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be after tea, not before it, this she knows by instinct. Perchance 
she may just stoop to sweep back a cinder which has fallen since, 
in my absence, she looked after the fire; it is done quickly and 
silently. Then, still smiling, she withdraws, and I know that 
she is going to enjoy her own tea, her own toast, in the warm, 
comfortable, sweet-smelling kitchen.” 
* 
This is a picture which, for its suggestiveness, deserves to live. 
It precisely hits off the character of the excellent woman who 
played so large, though almost unconscious, a part in Ryecroft’s 
later life, and it serves fairly well to illume one side of Ryecroft's 
character. 
Ryecroft was certainly given to introspectiveness, a habit which 
the practical man may class as morbid, but to which the readers 
of these ‘‘ Private Papers’? must own some amount of pleasure, 
and, it may be, profit. For if I mistake not the moral of this 
book, it is that a quiet life is to be preferred to one filled in by an 
everlasting whirl, without time or inclination for thinking ; 
without regard for things other than those artificial: that it is 
wise to spend many hours with the books which bring no after- 
taste of bitterness—with the great poets, with the thinkers, with 
the gentle writers of papers that soothe and tranquilize. 
The thoughts of Ryecroft often range over the years which have 
passed by with all their lost opportunities, with all their 
thwackings of experience. He finds that in his own still house, 
with no intrusion to be dreaded, with no task or care to worry, 
he can fleet the time not unpleasantly, even without the help of 
books. Reverie, unknown in the time of bondage, has brought 
him solace. . 
I fear it must be admitted that the advantages of quiet and 
seclusion tended to make Ryecroft very sceptical of ordinary 
human harmony. I think I hardly agree that ‘‘ Man is not 
made for peaceful intercourse with his fellows ;’’ and when he 
says that the dominant note beneath the domestic roof of any 
town ‘‘is that of moods, tempers, opinions at jar,’’ one is 
tempted to think that he reduces the probable discord of his own 
early experience into rather too general terms. 
Perhaps one of the bitterest and most forceful chapters in the 
book is directed against the proposal to resort to Conscription. 
The idea affects him with a sickness of dread and disgust which 
is yet the same thing as saying that Englishmen will not fight 
if the safety of England is imperilled. ‘‘ But,” says he ‘‘ what 
a dreary change must come over our islanders if, without instant 
