麥克斯·畢爾勃姆/Max Beerbohm
麥克斯·畢爾勃姆（1872—1956），英國著名諷刺畫家、散文家和劇評家。曾就讀於牛津大學。除擅長繪畫外，他還寫過不少散文，並取得了較高的成就。後來繼蕭伯納任《星期六評論》劇評專欄作者達12年之久，晚年移居美國直到去世。
I am not good at it.To do it well seems to me one of the most diffi cult things in the world,and probably seems so to you,too.
To see a friend off from Waterloo to Vauxhall were easy enough.But we are never called on to perform that small feat.It is only when a fri end is going on a longish journey,and will be absent for a languish tim e,that we turn up at the railway station.The dearer the friend and the longer the journey,and the longer the likely absence,the earlier do we turn up,and the more lamentably do we fail.Our failure is in exact rat io to the seriousness of the occasion,and to the depth of our feeling.
In a room,or even on a doorstep,we can make the farewell quite wor thily.We can express in our faces the genuine sorrow we feel.Nor do wo rds fail us.There is no awkwardness,no restraint,on either side.The thread of our intimacy has not been snapped.The leave-taking is an idea l one.Why not,then,leave the leave-taking at that?Always,departing friends implore us not to bother to come to the railway station next mor ning.Always,we are deaf to these entreaties,knowing them to be not qu ite sincere.The departing friends would think it very odd of us if we t ook them at their word.Besides,they really do want to see us again.An d that wish is heartily reciprocated.We duly turn up.And then,oh then,what a gulf yawns!We stretch our arms vainly across it.We have utter ly lost touch.We have nothing at all to say.We gaze at each other as d umb animals gaze at human beings.We "make conversation"--and such conve rsation!We know that these friends are the friends from whom we parted overnight.They know that we have not altered.Yet,on the surface,ever ything is different;and the tension is such that we only long for the g uard to blow his whistle and put an end to the farce.