The poor woman will think more of my books than she
has ever thought before. I don't think this is snobbish, because it
is so perfectly instinctive and natural.
But what I wanted to say was that this is the kind of benefit which
is conferred by success; and for a quiet person, who likes familiar
and tranquil ways, it is no benefit at all; indeed, rather the
reverse; unless it is a benefit that the stationmaster touched his
hat to me to-day, which he has never done before. It is a funny
little world. Meanwhile I have no ideas, and my visitors to-day
haven't given me any, though Lord Wilburton might be a useful
figure in a book; so perfectly appointed, so quiet, so deferential,
so humorous, so deliciously insincere!
October 4, 1888.
I have happened to read lately, in some magazines, certain
illustrated interviews with prominent people, which have given me a
deep sense of mental and moral nausea. I do not think I am
afflicted with a strong sense of the sacredness of a man's home
life--at least, if it is sacred at all, it seems to me to be just
as much profaned by allowing visitors or strangers to see it and
share it as it is by allowing it to be written about in a
periodical.
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