e, for the effect they produced on other
people. Travelling in a compartment, with my hat-box beside me, I
enjoyed the silent interest which my labels aroused in my
fellow-passengers. If the compartment was so full that my hat-box had
to be relegated to the rack, I would always, in the course of the
journey, take it down and unlock it, and pretend to be looking for
something I had put into it. It pleased me to see from beneath my
eyelids the respectful wonder and envy evoked by it. Of course, there
was no suspicion that the labels were a carefully formed collection;
they were taken as the wild-flowers of an exquisite restlessness, of an
unrestricted range in life. Many of them signified beautiful or famous
places. There was one point at which Oxford, Newmarket, and Assisi
converged, and I was always careful to shift my hat-box round in such a
way that this purple patch should be lost on none of my
fellow-passengers. The many other labels, English or alien, they, too,
gave their hints of a life spent in fastidious freedom, hints that I
had seen and was seeing all that is best to be seen of men and cities
and country-houses. I was respected, accordingly, and envied. And I had
keen delight in this ill-gotten homage. A despicable delight, you say?
But is not yours, too, a fallen nature? The love of impressing
strangers falsely, is it not implanted in all of us? To be sure, it is
an inevitable outcome of the conditions in which we exist. It is a
result of the struggle for life. Happiness, as you know, is our aim in
life; we are all struggling to be happy. And, alas! for every one of
us, it is the things he does not possess which seem to him most
desirable, most conducive to happiness. For instance, the poor nobleman
covets wealth, because wealth would bring him comfort, whereas the
nouveau riche covets a pedigree, because a pedigree would make him of
what he is merely in. The rich nobleman who is an invalid covets
health, on the assumption that health would enable him to enjoy his
wealth and position. The rich, robust nobleman hankers after an
intellect. The rich, robust, intellectual nobleman is (be sure of it)
as discontented, somehow, as the rest of them. No man possesses all he
wants. No man is ever quite happy. But, by producing an impression that
he has what he wants--in fact, by 'bluffing'--a man can gain some of
the advantages that he would gain by really having it. Thus, the poor
nobleman can, by concealing his 'bala