We know what it would be were we never for a single instant able to get away from the too-familiar scenes and people who, unconsciously, because of their very familiarity, drive us back upon ourselves. In each life there are a series of soul crises, when the spirit has to battle against some great pain, […]

I always feel so sorry for the blind, because it seems to me they can never get away from themselves by wandering in pastures new. It is trite to say that the glory of the golden sunsets, the glory of the mountains and the valleys, the coming of spring, the radiance of summer–all these things […]

I must confess, his remark gave me an additional respect for those huge volumes of books written in Braille which he always carried about with him than I had ever felt before. When you and I are “fed up” with life and everybody surrounding us–and we all have these moods–we can escape open grousing by […]

It is so difficult for them to get away from themselves, to seek that change and novelty which, in our hours of dread and suspense, are our most urgent need. All the time, day in, day out, their perpetual darkness thrusts them back upon themselves. They cannot get away from it. Nothing–or perhaps, so very, […]

Have you noticed how a woman displays much more “sang froid” in love than a man? Her heart may be aflame, but there always seems to be a tiny lump of ice which keeps her head cool. Only when a woman is not quite sure of her captor does she begin to lose her feminine […]

So many women seem to imagine that when they dip their heads in henna twenty years suddenly slips from off them into the mess. As a matter of fact, they invariably pick up an additional ten years with the dye every time. After all, the hair, even at its dullest and greyest, shows fewer of […]

Of all the human species–preserve, oh! preserve me from the monstrous family of the Goats. I don’t mean the people who go off mountain climbing, nor those old gentlemen who allow the hair round their lower jaw to grow so long that it resembles a dirty halo which has somehow slipped down over their noses; […]

When Youth bids “Good-bye” to anything, it is usually to some very tremendous thing–or at least, it seems to be tremendous in the eyes of Youth. But Age–although few people ever suspect–is always saying Farewell, not to some tremendous thing, because Age knows alas! that very few things are tremendous, but to little everyday pleasures […]

I have just been to see the latest musical comedy. Of course, I feel in love with the heroine. Could I help myself? Even women have fallen in love with her–so what chance has a mere male, and one at the dangerous age at that? But what struck me almost as much as the youthful […]

I always think that visitors are charming “interruptions.” They are delightful when they arrive; they are equally delightful–perhaps more so–when they go. Only on the third day of their visit are they tiresome, and their qualities distinctly below the par we expected. Almost anybody can put up with almost anybody for three days. There is […]

The only real excitement I can ever perceive about a Seaside Pier is when the sea washes half of it away. To me, Seaside Piers are the most deadly things. You pay tuppence to go on them, and you generally stay on them until you can stay no longer because–well, because you have paid tuppence. […]

I always think that the author who places his own photograph as an illustrated frontispiece to his own book must be either an exceedingly brave man or an exceedingly misguided one. At any rate, he runs a terrible risk, amounting almost to certain calamity, in regard to his literary admirers. I have never yet known […]

I would sooner live with an immoral man or woman than a bad-tempered one. An immoral person can often be a very charming companion, quite easy to live with–if you take the various excuses for sudden absences at their face value, and don’t probe too deeply into the business; in fact, if you are not […]

I don’t know if you, fair reader, find that in the spring your fancy turns to thoughts of love–I know mine doesn’t! On the contrary, it turns to thoughts of sulphur tablets and camomile tea and other sickly or disagreeable circumventions of the “creakiness” of the human body. For among the things I could teach […]

Old Age is bad enough, but a dyspeptic Old Age–that surely is fate hitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love of adventure leaves us; the “Love of a Lifetime” becomes to us of more real consequence than our pet armchair–but the love of a good dinner, that, at least, can make […]

A man may live to be a hundred; he may have learnt to speak twelve different languages–all badly; he may know, in fact, everything a man ought to know, and have done everything a man ought to have done; but one thing he probably won’t have learnt–or, if he has done so, then he ought […]

Our Relations are a race apart. They are not often our friends; rarer still are they our enemies. They are just “relations”–men and women who treat our endeavours towards righteousness with all the outspoken hostility of those who dislike us, whom yet we do not want to quarrel with because then there may be nobody […]

But unless your determination be something Napoleonic, you won’t have achieved very much more than this. It has all been so invigorating and delightful to contemplate; and the way of your decline has been so cosy and so comfortable, and it has so often ended in a glass of hot “toddy” and so to bed. […]

But alas! all you do . . . all you really do, is . . . Well, as I said before, the man who first said that “the way to hell is paved with good intentions,” must have said it in the autumn, or perhaps, in the spring, when he realised how few of the […]

I sometimes think the man who first said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” must have said it in November. The autumn is full of good intentions–just as spring is full of holiday and hope, and summer of heat and dolce far niente. But, just as the first warm day in […]