'What an intolerable young person!' I exclaimed, the moment he had left the room. 'How can one sit and listen to such folly? The arrogance and ignorance of these young men! And the things they write, and their pictures!' 'It's all pose and self-advertisement, I tell you--' 'They have no reverence!' I gobbled. Now why do I do it? I know it turns the hair grey and stiffens the joints--why, then, by denouncing them in this unhygienic fashion, do I talk myself into an invalid and old fogey before my time? AT THE CLUB 'It's the result of Board School Education--' 'It's the popular Press--' 'It's the selfishness of the Working Classes--' 'It's the Cinema--' 'It's the Jews--' 'Paid Agitators!--' 'The decay of faith--' 'The disintegration of family life--' 'I put it down,' I said, 'to sun-spots. If you want to know what I think,' I went inexorably on, 'if you ask me the cause of all this modern unrest--' DELAY I was late for breakfast this morning, for I was delayed in my heavenly hot bath by the thought of all the other Earnest Thinkers, who, at that very moment--I had good reason to believe it--were blissfully soaking the time away in hot baths all over London. SMILES When people smile to themselves in the street, when I see the face of an ugly man or uninteresting woman light up (faces, it would seem, not exactly made for happy smiling), I wonder from what visions within those smiles are reflected; from what footlights, what gay and incredible scenes they gleam of glory and triumph. THE DAWN My Imagination has its dancing-places, like the Dawn in Homer; there are terraces, with balustrades and marble fountains, where Ideal Beings smile at my approach; there are ilex-groves and beech trees in whose shadows I hold forth for ever; gardens fairer than all earthly gardens where groups of ladies grow never weary of listening to my voice. THE PEAR 'But every one is enthusiastic about the book!' I protested. 'Well, what if they are?' was the answer. I too am a Superior Person, but the predicament was awkward. To appear the dupe of a vulgar admiration, to be caught crying stale fish at a choice luncheon party! 'Oh, of course!' I hit back, 'I know it's considered the thing just now to despise the age one lives in. No one, even in Balham, will admit that they have read the books of the day. But my attitude has always been' (what had it been? I had to think in a hurry), 'I have always felt that it was more interesting, after all, to belong to one's own epoch; to share its dated and unique vision, that flying glimpse of the great panorama, which no subsequent generation can ever recapture. To be Elizabethan in the age of Elizabeth; romantic at the height of the Romantic Movement--' But it was no good: I saw it was no good, so I took a large pear and eat it in silence. I know a good deal about pears, and am particularly fond of them. This one was a _Doyenne du Comice_, the most delicious kind of all. INSOMNIA