第29章

He does not have to get up early and worry dumb-bells in his nightshirt; he just lies on a sofa in an elegant attitude and muscle comes to him.If his horse declines to jump a hedge, he slips down off the animal's back and throws the poor thing over; it saves argument.If he gets cross and puts his shoulder to the massive oaken door, we know there is going to be work next morning for the carpenter.Maybe he is a party belonging to the Middle Ages.Then when he reluctantly challenges the crack fencer of Europe to a duel, our instinct is to call out and warn his opponent.

"You silly fool," one feels one wants to say; "why, it is the hero of the novel! You take a friend's advice while you are still alive, and get out of it anyway--anyhow.Apologize--hire a horse and cart, do something.You're not going to fight a duel, you're going to commit suicide."If the hero is a modern young man, and has not got a father, or has only something not worth calling a father, then he comes across a library--anybody's library does for him.He passes Sir Walter Scott and the "Arabian Nights," and makes a bee-line for Plato; it seems to be an instinct with him.By help of a dictionary he worries it out in the original Greek.This gives him a passion for Greek.

When he has romped through the Greek classics he plays about among the Latins.He spends most of his spare time in that library, and forgets to go to tea.

[Because he always "gets there," without any trouble.]

That is the sort of boy he is.How I used to hate him! If he has a proper sort of father, then he goes to college.He does no work:

there is no need for him to work: everything seems to come to him.

That was another grievance of mine against him.I always had to work a good deal, and very little came of it.He fools around doing things that other men would be sent down for; but in his case the professors love him for it all the more.He is the sort of man who can't do wrong.A fortnight before the examination he ties a wet towel round his head.That is all we hear about it.It seems to be the towel that does it.Maybe, if the towel is not quite up to its work, he will help things on by drinking gallons of strong tea.The tea and the towel combined are irresistible: the result is always the senior wranglership.

I used to believe in that wet towel and that strong tea.Lord! the things I used to believe when I was young.They would make an Encyclopaedia of Useless Knowledge.I wonder if the author of the popular novel has ever tried working with a wet towel round his or her head: I have.It is difficult enough to move a yard, balancing a dry towel.A heathen Turk may have it in his blood to do so: the ordinary Christian has not got the trick of it.To carry about a wet towel twisted round one's head needs a trained acrobat.Every few minutes the wretched thing works loose.In darkness and in misery, you struggle to get your head out of a clammy towel that clings to you almost with passion.Brain power is wasted in inventing names for that towel--names expressive of your feelings with regard to it.

Further time is taken up before the glass, fixing the thing afresh.