interest
at 50 per cent., in 'hospitality,' 'entertainment,' and your still more
precious time. For the givers of wedding-presents there is no more
profitable form of investment. But you, be wise, and buy your own.

There is a peculiar joy in snubbing irrelevant would-be country visitors.
It is the sweetest exercise of the will. Especially, too, if they are
conceited persons who made sure of invitation. It adds a yet deeper thrill
to the pleasure if you are able to invite some other friends near at hand,
of humbler mind and greater interest, whose (maybe) shy charms are not
flauntingly revealed. 'Fancy So-and-So being invited! I shouldn't have
thought they had anything in common.' How sweet is the imagination of that
wounded whisper. It makes you feel like a (German) prince. You have the
power of making happy and (even better in some cases) unhappy, at least,
as Carlyle would say, 'to the extent of sixpence.'

You have tasted the sweets of choosing your own friends, and snubbing the
others. You have gone so far towards the attainment of the harmonious
environment, the Perfect Relation. Your friends shall be as carefully
selected, shall mean as much to you as your books and flowers and
pictures; and your leisure shall be a priest's garden, in which none but
the chosen may walk.

Yet, in spite of my little burst of Neroics, I am far from advising a
cruel treatment of the Irrelevant Person. Let us not forget what we said
at the beginning, that he is probably an interesting person in the wrong
place. He has taken the wrong turning--into your company. Do unto him as
you would he might do unto you. Direct him aright--that is to say, out of
it! Remember, we are all bores in certain uncongenial social climates: all
stars in our own particular milky way. So, remember, don't be cruel--as a
rule--to the Irrelevant Person; but just smile your best at him, and
whisper: 'We were not born for each other.'

THE DEVILS ON THE NEEDLE

'... these things are life:
And life, some say, is worthy of the muse.'

I

There is a famous query of the old schoolman at which we have all flung a
jest in our time: _How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?_ In
a world with so many real troubles it seems, perhaps, a little idle to
worry too long over the question. Yet in the mere question, putting any
answer outside possibility, there is a wonderful suggestiveness, if it has
happened to come to you illuminated by