"Thank God, that's over!" and half resolve to avoid
all such boredom for the future!

What, now, is the secret of this perpetual miscarriage and
disappointment? Does not the fault lie with all these needless
adjuncts--these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these expensive
preparations, these many devices and arrangements that imply trouble and
raise expectation? Who that has lived thirty years in the world has not
discovered that Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued,
but must be caught unawares? An air from a street-piano, heard while at
work, will often gratify more than the choicest music played at a
concert by the most accomplished musicians. A single good picture seen
in a dealer's window, may give keener enjoyment than a whole exhibition
gone through with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready
our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the happiness is
gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these receivers, garnished
with compliments, and fenced round with etiquette. The more we multiply
and complicate appliances, the more certain are we to drive it away.

The reason is patent enough. These higher emotions to which social
intercourse ministers, are of extremely complex nature; they
consequently depend for their production upon very numerous conditions;
the more numerous the conditions, the greater the liability that one or
other of them will be disturbed, and the emotions consequently
prevented. It takes a considerable misfortune to destroy appetite; but
cordial sympathy with those around may be extinguished by a look or a
word. Hence it follows, that the more multiplied the _unnecessary_
requirements with which social intercourse is surrounded, the less
likely are its pleasures to be achieved. It is difficult enough to
fulfil continuously all the _essentials_ to a pleasurable communion with
others: how much more difficult, then, must it be continuously to fulfil
a host of _non-essentials_ also! It is, indeed, impossible. The attempt
inevitably ends in the sacrifice of the first to the last--the
essentials to the non-essentials. What chance is there of getting any
genuine response from the lady who is thinking of your stupidity in
taking her in to dinner on the wrong arm? How are you likely to have
agreeable converse with the gentleman who is fuming internally because
he is not placed next to the hostess? Formalities, familiar as they may
become, necessarily occupy