And so you
read about the threatened strike; the murder in East Ham; the leading
article, the marriage of Lady Fitzclarence-Forsooth to--well, whoever she
married, the funny remark the drunken woman made to the judge when he
fined her two-and-six for kissing a policeman; Mr. Justice Darling's
latest _mot_; the racing, the forthcoming fashions; the advertisement of
Back-Ache Pills; Mr. C. B. Cochran's praise of his own productions, Mr.
Selfridge's praise of his own shop; the "Wants," the "Situations Vacant,"
the . . . Then somebody woke you up to ask if you were asleep . . .
which, of course, you _weren't_ . . . Well . . . well . . . It is past
midnight! So what can one do now? What _can_ one do? Why, go to bed,
of course. Another autumn evening is over. But then, there are plenty
more . . . oh, plenty more. "Good-night."

_Two Lives_

I often wish that we could all of us lead two lives. I don't mean I wish
that we could live twice as long--though, in reality, it would come to
the same thing. But I would like to live the two lives which I want to
lead, and only do lead in a sort of patchwork-quilt kind of way. I would
like to live a life in which I could wander gipsy-like over the face of
the globe--seeing everything, doing everything, meeting everybody. I
should also like to live a purely vegetable existence in some remote
country village--sleeping away my life in happy domesticity, away from
the crowd, free from care, tranquil, and at peace. I suppose that, even
as dreams, they are only too futile--but they are very pleasant dreams
nevertheless. I know that they _are_ dreams--since I am quite sure that
the reality would be far less satisfactory than it seems in anticipation.
There is "always a fly in the amber" as the saying goes, and my
experience is, that the truth more nearly resembles a great big fly with
a tiny speck of amber sticking somewhere to its back. For in our dream
voyages we overlook the fleas, the mosquitoes, the hunt for lodgings, the
struggle with languages, the hundred-and-one disturbances of the spirit
which are inseparable from real voyages of any kind and bombard our inner
tranquillity at every turn. In the same way, when we gaze at the
peaceful landscape of some hidden-away English countryside, we yearn to
live among such peacefulness, forgetting that, though life in the country
may _look_ peaceful to the stranger's eye, experience teaches us that
gossip and scandal and