Partly by my own act, and partly with the help of Destiny (the greater
jester than I) I have stripped myself of all these garments of life
which not only enabled me to strut peacock-fashion in the pleasant
places of the world, but also sheltered me from its inclemencies.
I had wealth--not a Rothschild or Vanderbilt fortune but enough to
assure me ease and luxury. I have stripped myself of it. I have but a
beggarly sum remaining at my bankers. Practically I am a pauper.
I had political position. I surrendered it as airily as I had achieved
it; so airily, indeed, that I doubt whether I could regain it even had
I the ambition. For it was a game that I played, sometimes fascinating,
sometimes repugnant to my fastidious sense of honourable dealing, for
which I shall never recapture the mood. Mood depends on conditions, and
conditions, as I am trying to show, are changed.
I had social position. I did not deceive myself as to its value in the
cosmic scheme, but it was one of the pleasant things to which I was
born, just as I was born to good food and wines and unpatched boots and
the morning hot water brought into my bedroom.
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