Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/50

 is much the same in one case as in the other. Ben Jonson's couplet—

puts them both in a nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face, and turned on your heel, that she begins to smile upon you.

But, by that time, you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have thrilled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.

Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should be so, and that it proves ambition is wicked.

Bosh! Good people are altogether wrong. (They always are, in my opinion. We never agree on any single point.) What would the world do without ambitious people, I should like to know? Why, it would be as flabby as a Norfolk dumpling. Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people, the world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering, shouting and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.