Take yourself seriously, and clap on a swelled head and you will impress all such as have time to attend to you. Have we not come across the pretty third-rate actress who puts on the airs of the great, and refers to her wooden impersonations as "Art"? O art, art, what sins have been committed in thy name! Have we not met the pet of the papers, the celebrated lady novelist? How did she get her exalted position? Goodness knows! She sweeps through society with superb assurance, and she is really so rude at afternoon teas that that alone proves how great she is; she only relents when she meets editors and reviewers. She coos at them, and well she may for she is crowned with the laurel-wreath of the best up-to-date advertising.
Once I met a little politician who thought he was a statesman. A rare instance of course. Circumstances made me helpless, so to speak, and so he inflicted on me all the speeches he did not make in the "House." He gave me to understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer consulted him on all intricate matters of finance; that he was in fact the power behind the throne. Now the truth was, and he knew it, and I knew it, that his serious work consisted in paying those little tributes his constituency demanded, to subscribe bravely to drinking fountains, almshouses, and fairs--the kind with the merry-go-rounds--and, in his enlightened patriotism, to open bazaars, and also to dance for the good of his party. His supreme glory was to write M.P. after his name, which made him much sought after at innocent dinner-parties that aspired to shine with reflected glory. On such occasions he was often in great form and delivered extracts from those tremendous speeches he never made. But everybody was deeply impressed and it was rumoured in the suburbs that he would certainly be in the next Cabinet.
If you have a grain of humour you can't take yourself too seriously, for then you do realise how desperately unimportant you are. The very greatest are unimportant; what then about the little bits of ones who constitute the huge majority? Was there ever anyone in the world who was ever missed except by one or two, and that not because he was great or even necessary, but only because he was beloved by some longing, aching heart? The waters of oblivion settle over a memory as quickly as over a puddle which is disturbed by a pebble thrown by a careless hand. Alas!