There is, alas, no Universal Reason why a man should go to an afternoon tea!
So the matter looks to me in my tub, but perhaps, like Diogenes, I am a cynic philosopher. After all, when a thing cannot be escaped, why seek for reasons not to escape it? Let us, rather, be brave if we cannot be gay; cheerful if we cannot talk; ornamental if we cannot move. As the grave-digger in Elsinore churchyard might say: 'Here lies the afternoon tea; good: here stands the gentleman; good: If the gentleman go to this afternoon tea and bore himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that? But if the afternoon tea come to him and bore him, he bores not himself; argal, he that goes not willingly to the afternoon tea wearies not his own life.'
So, in effect, he that is _dragged_ to an afternoon tea does not go at all; and when he gets there, he is really somewhere else. This happy thought is a little difficult to reconcile with circumstances; but when one has become thoroughly soaked in it, it is a great help.
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Perfect Gentleman, by Ralph Bergengren