An Autiimn Reverie 129 



and who blushes to be suspected of beating the air. 

 It is pleasanter to sit by one's own library fire of a 

 winter night, and dissect the latest financial project 

 by which an always unfortunate, always hopeful 

 neighbour is prepared to lose another slice of his 

 patrimony, than to follow a bragging, smug-faced, 

 successful man about, as with an insinuated boast he 

 shows in turn his furniture, his pictures, his horses, 

 and other damning proofs of his having lived in direct 

 opposition to the ideal life. And surely, to loiter in 

 a woody lane on a summer afternoon and listen as a 

 young poet describes the never-to-be-printed tragedy 

 by whfch he hopes to electrify London until you are 

 almost infected with his enthusiasm, is more like real 

 poetry than to stand before an author's bookcase and 

 number row upon row of the works by which his 

 fame has been achieved. Until disillusion has actually 

 come to your speculative friend, you have the pleasure 

 of hoping that at last his ill-luck is to be retrieved, and 

 until the poet becomes disgusted with the return of 

 his manuscripts and goes into a place in the City, it is 

 a delight to sit on the willow-stump by the river and 

 share his dreams. There is no need to mourn over 

 their disappointments, for ere the climax comes other 

 aspirants will have come to inspire you with new 

 hopes. 



Nothing leads more inevitably to a doleful conver- 

 sation than an invitation to discuss some ' actual ' or 

 practical idea. It makes one feel as if in a cage. 



K 



