The bride is cutting the cake. The bridegroom
has lent her his sword, or his fountain-pen, whatever
is the emblem of his trade—he is a stockbroker—and
as she cuts, we buzz round her, hoping for one of the
marzipan pieces. I wish to leave now, before I
am sorry, but my friend tells me that it is not etiquette
to leave until the bride and bridegroom have gone.
Besides, I must drink the bride’s health.
I drink her health; hers, not mine.
Time rolls on. I was wrong to have had champagne.
It doesn’t suit me at tea. However, for
the moment life is bright enough. I have looked
at the presents and my own is still there. And
I have been given a bagful of confetti. The weary
weeks one lives through without a handful of anything
to throw at anybody. How good to be young again.
I take up a strong position in the hall.
They come... Got him—got him!
Now a long shot—got him! I feel slightly
better, and begin the search for my hostess....
I have shaken hands with all the bride’s aunts
and all the bridegroom’s aunts, and in fact
all the aunts of everybody here. Each one seems
to me more like my hostess than the last. “Good-bye!”
Fool—of course—there she is.
“Good-Bye!”
My hat and I take the air again. A pleasant afternoon;
and yet to-morrow morning I shall see things more
clearly, and I shall know that the bridegroom has
married the wrong girl. But it will be too late
then to save him.
At the beginning of the last strike the papers announced
that Public Opinion was firmly opposed to dictation
by a minority. Towards the end of the strike
the papers said that Public Opinion was strongly in
favour of a settlement which would leave neither side
with a sense of defeat. I do not complain of
either of these statements, but I have been wondering,
as I have often wondered before, how a leader-writer
discovers what the Public Opinion is.
When one reads about Public Opinion in the press (and
one reads a good deal about it one way and another),
it is a little difficult to realize, particularly
if the printer has used capital letters, that this
much-advertised Public Opinion is simply You and Me
and the Others. Now, since it is impossible for
any man to get at the opinions of all of us, it is
necessary that he should content himself with a sample
half-dozen or so. But from where does he get his
sample? Possibly from his own club, limited perhaps
to men of his own political opinions; almost certainly
from his own class. Public Opinion in this case
is simply what he thinks. Even if he takes the
opinion of strangers—the waiter who serves
him at lunch, the tobacconist, the policeman at the
corner—the opinion may be one specially
prepared for his personal consumption, one inspired
by tact, boredom, or even a sense of humour.
If, for instance, the process were to be reversed,
and my tobacconist were to ask me what I thought of
the strike, I should grunt and go out of his shop;
but he would be wrong to attribute “a dour grimness”
to the nation in consequence.
