But that does not trouble
them. They don't require friendship. They only need, as it were, a
perpetual pair of ears into which to pour the trivialities of their
daily life. Personally, I get so tired of listening to stories of
children I have never seen; golfing "yarns" which I have heard before;
servants--all as bad as each other; Lloyd George; new clothes;
ailments; what Aunt Emily intends to do with last year's frock, and of
little Flora's cough. I wish it were the fashion for people to ask
their friends to _do_ something, instead of securing their society,
with nothing to do with it when they've got it, except to offer hours
for conversation with literally nothing to say on either side. I
should like to read a book in company, it is nice to work in company; a
visit to a theatre with a congenial companion is delightful--and this,
of course, applies to concerts, lectures, picture galleries, even
shopping. But the usual form of friendly entertainment is a deadly
thing. Only a cook, who at the same time is an artist, can make them
possible. For you can endure hours of little other than the personal
note in conversation with the compensation of a culinary _chef'
d'oeuvre_ in front of you. That is why you so often hear of a
"perfectly charming woman with a simply wonderful cook." It's the
cook, I fancy, who is the real charmer.

_Awful Warnings_

Old Age is bad enough, but a dyspeptic Old Age--that surely is fate
hitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love of
adventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of more
real consequence than our pet armchair--but the _love of a good
dinner_, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian well
worth living. Young people little realise the awful prophecy implied
in that irritating remark--"Don't gobble!" There is another one,
almost equally irritating to youth--"Go and change your socks!" But,
if the truth must be told, you regret the "No" you said to Edwin when
he asked you to "fly with him"; the louis you failed to place _en
plein_ on thirty-six, which you _felt_ was coming up, infinitely less
than that you still persisted to "gobble" when you were warned not to,
and you failed to change your socks while there was yet time. Now it
is too late, alas! How true it is, the saying--"If Youth knew how, and
Age only could." The trouble is that, when elderly people would warn
youth, they rarely ever give concrete examples