22 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



free lectures, and in the honest patience with which they 

 listen to them. He who pays may yawn and shift testily 

 in his seat, or even go out with an awful reverberation of 

 criticism, for he has bought the right to do any or all 

 of these and paid for it. But gratuitous hearers are 

 anaesthetised to suffering by a sense of virtue. They are 

 performing perhaps the noblest, as it is one of the most 

 difficult, of human functions in getting Something (no 

 matter how small) for Nothing. They are not pestered by 

 the awful duty of securing their money s worth. They are 

 wasting time, to do which elegantly and without lassitude 

 is the highest achievement of civilisation. If they are 

 cheated, it is, at worst, only of a superfluous hour which was 

 rotting on their hands. Not only is mere amusement made 

 more piquant, but instruction more palatable, by this 

 universally relished sauce of gratuity. And if the philo 

 sophic observer finds an object of agreeable contemplation 

 in the audience, as they listen to a discourse on the 

 probability of making missionaries go down better with the 

 Feejee-Islanders by balancing the hymn-book in one pocket 

 with a bottle of Worcestershire in the other, or to a plea 

 for arming the female gorilla with the ballot, he also takes 

 a friendly interest in the lecturer, and admires the wise 

 economy of Nature who thus contrives an ample field of 

 honest labour for her bores. Even when the insidious hat 

 is passed round after one of these eleemosynary feasts, the 

 relish is but heightened by a conscientious refusal to disturb 

 the satisfaction s completeness with the rattle of a single 

 contributory penny. So firmly persuaded am I of this 

 gratis-instinct in our common humanity, that I believe I 

 could fill a house by advertising a free lecture on Tupper 

 considered as a philosophic poet, or on my personal recol 

 lections of the late James K. Polk. This being so, I have 

 sometimes wondered that the peep-shows which Nature 

 provides with such endless variety for her children, and to 

 which we are admitted on the bare condition of having 

 eyes, should be so generally neglected. To be sure, eyes are 

 not so common as people think, or poets would be plentier, 



