Now I know that these are superficial things, and that a kind heart and an interesting personality are not inconsistent with boots of a grotesque shape and even with mutton-chop whiskers.  In fact, I think that small oddities and differences have grown to have a distinct value, and form a pleasing variety.  If a person’s manner is unattractive, I often find that it is nothing more than a shyness or an awkwardness which disappears the moment that familiarity is established.  My standard is, in fact, lower, and I am more tolerant.  I am not, I confess, wholly tolerant, but my intolerance is reserved for qualities and not for externals.  I still fly swiftly from long-winded, pompous, and contemptuous persons; but if their company is unavoidable, I have at least learnt to hold my tongue.  The other day I was at a country-house where an old and extremely tiresome General laid down the law on the subject of the Mutiny, where he had fought as a youthful subaltern.  I was pretty sure that he was making the most grotesque misstatements, but I was not in a position to contradict them.  Next the General was a courteous, weary old gentleman, who sate with his finger-tips pressed together, smiling and nodding at intervals.  Half-an-hour later we were lighting our candles.  The General strode fiercely up to bed, leaving a company of yawning and dispirited men behind.  The old gentleman came up to me and, as he took a light, said with an inclination of his head in the direction of the parting figure, “The poor General is a good deal misinformed.  I didn’t choose to say anything, but I know something about the subject, because I was private secretary to the Secretary for War.”

That was the right attitude, I thought, for the gentlemanly philosopher; and I have learnt from my old friend the lesson not to choose to say anything if a turbulent and pompous person lays down the law on subjects with which I happen to be acquainted.

Again, there is another gain that results from advancing years.  I think it is true that there were sharper ecstasies in youth, keener perceptions, more passionate thrills; but then the mind also dipped more swiftly and helplessly into discouragement, dreariness, and despair.  I do not think that life is so rapturous, but it certainly is vastly more interesting.  When I was young there were an abundance of things about which I did not care.  I was all for poetry and art; I found history tedious, science tiresome, politics insupportable.  Now I may thankfully say it is wholly different.  The time of youth was the opening to me of many doors of life.  Sometimes a door opened upon a mysterious and wonderful place, an enchanted forest, a solemn avenue, a sleeping glade; often, too, it opened into some dusty work-a-day place, full of busy forms bent over intolerable tasks, whizzing wheels, dark gleaming machinery, the din of the factory and the workshop.  Sometimes, too, a door would open into a bare and melancholy place,