When a bad writer is inexact, even if he can
look back on half a century of years, we charge him with
incompetence and not, with dishonesty. And why not extend
the same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a
stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet inexact
in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily
from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human
entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a
fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto,
and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream and the
rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as
nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing
evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent: you
do not consider how little the child sees, or how swift he
is to weave what he has seen into bewildering fiction; and
that he cares no more for what you call truth, than you for
a gingerbread dragoon.
It would be easy to leave them in their native cloudland,
where they figure so prettily--pretty like flowers and
innocent like dogs. They will come out of their gardens
soon enough, and have to go into offices and the
witness-box. Spare them yet a while, O conscientious parent!
Let them doze among their playthings yet a little! for who
knows what a rough, warfaring existence lies before them
in the future?
*
'You are a friend of Archie Weir's?' said one to Frank Innes;
and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his
usual insight: 'I know Weir, but I never met Archie.
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