They are trying their best. "This is Liberty Hall," Mrs.
Beverly-Jones said to me on the first day of my visit.
"We want you to feel that you are to do absolutely as
you like!"
Absolutely as I like! How little they know me. I should
like to have answered: "Madam, I have now reached a time
of life when human society at breakfast is impossible to
me; when any conversation prior to eleven a.m. must be
considered out of the question; when I prefer to eat my
meals in quiet, or with such mild hilarity as can be got
from a comic paper; when I can no longer wear nankeen
pants and a coloured blazer without a sense of personal
indignity; when I can no longer leap and play in the
water like a young fish; when I do not yodel, cannot sing
and, to my regret; dance even worse than I did when young;
and when the mood of mirth and hilarity comes to me only
as a rare visitant--shall we say at a burlesque performance
--and never as a daily part of my existence. Madam, I
am unfit to be a summer guest. If this is Liberty Hall
indeed, let me, oh, let me go!"
Such is the speech that I would make if it were possible.
As it is, I can only rehearse it to myself.
Indeed, the more I analyse it the more impossible it
seems, for a man of my temperament at any rate, to be a
summer guest.
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