Rossetti was a little doubtful
whether the sun went round the earth or the earth round the sun. I once met
an American elocutionist who could recite ten of Shakespeare's plays, and
he showed me the wonderful system of mnemonics by which he achieved the
miracle. But he was a mere recording machine--a dull fellow. The true
argosy of memory is not facts, but a perfume compounded of all the sunsets
we have ever seen, all the joys and friendships, pleasures and sorrows we
have ever known, all the emotions we have felt, all the brave and mean
things we have done, all the broken hopes we have suffered. To have lost
that argosy is to be dead, no matter how healthy an appetite we retain.

ON WEARING A FUR-LINED COAT

A friend of mine--one of those people who talk about money with an air of
familiarity that suggests that they have got an "out-crop" of the Rand reef
in their back-gardens--said to me the other day that I ought to buy a
fur-lined coat. There never was such a time as this for buying a fur-lined
coat or a sealskin jacket, said he. What with the war, and the "sales," and
the tradesmen's need of cash, they were simply being thrown at you. You
could have them almost for the trouble of carrying them away. A trifle of
fifteen or twenty pounds would buy one a coat that would be cheap at sixty
guineas. And, remember, there was wear for twenty years in it. And think of
the saving in doctor's bills--for you simply can't catch colds if you wear
a fur coat. In short, not to buy a fur coat at this moment was an act of
gross improvidence, a wrong to one's family, a ... a ... And then he
looked, with the cold disapproval of a connoisseur, at the coat I was
wearing. And in the light of that glance I saw for the first time that it
was ... yes ... certainly, it was not what it had been.

Now I am not going to pretend that I have a soul above fur-lined coats. I
haven't; I love them. And by fur coats I don't mean those adorned with
astrakhan collars, which I abominate. A man in an astrakhan coat is to me a
suspicious character, a stage baron, one who is probably deep in treasons,
stratagems, and spoils. The suspicion is unjust to the gentleman in the
astrakhan coat, of course. Most suspicions are unjust. And if you ask me to
give reasons for this unreasoning hostility to astrakhan, I do not know
that I could find them. Perhaps it is the dislike I have for artificial
curls; perhaps it is that the astrakhan collar reminds me of t