Harry McDonald Walters

“ Men who appear to be gentlemen are rare in the gambling crowd. It is not the people who dress well and keep up appearances who have the bulk of the money floating about in such company; but the shabby people who care more for money than appearances. I have seen thousands of dollars change hands amidst a shabby unkempt crowd, who looked as if one could buy them and their belongings for five or ten dollars a head; and all in quietness and calm without a murmur. Nothing is despised so much among the gambling fraternity as one who bawls, weeps or babbles. ”

“ What is your business with me?” asked the merchant.
“You can do nothing for me,” replied the Entity; “but I can do much for you and have done much.”
“You must be making a mistake,” said the merchant. “You are in the wrong house. I never had any cases altered and I don’t need any altered now. Go away, please, I do not know you.”
“Yet I made you,” said the Entity.
“Pooh! pooh! nonsense,” said the merchant, “you must be a stranger hereabouts; everyone knows I am a self-made man.”
“A self-made fool,” said the Entity, “your memory is short and your vanity great. ”

“ He loved her no less that he appreciated her faults; a girl would not be perfect without faults; she is not like a race-horse. One idle afternoon the Philosopher sat in his study enjoying himself with fancy mental pictures of the girl while he patiently waited till the clock indicated that he might go to the girl’s house where, in his imagination, he saw her waiting as anxious as he. The clock’s hands moved deliberately forward and finally came to the hour the Philosopher impatiently waited for, just the same as they would have done in any case. Time is the only thing that can laugh at love. ”

“ I have seen beguiling, attractive depravity take away from me the little girl who was born at the mill, marry her, break her heart, and kill her. On the other hand, I have seen my son grow up and make a man of himself, marry the right woman (who is so rarely found) , and prosper. I have seen my Third Beloved grow in beauty and character and mate with a man of heart and mind. All these things have I seen; and my grand-children and I have kept One Beloved at our side; and last, but by no means least, life has spared me Muriel; and the world seems good. Therefore, write me not down a failure. ”

“ Love cannot stand continuous worry about small things. You know very well that I would not have desecrated your drawing room had you been here; but you being gone from me, drawing room, cushions or sofa had no value to me, other than the comfort they could afford me. Come now, is it a new start?”
“Oh, Jack, you do not understand,” said Mrs. Johns. “But I do understand,” replied Johns. “I understand very plainly, indeed, that we could never be happy in the way we were going. ”

“ In the winter of my sophomore year I was trapped for all time—caught to my undoing in one way, and to my making in a hundred ways.
Paul de la Croix talked beautifully of love in two languages—French and English. He was a past-master in the æsthetic realisation and description of love, although I do not believe he ever really loved any one but himself. He was very artistic, and uncommon looking, for which reasons the women loved him, and his family adored him. Music was his chosen career; an easy career for the pampered son of a wealthy, common, luxury-loving father. ”

“ She discovered that living with mother was not half as pleasant as living with Johns; that home was not what it used to be in her single days; that mother was very self-opinionated; that Johns could write much more interesting letters than she thought he could; that there are several kinds of love and several kinds of love letters; and that Johns knew how to write them all; that Johns was not so pliable as she had imagined he was; and that, anyway, she would rather love a man who had character enough to assert himself than a weakling. ”

“ Forming a character in another is much like teaching music. You cannot teach without learning much yourself, and many things are brought home to you while looking at the instrument in the learner’s hands that you could not have discovered by having the instrument in your own.
Our period of adjustment lasted many years, during which time we often lost patience exactly at the wrong instant, often doubted when we should have trusted each other, and often thought our hasty marriage a dreadful failure. ”

“ Many a time I was put out of countenance when one of these juvenile fiends escaped from a keeper and invaded my privacy; for their candour was appalling.
“Hello, Blockhead!” one of the big boys would greet me. “Still hanging around Muriel? She makes us sick.”
I am naturally fond of children, but they need not have the manners of a playful bear.
I went to Riviere du Loup for a short holiday towards the end of the summer, with Mason’s consent, but without the knowledge of my father. My reception by Muriel was all that I dreamed it would be; but that of Mrs. Joseph was frosty and forbidding. ”

“ Consequently, Willie argued, it is a man’s first business to become well off. Seek first dollars and all things shall be added unto you. Many children have this idea and some never get over it, Willie never got over it.
Willie heard that “anything can be bought,” that “every man has his price,” that “a man’s best friend is his money,” and a great many other equally wise and true saws.
So it came about quite naturally that Willie set the dollar up in his mind as something to be venerated, and overlooked the fact (quite naturally too) that the dollar is a means to an end not an end. ”

“ Perhaps they remembered the day when they married, bride and bridegroom one year younger than Muriel and I; and they treated us as if we were human, foolish, and headstrong. They gave us, moreover, many things of immediate need wherewith to start our housekeeping; and so sent us away to the mill happy.
I have made many grave mistakes in my life which have had far-reaching consequences. My marriage has sometimes appeared to be the gravest of all, but as far as I can yet discover, the outcome on the whole, has been good. The consequences, of course, will reach on for ever ”

“ Philosophy is a very satisfactory kind of thing, but its pursuit does not bring happiness, rather is it a drag upon happiness; any fool can be happy, but a Philosopher has to have reason therefor. Philosophy is a useful kind of break, preventing happiness from getting too hot and misery from getting too cold. The Philosopher was happy because he had been smitten, not smote with a club, but by a girl; he loved a girl and believed he was loved because the girl told him he was, which is a good reason for any fellow, but should not be for a Philosopher. ”

“ To wear my hair a little long is my taste and Muriel’s. Rex wore his hair cropped like a pork butcher and the beard upon his face trimmed to a pattern. “Chacun à son goût.” He was like a great many other people in thinking that matters of taste are matters of fact, and that style and gait not of this or that type must necessarily be bad taste. ”

“ He pictured to her the forlorn state of her father as a horrible specimen of petticoat government. He was eloquent, and he thought convincing, in his plea for some liberty. If Mrs. Johns had had half the common sense she prided herself on having, she would have accepted his explanation. She would have seen that it was just as foolish to expect to manage all the details of a man’s doings, comings and goings, wearings and tastes, as it would be for a man to offer to do the same for a woman ”

“ As he sat at his desk in class-room, he was always pawing his bald head with a large bony hand, probing his ear with a lead pencil or pen handle, or investigating his nose. His black waistcoat, which buttoned behind, was always decorated with spots, and his odour was that of a stableman. His voice was harsh and loud, except when speaking from the pulpit; then he subdued it to a monotonous sing-song drone involving four semitones in a chromatic scale; the kind of noise the bass string of a ’cello will make if it is plucked while the peg is turned up and let down again. ”

“ Women say this kind of thing every day to men whom they worship, and never expect to be taken at par and never should be. The value of a statement by a woman is entirely different to the value of a statement by a man.
At this point Johns made a grave mistake. He took his wife’s intemperate utterances at par. He was deeply grieved to learn what he thought was the real condition of her mind, and, believing, that all happiness was gone for him, and that there was no use continuing the painful scene, he made for his hat, intending to leave the house. ”

“ The Civil Service suffers and will suffer, for many years to come, from the dead weight of the human culls and misfits dumped into it by the official and professional politician. It is really a great deal better than might be expected, considering the handicap under which it does a great work. To say that it is corrupt or inefficient, as if it were the actual cause of its own failings and shortcomings, is foolish. ”

“ I could not be happy in one continued round of obeying orders, so like a private in a regiment of soldiers; and you could not be happy with a man you had to worry over and fuss about all the time as if he were a child. In that way we would worry each other out of all comfort in life, as I see many couples foolishly do. Let us be different from other couples. ”

“ My first impression of Muriel was a disappointment. She was a striking, unusual type, most attractive in her way; but at first she failed to realise the mental picture I had drawn of her; and did not strike me as I had expected she would. After too keen an anticipation of pleasure, the actual realisation is often a disappointment. Muriel, as I remember her the first time we met, was a most uncommon looking girl. ”

“ Our civilisation is peculiar, in that it worships morality without being moral, praises honesty and practices dishonesty, honours justice and tolerates injustice, and makes a pretence of believing a great many things that it finds impracticable, inexpedient [Pg 152] and inconvenient to follow. Appearance is the only thing that counts, and the most successful hypocrite is the greatest man among us. It is the opinions you express that mark you, not the actions of your life, provided you care for appearances. We are worshippers of form. Good form is everything; the substance is nothing. ”

“ Johns was also influenced in her method with Johns by what she had seen in her own home, where her calm and dignified, but rather shallow, mother walked on all the rights and liberties of her father, who only claimed his own soul by stealth.
The foregoing is, of course, commonplace enough. Married people are to be seen on all sides dragging out a miserable existence, just for want of a little thought about the real cause of their wretchedness. Johns did not propose to be of the many. ”

“ I felt a genuine sorrow about grandfather’s death because he was a dear old chap—hale, hearty, and jovial. He was suddenly, and it may seem ruthlessly, killed by having his head crushed by a runaway horse; but sudden death is not, despite the Prayer Book, the worst kind of exit. He was a most cheerful old optimist, caring nothing for the day after to-morrow, or any other day but the one he was living; and his end was in keeping with his life. He was a third husband of my grandmother, who had been a very beautiful Quakeress, and my father was their only son. ”