"effective" scenes and episodes, of three eminently respectable persons shaking themselves to bits with a passion they had never had; or, for comedy, there would have been the ribaldry of equally respectable persons twisting themselves into knots in their attempts to frustrate the discovery of a mis-spent night. Now, thought I, this brings me near the heart of the mystery. There are few men and women born without the kernel of passion. There are forty millions of men and women in the British Isles; what do they do with their passion? What, indeed--let us be frank--had I done with my own? Now do you perceive why I am writing to you? First of all, let us agree that boyhood is the least zestful part of a man's life. His existence is not then truly his own, he is a spectator; he is absorbed in gazing upon the great world which at a seemingly remote period he is to enter. Then he is apprenticed, initiated by the brutal test of a swift growth and physical change; easily he learns the ways, the manners, the pursuits of men; the conduct of the material world, the common life, is all arranged; he has but to slip into it. That is easy. But his own individual life, that is not so easy. He soon perceives, confusedly and mistily, that into that he can only enter through his passion, through its spontaneous and inevitable expression. He knows that; you know it. I know it. They are a miserable few who do not know it. But in England he can find none to share his knowledge. He is left alone with his dread, with so much sick hope thrust back in him, for want of a generous salute from those who have gone before, that it rots away in him and eats into his natural faith. He asks for a vision of manhood and is given a dull imitation of man, strong, silent, brutal, and indifferent. He must admire it, for on all sides it is admired. As a child he has been taught to babble of gentle Jesus; as a youth he finds that same Jesus turned--by the distorting English atmosphere--into a hard Pharisee, blessing the money changers. His passion racks his bones and blisters his soul. His inmost self yearns to get out and away, to spend itself, to find its due share in the ever-creating love. He dare not so much as whisper his need, for none but shameful words are given him to express it. "All's well with the world," he is told. "All's wrong with myself," he begins to think. In other men, older men, he can find no trace of passion, only temper and lewdness, with a swagger to both. They bear both easily. His passion becomes hateful to him; he begins to chafe against it, to spurn it, to live gaily enough in the common life, to choke the vision of his own life. So it has been with you, with me, with all of us.