for one and
the same thing), when we see life in all its worm-like meanness, and
death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness. Two days out of this year live
like fire in my mind. I went to my uncle Richard's funeral. There was
cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I
would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went. It lay
swollen and featureless, and two busy hags lifted it up and packed it
tight with wisps of hay, and mechanically uttered shrieks and moans.

"But, though the funeral was painfully obscene, it was not so obscene as
the view of life I was treated to last week....

"Last week I was in London; I went to a place they call the 'Colonies.'
Till then I had never realised the foulness of the human animal, but
there even his foulness was overshadowed by his stupidity. The masses,
yes, I saw the masses, and I fed with them in their huge intellectual
stye. The air was filled with lines of the most inconceivable flags,
lines upon lines of pale yellow, and there were glass cases filled with
pickle bottles, and there were piles of ropes and a machine in motion,
and in nooks there were some dreadful lay figures, and written
underneath them, 'Indian corn-seller,' 'Indian fish-seller.' And there
was the Prince of Wales on horseback, three times larger than life; and
there were stuffed deer upon a rock, and a Polar bear, and the Marquis
of Lome underneath. In another room there were Indian houses, things in
carved wood, and over each large placards announcing the popular dinner,
the _buffet_, the _table d'hote_, at half-a-crown; and there were oceans
of tea, and thousands of rolls of butter, and in the gardens the band
played 'Thine alone' and 'Mine again.'

"It seemed as if all the back-kitchens and staircases in England had
that day been emptied out--life-tattered housewives, girls grown stout
on porter, pretty-faced babies, heavy-handed fathers, whistling boys in
their sloppy clothes, and attitudes curiously evidencing an odious
domesticity....

"In the Greek and Roman life there was an ideal, and there was a great
ideal in the monastic life of the Middle Ages; but an ideal is wholly
wanting in nineteenth century life. I am not of these later days. I am
striving to come to terms with life."

"And you think you can do that best by folding vestments and reviling
humanity. I do not see how you reconcile these opinions with the
teaching of Christ--with the life of Christ."

"Oh,