RED-LETTER DAYS.
WHEN people say of us that we are not quite ourselves they moan that we I- re rather ill or very cross, duller than usual, or by fault or misfortune more confused in mind. They find us uncompanionable, but they wish to emphasize the fact that our mental condition is accidental, not habitual. We all have days when we deserve to be thus excused. But there are other days, rod-letter days, when also we are not ourselves, Other people do not notice them, but we seem to ourselves to be better, or at any rate better company, than usual. We all get very tired of our own personalities, we bore ourselves some- times till we almost hate ourselves, but just now and then on those red-letter days we seem to develop new. perceptions, to have now powers of enjoyment which last just. long enough to bring about a reconcilement. If wo look beck, do we not sea these days standing out in the calendar almost as vividly as those which commemorate outward events We have a notion that people of very remarkable mental ability, of genius in any shape or form, never have those hours of delight. Their average power of perception is perhaps too high. No ; red-letter days are the consolation of the ordinary man when, like children at the table of their elders, he is allowed to taste the pod of the gods. Constitutionally high-spirited people never, wo believe, have them either. Their calendar is printed in gold. There may be a few black days, but these, not the bright ones, are the exceptions. People who are always in good spirits are like men of genius ; they stand apart from the world at large. But we know how they feel, these people chosen for happiness, because we ordinary men have also felt the joy of being alive— upon our red-letter days—and we cannot help believing that we reached a height of pleasure beyond theirs. As we look back at such a day we probably realize that nothing whatever happened out of the ordinary. We were not seeking happiness upon a Swiss mountain, or hunting, or fishing, or doing any of the things which bring the joy of living to people in books. Very likely we were in our own homes. The scene of the rod-letter day may have been laid by a fire or in a garden, or possibly we were enjoying that harmless sort of drunkenneas which comes of many unaccustomed hours in fresh air. " Is this how really happy people always feel," we said to ourselves, " and is it really I who am feeling it ? Will it perhaps last ? " Of course, it never does. Even two red-letter days never come together. Next day we were ourselves again. More often, however, the delights of a red-letter day are more definite than this. For instance, have not moat of us felt upon a very few occasions in our lives a delight in some form of art which at ordinary times loaves us but lukewarm ? Perhaps we have felt for once the compelling charm of music. We went for a abort time into a new world and heard unutterable things. Our spirits within us were drawn by the spell of rhythm into some wild dance of joy, or melody offered to us a sympathy more intimate thanever poet gave, or we knew for the first time that doubt maybe resolved by other means than thought and anxiety calmed by other
emotions than hope. Is this how musicians feel always ?" we asked ourselves in amazement ; and once more, "-Is it I who am experiencing this delight ? " We tried of course to renew the sensation, but of course we could not. The sanie musicians and the same music struck, it seemed to us, upon different ears. Once more we were no more musical than the average man. •
Most men and women have not any very keen feeling for Nature, more especially if they have been brought up in towns. We realize this immediately if we associate at all outside the circle in which a love of Nature is conventionally supposed. Uneducated people seldom make any pretence to any feeling for it beyond a genuine love for flowers. It is a thing widish is born in men or not born in them, and probably not a mush larger proportion of educated than of uneducated parsons really fool it. So strong is the convention that a parson of education Would almost as soon allow that he was without a sense of humour as allow himself impervious to the charm of
scenery. Most of us, however, know in our hearts that, apart
from fresh air and gardening and an admiration for snow and sunsets and.moonlight, we do not think a great deal about it,
On the other hand, can we not recollect a few red-letter days when we suddenly wondered whether what we wore feeling was what Wordsworth felt always ? Perhaps no strange landscape, no vision of mountains, no exceptional effect of sky or sea.
startled us into artistic consciousness; perhaps the vision burst upon us at our own front door. We saw—" Was it we," we
asked ourselves, "who saw it ?"—the accustomed scene with other eyes. That sunlight, those shadows, that grans, that water, how familiar was the sight—end yet how new. "How delightful if. we could always see like that ! " we said to our ; but the power vanished entirely. We remember the experience as a red-letter day, and we know such days are few and very far between.
What are ordinarily called social pleasures make for a great many people, especially women, the happiness of life. A good many people, however, are unfortunately born with a shyness which almost entirely precludes them from this very natural and innocent pleasure. On rare occasions, judging by what they say, this shyness leaves them, and they taste with delight what is to others an everyday pleasure. Have we not all bees amused by hearing shy people allude again and again to some gay episode, some one short period of frivolity or gaiety which one would have imagined they would long ago have got tired of thinking of ? Apparently it was a red-letter day in which they were able to be—not quite themselves.
It is a sad fact that when really old people want to allude is one of these red-letter days they all do it in the sumo words.
They all say: felt young again." Togo back and be one'sold self again is a happy sensation chiefly enjoyed in dreams. is red-letter dreams we may be any age—whichever among those of the seven periods of life as yet passed through we have enjoyed the most. There is something rather uncanny about waking and feeling that even in a dream we have been somebody else, that old self who was so like us and whom yet we cannot regard ax quite the same. Towards ourselves of the past we all take a strangely patronizing attitude, if a very affectionate one. We are not bored by our past selves ; wo love them and smile upon them—however little we think of the person who now is.
Religious biography abounds in rod-letter days. The sense they give of some kind of change of personality la very much emphasized by the autobiographers. A sceptical world is apt to wonder whether the change was so great as those who describe it tell of, the reader as a rule coming to the conclusion that the writer was not nearly no bad before the given date, and perhaps not quite so bad afterwards, as the narrative suggests. &Homily. however, most people do in some far less measure experienao at one time or other in their lives some dimly analogous emulation. There are times when we all feel an increase of mental capacity. when some difficult and puzzling question seems clear to us, and when actually we can make a little calculation or take in a page of a dry book far more quickly than usual. At such time the least studious of us appreciate the sweets of scholarship. Perhaps wo remember moments in our lives when some great drama or some great picture appeared to us in a light that we have never seen it in since. We know suddenly what the man meant who painted or wrote. We could not have explained our sensations to any one else. We cannot very likely remember them except as sensations ; they threw no permanent light upon either art or literature. Often we wonder whether they partook of the nature of artistic revelation, or must be accounted more accesses of sentimentality. They have, how- ever, left a permanent mark in one sense. They makeimposaible that idiotic attitude of scorn towards any experienee of the mind or spirit which is taken up by certain persona, who mistake in themselves an imamate philiatiniam for trenchant good sense. Perhaps herein lies their greatest value—for they are not pro- ductive days. So far as it is possible to discover from rise books which contain what one might call the confessions of the great, even men of genius do their best work at the cost of effort, perhaps with a sense of failure. In lesier degree the acme experience COMM to all brain.workom in their several vocations. Rod-letter days are essentially the holidays of the spirit, 't and their atmosphere is not that of the workshop. They are ce the stuff that dreams are made of, but it is strange to what an extent they illuminate life.
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