the help of the counterfeit what impression he makes on the beholder. Now,"
I continued, pausing and taking stock of my friend, "I know what you are
like. I take you all in at one glance. You can take me in at a glance. The
only person we can none of us take in at a glance is the person we should
most like to see."

"It's a mercy," said he.

I am not sure that he was right. In this matter, as in most things in this
perplexing world, there is much to be said on both sides. It is lucky for
some of us undoubtedly that we are condemned to be eternal strangers to
ourselves, and that not merely to our physical selves. We do not know even
the sound of our own voices. Mr. Pemberton-Billing has never heard the most
sepulchral voice in the House of Commons, and Lord Charles Beresford does
not know how a foghorn sounds when it becomes articulate. I have no idea,
and you have no idea, what sort of impression our manner makes on others.
If we had, how stricken some of us would be! We should hardly survive the
revelation. We should be sorry we had ever been born.

Imagine, for example, that eminent politician, Mr. Sutherland Bangs, M.P.,
meeting himself out at a dinner one evening. Mr. Sutherland Bangs cherishes
a comfortable vision of himself as a handsome, engaging fellow, with a gift
for talk, a breezy manner, a stylish presence, and an elegant accent. And
seated beside himself at dinner he would discover that he was a pretentious
bore, that his talk was windy commonplace, his breezy manner an offence,
his fine accent an unpleasant affectation. He would say that he would never
want to see that fellow again. And, realising that that was Mr. Sutherland
Bangs as he appears to the world, he would return home as humble and abject
as Mr. Tom Lofty in _The Good-Natured Man_ was when his imposture was found
out. "You ought to have your head stuck in a pillory," said Mr. Croaker.
"Stick it where you will," said Mr. Lofty, "for by the lord, it cuts a poor
figure where it sticks at present." Mr. Sutherland Bangs would feel like
that.

But if making our own acquaintance would give some of us a good deal of
surprise and even pain, it would also do most of us a useful turn as well.
Burns put the case quite clearly in his familiar lines:

O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us:
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An' foolish notion.

We should all make discoveries to our advantage as well as