ng of the Eastern and Western races Gilbert said it was curious
that while the Easterns were so logical and clear in their religion,
they were so unpractical in every-day life; the religion of the
Westerns is mystical and full of paradoxes. Yet they are far more
practical. "The Eastern says fate governs everything and he sits and
looks pretty; we believe in Free-will and Predestination and we
invent Babbage's Calculating Machine."

As the group grew into one another's thought the talk intensified and
we got from considering East and West to considering our own
countrymen. What makes a man essentially English? Dickens had it.
Johnson had it. "You couldn't," said G.K., "imagine a Scotch Johnson,
or an Irish Johnson, or a French or German Johnson."

George Wyndham told us, as we got on to the topic of patriotism, that
he had a fear he hardly liked to utter. As we urged him he said he
feared a big war might come and we might be defeated. Gilbert agreed
that he too had felt that fear. "But," he said, "if you were to say
that in the House or I to write it in a paper we should be denounced
as unpatriotic."

Small wonder the talk had time to range, for these scrappy notes are
all that remain of a meeting beginning about one o'clock and lasting
until five. At that hour two little old sisters, the Miss Blounts,
known in our family as "the little B's," happened to call on my
mother. I shall never forget their faces as they looked at the huge
man in the armchair, and the other guests all absorbed and animated,
and realised that they were interrupting a luncheon party. A swift
glance at the little old ladies, another at the clock, and the party
broke up, to remain my most cherished memory for months: until my
next visit to their home, when Gilbert and I arrived at the use of
each other's Christian names, an agreement that he insisted on
calling The Pact of Beaconsfield.

How deep he saw when in his "Defence of Hermits" he analysed a chief
joy of human intercourse:

. . . The best things that happen to us are those we get out of
what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they
would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they
love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or
inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into
acquaintances. The real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in
having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crus