know--or rather I think--that I
could improve it. And I should begin at that unhappy "kink" in all of
us which only realises those blessings which belong to other people, or
those which we ourselves have lost. Nobody really and truly knows what
Youth means until they have reached the age which only asks of men and
women to subside--gracefully, if possible, and silently as an act of
decency. We never love the people who love us, to quite the same
extent anyway, until, either they love us no more, or love somebody
else, or go out and die. We never realise the splendour of splendid
health until the doctor prescribes six months in a nursing home as the
only alternative to demise. We never appreciated butter until
profiteers and the war sent the price up to four-and-sixpence for a
pound. The extra five hundred a year which seems to stand in the way
of our complete happiness--when we receive it, we realise that our
happiness really required a thousand. Fame is a wonderful and
beautiful state, until we become famous and find out how dull it is and
what a real blessing it is to be a person of only the least importance.
Life, I can understand, is never so sweet as it is to those who, as it
were, have just been sentenced to be hanged. Our ideals are always
thrilling until one day we wake up to find them accomplished facts; and
the only real passion of our life is the woman who went off and married
somebody else. I exaggerate, perhaps, but scarcely too much, I
believe. For, as I said before, there is a certain "kink" in human
nature which casts a halo of delight over those things which we have
lost, or, by the biggest stretch of dreaming-fancy can we ever hope to
possess. I suppose it means that we could not possibly live up to the
happiness which we believe would be ours were we to possess the
blessings we yearn for with all our hearts. All the same, I wish that
human nature were as fond of the blessings it throws away unheeded, as
it would be could it only regain possession of them once it fully
realises they are lost. Half our troubles spring from our own
fault--though they were not really our own fault, because we did not
know what we were doing when we did those things which might have saved
us all our tears. That is where the tragedy of it all came in. We
never _realised_ . . . we never _knew_! But Fate pays not the
slightest heed to our ignorance. We just have to live out our mistakes
as best we may. And n