'Yes, as you say, life is so full of disappointment, disillusion! More and more I ask myself, as I grow older, what is the good of it all? We dress, we go out to dinner,' I went on, 'but surely we walk in a vain show. How good this asparagus is! I often say asparagus is the most delicious of all vegetables. And yet, I don't know—when one thinks of fresh green peas. One can get tired of asparagus, as one can of strawberries—but tender peas I could eat forever. Then peaches, and melons;—and there are certain pears, too, that taste like heaven. One of my favourite daydreams for the long afternoon of life is to live alone, a formal, greedy, selfish old gentleman, in a square house, say in Devonshire, with a square garden, whose walls are covered with apricots and figs and peaches: and there are precious pears, too, of my own planting, on espaliers along the paths. I shall walk out with a gold-headed cane in the autumn sunshine, and just at the right moment I shall pick another pear. However, that isn't at all what I was going to say—'