A little definite scheme opens before us here; old friends of Maud's find us out, simple, kindly, tiresome people. There is an exchange of small civilities, there are duties, activities, relationships. To Maud these things come by the light of nature; to her the simplest interchange of definite thoughts is as natural as to breathe. I hear her calm, sweet, full voice answering, asking. To me these things are utterly wearisome and profitless. I want only to speak of the things for which I care, and to people attuned to the same key of thought; a basis of sympathy and temperamental differences--that is the perfect union of qualities for a friend. But these stolid, kindly parsons, with brisk, active wives, ingenuous daughters, heavy sons--I want either to know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud listening, with rapt interest, to the chronicles of all the village families, robustly and unimaginatively told by the parson's wife; meanwhile I, tortured by intolerable ennui, pumped up questions, tried a hundred subjects with my worthy host. He told me long and prolix stories, he discoursed on rural needs. At last I said that we must be going; he replied with genuine disappointment that the night was still young, and that it was a pity to break up our pleasant confabulation. I saw with a shock of wonder that he had evidently been enjoying himself hugely; that it was a pleasure to him, for some unaccountable reason, not to hear a new person talk, but to say the same things that he had said for years, to a new person. It is not ideas that most people want; they are satisfied with mere gregariousness, the sight and sound of other figures. They like to produce the same stock of ideas, the same conclusions. "As I always say," was a phrase that was for ever on my entertainer's lips. I suppose that probably my own range is just as limited, but I have an Athenian hankering after novelty of thought, the new mintage of the mind. I loathe the old obliterated coinage, with the stamp all rounded and faint. Dulness, sameness, triteness, are they essential parts of life? I suppose it is really that my nervous energy is low, and requires stimulus: if it were strong and full, the current would flow into the trivial things. I derive a certain pleasure from the sight of other people's rooms, the familiar, uncomfortable, shabby furniture, the drift of pictures, the debris of ornament--all that stands for difference and individuality. But one can't get inside most people's minds; they only admit one to the public rooms. A crushing