If the church doors are open wide, let the doors of the public galleries and the museums and the libraries be opened wide as well. Let him, if he choose, step from church to library. But if he is wise, when the grass is long and the bramble is in blossom, and the foliage is thick and heavy on the elms, he will, after dinner, repair to the country, if it is only to breathe the air of the fields, and lie on his back watching the slow westering of the sun and listening to the note of the blackbird in the wood.
Two by two they stroll or sit about Hempstead Heath on such an evening. If you were to listen (a pleasant thing to do, but wrong) to the talk of these couples you would find that they are mostly silent, except that they only occasionally exchange a word or two. Why should they talk? They know each other's cares and prospects; they know the burden that each has to bear--the evil temper of the boss, the uncertainties of employment, the difficulties in the way of an improved screw, and the family troubles--there are always family troubles, due to some inconsiderate member or other. I declare that we have been teaching morality and the proper conduct of life on quite a wrong principle--namely, the selfish principle.
We say, "Be good, my child, and you will go to heaven." The proposition is no doubt perfectly true. But it proposes a selfish motive for action. I would rather say to that child, "Be good, my dear, or else you will become an intolerable nuisance to other people." Now, no child likes to consider himself an intolerable nuisance.
These lovers, therefore, wander about the Heath, sometimes up to their knees in bracken, sometimes sitting under the trees, not talking much, but, as the old phrase has it, "enjoying themselves" very much indeed. At the end of the Spaniards' Road--that high causeway whence one can see, in clear weather, the steeple of Harrow Church on one side and the dome of St. Paul's on the other--there is a famous clump of firs, which have been represented by painters over and over again. Benches have been placed under these trees, where one can sit and have a very fine view indeed, with the Hendon Lake in the middle distance, and a range of hills beyond, and fields and rills between.