The Angel and the Author | Page 8

if there was one thing in the
world she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a lion, but now
she supposed the children would have to go without her, found that
philosophy came to his aid less readily.
"Bother these barbarians," Marcus Aurelius may have been tempted, in
an unphilosophical moment, to exclaim; "I do wish they would not burn
these poor people's houses over their heads, toss the babies about on
spears, and carry off the older children into slavery. Why don't they
behave themselves?"
But philosophy in Marcus Aurelius would eventually triumph over
passing fretfulness.
"But how foolish of me to be angry with them," he would argue with
himself. "One is not vexed with the fig-tree for yielding figs, with the
cucumber for being bitter! One must expect barbarians to behave
barbariously."
Marcus Aurelius would proceed to slaughter the barbarians, and then
forgive them. We can most of us forgive our brother his transgressions,
having once got even with him. In a tiny Swiss village, behind the
angle of the school-house wall, I came across a maiden crying bitterly,
her head resting on her arm. I asked her what had happened. Between
her sobs she explained that a school companion, a little lad about her
own age, having snatched her hat from her head, was at that moment
playing football with it the other side of the wall. I attempted to console
her with philosophy. I pointed out to her that boys would be boys--that
to expect from them at that age reverence for feminine headgear was to
seek what was not conformable with the nature of boy. But she
appeared to have no philosophy in her. She said he was a horrid boy,
and that she hated him. It transpired it was a hat she rather fancied
herself in. He peeped round the corner while we were talking, the hat in

his hand. He held it out to her, but she took no notice of him. I gathered
the incident was closed, and went my way, but turned a few steps
further on, curious to witness the end. Step by step he approached
nearer, looking a little ashamed of himself; but still she wept, her face
hidden in her arm.
He was not expecting it: to all seeming she stood there the
personification of the grief that is not to be comforted, oblivious to all
surroundings. Incautiously he took another step. In an instant she had
"landed" him over the head with a long narrow wooden box containing,
one supposes, pencils and pens. He must have been a hard-headed
youngster, the sound of the compact echoed through the valley. I met
her again on my way back.
"Hat much damaged?" I inquired.
"Oh, no," she answered, smiling; "besides, it was only an old hat. I've
got a better one for Sundays."
I often feel philosophical myself; generally over a good cigar after a
satisfactory dinner. At such times I open my Marcus Aurelius, my
pocket Epicurus, my translation of Plato's "Republic." At such times I
agree with them. Man troubles himself too much about the unessential.
Let us cultivate serenity. Nothing can happen to us that we have not
been constituted by Nature to sustain. That foolish farm labourer, on
his precarious wage of twelve shillings a week: let him dwell rather on
the mercies he enjoys. Is he not spared all anxiety concerning safe
investment of capital yielding four per cent.? Is not the sunrise and the
sunset for him also? Many of us never see the sunrise. So many of our
so-termed poorer brethen are privileged rarely to miss that early
morning festival. Let the daemon within them rejoice. Why should he
fret when the children cry for bread? Is it not in the nature of things that
the children of the poor should cry for bread? The gods in their wisdom
have arranged it thus. Let the daemon within him reflect upon the
advantage to the community of cheap labour. Let the farm labourer
contemplate the universal good.
CHAPTER III

[Literature and the Middle Classes.]
I am sorry to be compelled to cast a slur upon the Literary profession,
but observation shows me that it still contains within its ranks writers
born and bred in, and moving amidst--if, without offence, one may put
it bluntly--a purely middle-class environment: men and women to
whom Park Lane will never be anything than the shortest route between
Notting Hill and the Strand; to whom Debrett's Peerage --gilt-edged
and bound in red, a tasteful-looking volume-- ever has been and ever
will remain a drawing-room ornament and not a social necessity. Now
what is to become of these writers--of us, if for the moment I may be
allowed to speak as representative of this rapidly-diminishing yet
nevertheless still