_Milverton_. It must be confessed that these people do make their humility somewhat obnoxious. Yet, after all, you allow that they know their deficiencies, and they only say, “I know I have not much to recommend me, but I wish to be loved, nevertheless.”
_Ellesmere_. Ah, if they only said it a few times! Besides, there is a little envy mixed up with the humility that I mean.
_Dunsford_. Travelling is a great trial of people’s ability to live together.
_Ellesmere_. Yes. Lavater says that you do not know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him; but I think a long journey with him will do.
_Milverton_. Well, and what is it in travelling that makes people disagree? Not direct selfishness, but injudicious management; stupid regrets, for instance, at things not being different from what they are, or from what they might have been, if “the other route” had been chosen; fellow-travellers punishing each other with each other’s tastes; getting stock subjects of disputation; laughing unseasonably at each other’s vexations and discomforts; and endeavouring to settle everything by the force of sufficient reason, instead of by some authorised will, or by tossing up. Thus, in the short time of a journey, almost all modes and causes of human disagreement are brought into action.
_Ellesmere_. My favourite one not being the least—over-much of each other’s company.
For my part, I think one of the greatest bores of companionship is, not merely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as they might the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a process amusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely uncomfortable to the person being ready-shod: but that they bore you with never-ending talk about their pursuits, even when they know that you do not work in the same groove with them, and that they cannot hope to make you do so.
_Dunsford_. Nobody can accuse you of that fault, Ellesmere: I never heard you dilate much upon anything that interested you, though I have known you have some pet subject, and to be working at it for months. But this comes of your coldness of nature.
_Ellesmere_. Well, it might bear a more favourable construction. But to go back to the essay. It only contemplates the fact of people living together as equals, if we may so say; but in general, of course, you must add some other relationship or connection than that of merely being together.