If Mr. Smith cared to
put up as an honorary member, I have no doubt that he would be
elected; for though it is against the Money God that the chief
battle is waged, yet the spirit of refusal is the same. "Blessed
are they who know how to refuse," runs the club's motto, "for
they will have a chance to be clean."
On Going into a House
It is nineteen years since I lived in a house; nineteen years
since I went upstairs to bed and came downstairs to breakfast. Of
course I have done these things in other people's houses from
time to time, but what we do in other people's houses does not
count. We are holiday-making then. We play cricket and golf and
croquet, and run up and down stairs, and amuse ourselves in a
hundred difierent ways, but all this is no fixed part of our
life. Now, however, for the first time for nineteen years, I am
actually living in a house. I have (imagine my excitement) a
staircase of my own.
Flats may be convenient (I thought so myself when I lived in one
some days ago), but they have their disadvantages. One of the
disadvantages is that you are never in complete possession of the
flat. You may think that the drawing-room floor (to take a case)
is your very own, but it isn't; you share it with a man below who
uses it as a ceiling. If you want to dance a step-dance, you have
to consider his plaster. I was always ready enough to accommodate
myself in this matter to his prejudices, but I could not put up
with his old-fashioned ideas about bathroom ceilings.
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