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That had always been his "note," that confidence in his own seaworthy vessel. Neither the little South African War nor the big World War with all the social changes that followed them really, he maintained proudly, disturbed him, although for convention's sake he would complain of the "changed times," and that "things were not, dammit, at all as they used to be." But because his digestion was still so excellent, and because he had that best of all gifts, the power to enjoy a good moment to its full consciously at the very instant that it was occurring, nothing but a collapse in his health, he asserted, would ever disturb him. It was not that he was selfish or hard-hearted. The sorrows of others grieved him, and he did many kindnesses in a quiet unobtrusive way, but life now in his seventy-seventh year was as good and rich to him as it had been in his seventh when his father had put him for the first time on his pony.

When he did think of social conditions—and it was hard enough in these days to avoid them—he felt sure that the miseries of other people as recounted by other people were greatly exaggerated.