Another ‘word to the newly-married.’  Be not over-solicitous of wedding-presents.  They carry a terrible rate of interest.  A silver toast-rack will never leave you a Bank Holiday secure, and a breakfast service means at least a fortnight’s ‘change’ to one or more irrelevant persons twice a year.  They have been known to stay a month on the strength of an egg-boiler.  So, be warned, I pray you.  Wedding-presents are but a form of loan, which you are expected to pay back, with compound 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