Backers in Novel-land do not seem to me to know their way about. If
the hero of the popular novel swims at all, it is not like an
ordinary human being that he does it. You never meet him in a
swimming-bath; he never pays ninepence, like the rest of us, for a
machine. He goes out at uncanny hours, generally accompanied by a
lady friend, with whom the while swimming he talks poetry and cracks
jokes. Some of us, when we try to talk in the sea, fill ourselves up
with salt water. This chap lies on his back and carols, and the wild
waves, seeing him, go round the other way. At billiards he can give
the average sharper forty in a hundred. He does not really want to
play; he does it to teach these bad men a lesson. He has not handled
a cue for years. He picked up the game when a young man in
Australia, and it seems to have lingered with him.

He does not have to get up early and worry dumb-bells in his
nightshirt; he just lies on a sofa in an elegant attitude and muscle
comes to him. If his horse declines to jump a hedge, he slips down
off the animal's back and throws the poor thing over; it saves
argument. If he gets cross and puts his shoulder to the massive
oaken door, we know there is going to be work next morning for the
carpenter. Maybe he is a party belonging to the Middle Ages. Then
when he reluctantly challenges the crack fencer of Europe to a duel,
our instinct is to call out and warn his opponent.

"You silly fool," one feels one wants to say; "why, it is the hero of
the novel! You take a friend's advice while you are still alive, and
get out of it anyway--anyhow. Apologize--hire a horse and cart, do
something. You're not going to fight a duel, you're going to commit
suicide."