expressed, why,
it is worth expressing. We want all the sidelights we can get."

"That's one comfort!" I said.

"Yes," said Father Payne, "but you know perfectly well that you knew it
before I told you. Why be so undignified? You need not want to astonish or
amuse the whole civilised world. You probably won't do that; but you can
fit a bit of the mosaic in, if you have it in you. Now look you here! I
know exactly what I am worth. I can't write--though I think I can when I'm
at it--but I can perceive, and see when a thing is amiss, and lay my finger
on a fault; I can be of some use to a fellow like yourself--and I can
manage an estate in my own way, and I can keep my tenants' spirits up. I
have got a perfectly definite use in the world, and I'm going to play my
part for all that I'm worth. I'm not going to pretend that I am a worm or
an outcast--I don't feel one; and I am as sure as I can be of anything,
that God does not wish me to feel one. He needs me; He can't get on without
me just here; and when He can, He will say the word. I don't think I am of
any far-reaching significance: but neither am I going to say that I am
nothing but vile earth and a miserable sinner. I'm lazy, I'm cross, I'm
unkind, I'm greedy: but I know when I am wasting time and temper, and I
don't do it all the time. It's no use being abject. The mistake is to go
about comparing yourself with other people and weighing yourself against
them. The right thing to do is to be able to recognise generously and
desirously when you see anyone doing something finely which you do badly,
and to say, 'Come, that's the right way! I must do better.' But to be
humble is to be grubby, because it makes one proud, in a nasty sort of way,
of doing things badly. 'What a poor creature I am,' says the humble man,
'and how nice to know that I am so poor a creature; how noble and unworldly
I am.' The mistake is to want to do a thing better than Smith or Jones: the
right way is to want to do it better than yourself."

"Yes," I said, "that's perfectly true, Father: and I won't be such a fool
again."

"You haven't been a fool, so far as I am aware," said Father Payne. "It is
only that you are just a thought too polite. You mustn't be polite in mind,
you know--only in manners. Politeness only consists in not saying all you
think unless you are asked. But humility consists in trying to believe that
you think less than you think. It's like holding your nose, and saying that
t