And little Boys would always tell the Truth!

Politeness would seem to have been invented for the comfort of the undeserving.  We let fall our rain of compliments upon the unjust and the just without distinction.  Every hostess has provided us with the most charming evening of our life.  Every guest has conferred a like blessing upon us by accepting our invitation.  I remember a dear good lady in a small south German town organizing for one winter’s day a sleighing party to the woods.  A sleighing party differs from a picnic.  The people who want each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving the bores to find only each other.  You are in close company from early morn till late at night.  We were to drive twenty miles, six in a sledge, dine together in a lonely Wirtschaft, dance and sing songs, and afterwards drive home by moonlight.  Success depends on every member of the company fitting into his place and assisting in the general harmony.  Our chieftainess was fixing the final arrangements the evening before in the drawing-room of the pension.  One place was still to spare.

“Tompkins!”

Two voices uttered the name simultaneously; three others immediately took up the refrain.  Tompkins was our man—the cheeriest, merriest companion imaginable.  Tompkins alone could be trusted to make the affair a success.  Tompkins, who had only arrived that afternoon, was pointed out to our chieftainess.  We could hear his good-tempered laugh from where we sat, grouped together at the other end of the room.  Our chieftainess rose, and made for him direct.

Alas! she was a short-sighted lady—we had not thought of that.  She returned in triumph, followed by a dismal-looking man I had met the year before in the Black Forest, and had hoped never to meet again.  I drew her aside.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t ask --- ” (I forget his name.  One of these days I’ll forget him altogether, and be happier.  I will call him Johnson.)  “He would turn the whole thing into a funeral before we were half-way there.  I climbed a mountain with him once.  He makes you forget all your other troubles; that is the only thing he is good for.”

“But who is Johnson?” she demanded.  “Why, that’s Johnson,” I explained—“the thing you’ve brought over.  Why on earth didn’t you leave it alone?  Where’s your woman’s instinct?”

“Great heavens!” she cried, “I thought it was Tompkins.  I’ve invited him, and he’s accepted.”

She was a stickler for politeness, and would not hear of his being told that he had been mistaken for an agreeable man, but that the error, most fortunately, had been discovered in time.  He started a row with the driver of the sledge, and devoted the journey outwards to an argument on the fiscal question.  He told the proprietor of the hotel what he thought of German cooking, and insisted on having the windows open.  One of our party—a German student—sang, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,”—which led to a heated discussion on the proper place of sentiment in literature, and a general denunciation by Johnson of Teutonic characteristics in general.  We did not dance.  Johnson said that, of course, he spoke only for himself, but the sight of middle-aged ladies and gentlemen catching hold of each other round the middle and jigging about like children was to him rather a saddening spectacle, but to the young such gambolling was natural.  Let the young ones indulge themselves.  Only four of our party could claim to be under thirty with any hope of success.  They were kind enough not to impress the fact upon us.  Johnson enlivened the journey back by a searching analysis of enjoyment: Of what did it really consist?

Yet, on wishing him “Good-night,” our chieftainess thanked him for his company in precisely the same terms she would have applied to Tompkins, who, by unflagging good humour and tact, would have made the day worth remembering to us all for all time.