a solitary walk for instance, or of a tramcar ride, the dreams dreamt

behind the counter while trade was slack and mechanical foldings

and rollings occupied his muscles. Most of them were little dramatic

situations, crucial dialogues, the return of Mr. Hoopdriver to his

native village, for instance, in a well-cut holiday suit and natty

gloves, the unheard asides of the rival neighbours, the delight of

the old 'mater,' the intelligence--"A ten-pound rise all at once

from Antrobus, mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the first

whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served

a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in

distress from truculent insult or ravening dog.

So many people do this--and you never suspect it. You see a tattered lad

selling matches in the street, and you think there is nothing between

him and the bleakness of immensity, between him and utter abasement, but

a few tattered rags and a feeble musculature. And all unseen by you a

host of heaven-sent fatuities swathes him about, even, maybe, as they

swathe you about. Many men have never seen their own profiles or the

backs of their heads, and for the back of your own mind no mirror has

been invented. They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks of fate

scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant titillation. And so,

indeed, it is with all of us who go on living. Self-deception is the

anaesthetic of life, while God is carving out our beings.

But to return from this general vivisection to Mr. Hoopdriver's

imaginings. You see now how external our view has been; we have had but

The Wheels of Chance