I always secretly wonder what people mean when they say they are “going to the dogs.” Do they mean that they are going to enjoy themselves thoroughly, with Hell at the end of it?–or do they mean that they are going to raise Hell in their neighbourhood and prevent everybody else from enjoying themselves? Personally, […]

I was standing outside a music shop the other day, gazing through the windows at the songs “everybody is singing.” Their titles amused me. Not a single one promised very much real sense. They were all what I will call love “mush”–“If you were a flowering rose,” and “Come to my garden of love,” were […]

I always think that one of the most amusing things (to watch), in all life, is what I term the “Kaiser-spirit” in individuals. Nearly everyone mistakes the trimmings of greatness for the real article, and most people would sooner expire than not be able to flaunt these wrappings, or the rags or them, before somebody’s […]

But just a few people seem to be enabled to see beneath the surface of things. Around them they seem to shed an extraordinary kind of understanding sympathy. They are not entirely the “people in trouble” who appeal to them; rather they seem able to perceive the misery of a “state of life”–something which obtains […]

Nearly everybody can “feel sorry”–some, extremely so! Lots of people can exclaim, “How ghastly!” in front of a mangled corpse–and then pass shudderingly on their way with a prayer in their hearts that the dead body isn’t their own, nor one belonging to their friends and acquaintances. But very few people, it seems to me, […]

I often think that, if those “Old walls only could speak”–as the “tripper” yearns for them to do, because he can’t think of anything else to remark at the moment–all they would say to him would be the words, “For God’s sake, you guys, CLEAR OUT!” As a matter of fact, it is just as […]

The longer I live the more clearly I perceive the extreme difficulty reformers have to interest people in philanthropic schemes which do not place their religion, their brand of politics, or they themselves in prominent positions on the propaganda. It seems to be very much the fashion among those who desire to help others that […]

For a long time past people have been–and, I suppose, for a long time hence people will be–dusting their imaginations in order to discover the most fitting tribute their and other people’s money can erect to the memory of the sailors and soldiers who died so that they and their children might live. And yet […]

One of the minor tragedies of life (or is it one of the major?) is the way we grow out of things–often against our will, sometimes against our better judgment. I don’t mean only that we grow out of clothes–that, after all, is nothing very serious, unless you have no younger brother to whom to […]

The wife of a poor man really can be a helpmate, but the wife of a rich man is so often only asked to be a mistress who can bear her husband legitimate children. Everything which a woman can do, a rich woman pays other women to do for her, while she graces the results […]

I wish the Mystics and the Practical Men could meet, fraternise, and still not yearn to murder one another. It would be of immense benefit to you and me and the rest of us who make up the “hum-drum” world. For the Practical Man who is not something of a mystic is at best a […]

It seems to me that the poor need a friend more urgently than they need a pastor, or, if they must have a pastor–then the pastor must be completely disguised as a friend. I always wonder why it is the popular fallacy that the poor need religion more than the wealthy. My own experience is […]

It is so difficult for men and women, as it were, to really help the East-end while living in West-end comfort. It is so difficult for religious people to realise that the finest prayer of all is to “play the game.” But the poor understand the wonder of that prayer full well; it is, indeed, […]

I always feel so sorry for clergymen–the clergymen who are inspired to their calling, not, of course the “professional” variety who are clergymen because they preferred the Church to the Stock Exchange. They carry with them wherever they go the mark of the professional servant of God, and it creates a prejudice, between them and […]

I hope when I am old that Fate will give me a garden and a view of the sea. I should hate to decay in a suburban row and be carried away at the end of all my mostly fruitless longings in a hearse; the seven minutes’ wonder of the small children of the street, […]

In every mixed crowd there always seems such a large percentage of the unimaginative and the inane that I am never surprised that the silliest superstitions still flourish, “the Thing” is rampant, and that, in every progress towards real civilisation, the very longest way round is taken with the very feeblest results. It is not […]

The other day I received a most extraordinary spirit picture anonymously through the post. I cannot describe this picture–it is well-nigh indescribable. The effect is wonderful, though the means are of the simplest. Apparently the artist had upset a bottle of ink over a large piece of white cardboard, and then, with the aid of […]

Everybody knows that they could improve human nature. I don’t mean, of course, that they could necessarily improve their own, nor that of the lady who lives next door, nor that of Mr. Lloyd George, nor of Miss Marie Lloyd, nor even of Lenin and Trotsky; but human nature as it is found in all […]

Do you know those men and women who, to paraphrase Omar Khayyam, “come like treacle and like gall they go”? Well, it seems to me that life is rather like such as they. You may live for something, you may live for someone, but some time, sooner or later, you will be thrown back upon […]

I wish that the great Shakespeare had not written that “immortal” line: “The wish is father to the Thought.” It haunts you throughout your life. Like a flaming sign of interrogation it burns upon the Altar of Faith Unquestioning, before which, in your perplexity, Fate forces you–at least once in your life–to bow the head. […]