How dull the world would be if we knew every acquaintance inside out as soon as we had offered him our cigar-case.  Suppose—­I put an extreme case to you—­suppose a pleasant young bachelor who admired our bowling showed himself by his shoe laces to be a secret wife-beater.  What could we do?  Cut so unique a friend?  Ah no.  Let us pray to remain in ignorance of the faults of those we like.  Let us pray it as sincerely as we pray that they shall remain in ignorance of ours.

Intellectual Snobbery

A good many years ago I had a painful experience.  I was discovered by my house-master reading in bed at the unauthorized hour of midnight.  Smith minor in the next bed (we shared a candle) was also reading.  We were both discovered.  But the most annoying part of the business, as it seemed to me then, was that Smith minor was discovered reading Alton Locke, and that I was discovered reading Marooned Among Cannibals.  If only our house-master had come in the night before!  Then he would have found me reading Alton Locke.  Just for a moment it occurred to me to tell him this, but after a little reflection I decided that it would be unwise.  He might have misunderstood the bearings of the revelation.

There is hardly one of us who is proof against this sort of intellectual snobbery.  A detective story may have been a very good friend to us, but we don’t want to drag it into the conversation; we prefer a casual reference to The Egoist, with which we have perhaps only a bowing acquaintance; a reference which leaves the impression that we are inseparable companions, or at any rate inseparable until such day when we gather from our betters that there are heights even beyond The Egoist.  Dead or alive, we would sooner be found with a copy of Marcus Aurelius than with a copy of Marie Corelli.  I used to know a man who carried always with him a Russian novel in the original; not because he read Russian, but because a day might come when, as the result of some accident, the “pockets of the deceased” would be exposed in the public Press.  As he said, you never know; but the only accident which happened to him was to be stranded for twelve hours one August at a wayside station in the Highlands.  After this he maintained that the Russians were overrated.

I should like to pretend that I myself have grown out of these snobbish ways by this time, but I am doubtful if it would be true.  It happened to me not so long ago to be travelling in company of which I was very much ashamed; and to be ashamed of one’s company is to be a snob.  At this period I was trying to amuse myself (and, if it might be so, other people) by writing a burlesque story in the manner of an imaginary collaboration by Sir Hall Caine and Mrs. Florence Barclay.  In order to do this I had to study the works of these famous authors, and for many week-ends in succession I might have been seen travelling to, or returning from, the country