we are discussing. Of course, excess usually exacts its toll, within
twenty-four hours, especially from the weak. But the benefit is worth
its price. The body pays no more than the debt which the soul has
incurred. An occasional change of habit is essential to well-being, and
every change of habit results in temporary derangement and
inconvenience.

Do not misunderstand me. Do not push my notion of excess to extremes.
When I defend the excess inevitably incident to a feast, I am not
seeking to prove that a man in celebrating Christmas is entitled to
drink champagne in a public restaurant until he becomes an object of
scorn and disgust to the waiters who have travelled from Switzerland in
order to receive his tips. Much less should I be prepared to justify him
if, in his own home, he sank lower than the hog. Nor would I
sympathetically carry him to bed. There is such a thing as excess in
moderation and dignity. Every wise man has practised this. And he who
has not practised it is a fool, and deserves even a harder name. He
ought indeed to inhabit a planet himself, for all his faith in humanity
will be exhausted in believing in himself. * * * So much for the feast!

* * * * *

But the accompaniments of the feast are also excessive. For example, you
make a tug-of-war with your neighbour at table, and the rope is a
fragile packet of tinselled paper, which breaks with a report like a
pistol. You open your half of the packet, and discover some doggerel
verse which you read aloud, and also a perfectly idiotic coloured cap,
which you put on your head to the end of looking foolish. And this
ceremony is continued until the whole table is surrounded by
preposterous headgear, and doggerel verse is lying by every plate.