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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
77
VI.
Of
how
many
dwellings
can
it
be
said
that
no
word
of
anger
is
ever
heard
beneath
its
roof,
and
that
no
unkindly
feeling
ever
exists
between
the
inmates?
Most
men's
experience
would
seem
to
justify
them
in
declaring
that,
throughout
the
inhabited
world,
no
such
house
exists.
I,
knowing
at
all
events
of
one,
admit
the
possibility
that
there
may
be
more;
yet
I
feel
that
it
is
to
hazard
a
conjecture;
I
cannot
point
with
certainty
to
any
other
instance,
nor
in
all
my
secular
life
(I
speak
as
one
who
has
quitted
the
world)
could
I
have
named
a
single
example.
It
is
so
difficult
for
human
beings
to
live
together;
nay,
it
is
so
difficult
for
them
to
associate,
however
transitorily,
and
even
under
the
most
favourable
conditions,
without
some
shadow
of
mutual
offence.
Consider
the
differences
of
task
and
of
habit,
the
conflict
of
prejudices,
the
divergence
of
opinions
(though
that
is
probably
the
same
thing),
which
quickly
reveal
themselves
between
any
two
persons
brought
into
more
than
casual
contact,
and
think
how
much
self-subdual
is
implicit
whenever,
for
more
than
an
hour
or
two,
they
co-exist
in
seeming
harmony.
Man
is
not
made
for
peaceful
intercourse
with
his
fellows;
he
is
by
nature
self-assertive,
commonly
aggressive,
always
critical
in
a
more
or
less
hostile
spirit
of
any
characteristic
which
seems
strange
to
him.
That
he
is
capable
of
profound
affections
merely
modifies
here
and
there
his
natural
contentiousness,
and
subdues
its
expression.
Even
love,
in
the
largest
and
purest
sense
of
the
word,
is
no
safeguard
against
perilous
irritation
and
sensibilities
inborn.
And
what
were
the
durability
of
love
without
the
powerful
alliance
of
habit?
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