But it is quite possible, as I also know from personal experience, to go patiently and humbly to work again, to face the reasons for failure, to learn to enjoy work, to banish from the mind the uneasy hope of personal distinction.  We may try to discern the humour of Providence, because I am as certain as I can be of anything that we are humorously treated as well as lovingly regarded.  Let me relate two small incidents which did me a great deal of good at a time of self-importance.  I was once asked to give a lecture, and it was widely announced.  I saw my own name in capital letters upon advertisements displayed in the street.  On the evening appointed, I went to the place, and met the chairman of the meeting and some of the officials in a room adjoining the hall where I was to speak.  We bowed and smiled, paid mutual compliments, congratulated each other on the importance of the occasion.  At last the chairman consulted his watch and said it was time to be beginning.  A procession was formed, a door was majestically thrown open by an attendant, and we walked with infinite solemnity on to the platform of an entirely empty hall, with rows of benches all wholly unfurnished with guests.  I think it was one of the most ludicrous incidents I ever remember.  The courteous confusion of the chairman, the dismay of the committee, the colossal nature of the fiasco filled me, I am glad to say, not with mortification, but with an overpowering desire to laugh.

I may add that there had been a mistake about the announcement of the hour, and ten minutes later a minute audience did arrive, whom I proceeded to address with such spirit as I could muster; but I have always been grateful for the humorous nature of the snub administered to me.

Again on another occasion I had to pay a visit of business to a remote house in the country.  A good-natured friend descanted upon the excitement it would be to the household to entertain a living author, and how eagerly my utterances would be listened to.  I was received not only without respect but with obvious boredom.  In the course of the afternoon I discovered that I was supposed to be a solicitor’s clerk, but when a little later it transpired what my real occupations were, I was not displeased to find that no member of the party had ever heard of my existence, or was aware that I had ever published a book, and when I was questioned as to what I had written, no one had ever come across anything that I had printed, until at last I soared into some transient distinction by the discovery that my brother was the author of Dodo.

I cannot help feeling that there is something gently humorous about this good-humoured indication that the whole civilised world is not engaged in the pursuit of literature, and that one’s claims to consideration depend upon one’s social merits.  I do honestly think that Providence was here deliberately poking fun at me, and showing me that a habit of presenting one’s opinions broadcast to the world does not necessarily mean that the world is much aware either of oneself or of one’s opinions.