or
leisure to read in. How can they pass their lives?"

The answer is simple enough, as Emily Bronte knew. They quarrel. And an
excellent way of passing the time it is; so excellent, indeed, that the
pity were better inverted. But we all lack the knowledge of our chiefest
needs. In the first place, and mainly, it is hygienic to quarrel, it
disengages floods of nervous energy, the pulse quickens, the breathing
is accelerated, the digestion improved. Then it sets one's stagnant
brains astir and quickens the imagination; it clears the mind of
vapours, as thunder clears the air. And, finally, it is a natural
function of the body. In his natural state man is always quarrelling--by
instinct. Not to quarrel is indeed one of the vices of our civilisation,
one of the reasons why we are neurotic and anaemic, and all these things.
And, at last, our enfeebled palates have even lost the capacity for
enjoying a "jolly good row."

There can be no more melancholy sight in the world than that of your
young man or young woman suffering from suppressed pugnacity. Up to the
end of the school years it was well with them; they had ample scope for
this wholesome commerce, the neat give and take of offence. In the
family circle, too, there are still plentiful chances of acquiring the
taste. Then, suddenly, they must be gentle and considerate, and all the
rest of it. A wholesome shindy, so soon as toga and long skirts arrive,
is looked upon as positively wrong; even the dear old institution of the
"cut" is falling into disrepute. The quarrelling is all forced back into
the system, as it were; it poisons the blood. This is why our literature
grows sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and that,
write odd books, and ride about on bicycles in remarkable clothes. They
have shut down the safety valve, they suffer from the present lamentable
increase of gentleness. They must find some outlet, or perish. If they
could only put their arms akimbo and tell each other a piece of their
minds for a little, in the ancient way, there can be not the slightest
doubt that much of this _fin-de-siecle_ unwholesomeness would disappear.

Possibly this fashion of gentleness will pass. Yet it has had increasing
sway now for some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen--among the
more educated class at least--that quarrels little, regards the function
as a vice or a nuisance, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art or
literature. We seem indee