room, and that he will presently appear.
'But,' he may say, with a toss of his grey beard, 'I am not going to
practise any device whatsoever. I am above devices. I shall be in the
room when the young man arrives.' I assure him that I am not appealing
to his vanity, merely to his good-nature. Let him remember that he too
was young once, he too thrilled in harmless hero-worship. Let him not
grudge the young man an utmost emotion.

Coming into a room that contains a stranger is a definite performance, a
deed of which one is conscious--if one be young, and if that stranger be
august. Not to come in awkwardly, not to make a bad impression, is
here the paramount concern. The mind of the young man as he comes in
is clogged with thoughts of self. It is free of these impediments if he
shall have been waiting alone in the room. To be come in to is a thing
that needs no art and induces no embarrassment. One's whole attention
is focussed on the comer-in. One is the mere spectator, the passive and
receptive receiver. And even supposing that the young man could come in
under his hero's gaze without a thought of self, his first vision would
yet lack the right intensity. A person found in a room, if it be a
room strange to the arriver, does not instantly detach himself from his
surroundings. He is but a feature of the scene. He does not stand out as
against a background, in the grand manner of portraiture, but is fused
as in an elaborately rendered 'interior.' It is all the more essential,
therefore, that the worshipper shall not have his first sight of hero
and room simultaneously. The room must, as it were, be an anteroom, anon
converted into a presence-chamber by the hero's entry. And let not the
hero be in any fear that he will bungle his entry. He has but to make
it. The effect is automatic. He will stand out by merely coming in.
I would but suggest that he must not, be he never so hale and hearty,
bounce in. The young man must not be startled. If the mountain had come
to Mahomet, it would, we may be sure, have come slowly, that the prophet
should have time to realise the grandeur of the miracle. Let the hero
remember that his coming, too, will seem supernatural to the young man.
Let him be framed for an instant or so in the doorway--time for his eyes
to produce their peculiar effect. And by the way: if he be a wearer of
glasses, he should certainly remove these before coming in. He can put
them on again almost immediately. It is t