And then I know households where one sees in the books, the pictures, the glances, the gestures, the movements of the inmates, a sort of grace and delicacy which comes of really caring about things that are beautiful and fine.  Sincere things are simply said, humour bubbles up and breaks in laughter; one feels that light is thrown on a hundred topics and facts and personalities.  The whole of life then becomes a garden teeming with strange and wonderful secrets, and influences that flash and radiate, passing on into some mysterious and fragrant gloom.  Everything there seems charged with significance and charm; there are no pretences—­there are preferences, prejudices if you will; but there is tolerance and sympathy, and a desire to see the point of view of others.  The effect of such an atmosphere is to set one wondering how one has contrived to miss the sense of so much that is beautiful and interesting in life, and sends one away longing to perceive more, and determined if possible to interpret life more truly and more graciously.

X

FEARS OF AGE

And then age creeps on; and that brings fears of its own, and fears that are all the more intolerable because they are not definite fears at all, merely a loss of nervous vigour, which attaches itself to the most trivial detail and magnifies it into an insuperable difficulty.  A friend of mine who was growing old once confided to me that foreign travel, which used to be such a delight to him, was now getting burdensome.  “It is all right when I have once started,” he said, “but for days before I am the prey of all kinds of apprehensions.”  “What sort of apprehensions?” I said.  He laughed, and replied, “Well, it is almost too absurd to mention, but I find myself oppressed with anxiety for weeks beforehand as to whether, when we get to Calais, we shall find places in the train.”  And I remember, too, how a woman friend of mine once told me that she called at the house of an elderly couple in London, people of rank and wealth.  Their daughter met her in the drawing-room and said, “I am glad you are come—­you may be able to cheer my mother up.  We are going down to-morrow to our place in the country; the servants and the luggage went this morning, and my mother and father are to drive down this afternoon—­my mother is very low about it.”  “What is the matter?” said my friend.  The daughter replied, “She is afraid that they will not get there in time!” “In time for what?” said my friend, thinking that there was some important engagement.  “In time for tea!” said the daughter gravely.

It is all very well to laugh at such fears, but they are not natural fears at all, they just indicate a low vitality; they are the symptoms and not the causes of a disease.  It is the frame of mind of the sluggard in the Bible who says, “There is a lion in the way.”  Younger people are apt to be irritated by what seems a wilful creating of apprehensions.  They ought rather to be patient and reassuring, and compassionate to the weakness of nerve for which it stands.