`But,' he may say, with a toss of his grey
beard, `I am not going to practise any device whatsoever. I am above
devices. I shall be in the room when the young man arrives.' I assure
him that I am not appealing to his vanity, merely to his good-nature.
Let him remember that he too was young once, he too thrilled in
harmless hero-worship. Let him not grudge the young man an utmost
emotion.
Coming into a room that contains a stranger is a definite performance,
a deed of which one is conscious--if one be young, and if that
stranger be august. Not to come in awkwardly, not to make a bad
impression, is here the paramount concern. The mind of the young man
as he comes in is clogged with thoughts of self. It is free of these
impediments if he shall have been waiting alone in the room. To be
come in to is a thing that needs no art and induces no embarrassment.
One's whole attention is focussed on the comer-in. One is the mere
spectator, the passive and receptive receiver. And even supposing that
the young man could come in under his hero's gaze without a thought of
self, his first vision would yet lack the right intensity. A person
found in a room, if it be a room strange to the arriver, does not
instantly detach himself from his surroundings. He is but a feature of
the scene.
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