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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
128
"Hear
such
talk!"
cries
his
neighbour.
"He's
fiction.
What
he
says
never
happened
at
all.
He
tries
hard
to
make
you
believe
it,
but
it
isn't
true,
not
a
word
of
it.
Now,
I'm
fact.
Everything
you
find
in
me
can
be
depended
upon."
"Yes,"
responds
the
other,
"but
who
cares!
Nobody
wants
to
read
you,
you're
dull."
"You're
false!"
As
their
voices
grow
shriller
with
argument
your
highness
listens
with
the
indulgent
smile
of
royalty
when
its
courtiers
contend
for
its
favour,
knowing
that
their
very
life
depends
upon
a
wrinkle
in
your
august
brow.
As
for
me
I
confess
to
being
a
rather
crusty
despot.
When
Horace
was
over
here
the
other
evening
talking
learnedly
about
silos
and
ensilage
I
admit
that
I
became
the
very
pattern
of
humility,
but
when
I
take
my
place
in
the
throne
of
my
arm-chair
with
the
light
from
the
green-shaded
lamp
falling
on
the
open
pages
of
my
book,
I
assure
you
I
am
decidedly
an
autocratic
person.
My
retainers
must
distinctly
keep
their
places!
I
have
my
court
favourites
upon
whom
I
lavish
the
richest
gifts
of
my
attention.
I
reserve
for
them
a
special
place
in
the
worn
case
nearest
my
person,
where
at
the
mere
outreaching
of
an
idle
hand
I
can
summon
them
to
beguile
my
moods.
The
necessary
slavies
of
literature
I
have
arranged
in
indistinct
rows
at
the
farther
end
of
the
room
where
they
can
be
had
if
I
require
their
special
accomplishments.
How
little,
after
all,
learning
counts
in
this
world
either
in
books
or
in
men.
I
have
often
been
awed
by
the
wealth
of
information
I
have
discovered
in
a
man
or
a
book:
I
have
been
awed
and
depressed.
How
wonderful,
I
have
thought,
that
one
brain
should
hold
so
much,
should
be
so
infallible
in
a
world
of
fallibility.
But
I
have
observed
how
soon
and
completely
such
a
fount
of
information
dissipates
itself.
Having
only
things
to
give,
it
comes
finally
to
the
end
of
its
things:
it
is
empty.
What
it
has
hived
up
so
painfully
through
many
a
studious
year
comes
now
to
be
common
property.
We
pass
that
way,
take
our
share,
and
do
not
even
say
"Thank
you."
Learning
is
like
money;
it
is
of
prodigious
satisfaction
to
the
possessor
thereof,
but
once
given
forth
it
diffuses
itself
swiftly.
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