indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life;
and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken.
What is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with
such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not plunge
down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember the high practical
timidity of youth. I was a particularly brave boy--this I think of
myself, looking back--and plunged into adventures and experiments, and
ran risks that it still surprises me to recall. But, dear me, what a
fear I was in of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which I
stood; and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs I would
touch a new crank and await developments! I do not mean to say I do not
fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an adventurer like myself)
is still one of the chief joys of living.

But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless
robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite. And so,
when you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so dry and so
excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose--for a wager)
that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your hand, and
remember the little dears are all in a blue funk. It must be very funny,
and to a spectator like yourself I almost envy it. But never get
desperate; human nature is human nature; and the Roman Empire, since the
Romans founded it and made our European human nature what it is, bids
fair to go on and to be true to itself. These little bodies will all
grow up and become men and women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are
having it now; and whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes
no difference--there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be
lived; and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody.
Even Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And
the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the
representative of the only other great civilisation. Take my people here
at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite thinkable, quite
acceptable to us. And the little dears will be soon skating on the other
foot; sooner or later, in each generation, the one-half of them at least
begin to remember all the material they had rejected when first they
made and nailed up their little theory of life; and these become
reactionaries or conservatives, and