IT is well to be disciplined in all the social usages
and to have manners for all occasions
as we have clothes.
It is absurd for me to display my naked soul at the tea-table.
If we are properly clothed and disciplined in the dining-room
or the street
then the private intimacy of friendship will be real and precious
and our naked contact will be rare and vivid and tremendous.
But when everybody goes round with soul half-bared, or quite
in promiscuous intimate appeal
then friendship is impossible
and naked embrace an anti-climax, humiliating and ridiculous.