ROYAL ROADS.
THERE are traditions attached to the yearly meeting of the National Rifle Association as well as to other events of long standing, and one of them, it would seem, is to put to the winner of the King's Prize a certain question,—or, rather, two questions. Other successful riflemen—even those who have won competitions entailing quite as much skill, nerve, and endurance as are necessary to win the King's Prize—may get their performances criticised and their victories applauded, but they escape, or appear to escape, the attentions of the journalist interviewer. The King's Prizeman never escapes. He is always asked, as if it were a definite matter of urgent public importance, to reassure or to warn the public on two points. Does be drink and does he smoke ? In the first question there is, of course, no suggestion of a possibility of intemperance; merely the questioner wishes to know whether he avoids or does not avoid alcoholic liquors. The second question, in the same way, does not ask whether the successful rifle-shot consumes a hundred cigarettes a day, or is never without a pipe in his mouth ; it is merely meant to inquire whether he uses tobacco. The answer to neither question, of course, is of any great value
or interest. It would be interesting, no doubt, if it were dis- covered that no person could attain to success in rifle-shooting unless he never touched alcohol or tobacco,—just as it would be interesting to doctors if the King's Prize were won by an opium-eater or a dipsomaniac. Since, however, it is not disputed that a man who drinks and smokes can win the King's Prize, and that an intemperate man does not make a
first-class rifle-shot, you do not add much to the sum of human knowledge by inquiring whether a particular prize-winner is or is not a teetotaler. All that you do, in effect, is to watch a man come successfully through an ordeal involving the strongest of nerves, the steadiest of hands, and the keenest of eyesight, and then to proceed solemnly to ask him to assure you —for that is what it comes to—that his habits are those of an ordinary mortal. Your question might have gone unasked; it is answered by the record of the man's performance.
Still, the frame of mind in which the question is asked and in which the answer is accepted is interesting. Why is the King's Prizeman asked if he drinks or smokes? Not simply because he has won the King's Prize, and because personal details about him are therefore interesting. Not, again, simply because people who approve of teetotalism want a shining example of what you can do if you drink only water, or because anti-tobacconists want to point to the winner of an important prize and tell you that he does not smoke, or yet because other people want arguments to use against anti- tobacconists and teetotalers. "Arguments to the man" of this kind are not sufficiently convincing ; it is always open to one side to say, "Yes, I admit that Jones, who is not a tee- totaler, has done excellently. But just think what he might have done if be were in the habit of drinking only water!" and, of course, it is open to the other side to make a precisely similar retort. The fact seems to be that it is not merely curiosity, and not a wish to get somebody "on your side," which prompts such earnest inquiries as these. It is the idea which exists in the minds of so many people of finding a "royal road "—a "short cut "—to success. Here is So-and-so,' the average person seems to say to himself, who has attained marked success in a pursuit in which I have not attained success, or have only partially succeeded. How has he done it? Is there not, perhaps, some hint which he could give me —some secret of which he is the fortunate possessor—which would enable me to do as well as he has done ? Can I not, possibly, just alter one small habit of mine, or adopt some small habit of his, which will give me command of the success he has achieved?' And so you get the petty inquiry into matters of diet. People will not readily contemplate a great effort or great changes in order to attain an end they desire. It is not true of very many people that they prefer Abana and Pharpar—the great effort, the important, noticeable exertion—to the small, easy washing in Jordan. The smaller the Jordan, and the easier the effort, the better; so long, that is, as it is believed that few people know the whereabouts of the small Jordan, and so long, therefore, as the knowledge of its whereabouts may be supposed to help those "in the know" to gain an advantage over other people less happy.
Is it not strange that the fact that there is no such thing as a "royal road "—a short cut "—to success prevents so few leople from spending time in looking for it? The desire to find may exist, but the hope of finding the" royal road" is quite unwarranted by the experience of the past. Perhaps as good an illustration as any—if only because the search is so openly and naturally made—of the seeking for the "short cut," when all experience shows that there is no "short cut," is to be found in the schoolboy confronted with the prospect of athletic sports three weeks ahead. What shall he do to win the mile? Of course, it is true that Smith, who won the mile last year, was naturally a. fine runner, and also took a great deal of trouble in practising every day for some weeks before the race. But were those the reasons of his success? Not at all. Probably Smith had some little " tip " which he alone knew ; he was said, indeed, never to eat a particular kind of pudding, and had been observed to refuse a second helping of other dishes. If, therefore,' the schoolboy argues to himself, 'I also refuse a second helping of the dishes Smith refused, and if I put away from myself the particular kind of pudding which Smith never ate, it is likely that my chances of winning the mile will be greatly increased; indeed, it is quite possible that I may win easily.' The fact that he has not in the past done much in the way of running, and that other people have, does not greatly weigh with him ; the important point is the small point, —the avoid. ance of a certain dish, or the wearing of a certain kind of running-shoe. Absurd as such an attitude of mind may be, who shall say that the train of the schoolboy's thought is not that of a very large number of older, and presumably wiser, people, who have to contemplate the winning or losing of things much more important than a schoolboy's athletic sports? Nobody need look further than the obituary columns of a newspaper for evidence of that fact. When a man who has lived well into the nineties, or even who, having passed the span of three- score years and ten, is still hale and hearty, and doing as good work in the world as men twenty years younger,— when such a man dies at last, what is it that the chronicler fixes upon to tell to the rest of the world ? Or, rather, what is it that so many people appear especially anxious to hear about him? Not whether he came of an exceptionally long- lived family, or inherited a particularly strong constitution,— although these would seem naturally to be predisposing causPi of long life. Information on points such as these does not arouse interest, because nobody "by taking thought" can add anything to the advantages of constitution he has inherited.
The points which seem to be considered of interest are of the stuff of which "personal paragraphs" are made. "Mr. Jones, the centenarian, who recently died at the advanced age of one hundred and one years, and who was in full possession of all his faculties up to the last, was in the habit of rising at 3.30 a.m. every morning, and of drinking a glass of water at 9 p.m. before retiring to rest,"—everybody is familiar with the old formula. There were hundreds of such paragraphs printed about Mr. Gladstone, most of them quite apocryphal, but all, apparently, written with the idea of providing people with valuable little sign-posts, directing them down this or that byway as a "short cut" to success.
Does the average sensible man really accept such guidance? In a sense he does. He is, of course, not an average sensible man who asks for and accepts such counsel as that which sometimes appears in the correspondence columns of newspapers. "Five minutes every morning before breakfast alone with a copy of Matthew Arnold " as counsel to "a would- be poet" is no bad advice to anybody, but it is not much more likely to create a poet than any other advice. Still, the "royal roads" suggested in other connections, especially regards long life, are in reality noticed and valued, even if unconsciously, by sensible men. We do not really neglect all the little sign-posts which we see along the road we are travel- ling, even though we may not follow the byways down which they point. The advice which they really give us is not to go down other byways. When a man is told that So-and-so lived to be ninety and always went to bed at nine, he does not necessarily decide that it is good to go to bed at nine, but he knows that it is not good to go to bed at five in the morning. It is by having it perpetually suggested to him that this or that is a "royal road," and by contrasting the "royal roads suggested with other paths, that a sensible man is able to keep to the plain road it is best for him to tread.
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