It is an eternal problem; and the morally lenient and socially severe is what you encounter every day of your life. I confessed how much I resented the shortness of life and urged her to realise this, as she appeared to me, in spite of having a genius for friendship, to be self-contained and lonely. She was responsive, and said many encouraging things to me. I said that somewhere or other I had read that Marcus Aurelius had begged us to keep our colour. I was not very sure of the correct text; but that the idea was that some of us were born red, some yellow, and others grey, but that however this might be, the point was to keep it; not so much by contrast or conflict with the other person, but to complement it. Great scientists, mathematicians or philosophers may manage to develop their personality alone, but what they write will not have the key that the writings of men who are nearer the earth are able to present to ordinary human beings.
At one of Abraham Lincoln's great meetings, he had to walk through the crowd to reach the platform. He heard someone say as he passed:
"Is that President Lincoln? Why, what a common-looking fellow!"
At which he turned round and said:
"God likes common-looking fellows or he would not have made so many of them."
I told her how much I had been moved by her remark to my secretary that our friendship would help her to emerge out of clay soil; adding that the desire of my life was to replant myself in a bigger pot every year, and that what she had said would encourage me to go on. After a certain age we were liable to become stationary; and the ravages of war so far from having regenerated, had retarded civilisation.
We were interrupted by Mr. Henry J. Allen, a guest who arrived long before the luncheon hour.
The Governor of the State of Kansas is a man of authority—not only intelligent but intellectual, always a rare combination, and it needs no witch to predict a great future for him. He remained at Mrs. Shields's lovely house in Cherry Street from 11.30 till 6 in the evening, in spite of having an appointment at 4, by which I inferred he could do what he liked.
XIV: THE WAR AND PROHIBITION
XIV.
THE WAR AND PROHIBITION