We can afford to be hard upon the young, for youth itself is hard. The young are not dependent in any way upon what we think of them, for they are still convinced that the powers of the universe plotted amicably to fill them with greatness, so that whether the lesser mortals that encompass them think well or ill of them matters little. They are still living in Eternity, and, unlike the old, do not understand the need of claiming some measure of applause while there is yet time for it. Their hours are spacious, golden, crammed with promise. If we should put a young man into high office, it is unlikely that he would think any better of us: he owes us nothing; he has received only his deserts; he has got one office, but he might have had any one of a hundred others that were shining before his path. The world appears to him so fruitful of glorious opportunities that even to thrust him into a post of honour is to do him an injury by limiting his choice. And as for the young who scribble and paint and write music (and they are legion), what can be done for them? They are all geniuses whose work is above the understanding and taste of the age, and as such are beyond our ministrations, for your misunderstood young genius is perhaps the only completely independent, self-satisfied thing in the universe. What are little paragraphs in the papers, invitations to dinner, and the like, to him when he is the man for whom the century has been waiting to give it voice. He can exist, as a young friend of mine did, on stale cake and cocoa, and yet march about the world like an emperor, attended by the glittering cohorts of his vain and heated fancy. If it were possible to measure and tax youthful vanity; if young men could be imprisoned for egotism; if it were a hanging matter to imagine oneself a genius; then we might have a chance of being cruel to the young. Short of that, we cannot reach them. In order to protect ourselves from their dreadful efficiency, we may deny them place and profit, but what are our trumpery rewards to the largess of a fond imagination. So our gifts go where they are appreciated--to the old.