“Which reminds me,” said Eric. “There is nothing to pay on receiving a telegram! Shall we enquire for one?” And he and Lady Muriel strolled off in the direction of the Telegraph-Office.
“I wonder if Shakespeare had that thought in his mind,” I said, “when he wrote ‘All the world’s a stage’?”
The old man sighed. “And so it is,” he said, “look at it as you will. Life is indeed a drama; a drama with but few _encores_—and no _bouquets_!” he added dreamily. “We spend one half of it in regretting the things we did in the other half!”
“And the secret of _enjoying_ it,” he continued, resuming his cheerful tone, “is _intensity_!”
“But not in the modern æsthetic sense, I presume? Like the young lady, in Punch, who begins a conversation with ‘Are you _intense_?’”
“By no means!” replied the Earl. “What I mean is intensity of _thought_—a concentrated _attention_. We lose half the pleasure we might have in Life, by not really _attending_. Take any instance you like: it doesn’t matter _how_ trivial the pleasure may be—the principle is the same. Suppose _A_ and _B_ are reading the same second-rate circulating-library novel. _A_ never troubles himself to master the relationships of the characters, on which perhaps all the interest of the story depends: he ‘skips’ over all the descriptions of scenery, and every passage that looks rather dull: he doesn’t half attend to the passages he does read: he goes on reading—merely from want of resolution to find another occupation—for hours after he ought to have put the book aside: and reaches the ‘FINIS’ in a state of utter weariness and depression! _B_ puts his whole soul _into_ the thing—on the principle that ‘whatever is worth doing is worth doing _well_’: he masters the genealogies: he calls up pictures before his ‘mind’s eye’ as he reads about the scenery: best of all, he resolutely shuts the book at the end of some chapter, while his interest is yet at its keenest, and turns to other subjects; so that, when next he allows himself an hour at it, it is like a hungry man sitting down to dinner: and, when the book is finished, he returns to the work of his daily life like ‘a giant refreshed’!”
“But suppose the book were really _rubbish_—nothing to repay attention?”