each and every individual I meet.
This could not happen if I weren't listening — I mean really
listening — to them. And, as has been said before, your education
doesn't really begin until you start to listen.
Of course, one activity blends into another. It is almost
impossible to separate attentive listening and interest. If you
have trouble listening to people, get interested in them. If you
are finding it difficult to get interested in people, start listening
to them attentively. One helps you accomplish the other.
Now then, as I've explained, you will not relieve that relentless
loneliness until you can be interested in, or do things for, others
unselfishly. If the thought is with you that you are doing all this
18 SECRETS OF MIND POWER

for that very reason, it is no longer unselfish. Stop thinking about

it —just do it. Although if you start following these instructions
right now, you'll do so for a basically selfish reason, I think you'll
forget that reason in a short time. Because, you see, you'll become
genuinely interested in the people you're doing things for.

If You Dislike People, You Make Yourself

Dislikable
The loneliest people in the world, of course, are those who dislike
other people. If you dislike someone, it's a bit difficult to be
interested in him. Well, there's only one solution, you know, and
that is to stop disliking people. I know we can't love everyone we
come in contact with, but if you dislike most people, I'm afraid
there's something wrong with you!
A group of college students was once asked to list, as quickly
as they could, the names of people they disliked. When the time
allotted had elapsed, every student had listed a different number
of names. It was discovered (not to my surprise) that those who
disliked the most people were themselves the most widely disliked.
I have some more thoughts on the subject of disliking people,
and how to go about avoiding it, which I'll discuss later on. I will
only repeat now what Benjamin Disraeli once said: "Life is too
short to be little!" Perhaps you are wondering what all this has
to do with organizing your mind. If you are, then I haven't as
yet emphasized strongly enough the far-reaching power of the
mind. Everything, every ability or talent for which you have
been given credit, is really due to mind power. Of course, I'm not
including physical strength, or the ability to wiggle your ears —
although it can be argued, convincingly, that these things too
are really a part of mental organization.
The degree of interest that you show toward anyone or
anything can be controlled. The way your mind controls that
interest can change your entire life for the better. It's up to you
— there is no way that anyone can help you other than what
I'm doing right now: trying to impress upon you the importance
of controlling your interest.
You may think that I'm giving far too much space to the subject,
but I must disagree. As a matter of fact, I'm not through with it
yet. Most of the following chapter is devoted to it; and you'll find
the subject of "interest" mentioned throughout the book.
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 From this thought I somehow got back to my previous ones, and the
longer I lay wakeful the more pronouncedly stern did they become. I am as
loyal and loving a son of the Fatherland as it will ever in all human
probability beget, but what son after a proper period of probation does not
like the ring on the finger, the finer raiment, the paternal embrace, and the
invitation to dinner? In other words (and quitting parable), what son after
having served his time among such husks as majors does not like promotion
to the fatted calves of colonels? For some time past I have been expecting it
every day, and if it is not soon granted it is possible that my patience may be
so changed to anger that I shall refuse to remain at my post and shall send in
my resignation; though I must say I should like a hit at the English first.
Once embarked on these reflections I could not again close my eyes, and
lay awake for the remaining hours of the night with as great a din going on
as ever I heard in my life. I have described this—the effect of heavy rain
when you are in a caravan—in that portion of the narrative dealing with the
night on Grip’s Common, so need only repeat that it resembles nothing so
much as a sharp pelting with unusually hard stones. Edelgard, if she did
indeed sleep, must be of an almost terrifying toughness, for the roof on
which this pelting was going on was but a few inches from her head.
As the cold dawn crept in between the folds of our window-curtains and
the noise had in no way abated, I began very seriously to wonder how I
could possibly get up and go out and eat breakfast under such conditions.
There was my mackintosh, and I also had galoshes, but I could not appear
before Frau von Eckthum in the sponge bag, and yet that was the only
sensible covering for my head. But what after all could galoshes avail in
such a flood? The stubble field, I felt, could be nothing by then but a lake; no
fire could live in it; no stove but would be swamped. Were it not better, if
such was to be the weather, to return to London, take rooms in some water-
tight boarding-house, and frequent the dryness of museums? Of course it
would be better. Better? Must not anything in the world be better than that
which is the worst?
But, alas, I had been made to pay beforehand for the Elsa, and had taken
the entire responsibility for her and her horse’s safe return and even if I
could bring myself to throw away such a sum as I had disbursed one cannot
leave a caravan lying about as though it were what our neighbours across the
Vosges call a mere bagatelle. It is not a bagatelle. On the contrary, it is a
huge and complicated mechanism that must go with you like the shell on the
poor snail’s back wherever you go. There is no escape from it, once you
have started, day or night. Where was Panthers by now, Panthers with its
kind and helpful little lady? Heaven alone knew, after all our zigzagging.
Find it by myself I certainly could not, for not only had we zigzagged in
obedience to the caprices of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I had walked most of
the time as a man in a dream, heeding nothing particularly except my
growing desire to sit down.
I wondered grimly as six o’clock drew near, the hour at which the rest of
the company usually burst into activity, whether there would be many
exclamations of healthy and jolly that day. There is a point, I should say, at
which a thing or a condition becomes so excessively healthy and jolly that it
ceases to be either. I drew the curtain of my bunk together—for a great
upheaval over my head warned me that my wife was going to descend and
dress—and feigned slumber. Sleep seemed to me such a safe thing. You
cannot make a man rise and do what you consider his duty if he will not
wake up. The only free man, I reflected with my eyes tightly shut, is the man
who is asleep. Pushing my reflection a little further I saw with a slight start
that real freedom and independence are only, then, to be found in the
unconscious—a race (or sect; call it what you will) of persons untouched by
and above the law. And one step further and I saw with another slight start
that perfect freedom, perfect liberty, perfect deliverance from trammels, are
only to be found in a person who is not merely unconscious but also dead.
These, of course, as I need not tell my hearers, are metaphysics. I do not
often embark on their upsetting billows for I am, principally, a practical man.
But on this occasion they were not as fruitless as usual, for the thought of a
person dead suggested at once the thought of a person engaged in going
through the sickness preliminary to being dead, and a sick man is also to a
certain extent free—nobody, that is, can make him get up and go out into the
rain and hold his umbrella over Jellaby’s back while he concocts his terrible
porridge. I decided that I would slightly exaggerate the feelings of
discomfort which I undoubtedly felt, and take a day off in the haven of my
bed. Let them see to it that the horse was led; a man in bed cannot lead a
horse. Nor would it even be an exaggeration, for one who has been wakeful
half the night cannot be said to be in normal health. Besides, if you come to
that, who is in normal health? I should say no one. Certainly hardly any one.
And if you appeal to youth as an instance, what could be younger and yet
more convulsed with apparent torment than the newly born infant? Hardly
any one, I maintain, is well without stopping during a single whole day. One
forgets, by means of the anodynes of work or society or other excitement;
but cut off a person’s means of doing anything or seeing any one and he will
soon find out that at least his head is aching.
When, therefore, Edelgard had reached the stage of tidying the caravan,
arranging my clothes, and emptying the water out of the window preparatory
to my dressing, I put the curtains aside and beckoned to her and made her
understand by dint of much shouting (for the rain still pelted on the roof) that
I was feeling very weak and could not get up.
She looked at me anxiously, and pushing up the sponge bag—at which
she stared rather stupidly—laid her hand on my forehead. I thought her hand
seemed hot, and hoped we were not both going to be ill at the same time.
Then she felt my pulse. Then she looked down at me with a worried
expression and said—I could not hear it, but knew the protesting shape her
mouth assumed: “But Otto——”
I just shook my head and closed my eyes. You cannot make a man open
his eyes. Shut them, and you shut out the whole worrying, hurrying world,
and enter into a calm cave of peace from which, so long as you keep them
shut no one can possibly pull you. I felt she stood there awhile longer
looking down at me before putting on her cloak and preparing to face the
elements; then the door was unbolted, a gust of wet air came in, the caravan
gave a lurch, and Edelgard had jumped into the stubble.
Only for a short time was I able to reflect on her growing agility, and how
four days back she could no more jump into stubble or anything else than
can other German ladies of good family, and how the costume she had
bought in Berlin and which had not fitted her not only without a wrinkle but
also with difficulty, seemed gradually to be turning into a misfit, to be
widening, to be loosening, and those parts of it which had before been
smooth were changing every day into a greater bagginess—I was unable, I
say, to think about these things because, worn out, I at last fell asleep.
How long I slept I do not know, but I was very roughly awakened by
violent tossings and heavings, and looking hastily through my curtains saw a
wet hedge moving past the window.
So we were on the march.
I lay back on my pillow and wondered who was leading my horse. They
might at least have brought me some breakfast. Also the motion was
extremely disagreeable, and likely to give me a headache. But presently,
after a dizzy swoop round, a pause and much talking showed me we had
come to a gate, and I understood that we had been getting over the stubble
and were now about to rejoin the road. Once on that the motion was not
unbearable—not nearly so unbearable, I said to myself, as tramping in the
rain; but I could not help thinking it very strange that none of them had
thought to give me breakfast, and in my wife the omission was more than
strange, it was positively illegal. If love did not bring her to my bedside with
hot coffee and perhaps a couple of (lightly boiled) eggs, why did not duty? A
fasting man does not mind which brings her, so long as one of them does.
My impulse was to ring the bell angrily, but it died away on my
recollecting that there was no bell. The rain, I could see, had now lightened
and thinned into a drizzle, and I could hear cheerful talk going on between
some persons evidently walking just outside. One voice seemed to be
Jellaby’s, but how could it be he who was cheerful after the night he must
have had? And the other was a woman’s—no doubt, I thought bitterly,
Edelgard’s, who, warmed herself and invigorated by a proper morning meal,
cared nothing that her husband should be lying there within a stone’s throw
like a cold, neglected tomb.
Presently, instead of the hedge, the walls and gates of gardens passed the
window, and then came houses, singly at first, but soon joining on to each
other in an uninterrupted string, and raising myself on my elbow and putting
two and two together, I decided that this must be Wadhurst.
It was. To my surprise about the middle of the village the caravan
stopped, and raising myself once more on my elbow I was forced
immediately to sink back again, for I encountered a row of eager faces
pressed against the pane with eyes rudely staring at the contents of the
caravan, which, of course, included myself as soon as I came into view from
between the curtains of the berth.
This was very disagreeable. Again I instinctively and frantically sought
the bell that was not there. How long was I to be left thus in the street of a
village with my window-curtains unclosed and the entire population looking
in? I could not get out and close them myself, for I am staunch to the night
attire, abruptly terminating, that is still, thank heaven, characteristic during
the hours of darkness of every honest German gentleman: in other words, I
do not dress myself, as the English do, in a coat and trousers in order to go to
bed. But on this occasion I wished that I did, for then I could have leaped out
of my berth and drawn the curtains in an instant myself, and the German
attire allows no margin for the leaping out of berths. As it was, all I could do
was to lie there holding the berth-curtains carefully together until such time
as it should please my dear wife to honour me with a visit.
This she did after, I should say, at least half an hour had passed, with the
completely composed face of one who has no reproaches to make herself,
and a cup of weak tea in one hand and a small slice of dry toast on a plate in
the other, though she knows I never touch tea and that it is absurd to offer a
large-framed, fine man one piece of toast with no butter on it for his
breakfast.
“What are we stopping for?” I at once asked on her appearing.
“For breakfast,” said she.
“What?”
“We are having it in the inn to-day because of the wet. It is so nice, Otto.
Table-napkins and everything. And flowers in the middle. And nothing to
wash up afterward. What a pity you can’t be there! Are you better?”
“Better?” I repeated, with a note of justified wrath in my voice, for the
thought of the others all enjoying themselves, sitting at a good meal on
proper chairs in a room out of the reach of fresh air, naturally upset me. Why
had they not told me? Why, in the name of all that was dutiful, had she not
told me?
“I thought you were asleep,” said she when I inquired what grounds she
had for the omission.
“So I was, but that——”
“And I know you don’t like being disturbed when you are,” said she,
lamely as I considered, for naturally it depends on what one is disturbed for
—of course I would have got up if I had known.
“I will not drink such stuff,” I said, pushing the cup away. “Why should I
live on tepid water and butterless toast?”
“But—didn’t you say you were ill?” she asked, pretending to be
surprised. “I thought when one is ill——”
“Kindly draw those curtains,” I said, for the crowd was straining every
nerve to see and hear, “and remove this stuff. You had better,” I added, when
the faces had been shut out, “return to your own breakfast. Do not trouble
about me. Leave me here to be ill or not. It does not matter. You are my wife,
and bound by law to love me, but I will make no demands on you. Leave me
here alone, and return to your breakfast.”
“But, Otto, I couldn’t stay in here with you before. The poor horse would
never——”
“I know, I know. Put the horse before your husband. Put anything and
anybody before your husband. Leave him here alone. Do not trouble. Go
back to your own, no doubt, excellent breakfast.”
“But Otto, why are you so cross?”
“Cross? When a man is ill and neglected, if he dare say a word he is
cross. Take this stuff away. Go back to your breakfast. I, at least, am
considerate, and do not desire your omelettes and other luxuries to become
cold.”
“It isn’t omelettes,” said Edelgard. “Why are you so unreasonable? Won’t
you really drink this?” And again she held out the cup of straw-coloured tea.
Then I turned my face to the wall, determined that nothing she could say
or do should make me lose my temper. “Leave me,” was all I said, with a
backward wave of the hand.
She lingered a moment, as she had done in the morning, then went out.
Somebody outside took the cup from her and helped her down the ladder,
and a conviction that it was Jellaby caused such a wave of just anger to pass
over me that, being now invisible to the crowd, I leaped out of my berth and
began quickly and wrathfully to dress. Besides, as she opened the door a
most attractive odour of I do not know what, but undoubtedly something to
do with breakfast in the inn, had penetrated into my sick chamber.
“ ’Ere ’e is,” said one of the many children in the crowd, when I emerged
dressed from the caravan and prepared to descend the steps; “ ’ere’s ’im out
of the bed.”
I frowned.
“Don’t ’e get up late?” said another.
I frowned again.
 “ ’Ere ’e is”

“Don’t ’e look different now?” said a third.

I deepened my frown.
“Takes it easy ’e do, don’t ’e,” said a fourth, “in spite of pretendin’ to be
a poor gipsy.”
I got down the steps and elbowed my way sternly through them to the
door of the inn. There I paused an instant on the threshold and faced them,
frowning at them as individually as I could.
“I have been ill,” I said briefly.
But in England they have neither reverence nor respect for an officer. In
my own country if any one dared to speak to me or of me in that manner in
the street I would immediately draw my sword and punish him, for he would
in my person have insulted the Emperor’s Majesty, whose uniform I wore;
and it would be useless for him to complain, for no magistrate would listen
to him. But in England if anybody wants to make a target of you, a target
you become for so long as his stock of wit (heaven save the mark!) lasts. Of
course the crowd in Wadhurst must have known. However much my
mackintosh disguised me it was evident that I was an officer, for there is no
mistaking the military bearing; but for their own purposes they pretended
they did not, and when therefore turning to them with severe dignity I said:
“I have been ill,” what do you think they said? They said, “Yah.”
For a moment I supposed, with some surprise I confess, that they were
acquainted with the German tongue, but a glance at their faces showed me
that the expression must be English and rude. I turned abruptly and left these
boors: it is not part of my business to teach a foreign nation manners.
My frowns, however, were smoothed when I entered the comfortable
breakfast-room and was greeted with a pleasant chorus of welcome and
inquiries.
Frau von Eckthum made room for me beside her, and herself ministered
to my wants. Mrs. Menzies-Legh laughed and praised me for my
sensibleness in getting up instead of giving way. The breakfast was abundant
and excellent. And I discovered that it was the ever kind and thoughtful Lord
Sigismund who had helped Edelgard out of the caravan, Jellaby being
harmlessly occupied writing picture postcards to (I suppose) his constituents.
 By the time I had had my third cup of coffee—so beneficial is the effect
of that blessed bean—I was able silently to forgive Edelgard and be ready to
overlook all her conduct since the camp by the Medway and start fresh
again; and when toward eleven o’clock we resumed the march, a united and
harmonious band (for the child Jumps was also that day restored to health
and her friends) we found the rain gone and the roads being dried up with all
the efficiency and celerity of an unclouded August sun.
That was a pleasant march. The best we had had. It may have been the
weather, which was also the best we had had, or it may have been the
country, which was undeniably pretty in its homely unassuming way—
nothing, of course, to be compared with what we would have gazed at from
the topmost peak of the Rigi or from a boat on the bosom of an Italian lake,
but very nice in its way—or it may have been because Frau von Eckthum
walked with me, or because Lord Sigismund told me that next day being
Sunday we were going to rest in the camp we got to that night till Monday,
and dine on Sunday at the nearest inn, or, perhaps it was all this mingled
together that made me feel so pleasant.
Take away annoyances and worry, and I am as good-natured a man as you
will find. More, I can enjoy anything, and am ready with a jest about almost
anything. It is the knowledge that I am really so good-humoured that
principally upsets me when Edelgard or other circumstances force me into a
condition of vexation unnatural to me. I do not wish to be vexed. I do not
wish ever to be disagreeable. And it is, I think, down-right wrong of people
to force a human being who does not wish it to be so. That is one of the
reasons why I enjoyed the company of Frau von Eckthum. She brought out
what was best in me, what I may be pardoned for calling the perfume of my
better self, because though it contains the suggestion that my better self is a
flower-like object it also implies that she was the warming and vivifying and
scent-extracting sun.
There is a dew-pond at the top of one of the hills we walked up that day
(at least Mrs. Menzies-Legh said it was a dew-pond, and that the water in it
was not water at all but dew, though naturally I did not believe her—what
sensible man would?) and by its side in the shade of an oak tree Frau von
Eckthum and I sat while the three horses went down to fetch up the third
caravan, nominally taking care of those already up but really resting in that
pretty nook without bothering about them, for of all things in the world a
horseless caravan is surely most likely to keep quiet. So we rested, and I
amused her. I really do not know about what in particular, but I know I
succeeded, for her oh’s became quite animated, and were placed with such
dexterous intelligence that each one contained volumes.
She was interested in everything, but especially so in what I said about
Jellaby and his doctrines, of which I made great fun. She listened with the
most earnest attention to my exposure of the fallacies with which he is
riddled, and became at last so evidently convinced that I almost wished the
young gentleman had been there too to hear me.
Altogether an agreeable, invigorating day; and when, about three o’clock,
we found a good camping ground in a wide field sheltered to the north by a
copse and rising ground, and dropping away in front of us to a most
creditable and extensive view, for the second time since I left Panthers I was
able to suspect that caravaning might not be entirely without its
commendable points.
 CHAPTER XII

W E supped that night beneath the stars with the field dropping
downward from our feet into the misty purple of the Sussex Weald.
What we had for supper was chicken and rice and onions, and very
excellent it was. The wind had gone, and it was cold. It was like a night in
North Germany, where the wind sighs all day long and at sunset it suddenly
grows coldly and clearly calm.
These are quotations from a conversation I overheard between Frau von
Eckthum (oddly loquacious that night) and Jellaby, who both sat near where
I was eating my supper, supposed to be eating theirs but really letting it spoil
while they looked down at the Sussex Weald (I wish I knew what a Weald is:
Kent had one too) and she described the extremely flat and notoriously dull
country round Storchwerder.
Indeed I would not have recognized it from her description, and yet I
know it every bit as well as she can. Blue air, blue sky, blue water, and the
flash of white wings—that was how she described it, and poor Jellaby was
completely taken in and murmured “Beautiful, beautiful” in his foolish slow
voice, and forgot to eat his chicken and rice while it was hot, and little
guessed that she had laughed at him with me a few hours before.
I listened, amused but tolerant. We must not keep a pretty lady too
exactly to the truth. The first part of this chapter is a quotation from what I
heard her say (excepting one sentence), but my hearers must take my word
for it that it did not sound anything like as silly as one might suppose.
Everything depends on the utterer. Frau von Eckthum’s quasi-poetical way
of describing the conduct of our climate had an odd attractiveness about it
that I did not find, for instance, in my dear wife’s utterances when she too,
which she at this time began to do with increasing frequency, indulged in the
quasi-poetic. Quasi-poetic I and other plain men take to be the violent
tearing of such a word as rolling from its natural place and applying it to the
plains and fields round Storchwerder. A ship rolls, but fields, I am glad to
say, do not. You may also with perfect propriety talk about a rolling-pin in
connection with the kitchen, or of a rolling stone in connection with moss.
Of course I know that we all on suitable occasions make use of exclamations
of an appreciative nature, such as colossal and grossartig, but that is brief
and business-like, it is what is expected of us, and it is a duty quickly
performed and almost perfunctory, with one eye on the waiter and the
restaurant behind; but slow raptures, prolonged ones, raptures beaten out
thin, are not in my way and had not till then been in Edelgard’s way either.
The English are flimsier than we are, thinner blooded, more feminine, more
finnicking. There are no restaurants or Bierhalle wherever there is a good
view to drown their admiration in wholesome floods of beer, and not being
provided with this natural stopper it fizzles on to interminableness. Why,
Jellaby I could see not only let his supper get stone cold but forgot to eat it at
all in his endeavour to outdo Frau von Eckthum’s style in his replies, and
then Edelgard must needs join in too, and say (I heard her) that life in
Storchwerder was a dusty, narrow life, where you could not see the liebe
Gott because of other people’s chimney-pots.
Greatly shocked (for I am a religious man) I saved her from further
excesses by a loud call for more supper, and she got up mechanically to
attend to my wants.
Jellaby, however, whose idea seemed to be that a woman is never to do
anything (I wonder who is to do anything, then?) forestalled her with the
sudden nimbleness he displayed on such occasions, so surprising in
combination with his clothes and general slackness, and procured me a fresh
helping.
I thanked him politely, but could not repress some irony in my bow as I
apologized for disturbing him.
“Shall I hold your plate while you eat?” he said.
“Why, Jellaby?” I asked, mildly astonished.
“Wouldn’t it be even more comfortable if I did?” he asked; and then I
perceived that he was irritated, no doubt because I had got most of the
cushions, and he, Quixotic as he is, had given up his to my wife, on whom it
was entirely thrown away for she has always assured me she actually prefers
hard seats.
Well, of course there were few things in the world quite so unimportant as
Jellaby’s irritation, so I just looked pleasant and at the food he had brought
me; but I did not get another evening with Frau von Eckthum. She sat
immovable on the edge of the slope with my wife and Jellaby, talking in
tones that became more and more subdued as dusk deepened into night and
stars grew hard and shiny.
 They all seemed subdued. They even washed up in whispers. And
afterward the very nondescripts lay stretched out quite quietly by the
glowing embers of Lord Sigismund’s splendid fire listening to Menzies-
Legh’s and Lord Sidge’s talk, in which I did not join for it was on the subject
they were so fond of, the amelioration of the condition of those dull and
undeserving persons, the poor.
I put my plate where somebody would see it and wash it, and retired to
the shelter of a hedge and the comfort of a cigar. The three figures on the
edge of the hill became gradually almost mute. Not a leaf in my hedge
stirred. It was so still that people talking at the distant farm where we had
procured our chickens could almost be understood, and a dog barking
somewhere far away down in the Weald seemed quite threateningly near. It
was really extraordinarily still; and the stillest thing of all was that strange
example of the Englishwoman grafted on what was originally such excellent
German stock, Mrs. Menzies-Legh, sitting a yard or two away from me, her
hands clasped round her knees, her face turned up as though she were
studying astronomy.
I do not suppose she moved for half an hour. Her profile seemed to shine
white in the dusk with lines that reminded me somehow of a cameo there is
in a red velvet case lying on the table in our comfortable drawing-room at
Storchwerder, and the remembrance brought a slight twinge of home-
sickness with it. I shook this off, and fell to watching her, and for the
amusement of an idle hour lazily reconstructed from the remnants before me
what her appearance must have been ten years before in her prime, when
there were at least undulations, at least suggestions that here was a woman
and not a kind of elongated boy.
The line of her face is certainly quite passable; and that night in the half
darkness it was quite as passable as any I have seen on a statue—objects in
which I have never been able to take much interest. It is probable she used to
be beautiful. Used to be beautiful? What is the value of that? Just a snap of
the fingers, and nothing more. If women would but realize that once past
their first youth their only chance of pleasing is to be gentle and rare of
speech, tactful, deft—in one word, apologetic, they would be more likely to
make a good impression on reasonable men such as myself. I did not wish to
quarrel with Mrs. Menzies-Legh and yet her tongue and the way she used it
put my back up (as the British say) to a height it never attains in the placid
pools of feminine intercourse in Storchwerder.
 To see her sit so silent and so motionless was unusual. Was she regretting,
perhaps, her lost youth? Was she feeling bitter at her inability to attract me, a
man within two yards of her, sufficiently for me to take the trouble to engage
her in conversation? No doubt. Well—poor thing! I am sorry for women, but
there is nothing to be done since Nature has decreed they shall grow old.
I got up and shook out the folds of my mackintosh—a most useful
garment in those damp places—and threw away the end of my cigar. “I am
now going to retire for the night,” I explained, as she turned her head at my
rustling, “and if you take my advice you will not sit here till you get
rheumatism.”
She looked at me as though she did not hear. In that light her appearance
was certainly quite passable: quite as passable as that of any of the statues
they make so much fuss about; and then of course with proper eyes instead
of blank spaces, and eyes garnished with that speciality of hers, the
ridiculously long eyelashes. But I knew what she was like in broad day, I
knew how thin she was, and I was not to be imposed upon by tricks of light;
so I said in a matter of fact manner, seizing the opportunity for gentle malice
in order to avenge myself a little for her repeated and unjustified attacks on
me, “You will not be wise to sit there longer. It is damp, and you and I are
hardly as young as we were, you know.”
Any normal woman, gentle as this was, would have shrivelled. Instead
she merely agreed in an absent way that it was dewy, and turned up her face
to the stars again.
“Looking for the Great Bear, eh?” I remarked, following her gaze as I
buttoned my wrap.
She continued to gaze, motionless. “No, but—don’t you see? At Christ
Whose glory fills the skies,” she said—both profanely and senselessly, her
face in that light exactly like the sort of thing one sees in the windows of
churches, and her voice as though she were half asleep.
So I hied me (poetry being the fashion) to my bed, and lay awake in it for
some time being sorry for Menzies-Legh, for really no man can possibly like
having a creepy wife.
But (luckily) autres temps autres mœurs, as our unbalanced but
sometimes felicitous neighbours across the Vosges say, and next morning the
poetry of the party was, thank heaven, clogged by porridge.
 It always was at breakfast. They were strangely hilarious then, but never
poetic. Poetry developed later in the day as the sun and their spirits sank
together, and flourished at its full growth when there were stars or a moon.
That morning, our first Sunday, a fresh breeze blew up from the Weald
below and a cloudless sun dazzled us as it fell on the white cloth of the table
set out in the middle of the field by somebody—I expect it was Mrs.
Menzies-Legh—who wanted to make the most of the sun, and we had to
hold on our hats with one hand and shade our eyes with the other while we
ate.
Uncomfortable? Of course it was uncomfortable. Let no one who loves to
be comfortable ever caravan. Neither let any one who loves order and
decency do so. They may take it from me that there is never any order, and
even less frequently is there any decency. I can give you an example from
that Sunday morning. I was sitting at the table with the ladies, on a seat (as
usual) too low for me, and that (also as usual) slanted on the uneven ground,
with my feet slightly too cold in the damp grass and my head slightly too hot
in the bright sun, and the general feeling of subtle discomfort and ruffledness
that is one of the principal characteristics of this form of pleasure-taking,
when I saw (and so did the ladies) Jellaby emerge from his tent—in his shirt
sleeves if you please—and fastening up a mirror on the roof of his canvas
lair proceed then and there in the middle of the field to lather his face and
then to shave it.
Edelgard, of course, true to her early training, at once cast down her eyes
and was careful to keep them averted during the remainder of the meal, but
nobody else seemed to mind; indeed, Mrs. Menzies-Legh got out her camera
and focussing him with deliberate care snap-shotted him.
Were these people getting blunted as the days passed to the refinements
and necessary precautions of social intercourse? I had been stirred to much
silent indignation by the habit of the gentlemen of walking in their shirt
sleeves, and had not yet got used to that, but to see Jellaby dressing in an
open field was a little more than I could endure in silence. For if, I asked
myself rapidly, Jellaby dresses (shaving being a part of dressing) out-of-
doors in the morning, what is to prevent his doing the opposite in the
evening? Where is the line? Where is the logical limit? We had now been
three days out, and we had already got to this. Where, I thought, should we
have got to in another six? Where should we be by, say, the following
Sunday?
 I cannot think a promiscuous domesticity desirable, and am one of those
who strongly disapprove of that worst example of it, the mixed bathing or
Familienbad which blots with practically unclothed Jews of either sex our
otherwise decent coasts. Never have I allowed Edelgard to indulge in it, nor
have I done so myself. It is a deplorable spectacle. We used to sit and watch
it for hours, in a condition of ever-increasing horror and disgust—it was
quite difficult to find seats sometimes, so many of our friends were there
being disgusted too.
But these denizens of the deep at the points where the deep was a
Familienbad were, as I have said, chiefly Jews and their Jewesses, and what
can you expect? Jellaby, however, in spite of his other infirmities, was not
yet a Jew; he was everything else I think, but that crowning infamy had up to
then been denied him.
But not to be one and yet to behave with the laxness of one within view
of the rest of the party was very inexcusable. “Are there no hedges to this
field?” I cried in indignant sarcasm, looking pointedly at each of its four
hedges in turn and raising my voice so that he could hear.
“Oh, Baron dear, it’s Sunday,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, no longer a
rather nice-looking if irreverent cameo in a velvet case, but full of morning
militancy. “Don’t be cross till to-morrow. Save it up, or what will you do on
Monday?”
“Be, I trust, just as capable of distinguishing between the permitted and
the non-permitted as I am to-day,” was my ready retort.
“Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, shaking her head and smiling as
though she were talking to a child or a feeble-minded; and turning her
camera on to me she took my photograph.
“Pray why,” I inquired with justifiable heat, “should I be photographed
without my consent?”
“Because,” she said, “you look so deliciously cross. I want to have you in
my scrap-book like that. You looked then exactly like a baby I know.”
“Which baby?” I asked, frowning and at a loss how to meet this kind of
thing conversationally. And there was Edelgard, all ears; and if a wife sees
her husband being treated disrespectfully by other women is it not very
likely that she soon will begin to treat him so herself? “Which baby?” I
asked; but knew myself inadequate.
 “Oh, a perfectly respectable baby,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh carelessly,
putting her camera down and going on with her breakfast, “but irritable and
exacting about things like bottles.”
“But I do not see what I have to do with bottles,” I said nettled.
“Oh, no—you haven’t. Only it looks at its nurse just like you did then if
they’re late, or not full enough.”
“But I did not look at its nurse,” I said angrily, becoming still more so as
they all (including my wife) laughed.
I rose abruptly. “I will go and smoke,” I said.
Of course I saw what she meant about the nurse the moment I had
spoken, but it is inexcusable to laugh at a man because he does not
immediately follow the sense (or rather the senselessness) of a childishly
skipping conversation. I am as ready as any one to laugh at really amusing
phrases or incidents, but being neither a phrase nor an incident myself I do
not see why I should be laughed at. Surely it is unworthy of grown men and
women to laugh at each other in the way silly children do? It is ruin to the
graces of social intercourse, to the courtliness that should uninterruptedly
distinguish the well-born. But there was a childish spirit pervading the whole
party (with the exception of myself) that seemed to increase as the days went
by, a spirit of unreasoning glee and mischievousness which I believe is
characteristic of very young and very healthy children. Even Edelgard was
daily becoming more calf-like, as we say, daily descending nearer to the
level occupied at first only by the two nondescripts, that level at which you
begin to play idiotic and heating games like the one the English call Blind
Man’s Buff (an obviously foolish name, for what is buff?) and which we so
much more sensibly call Blind Cow. Therefore I, having no intention at my
age and in my position of joining in puerilities or even of seeming to
countenance them by my presence, said abruptly, “I will smoke”—and
strode away to do it.
One of the ladies called after me to inquire if I were not going to church
with them, but I pretended not to hear and strode on toward the shelter of the
hedge, giving Jellaby as I passed him such a look as would have caused any
one not overgrown with the leather substitute for skin peculiar to persons
who set order, morals, and religion at defiance, to creep confounded into his
tent and stay there till his face was ready and his collar on. He, however,
called out with the geniality born of brazenness, that it was a jolly morning;
of which, of course, I took no notice.
In the dry ditch beneath the hedge on the east side of the field sat Lord
Sigismund beside his batterie de cuisine, watching over, with unaccountable
and certainly misplaced kindness, the porridge and the coffee that were
presently to be Jellaby’s. While he watched he smoked his pipe, stroked his
dog, and hummed snatches of what I supposed were psalms with the
pleasant humming of the good, the happy, and the well-born.
Near him lay Menzies-Legh, his dark and sinister face bent over a book.
He nodded briefly in response to my lifted hat and morning salutation, while
Lord Sigismund, full as ever of the graciousness of noble birth, asked me if I
had had a good night.
“A good night, and an excellent breakfast, thanks to you, Lord Sidge,” I
replied; the touch of playfulness contained in the shortened name lightening
the courteous correctness of my bow as I arranged myself next to him in the
ditch.
Menzies-Legh got up and went away. It was characteristic of him that he
seemed always to be doing that. I hardly ever joined him but he was
reminded by my approach of something he ought to be doing and went away
to do it. I mentioned this to Edelgard during the calm that divided one
difference of opinion from another, and she said he never did that when she
joined him.
“Dear wife,” I explained, “you have less power to remind him of
unperformed duties than I possess.”
“I suppose I have,” said Edelgard.
“And it is very natural that it should be so. Power, of whatever sort it may
be, is a masculine attribute. I do not wish to see my little wife with any.”
“Neither do I,” said she.
“Ah—there speaks my own good little wife.”
“I mean, not if it is that sort.”
“What sort, dear wife?”
“The sort that reminds people whenever I come that it is time they went.”
She looked at me with the odd look that I observed for the first time
during our English holiday. Often have I seen it since, but I cannot recollect
having seen it before. I, noticing that somehow we did not understand each
other, patted her kindly on the shoulder, for, of course, she cannot always
quite follow me, though I must say she manages very creditably as a rule.
“Well, well,” I said, patting her, “we will not quibble. It is a good little
wife, is it not?” And I raised her chin by means of my forefinger, and kissed
her.
This, however, is a digression. I suppose it is because I am unfolding my
literary wings for the first time that I digress so frequently. At least I am
aware of it, which is in itself, I should say, a sign of literary instinct. My
Muse has been, so to speak, kept in bed without stopping till middle age, and
is now suddenly called upon to get up and go for a walk. Such a muse must
inevitably stagger a little at first. I will, however, endeavour to curb these
staggerings, for I perceive that I have already written more than can be
conveniently read aloud in one evening, and though I am willing the same
friends should come on two, I do not know that I care to see them on as
many as three. Besides, think of all the sandwiches.
(This last portion of the narrative, from “one evening” to “sandwiches”
will, of course, be omitted in public.)
I will, therefore, not describe my conversation with Lord Sigismund in
the ditch beyond saying that it was extremely interesting, and conducted on
his side (and I hope on mine) with the social skill of a perfect gentleman.
It was brought to an end by the arrival of Jellaby and his dog, which was
immediately pounced on by Lord Sigismund’s dog, who very properly
resented his uninvited approach, and they remained inextricably mixed
together for what seemed an eternity of yells, the yells rending the Sabbath
calm and mingling with the distant church bells, and all proceeding from
Jellaby’s dog, while Lord Sigismund’s, a true copy of his master, did that
which he had to do with the silent self-possession of, if I may so express it, a
dog of the world.
The entire company of caravaners, including old James, ran up with cries
and whistling to try to separate them, and at last Jellaby, urged on I suppose
to deeds of valour by knowing the eyes of the ladies upon him, made a
mighty effort and tore them asunder, himself getting torn along his hand as
the result.
Menzies-Legh helped Lord Sigismund to drag away the naturally
infuriated bull-terrier, and Jellaby, looking round, asked me to hold his dog
while he went and washed his hand. I thought this a fair instance of the