“But aren’t we a great deal better than our proverbs?” said Barthrop:  “do they really express anything more than a contempt for weakness and sentiment?”

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but I don’t like them any better for that.  Why should we be ashamed of all our better feelings?  I admit that we have a sense of justice; but that only means that we care for material possessions so much that we are afraid not to admit that others have the right to do the same.  The real obstacle to socialism in England is the sense of sanctity about a man’s savings.  The moment that a man has saved a few pounds, he agrees to any legislation that allows him to hold on to them.”

“But aren’t we, behind all that,” said Barthrop, “an intensely sentimental nation?”

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but that’s a fault really—­we don’t believe in real justice, only in picturesque justice.  We are hopeless individualists.  We melt into tears over a child that is lost, or a dog that howls; and we let all sorts of evil systems and arrangements grow and flourish.  We can’t think algebraically, only arithmetically.  We can be kind to a single case of hardship; we can’t take in a widespread system of oppression.  We are improving somewhat; but it is always the particular case that affects us, and not the general principle.”

“But to go back to our sense of possession,” I said, “is that really much more than a matter of climate?  Does it mean more than this, that we, in a temperate climate inclining to cold, need more elaborate houses and more heat-producing food than nations who live in warmer climates?  Are not the nations who live in warmer climates less attached to material things simply because they are less important?”

“There is something in that, no doubt,” said Father Payne.  “Of course, where nature is more hostile to life, men will have to work longer hours to support life than where ‘the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle.’  But it isn’t that of which I complain—­it is the awful sense of respectability attaching to possessions, the hideous way in which we fill our houses with things which we do not want or use, just because they are a symbol of respectability.  We like hoarding, and we like luxuries, not because we enjoy them, but because we like other people to know that we can pay for them.  I do not imagine that there is any nation in the world whose hospitality differs so much from the mode in which people actually live as ours does.  In a sensible society, if we wanted to see our friends, we should ask them to bring their cold mutton round, and have a picnic.  What we do actually do is to have a meal which we can’t afford, and which our guests know is not in the least like our ordinary meals; and then we expect to be asked back to a similarly ostentatious banquet.”

“But isn’t there something,” said Barthrop, “in Dr. Johnson’s dictum, that a meal was good enough to eat, but not good enough to ask a man to?  Isn’t it a good impulse to put your best before a guest?”