character, until I felt sick and faint (though of robust constitution) with the “mazes of heat and sound” in which my life seemed “turning, turning,” like the life of the heroine of “Requiescat.”  I declare that such a performance is the sort of thing that I should expect to find in hell, even down to the burning marl, as Milton says.  I got away dizzy, unstrung, unfit for life, with that terrible sense of fatigue unaccompanied by wholesome tiredness, that comes of standing in hot buzzing places.  I had heard not a single word that amused or interested me; and yet there were plenty of people present with whom I should have enjoyed a leisurely talk, to whom I felt inclined to say, in the words of Prince Henry to Poins, “Prithee, Ned, come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand to laugh a little!” But as I went away, I pondered sadly upon the almost inconceivable nature of the motive which could lead people to behave as I had seen them behaving, and resolutely to label it pleasure.  I suppose that, as a matter of fact, many persons find stir, and movement, and the presence of a crowd an agreeable stimulus.  I imagine that people are divided into those who, if they see a crowd of human beings in a field, have a desire to join them, and those who, at the same sight, long to fly swiftly to the uttermost ends of the earth.  I am of the latter temperament; and I cannot believe that there is any duty which should lead me to resist the impulse as a temptation to evil.  But the truth is that sociable people, like liturgical people, require, for the full satisfaction of their instincts, that a certain number of other persons should be present at the ceremonies which they affect, and that all should be occupied in the same way.  It is of little moment to the originators of the ceremony whether those present are there willingly or unwillingly; and thus the only resource of their victims is to go out on strike; so far from thinking it a duty to be present at social or religious functions, in order that my sociable or liturgical friends should have a suitable background for their pleasures, I think it a solemn duty to resist to the uttermost this false and vexatious theory of society and religion!

I suppose, too, that inveterate talkers and discoursers require an audience who should listen meekly and admiringly, and not interrupt.  I have friends who are afflicted with this taste to such an extent, who are so determined to hold the talk in their own hands, that I declare they might as well have a company of stuffed seals to sit down to dinner with, as a circle of living and breathing men.  But I do not think it right, or at all events necessary, in the interests of human kindliness, that I should victimize myself so for a man’s pleasure.  Neither do I think it necessary that I should attend a ceremony where I neither get nor give anything of the nature of pleasure, simply in order to conform to a social rule, invented and propagated by those who happen to enjoy such gatherings.