But I have always liked the idea of a
caravan. And if you, alas, O reader, are a dweller in a railway-car, I
commend the idea to you. Take it, with my apologies for any words of
mine that may have nettled you. Put it into practice. Think of the
white road and the shifting hedgerows, and the counties that you will
soon lose count of. And think what a blessing it will be for you to
know that your house is not the one in which the Merstham Tunnel
murder was committed.
WILLIAM AND MARY
1920.
Memories, like olives, are an acquired taste. William and Mary (I give
them the Christian names that were indeed theirs--the joint title by
which their friends always referred to them) were for some years an
interest in my life, and had a hold on my affection. But a time came
when, though I had known and liked them too well ever to forget them,
I gave them but a few thoughts now and then. How, being dead, could
they keep their place in the mind of a young man surrounded with large
and constantly renewed consignments of the living? As one grows older,
the charm of novelty wears off. One finds that there is no such thing
as novelty--or, at any rate, that one has lost the faculty for
perceiving it. One sees every newcomer not as something strange and
special, but as a ticketed specimen of this or that very familiar
genus.
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