When you start thinking about insurance as selling and not as believing, you're never going to sell a thing. You've got to have conviction to make a connection. And if you don't have convictions, you're not going to have any connections, which is sales. So when I put that between their head, instead of this lead sucks, or everybody's calling me, want to know how to get free health insurance, and my day was miserable, people are going to hear you say that, and they're going to go, I don't want to be around you.  Welcome back to Insurance Influencers. We find people that are influencing our industry. And I have the pleasure of interviewing Miss Galen Hendricks today. Hello, and how are you? Fantastic. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited about today. Absolutely.  You're well-liked by a lot of people that I know and that I'm close with, which is important, right? Yes. Yeah, which is awesome. Thank you for being on. Galen is the CEO, Chief Executive Officer for Senior Security Benefits and known as the Queen of the Bundle, which we'll get to in a little bit, just to go ahead and segue that and get people excited about the ability to cross-sell and make more money. As I know, you can teach and train them to do.  And I'm sure you grew up when you were 10 saying, I want to be in insurance. Yeah, we all do that, right? Exactly. You know, it's so funny. I'll be celebrating in May. My 35th year in this business. May of 2020. Yes. You started when you were like four years old. That's awesome. Yes, that's a good way to go. I like that. I was young, though, and the fun thing about it is that we don't grow up wanting to be an insurance agent.  You're like, I'm an insurance agent. My thing I think at age five was like I want to be a beauty queen. But the cool thing is what the insurance business does for us. And 35 years, I'm working with guys who aren't even 35 years old yet. And as much as I love being queen of the bundle, I think the phrase that a lot of the guys that you know know me will tell you that they call me Mama Galen. And at first I was like, oh, I don't know about that. Because in this industry, I used to be the only female and the absolute youngest. Well, not the absolute youngest anymore, but the good news is I'm still a woman. And I love that. And what cool about this industry for me, Cody, is that the guys are so welcoming. I talk to a lot of women that are in my generation. And they're negative about what's going on in their companies and what's going on in their work. And I'm working around all these up-and-comers. And even people that have been doing this a while have just gotten a re-ignition of inspiration. And it inspires me. I mean, when I go home on a drive home at night, it's like, who am I going to call?  And we get off the phone, and we're having a good time and smiling. I mean, that's great. Who's your go-to?  You want to have some fun.  Who is it? Oh my gosh, I have lots. But you know, there'll be Justin Brock. There'll be Eric Yaro. Guys, you all know already. But guys, you don't know yet that are coming up. I mean, there's Jagger, Esch. There's Robert Beige. There's Daniel Kunkel.  I mean, what industry are you in really? We're a president of, let's just say, Aetna. Picks up the phone and calls you and says, how's your day today? How did things go? Or the CMO of Manhattan Life calls and says, hey, I want to pick your brain today.   Right now, it's the insurance business. I mean, I'm talking to people who make me better. And hopefully, I add a little bit to what they do. Absolutely, yeah. It's cool you mentioned that. I was at America sitting with the owner's son, CFO, CEO in a boardroom full of eight people talking like lead gen and marketing and stuff yesterday. And it was, yeah, it was so humbling and just cool to see like that and stuff. There's a lot of issues that stuff doesn't happen in, you know? And you know what I think about? I have, I don't know why I always do this. I always like to tell people what I think about them when we start an interview. You know what I think about when I think about you? Oh, goodness. And we're just getting to know each other, right? Right. We've only spoke a couple of times, even though I've seen your name and heard about you a ton. Right. I can already tell, without ever even speaking, that what's got you where you are is because you are fantastic at relationships. And I can just already tell that. Well, I appreciate that. That's probably one of the best compliments I've ever been given. You know, that was humbling. Friendships are what make this business work. Relationships are what make this business work. You know, I'll hear people, I'll say, do you know so-and-so? Oh, he's one of my best friends. And now I've gotten where I like, oh, every time I bring up his name, he's everybody's best friend. And I think that's because friendship is about giving. And we're in a world now where 20 years ago, this business was very cutthroat. I mean, everybody was about one-uping or getting something that somebody else didn't get. And everybody would say, man, if they're copying you, accept that as the best compliment because, you know, that's just flattery. And now what I find, it's kind of like the America thing. You get people in a room and they're not afraid to share. They want to share. And I was given some advice a long time ago by a guy that I worked with. And he said, you know, the best thing about having two brains in a room is that third brain that's created. That third brain is the best of you two. It's kind of like having a child, you know? You look at that kid and you're like, oh man, that's the best of my husband and the best of me. But that's how ideas are born. And I think the more we share, the more we get. And it doesn't really look like somebody's one up in us or I got the best compliment the other day. You know, FMO's in this business for a while, got a bad rap. And this guy goes, but I don't ever think of you as an FMO. You're just my friend. You're an agent. You still sell business. You're just one of us. And I heard that and I was telling one of my business partners today.  We all started selling. And being an agent is hard.  You don't have somebody you can really say, hey, did I do well? Did I do bad? I think that's where I'm gonna give you a compliment. I think you getting out on this platform and bringing these agents together so that they have a group that they can talk in and say, hey, am I doing okay?  But we can be that guy that goes, hey, I wrote two today. Is that good? Oh man, I can't even remember when I started. There would be days I didn't sell anything in the days I sold five. So, you know, one of the things I've told agents for years is, you may have a bad day in this business, but you won't have a bad week. And if you have a bad week, you won't have a bad month. And, you know, the end all's the year. So you look at the year and if the year's the number you wanted, then you don't think about that bad day or that bad week.  I can't wait for some of these new folks, you know, to hear about Zig Zigler. What a legacy and Norman Vincent Peel. You know, when I got started in this business, I called my dad and I said, okay, what's cool do I go to? Now that you've got me wanting to be in the insurance business, because I didn't want to be. He was a debit agent. He worked really hard. And he was like, you need to be in the ordinary side, which is what we're all in now. Right. That's how old I am, y'all. Yeah, that's for real. But the cool thing that he did for me is, he said, you don't need a schooling. You need these two books. You need Zig Zigler, see you at the top, and you need Norman Vincent Peel about positive thinking and just immerse yourself in these two books. And you may not be a superstar by the end of this year, but you will be a superstar. And I'll never forget it, what he told me. And I've told people the reason I sell so much cancer insurance these days is because of my dad. His legacy, he died at 52 years of age. And he told me, he said, you'll be a superstar because you work incredibly hard. But more importantly, you listen, and then you put it in play. He goes, any good football player I've ever seen, any good baseball player I've ever seen, and that's what my dad and I bonded over. He goes, it was always work ethic. It was always work ethic. He goes, some of those good, some, but that's not what gets them to the Super Bowl. That's not what gets them to the World Series. It's the hard work.  And so I kind of took that advice he gave me and I put that in my business. And as I was coming up, not a lot of people listened to that. They kind of thought I was being cheesy or cliche-ish or whatever, but the more I started listening to the motivators that I was listening to in my windshield time, now y'all would call it podcast, back then we called cassette tapes, but they worked and they worked well and they were just emblazed in my brain. And so I don't get negative easily and I don't think anybody should that's in sales. The exigler used to always say, if you don't have a positive spouse, go find your one. Oh. Yeah. And you know that, and he loved his red-headed wife, but she was positive and she was positive all the time. And I love that kind of thing because it's real. If you don't have somebody at home that it's not gonna work out well. So you've got to have positive, and if you've got that spouse at home that's not being positive, call one of us. Yeah, exactly. Lie in a dark night. Exactly. That's good, that's good. I always listen to Brian Tracy when I was first an insurance agent, you know? Amazing. Yes, yes. I always listen to the art of closing the cell every single day, you know? Just love that stuff. Yeah, really good. Thank you, thank you. So why do you think this business is so hard? You've mentioned it a few times. I know it's difficult, obviously, about 8% of agents actually succeed in safe participation. Yes. But there's more millionaires in their industry in the world. Absolutely. Why is it so difficult? Well, I think one is it's between what's these two years.  You know, in our organization, you'll ask anybody that works with me, they'll tell you rule number one is you never complain about a lead. Because a lead is just a piece of- Can you say that again? They never, they do not get to complain about a lead. They know that they'll see the door faster than anything else because there's two reasons for that. The first reason is, is because they're negging themselves out and they're not worth the investment that I'm making in them. And then number two, they're negging out the team around them. So poison spreads like wildfire.  The minute I see an agent turn in a lead and it says not interested, my first response back to that agent is, why weren't you interesting? People are only going to listen to things that are interested. Just like today, you know, you can turn on anything on any computer device and if you don't like it, you can turn it off. Why are we turning it off? Cause it didn't interest us. The great thing about sales is, yeah, there's not 100% closers. There are people that want to make you think they're 100% closers and great. Let them keep believing that lie because it's not real. But there are people who are 50% closers and that's a great living.  That's right. It would be 80% nation. Yes. So, you know, the good news is, is if you get in your head, that's just a piece of paper. And it's up to me to turn that paper into a $500 bill. And some people go, yeah, but I'm not making 500 on that sale. You are thinking so short-sighted because in the days of the motivational speakers, they used to talk to tea.  They didn't have technology like they had today. You know, and people around me love to go, did they have phones? And I'm like, yeah, we had phones. Let me clarify that. I did have one of the brick cell phones. But... Is that Justin or Eric that's saying that? Oh, probably both thought it, but they're still respectful enough not to tell me. But at the end of the day, those guys had to do real prospecting. There's an old, old guy by the name of Joe Gandalfa, one of the best life insurance agents that ever existed. And he said his reward at each day was a steak dinner. But he would not have a steak dinner if he didn't sell one person and one referral. So that's the key word, one person and one referral. Now, I'm sure there were lots of days he didn't eat steak, but then they made him go find that referral. And we've just gotten into the age. You know, I hear a lot of agents complaining right now that Facebook ads have soared in pricing. You know, when they first started, they were cheap. Now they're gone with dollars. And somebody said something the other day, I think I'm quoting Justin here, but I was telling about an agent complaining about something and he was like, yeah, there are just people that call the ambulance no matter what. And I think that's a really good thing to have right here. Don't start whining, start working. You know, if work was fun, it would be spelled F-U-N and not W-O-R-K. Now we can have fun at work. We have to work, we have to prospect. And what I love to do last night, I have a good friend, she's a new children's author. And this is a perfect example of how to prospect. So we went to this Ronald McDonald house here in Fort Worth. I'm a big advocate of theirs and we went to their Christmas tree life. Well, I know all these people who have children that are under the age of 10. And I'm like, hey, this is Nancy. She's a children's author. Have you bought a Christmas present yet? Oh, I love books. We sold about 20 books there last night. We got ready to go to the car and she goes, you are an amazing salesperson. And I'm like, I wasn't selling. I was talking about my friend who I believe in what she does. And I think every one of their children needs your book. When you start thinking about insurance as selling and not as believing, you're never gonna sell a thing. You've gotta have conviction to make a connection. And if you don't have convictions, you're not gonna have any connections, which is sales. So when I put that between their head instead of this lead sucks or everybody's calling me wanting to know how to get free health insurance. My day was miserable. People are gonna hear you say that and they're gonna go, I don't wanna be around you. That sure is crap, don't wanna buy from you. So we gotta think about how people view us and how they see us. And when they see your conviction, that connection starts happening. And so that's probably the best advice that I've learned in 35 years. Somebody asked me the other day, do you ever have a negative day? And I thought that was a compliment, first of all. You know, I was like, not many. And they go, really, why is it? And I said, well, I typically wake up and thank Jesus. And if I forget, my day goes terrible. But I always try to read something inspirational in the morning. Some people are about Jesus, some people are about Pinterest, some people are about Zig Ziglar. You know, I'm just gonna tell you, find that happy place in the morning. And get your day started right.  And that's why I think I'm viewed as a good salesperson because I believe in what I do. I love being around people that make me happy, visionary. You know, you could probably name five visionaries today that you talk to probably every week. And most people can't. When you're starting to talk to people in corporate America or, and I hate to say it, people that work for the government, you ask them who their visionaries are. First of all, I'll ask you what a visionary is. Now that's a sad day. Just a sad day. But in our world, we have visionaries. We have influencers. We have people that are excited, not only make this, but let me tell you what I was doing before I started making this. And they make you happy that you made the decision to be an insurance agent. So while we may not wake up wanting to be one, we're certainly glad we are one. Absolutely. And that is a major blessing. Huge blessing, yeah. Yeah. I noticed we were doing some research before the last 8% nation probably about a year ago. And I found a, I don't remember what the website was, but it said that our industry was 51% women. Did you know that? So I didn't know it, but I mentioned the other day when you and I were just visiting that there's a lot of women in this business, but there's not a lot of successful women in this business. And I hope we can all change that. Me too. You know, the cool thing is when I'm around a lot of the, I'll call them visionaries, maybe they're influencers, maybe we need to come up with a really creative name so we can marry those up. There you go. But what I find in that area is 90% of the time when I'm talking to women about why they're not more successful, why are you not doing more about it? It's really, and this is so sad to say, but they just say nobody really worked with me. Nobody believes in me. You know, I don't have a support at home. My husband thinks going straight commission's not a good idea. And you know, I think in my own life, I had a lot of great male role models.  I had a dad that believed in me like nobody's business. My husband is a major contributor to my success.  And that's not easy for a Vietnam veteran to do. I mean, stay at home dad in the 80s was not as popular as it is today. Absolutely. Let me go hit my goals. And has been my biggest cheerleader all along. My business partner is a great believer in me. My son's a great believer in me. I'm surrounded by amazing male influences. And I think this thing where we're in one box or another is ridiculous. We're all people and some of my biggest cheerleaders are men and guys that have helped me and given me ideas along the way. Some of my best teachers are males and I think what these women need is to sit back and go, I can do anything I wanna do, but I need to listen and I need to get some negative garbage out of my head. Where does that come from for you? Because I can see it and sense it that you believe deeply that you could accomplish anything you want to. And I love that. There's certain people in my life that are the same way and I always wonder where that comes from. Well, it is strictly by one person. I started working in advertising sales at 17. I hadn't had my eighth birthday yet. Was gonna go to college but decided I wanted to go work. Most people think I have a college degree, I don't. And that used to be something that I didn't say out loud. I would just let people kind of find out about it because all the people in this business were college degree and everybody talked about their college education. But my very first boss, she sat me down and she says, I don't care if you use the F-bomb 40 times a day, you're never allowed to say the word can't.  And as a 17 year old with my 18th birthday in like three months, I was terrified and her name was Twyla Offill. And her maiden name, well her first married name we met was Twyla Folsom. And then she ended up marrying a really good friend of mine and they were married for a really long time. But she said, I just have so many dreams for you. And if you start using the word can't, you will never accomplish anything. So I got rid of can't in my vocabulary at 17. I use the words will not occasionally, but I'm not to say the word can't. I'm thinking most people if you talk, especially people that are in my employee and people that have been around me, they'll tell you they hardly ever hear that said. And I would probably say they've never heard it said because I just have practiced not using it. But I don't wanna say never in case one person heard it, you know how social media is. I got her on camera, she said can't. I'm giving everybody the caveat right now I might have said it. But I think that was the stepping stone to my success.  And I would walk out of there in tears and feel like I was a failure and I was letting her down. Then when I left and went on to take another job in the insurance industry, which by the way I thought I was going into pharmaceutical sales. So that's a whole nother story for another session. But she literally looked at me across the desk and she said I wanna hold you here because you are the absolute best employee I've ever had. Wow. But I know the best thing for you is to go. And about, it's time flies in this world today, but I think it's about six months ago. I was going through this journey of some, everybody has a struggle and I was kind of going through this and I wrote this thing on Facebook and she came back and she goes, I don't know what your struggle is. I don't know what's happening, but I do know Galen and I know that you're gonna come out on the other side of this stronger and better than you ever were before. Now, I haven't worked for her in almost 40 years. Well, no, I left her when I was about 20. So not quite 40, let's go 36. I haven't worked for her in 36 years. And she put that on my Facebook and I read that and I came in and I started telling all of my employees about it. And they were like, that's so nice. That's so sweet. I was like, I wanna be that employer. It immediately changed because when people come and go, you always as an employer take it personally. You're like, oh my gosh, why is that person leaving me? And that happens a lot in our business because people go from captive to broker. And sometimes they come back broker to captive because they need that structure. But, and we always have an open door policy. You go out there, if it doesn't work, you're welcome back anytime. But I remember thinking when this one person left, I was really getting ready to take it really hard. And my former boss had written that like a month before. And I was like, I needed that message. I need to know that when you let your people go and become bigger and better, that's the reflection looking back at you. You helped that person become who they are. And you've got people like that in your life. You get to go back and go, hey, without them, I wouldn't be leading 8% nation. Totally. And so it's so cool to have that in your life. So I think learning not to say the word can't, I think knowing that I have all these people believe in me, but more importantly, I have had so many people in this journey that wanna help me. And sometimes we take their help as criticism, where it is open our vision and see that as not criticism, but really as somebody trying to help us.  You were just not on your game today.  And get those people sold. Maybe you only sell five of them. And if all of those were a $400 commission, you turn that 20 number of leads into $2,000. You don't work in any business where you wake up in the morning and go, I get a raise today. I have to go to John and ask for a raise or Carol or Betty Sue. I get to get up and just work a little harder and I made a raise or I got a raise. That's what's beautiful about our business.  No one else does that. It doesn't matter what your commission is. It's, you're on a commission. You get to make it as big as you want. And the harder you work, the better people see you. And I think that that is what makes people want to work harder. I love that, Galen. Thank you for sharing that. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put that on those last 180 seconds of that. I'm going to just put it on repeat so I could just press it in my car. Seriously, that was good. So good. Yeah, I mean, I love your confidence, willing to help believe in yourself, believe in other people.  That's so good. Because even if someone, someone tells them obviously when they're not interested, it's not that they've never bought insurance before or that they're never going to, you know? Or that they don't need to. That's the part that agents don't make the connection on. You know, my dad told me, and I'll tell you this quick story, because I think it's important for the listeners to hear this. This was a debit agent who on a good week made 500 bucks, okay? But their work ethic was phenomenal. And he used to tell me, you've got to get three no's. And when you get three no's, turn that no around. Now it becomes spelled as on and it's onto the next. So no, no, no, onto the next. No, no, no, onto the next. But I was on a sales call with him and I was 12 years old. My very first job was taking all these debit agents books that were about this thick and I was really good on an adding machine. And so I balanced all their books. I mean, at 12th, I mean, I was just, I just loved it. So I was with my dad on this sales call and this lady was Dirt Port. Dirt Port. He was life insurance agent. At the time the company's name was National Life and Accident. And for people that don't know, you know, they owned the Grand Ole Opry, they owned WSM and which by the way WSM, if you're a Nashville person or like Nashville, that really means we shield millions because they got a lot of people protected and they took a lot of banks out of the great depression that went bankrupt. Wow. So I've always been in and around the insurance business but the cool thing about this particular sales call, this lady was Dirt Port and my dad took her last, I think it was like $2.50 a week is what her policy was. And we walk out and it's like, I cannot believe you took her last $2.50. This woman is now broke and he turned me around by my shoulders and he said, listen little girl, she may not care about her family but I do. You're too young to understand what's going on in this family's life but this woman will probably die and her kids have nothing without this life insurance policy. So I didn't take her $2.50, I invested her $2.50. And so for all those years that I fought getting in the insurance industry, I wanted to be an advertising exec and I wanted to be a pharmaceutical sales exec. Now going back, I go back to moments like that in my life and I'm like, what a teaching moment.  So even though you're, it's a kid thing, it's also those new agents you're training up. You think a lot of time those new agents aren't listening to you. They're not just listening to you, they're watching you. They watch everything you do. They watch how hard you work. They watch what you believe in. They watch what you say to people. They watch everything. And I think that that is what going back in time has made me somewhat successful is that I really remembered hearing I didn't sell her that.  We invested this and this is gonna be the best thing for her family. So it doesn't matter if you're in life insurance, Medicare, health insurance, what any kind of insurance you're in, people need it. And most importantly, they want it. Now there is a bridge between needing and wanting and it's called the dollar bill. It's what their priority is and what they're gonna spend those dollars on.  Spend a dollar a day and protect the things that matter the most to you and that's your family. Cause one day these toys that you've gotta have, you're not gonna be able to use them.  Drinking, we all like a little bit, but you know, everything's at moderation.  I can't afford a dollar a day for them. I can still have fun doing all of this, but I just cut out one drink a week or I cut out one pack of cigarettes a week or I cut out something that's harming my family and instead invest it in my family. And what that does for the agent is now you've helped somebody but you've also increased your income 30 grand a year. So if you look at every product you add in a bundle, adding $30,000 a year to your income, if you're selling four products and you were making 50,000 but now you're making 120,000, you're on your way to tripling your income just because you have conviction in what you do. And you've showed somebody that. And that's the greatest thing about this is showing somebody. You know, we look at it as selling somebody. No, it's showing somebody. So I think- Love it. That's what's kind of clicks in my head. I love it, the queen of the bundle. Yay. I like that title. That's good. What, if someone wants to reach out to you or follow you or add you on Facebook or something like that, what should they do? Where should they go? So I'm on Facebook. It's really easy to find me because I don't have the name Cody. You know, mine is Galen, G-A-Y-L-A-N. And it's Galen Hendrix, it's easy to find. I'm on Instagram, it's Hendrix Galen. You know, that's one good thing about having a name like Reba and Cher, not everybody's got it. And so they can find me that way. They're always able to email me or call me. I love meeting new people. I love hearing new ideas. And you know, we're joining you guys, so we're gonna get to meet a whole new group of people. And so we're just really thrilled about the relationship.  Absolutely, yeah. It's easy, it's natural. You're phenomenal relationships and it's been fun getting to know you. Thank you so much for sharing everything. It's been unbelievable. And thank you for being on. Yeah, you're very welcome. Very welcome. Appreciate it. Huge thanks to Galen. Thanks for watching Insurance Influencers. If you wanna be on. And do you think you got what it takes? Email Andy at CodyAskans.com. See you next time. Hey, if you love this video, there's one video you absolutely have to watch. It's how to make $10,000 weekly and it's right there. Go click on it and I'll see you there. Let's do the math. So if you wanna think through 10K, all right? So the goal is $10,000, okay? If you divide that by an average premium,


And the general story is that these guys got, you know, they were getting some, they were getting some, some supposed chem dog, either that or a hybrid from this dude. And they found seeds in it. And they collected those seeds and they popped them in the summer of 95. And they got a couple cuts that they kept and they called them diesel one and diesel two. Right. Yep.  And so he thought it was called sourdies, right? So we know the mom of sour diesel because we know the bud that the weed came out of. The seeds. Yeah. So we know the weed that the seeds came out of, yes. Yeah. Sorry.


Now everyone seems to be doing it and there's kind of this fear that I have that we're just doing like decorative distractions because we have the capabilities to do it so we're doing it. If you're designing for a user, go and talk to that person or that person representing the group that this product is relevant for. We've reached a point with design tools where they feel like they're guiding the way we're actually creating things and too much control has been handed over to them rather than sort of the more individualistic custom stuff that when we're creating things as designers. What are your thoughts on that? I think we have made a lot of progress with design tools and that's very good because it makes it very easy for a lot of people to pick up a tool and design sites and to me or applications and to me that ties in with design systems that often you can load whole libraries working on a project right now where we have to use material design and I can just load all the components and we can start doing that and that's great, it speeds up the process but it also means someone who is not very experienced can make something that looks good that seems to make sense very quickly without actually thinking it through because that's not their job and so they're not designing with necessarily the right intent, they can put all the things together but they're not thinking through visual hierarchies, information architecture, how pages fit together, user journeys, all those things might not be designed for, each screen is designed for on its own and so that will look good but if then someone starts using it, things kind of might fall apart or don't really make sense or become confusing and that's because the tool makes certain things easy but it doesn't replace someone using intent in every kind of design decision laying out information, deciding what information goes on a page or doesn't go there and how things tie together Do you think they're making us more lazy then or potentially making the makers of things not consider context or like quick wins, easy fixes? I don't think they make us lazy, I think what they do is they make it even harder to do good design in terms of their business person, someone management commissions a job and sees a junior person can kind of do something that looks alright because that's often how they look at things, right? Or this looks fine then why do we spend so much time on information architecture or visual hierarchies that those are not concepts that they're familiar with and for them it's this looks okay, colors matched, buttons consistent, so it's fine and so I think in some ways they make it a lot easier and faster to do things but in other ways they make it a bit harder to defend why things take time why the invisible things of design just need to always be there and the tool doesn't replace that So in terms of a UI design, motion animation is quite popular now we've come to a point where before to understand animation and motion was quite complicated you had to have some sort of animation background or at least understand how the human eye works but now everyone seems to be doing it and there's kind of this fear that I have that we're just doing decorative distractions because we have the capabilities to do it so we're doing it and I know you've done a lot of studies with eye tracking and interfaces about how someone can navigate through something using their eyes I've done a lot of research on HCI and UX and I've built a lot of prototypes and I've started with doing just eye tracking studies looking at where people look on the screen and how you lay out the information that it makes sense but then what I found a lot more interesting is actually building interfaces that you can explore with their eyes and when you get to that point it becomes even more critical to think all of those things through because you don't want any information that distracts you need to really actively think about at every step in time where you guide the person's eye because it's the only way for them to navigate around and visual attention is very limited and it's linear and as the eye moves it abstracts a lot of information so our eyes are not getting the rich picture that we think we are getting most of that is actually processed by the brain and interpreted based on experience, previous knowledge and so on so what we are seeing isn't really what the eye is perceiving and so it's very important to design again with intent for those things and a lot of, especially for mobile apps tools nowadays come with all kinds of animation builders that you can do and again what the risk is that you are losing the intent in what is the purpose of that animation so for example you have, if you touch a button and it kind of glows up which is one of the material design things that makes a lot of sense because that is intent it confirms visually that I am selecting this button but then I was just looking at the Google Calendar for example where you can, if I create an event I can choose the color that I want to coat this event in and then the whole header changes and it uses the same animation and yeah it looks nice but it over focuses it takes me off my journey I am trying to create this event, I am filling in all the details maybe there is a reason why I want to change the color and suddenly half of the screen is animating the color change that is unnecessary, it doesn't serve any purpose other than a little bit the vanity of the designer wanting to say I can do this and it looks cool but it distracts the user and it is maybe not a highly critical situation in that case it is just a little bit maybe frustrating or annoying but it is the general risk that you are actually just designing for the animation's sake dark sky, the weather app, I really love that app and it is very nice for looking at weather in the next 10 minutes, half an hour and so on but the key animation or the key interaction with it is just sliding left and right from your day view to different locations and then there is this global map where you can look at the temperature and the rain on a world map you are swiping left to get to that view so what this communicates to me is I can swipe right again to go back to the other view but I cannot do that because I am now in a globe mode where I rotate the globe and I don't need to hunt for the X in the corner to go back so the animation is there because it is a common thing you swipe left and right to switch between screens but it doesn't make sense the right way to design that interaction would be to make the map accessible from the place where you exit it again so they are consistent and they meet the user's expectation where I go to it I can go back to the other screen or you can spend more time thinking about how to solve the problem and come up with a completely different interaction but the inconsistency is just what breaks this and it is introduced because it is so tempting because these animations are cheap and you can add them easily and you don't have to think through the problem or the loss which makes the thing look like you have done something amazing even though it is just a setting that you have just included I think there is this temptation because animations are I think today a hot topic and it is something that would have been traditionally very hard to do and you can do it out of the box you pick the animation you want just like people I don't know 10-20 years ago maybe even now in Powerboy and do all these slight animations just because they can and they didn't make any sense and I'm not saying it's that bad now but it's that easy to use them and not having to think about why am I actually using this and does it help at all and just as you would use visual hierarchies to think through how you organize information like where is the header, where is the title and how does the paragraph text fit in and how is the user's eye going from one place to the next the same applies to animation as it guides you from one screen to another or from one place on the screen to another the intent is to guide the user's eye from one place they're looking at to the next that is relevant for them especially if they're in a journey where you're designing to make pain go away so I have a problem, I need it solved it's a shopping journey or it's I don't know, I need to fill in a form you want to guide the user through this as quickly as possible so there's little cognitive load and the pain goes away quickly if you're designing for delight because it's something entertaining or it's a game then it's obviously different than animation so have a completely different purpose but again I don't think people think along those lines necessarily enough when they're using those tools and adding animations isn't that basically how to experience that I mean, I think we all look for the answer from some of the videos I've done before everything's about the answer I want this checkbox for performance I want a checkbox for accessibility is there an answer in UX is there something that someone could actually do or approach like principles that they can look at at least to have a starting point because unless someone is an expert and has studied these things how would they know or do you feel that they're just not people as an industry we're not necessarily thinking deeply enough about the problems that we're trying to solve so I think a good starting point is always to look at some of the psychological theories behind it and the principles and one thing I think is very important and when I interview people I always try to probe for the knowledge in those is Gestalt Laws or Gestalt Principles and Gestalt Laws are basically rules psychologists came up with those in Germany they're basically just rules that describe how human perception works how the brain tries to make sense of information and there's different laws of proximity of continuity of simplicity that for example if you look at different shapes and some are complex that's complexer than others that we find the simpler ones appealing and that drives design that's why products look often sleep when they're very simple shapes and so on and there's laws that mean that we're looking for things that are familiar to us so if we're seeing something we can't recognize the brain will try to make sense of it and will try to make us see things that aren't actually there the more common laws would be obviously related to alignment of information of grouping so how we lay out things so a very concrete example I like to or that's very dear to me personally is if you use white space and how you group things together to make them appear as relevant to each other it's just to use white space rather than lines lines is like outlines to group things is another way but it's often a cop out using white space and so these laws relate to how human perception works and I think it's critical to understand those in order to use tools that come with design systems and that make it very easy to put things on a screen and lay them out to understand those rules and those laws to design better experiences so if you're a developer coming into this today or like a designer what's the first thing they should really be looking at when trying to solve a problem if I was a developer or if I would have a developer to design something I would probably tell them to take a step back not just start playing with the tools straight away and do some reading and I think reading on psychology would be a good thing Gestalt laws, human perception and a very useful book is Universal Principles of Design it has those kind of laws and a lot of other laws beauty buyers, all kinds of things that explain why people perceive things the way they do why they make decisions the way they do why they like certain things more than others and so it has a theory on one side and it has really nice concrete examples on the other and it's very accessible and I think it's a very approachable book to familiarize oneself with that How do you do your research? Well, user research you should always do so yes, if you're designing for a user go and talk to that person if you're not familiar with doing user research it's very tempting or it's very easy to ask the wrong question how do you like this? should we do it like this or like that? and those are not the right questions to ask what you're trying to do is you're trying to understand again let's say, let's stick within the kind of solving kind of a real problem the user's pain, you're trying to understand what is it that is bothering them or that's hard for them that you want to design something that makes it easier for them and with that regard if for example I should suggest what's the best way to do research there is something called master and apprentice model in interviewing and this for contextual interviews and basically tells you that when you interview a user you are the apprentice and the user is the master he's the master of what he's trying to do and he's telling you what's the problem and you are there to learn about what's his problem you're not telling him or you're not trying to explain why the prototype works in a certain way that's not your job, your job is to understand why it doesn't make sense for him so that would be another thing contextual interviews would be a good thing to read up on one last thing, I mean I remember Alan Cooper the UX guru who came up with this idea of personas I remember in the early days looking at personas we would look at what's the person's demographic but he really dislikes this idea the demographic doesn't tell you anything what do you think about defining a persona or a user persona actually we just had a workshop yesterday and we used empathy maps before and I used that template again yesterday I think traditional personas that are based on demographic information for marketing if you want to narrow down who the group of customers is that you're targeting I think a lot in software design where experience is a lot more personal you want to go a lot deeper because you're designing specific journeys for a specific purpose for a group of people and so the only way you can do that well is by talking to them by understanding the groupings of course but understanding the real pain on why the mother in the morning when she has to bring the kids to school forget something a traditional persona wouldn't describe that the way you understand this is by going there observing it and seeing the problem and then once you understand it and you can actually understand it by just talking to maybe five similar people for that specific problem you can then come up with something to help fix it you've replaced the word blue with the word green and now you have a green sky you make it sound so easy it really is like I've got 12 year olds coding full VR scenes in under an hour


85 Ernest, being about two and thirty years old, and having had his fling for the last three or four years, now settled down in London, and began to write steadily. Up to this time he had given abundant promise, but had produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for another three or four years yet. He lived as I have said very quietly, seeing hardly any one but myself and the three or four old friends with whom I had been intimate for years. Ernest and we formed our little set, and outside of this my godson was hardly known at all. His main expense was travelling, which he indulged in at frequent intervals, but for short times only. Do what he would he could not get through more than about fifteen hundred a year. The rest of his income he gave away if he happened to find a case where he thought money would be well bestowed, or put by until some opportunity arose of getting rid of it with advantage. I knew he was writing, but we had had so many little differences of opinion upon this head, that by tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually publishing, till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological semi-social essays purporting to have been written by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of subjects from different standpoints. People had not yet forgotten the famous essays and reviews, and Ernest had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the essays, which suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop. The essays were, all of them, in support of the Church of England, and appeared both by internal suggestion, and their prima facie purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience in high position, who had determined to face the difficult questions of the day no less boldly from within the bosom of the Church than the Church's enemies had faced them from without her pale. There was an essay on the external evidences of the resurrection, another on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the world in times past and present, another was devoted to a consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority with it, another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle-class destitution, another with the authenticity, or rather unauthenticity, of the Fourth Gospel, another was headed irrational rationalism, and there were two or three more. They were all written vigorously and fearlessly, as though by people used to authority, all granted that the Church professed to enjoin belief in much which no one could accept who had been accustomed to weigh evidence, but it was contended that so much valuable truth had got so closely mixed up with these mistakes, that the mistakes had better not be meddled with. To lay great stress on these was like caviling at the Queen's right to reign, on the ground that William the Conqueror was illegitimate. One article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to change the words of our prayer book and articles, it would not be inconvenient to change in a quiet way the meanings which we put upon those words. This it was argued was what was actually done in the case of law. This had been the law's mode of growth and adaptation and had in all ages been found a righteous and convenient method of effecting change. It was suggested that the Church should adopt it. In another essay it was boldly denied that the Church rested upon reason. It was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was and ought to be faith. There being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for any of man's beliefs. If so, the writer claimed that the Church could not be upset by reason. It was founded like everything else on initial assumptions. That is to say on faith. And if it was to be upset, it was to be upset by faith. By the faith of those who in their lives appeared more graceful, more lovable, better bred in fact, and better able to overcome difficulties. Any sect which showed its superiority in these respects might carry all before it. But none other would make much headway for long together. Christianity was true insofar as it had fostered beauty and it had fostered much beauty. It was false insofar as it fostered ugliness and it had fostered much ugliness. It was therefore not a little true and not a little false. On the whole one might go farther and fair worse. The wisest course would be to live with it and make the best and not the worst of it. The writer urged that we become persecutors as a matter of course as soon as we begin to feel very strongly upon any subject. We ought not therefore to do this. We ought not to feel very strongly. Even upon that institution which was dearer to the writer than any other. The Church of England. We should be churchmen, but somewhat lukewarm churchmen, in as much as those who care very much about either religion or irreligion, are seldom observed to be very well bred or agreeable people. The church herself should approach as nearly to that of Laodicea as was compatible with her continuing to be a church at all, and each individual member should only be hot and striving to be as lukewarm as possible. The book rang with a courage, a like of conviction, and of an entire absence of conviction. It appeared to be the work of men who had a rule of thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand and credulity on the other, who cut Gordian knots as a matter of course when it suited their convenience, who shrank from no conclusion in theory nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were illogical of malice pre-pence, and for what they held to be sufficient reason. The conclusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting. The arguments by which they were reached were taken from the most advanced writers of the day. All that these people contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the most part handed over to those already in possession. Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was one from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world. It ran. If people require us to construct, exclaimed the writer, we set good breeding as the cornerstone of our edifice. We would have it ever present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the central faith in which they should live and move and have their being as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or evil according as they make for good breeding or against it. That a man should have been bred well and breed others well, that his figure, head, hands, feet, voice, manner, and clothes should carry conviction upon this point, so that no one can look at him without seeing that he has come of good stock and is likely to throw good stock himself. This is the decider random and the same with a woman, the greatest number of these well bred men and women and the greatest happiness of these well bred men and women. This is the highest good. Towards this all government, all social conventions, all art, literature and science should directly or indirectly tend. Only men and holy women are those who keep this unconsciously in view at all times, whether of work or pastime. If Ernest had published this work in his own name, I should think it would have fallen stillborn from the press, but the form he had chosen was calculated at that time to arouse curiosity and as I have said he had wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers did not think anyone would have been impudent enough to do if he were not a bishop or at any rate someone in authority. A well known judge was spoken of as being another of the writers and the idea spread ere long that six or seven of the leading bishops and judges had laid their heads together to produce a volume which should at once outbid essays and reviews and counteract the influence of that then still famous work. Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves and with them as with everyone else, omnignotum pro magnifico. The book was really an able one and abounded with humor, just satire and good sense. It struck a new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it otherwise. One of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it and declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the provincial letters of Pascal. Once a month or so that weekly always found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old masters or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since swift or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared since something else. If Ernest had put his name to the book and the writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written in a very different strain.  Then they are disappointed and as a general rule will pay Brown, Jones, or Robinson out. Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I was and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning to find himself famous. He was Christina's son and perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional undue elation. Air long, however, he found out all about it and settled quietly down to write a series of books in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even if they could or could even if they would. He has got himself a bad literary character. I said to him laughingly one day that he was like the man in the last century of whom it was said that nothing but such a character could keep down such parts.  I remember soon after one of these books was published. I happened to meet Mrs. Jupp, to whom, by the way, Ernest made a small weekly allowance. It was at Ernest's chambers and, for some reason, we were left alone for a few minutes. I said to her, Mr. Pontifex has written another book, Mrs. Jupp. Lord now, she said, has he really, dear gentlemen, is it about love? And the old sinner threw up a wicked sheep's eye glance at me from under her aged eyelids. I forget what there was in my reply which provoked it. Probably nothing. But she went rattling on at full speed to the effect that Belle had given her a ticket for the opera. So of course she said, I went. I didn't understand one word of it, for it was all French. But I saw their legs. Oh dear, oh dear, I'm afraid I shan't be here much longer. And when dear Mr. Pontifex sees me in my coffin, he'll say, poor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any more. Good bless you, I'm not so old as all that. And I'm taking lessons and dancing. At this moment, Ernest came in, and the conversation was changed. Mrs. Jupp asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this one was done. Of course I am, he answered. I'm always writing books. Here is the manuscript of my next. And he showed her a heap of paper. Well now, she exclaimed, dear, dear, me, and is that manuscript? I've often heard talk about manuscripts, but I never thought I should live to see some myself. Well, well, so that is really manuscript. There were a few geraniums in the window, and they did not look well. Ernest asked Mrs. Jupp if she understood flowers. I understand the language of flowers, she said, with one of her most bewitching leers. And on this we sent her off, till she should choose to honor us with another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do. For Ernest likes her. Chapter 86. And now I must bring my story to a close. The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records. That is to say in the spring of 1867. By that time my story had been written up to this point. But it has been altered here and there from time to time occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882. And if I am to say more, I should do so quickly, for I am 80 years old, and though well in health, cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is 47, though he hardly looks it. He is richer than ever, for he has never married, and his London and Northwestern shares have nearly doubled themselves. Through sheer inability to spend his income, he has been obliged to hoard in self-defense. He still lives in the temple in the same rooms I took for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been able to induce him to take a house. His house, he says, is wherever there is a good hotel. When he is in town he likes to work and to be quiet. When out of town he feels that he has left little behind him that can go wrong, and he would not like to be tied to a single locality. I know no exception, he says, to the rule that it is cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow. As I have mentioned, Mrs. Jupp, I may as well say here the little that remains to be said about her. She is a very old woman now, but no one now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in the old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the grave. Old, however, though she is, she lives in the same house and finds it hard work to make the two ends meet. But I do not know that she minds this very much. And it has prevented her from getting more to drink than would be good for her. It is no use trying to do anything for her beyond paying her allowance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her anticipate it. She pawns her flat iron every Saturday for four penny and takes it out every Monday morning for four and a half penny when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last 10 years as regularly as the week comes round. As long as she does not let the flat iron actually go, we know that she can still worry out her financial problems in her own hugger-mugger way and had better be left to do so. If the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we should know that it was time to interfere. I do not know why, but there is something about her which always reminds me of a woman who was as unlike her as one person can be to another.  The last time I had a long gossip with her was about two years ago, when she came to me, instead of to Ernest. She said she had seen a cab drive up just as she was going out to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr. Pontifex's paw put his bells above old head out the window. So she had come on to me for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsy, not for the likes of him. She professed to be very much down on her luck. Her lodgers did use her so dreadful, going away without paying and leaving not so much as a stick behind. But today she was as pleased as a penny carrot. She had had such a lovely dinner, a cushion of ham and green peas. She had had a good cry over it, but then she was so silly she was. And there's that bell, she continued, though I could not detect any appearance of connection. It's enough to give anyone the hump to see him now that he's taken to chapel going and his mother's prepared to meet Jesus and all that to me.  And then Grig, him as preaches, you know, as bell if I really was too gay, but not when I was young, I'd snap my fingers at any flyby knight in Holborn. And if I was tugged out and had my teeth, I'd do it now. I lost my poor dear Watkins, but of course that couldn't be helped.  I never thought when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen's passage and she gave me the chop that I should never see her again. And her gentleman friend was fond of her too, though he was a married man. I dare say she's gone to bits by now. If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would cry and I should say, nevermind Ducky, I'm all right. Oh dear, it's coming on to rain. I do hate a wet Saturday night.  And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner as people would say it ought to. Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very sufficiently. At times she gives us to understand that she is still much solicited. At others she takes quite a different tone. She has not allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers this 10 years. She would rather have a mutton chop any day. But ah, you should have seen me when I was sweet 17. I was the very moral of my poor dear mother and she was a pretty woman. Though I say it, that shouldn't. She had such a splendid mouth of teeth it was a sin to bury her in her teeth. I only knew of one thing which she professes to be shocked. It is that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear. Oh, it's too dreadful awful, she exclaimed. I don't know the meaning of the words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot. I believe the old woman in reality rather likes it. But surely Mrs. Jupp said I. Tom's wife used not to be Topsy. You used to speak of her as Feeb. Ah, yes, she answered. But Feeb behaved bad and it's Topsy now. Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate more than a year ago. Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good deal more. They have already presented him with a grandson and I doubt not we'll do so with many more. Georgie though only 21 is owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. He began when about 13 going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks. Then his father bought him and Jack barges of their own and then he bought them both ships and then steamers. I do not exactly know how many people make money by having a steamer but he does whatever is usual and from all I can gather makes it pay extremely well. He is a good deal like his father in the face but without a spark so far as I have been able to observe any literary ability. He has a fair sense of humor and abundance of common sense but his instinct is clearly a practical one. I am not sure that he does not put me in mind almost more of what Theobald would have been if he had been a sailor than of Ernest. Ernest used to go down to Battersby and stay with his father for a few days twice a year until Theobald's death and the pair continued on excellent terms in spite of what the neighboring clergy call the atrocious books which Mr. Ernest Pontifex has written. Perhaps the harmony or rather absence of discord which subsisted between the pair was due to the fact that Theobald had never looked into the inside of one of his son's works and Ernest, of course, never alluded to them in his father's presence. The pair, as I have said, got on excellently but it was doubtless as well that Ernest's visits were short and not too frequent. Once Theobald wanted Ernest to bring his children but Ernest knew they would not like it so this was not done. Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small business matters and paid a visit to Ernest's chambers. He generally brought with him a couple of lettuces or a cabbage or a half a dozen turnips done up in a piece of brown paper and told Ernest that he knew fresh vegetables were rather hard to get in London and he had brought him some. Ernest had often explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to him and that he had rather he would not bring them but Theobald persisted. I believe through sheer love of doing something which his son did not like but which was too small to take notice of. He lived until about 12 months ago when he was found dead in his bed on the morning after having written the following letter to his son. Dear Ernest, I've nothing particular to write about but your letter has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered letters to wit my pocket and it's time it was answered. I keep wonderfully well and I am able to walk my five or six miles with comfort but at my age there's no knowing how long it will last and time flies quickly. I have been busy potting plants all the morning but this afternoon is wet. What is this horrid government going to do with Ireland? I don't exactly wish they'd blow up Mr. Gladstone but if a mad bull would chivvy him there and he would never come back anymore I should not be sorry. Lord Harrington is not exactly the man I should like to set in his place but he would be immeasurably better than Gladstone. I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express. She kept my household accounts and I could pour out to her all the little worries and now that Joey is married too I don't know what I should do if one or the other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me. My only comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy and that he is as nearly worthy of her as a husband can be. Believe me, your affectionate father, Theobald, Pontifex. I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's marriage as though it were recent it had in reality taken place some six years previously she being then about 38 years old and her husband about seven years younger. There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his sleep. Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? He has presented the phenomena of death to other people but in respect of himself he has not only not died but he has not even thought that he was going to die. This is not more than half dying but then neither was his life more than half living. He presented so many of the phenomena of living that I suppose on the whole it would be less trouble to think of him as having been alive than as never having been born at all but this is only possible because association does not stick to the strict letter of its bond. This however was not the general verdict concerning him and the general verdict is often the truest. Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his father's memory. He never said Dr. Martin the old doctor who brought Ernest into the world spoke an ill word against anyone. He was not only liked he was beloved by all who had anything to do with him. A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man said the family solicitor I have never had anything to do with nor one more punctual in the discharge of every business obligation. We shall miss him sadly the Bishop wrote to Joey in the very warmest of terms. The poor were in consternation the wells never missed said one old woman till it's dry and she only said what everyone else felt. Ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected as for a loss which could not be easily repaired. He felt that there were only three people in the world who joined insincerely in the tribute of applause and these were the very three who could least show their want of sympathy. I mean Joey, Charlotte and himself. He felt bitter against himself for being of a mind with either Joey or Charlotte upon any subject and thankful that he must conceal his being so as far as possible not because of anything his father had done to him. These grievances were too old to be remembered now but because he would never allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel as long as communication was confined to the nearest commonplace all went well. But if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt that his father's instinct showed themselves in immediate opposition to his own. When he was attacked, his father laid whatever stress was possible on everything which his opponents said. If he met with any check his father was clearly pleased. What the old doctor had said about the able speaking ill of no man was perfectly true as regards others than himself but he knew very well that no one had injured his reputation in a quiet way so far as he dared to do more than his own father. This is a very common case and a very natural one. It often happens that if the son is right the father is wrong and the father is not going to have this if he can help it. It was very hard however to say what was the true root of the mischief in the present case. It was not earnest having been imprisoned. Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of 10 would have done. Partly no doubt it was due to the incompatibility of temperament but I believe the main ground of complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independent and so rich while still very young and that thus the old gentleman had been robbed of his power to tease and scratch in the way he felt he was entitled to do. The love of teasing in a small way when he felt safe in doing so had remained part of his nature from the days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on purpose to torment her.  At any rate I am sure that most fathers especially if they are clergymen are like Theobald. He did not in reality I am convinced like Joey or Charlotte one witt better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or anything or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler who looked after him when he was not well and took great care of him and believed him to be the best and ableist man in the whole world. Whether this faithful and attached servant continued to think this after Theobald's will was opened and it was found what kind of legacy had been left him. I know not. Of his children the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated him quite filially. As for Christina he hardly ever pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name but this was taken as proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able to ever speak of her. It may have been so but I do not think it. Theobald's effects were sold by auction and among them the harmony of the old and new testaments which he had compiled during the many years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of manuscript sermons being all in fact that he had ever written. These in the harmony fetched nine pence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear that Joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot but Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father than ever he had been himself and wished to get rid of everything that reminded him of him. It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married. Joey has a family but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse. Of course Ernest took nothing under his father's will. This had long been understood so that the other two are both well provided for. Charlotte is as clever as ever and sometimes asks Ernest to come and stay with her and her husband near Dover. I suppose because she knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a deotenbatone in all her letters. It is rather hard to lay one's finger upon it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel. What an awful creature he once said to me. That angel must have been if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is. Could you like, she wrote to him not long ago, the thoughts of a little sea change here. The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with heather. The gorse must be out already and the heather I should think begun to judge by the state of the hill at Yule. And heather or no heather the cliffs are always beautiful and if you come your room shall be cozy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and six pence is the price of a return ticket which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself like? Only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for you but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction. When I have a bad nightmare, Ernest said to me, laughing as he showed me this letter, I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte. Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written and I believe it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much to say, there now, don't you think you're the only one of us who can write, read this. And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it you like. I dare say she writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words, hope, think, feel, try, bright and little and can hardly write a page without introducing all of these words and some of them more than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous. Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so and of late years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds it still a little difficult and is in constant trouble through getting into the key of C-sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable to get back again. Getting into the key of C-sharp, he said, is like an unprotected female traveling on the Metropolitan Railway and finding herself at Shepherd's Bush without quite knowing where she wants to go. How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished seventh, susceptible of such enharmonic change that you can resolve it into all the possible termony of music. Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr. Skinner's eldest daughter, not so very long ago. Dr. Skinner had long left Ruffborough and had become dean of a cathedral in one of our Midland counties, a position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the neighborhood, Ernest called for old acquaintance's sake and was hospitably entertained at lunch. Thirty years had whitened the doctor's bushy eyebrows, his hair they could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have been made a bishop. His voice and manner were unchanged and when Ernest remarking upon a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirinal, he replied with all his wanted pomp. Yes, the Quirinal, or as I myself prefer to call it, the Quirinal.  At lunch he did indeed once say, next to impossible to think of anything else. But he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas. After which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr. Skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the Deenery dining room but he saw no copy of Rome or the Bible, which. And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr. Pontifex? Said Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of the lunch. Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like modern music. Isn't that rather dreadful? Don't you think you rather? She was going to have added, ought to. But she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning. I would like modern music if I could. I have been trying all my life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow. And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin? With Sebastian Bach. And don't you like Beethoven? No, I used to think I did when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him. Ah, how can you say so? You cannot understand him. You never could say this if you understood him. For me, a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness. Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father, a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph, stay, I may presently take a simple chord of Beethoven or a small semi-quaver from one of Mendelssohn's songs without words. After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the dean, he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his want. He rose and bowed. These expressions, he said, voce sua are very valuable to me.  And the pair danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining room table in front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this, Ernest departed. A month or two afterwards Dr. Skinner was gathered to his father's. He was an old fool, Ernest, said I, and you should not relent towards him. I could not help it, he replied.  Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself. And then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr. Skinner or Theobald in his sleep. But beyond this, neither of these two worthies can now molest him further. To myself, he has been a son and more than a son. At times I am half afraid, as for example, when I talk to him about his books, that I may have been to him more like a father than I ought. If I have, I trust he has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention between us. I want him to write like other people and not to offend so many of his readers. He says he can no more change his manner of writing than the color of his hair and that he must write as he does or not at all. With the public, generally, he is not a favorite. He is admitted to have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer, unpractical kind. And no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being ingest. His first book was a success for reasons which I have already explained, but none of his others have been more than creditable failures. He is one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes excellent reading as soon as it has been followed by a later work, which may in its turn be condemned. He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him over and over again that this is madness and find that this is the only thing I can say to him which makes him angry with me. What can it matter to me, he says, whether people read my books or not? It may matter to them, but I have too much money to want more and if the books have any stuff in them, it will work by and by. I do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion can any sane man form about his own work?  Why should I complain about being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity, let him be thankful. Besides, the books will have to stand by themselves someday, so the sooner they begin, the better. I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. Mr. Pontifex, he said, is a homo-unius libre, but it doesn't do to tell him so. I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in Ernest's literary position and looked upon him as a man whose failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a coup. He is in a very solitary position, Mr. Overton, continued the publisher. He has formed no alliances and has made enemies not only of the religious world, but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a man wishes to get on, he must belong to a set, and Mr. Pontifex belongs to no set, not even to a club. I replied, Mr. Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a difference. He hates not wisely, but too well. He would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them, and they him. There is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought into contact with them, his last state would be worse than his first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it, in the hopes, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the present. Can anything, said the publisher, be conceived more impracticable and imprudent? To all this, Ernest replies with only one word, wait, such is my friend's latest development. He would not, it is true, run much chance at present of trying to found a college of spiritual pathology, but I must leave it to the reader to determine whether there is not a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the college of spiritual pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the next generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there is not and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a soft nemesis lest he should again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather fatigues him, but no man's opinions, he sometimes says, can be worth holding unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of charity. In politics, he is a conservative so far as his vote and interests are concerned. In all other respects, he is an advanced radical. His father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of mind than they could understand Chinese, but those who know him intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he actually is. End of chapter 86, End of the Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler, recording by Rhonda Fetterman.