easant to see so many friends!"
"What a delightful day you have got for your party!" Such ineptitudes
were the current coin of the market. I passed on into another room
where refreshment, of a nature that I did not want, was sadly accepted.
And I then passed out into the open air; the garden was disagreeably
crowded; there was "a din of doubtful talk," as Rossetti says. The sun
beat down dizzily on my streaming brow. I joined group after group,
where the conversation was all of the same easy and stimulating
character, until I felt sick and faint (though of robust constitution)
with the "mazes of heat and sound" in which my life seemed "turning,
turning," like the life of the heroine of "Requiescat." I declare that
such a performance is the sort of thing that I should expect to find in
hell, even down to the burning marl, as Milton says. I got away dizzy,
unstrung, unfit for life, with that terrible sense of fatigue
unaccompanied by wholesome tiredness, that comes of standing in hot
buzzing places. I had heard not a single word that amused or interested
me; and yet there were plenty of people present with whom I should have
enjoyed a leisurely talk, to whom I felt inclined to say, in the words
of Prince Henry to Poins, "Prithee, Ned, come out of this fat room, and
lend me thy hand to laugh a little!" But as I went away, I pondered
sadly upon the almost inconceivable nature of the motive which could
lead people to behave as I had seen them behaving, and resolutely to
label it pleasure. I suppose that, as a matter of fact, many persons
find stir, and movement, and the presence of a crowd an agreeable
stimulus. I imagine that people are divided into those who, if they see
a crowd of human beings in a field, have a desire to join them, and
those who, at the same sight, long to fly swiftly to the uttermost ends
of the earth. I am of the latter temperament; and I cannot believe that
there is any duty which should lead me to resist the impulse as a
temptation to evil. But the truth is that sociable people, like
liturgical people, require, for the full satisfaction of their
instincts, that a certain number of other persons should be present at
the ceremonies which they affect, and that all should be occupied in
the same way. It is of little moment to the originators of the ceremony
whether those present are there willingly or unwillingly; and thus the
only resource of their victims is to go out on strike; so far from
thinking it