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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
102
For,
whereas
all
men
can
learn,
the
gift
of
prophecy
has
died
out.
A
man
cannot
work
up
in
his
breast
any
real
excitement
about
what
possibly
won’t
happen.
He
cannot
very
well
help
being
sentimentally
interested
in
what
he
knows
has
happened.
On
the
other
hand,
he
owes
a
duty
to
his
country.
And,
if
his
country
be
America,
he
ought
to
try
to
feel
a
vivid
respect
for
the
future,
and
a
cold
contempt
for
the
past.
Also,
if
he
be
selected
by
his
country
as
a
specimen
of
the
best
moral,
physical,
and
intellectual
type
that
she
can
produce
for
the
astounding
of
the
effete
foreigner,
and
incidentally
for
the
purpose
of
raising
that
foreigner’s
tone,
he
must--mustn’t
he?--do
his
best
to
astound,
to
exalt.
But
then
comes
in
this
difficulty.
Young
men
don’t
like
to
astound
and
exalt
their
fellows.
And
Americans,
individually,
are
of
all
people
the
most
anxious
to
please.
That
they
talk
overmuch
is
often
taken
as
a
sign
of
self-satisfaction.
It
is
merely
a
mannerism.
Rhetoric
is
a
thing
inbred
in
them.
They
are
quite
unconscious
of
it.
It
is
as
natural
to
them
as
breathing.
And,
while
they
talk
on,
they
really
do
believe
that
they
are
a
quick,
businesslike
people,
by
whom
things
are
“put
through”
with
an
almost
brutal
abruptness.
This
notion
of
theirs
is
rather
confusing
to
the
patient
English
auditor.
Altogether,
the
American
Rhodes
Scholars,
with
their
splendid
native
gift
of
oratory,
and
their
modest
desire
to
please,
and
their
not
less
evident
feeling
that
they
ought
merely
to
edify,
and
their
constant
delight
in
all
that
of
Oxford
their
English
brethren
don’t
notice,
and
their
constant
fear
that
they
are
being
corrupted,
are
a
noble,
rather
than
a
comfortable,
element
in
the
social
life
of
the
University.
So,
at
least,
they
seemed
to
the
Duke.
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