of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be irritated. Let him
think for a moment of the patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and
let his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose.
Again, I have known some people of very modern views driven by their
distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no
doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and
they could not pull it out. A friend of mine was particularly afflicted
in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day in
consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out
to him that this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative; it
rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and
would come out easily. "But if," I said, "you picture to yourself that
you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle
will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are
tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a
fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass. Imagine even that you are a
boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English."
Shortly after saying this I left him; but I have no doubt at all that my
words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that every day of
his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face
and eyes bright with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself, and
seeming to hear all round him the roar of an applauding ring.

So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to
suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed
poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been
caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect,
and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really
romantic situation. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly
considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.