ENTHUSIASTS

Dear Miss,—I don't feel like exactly to quarrel with somebody. But it is the first time in my life happens to me a thing like that. And therefore I am not going to let it go. I was just keeping quiet to see what you would do. But what I can see you think I have forgotten about it. But I may tell you this much. It is not the few shillings but it is the impudence to come in while I am away to ask the girl to do it as a special, and then to come in and take it away, and then tell the girl you would come in to-morrow to see me. And this is six weeks already and you have not come yet. The only thing I can say now, Miss, if you will kindly send the money by return, because I tell you candidly. I will not be had by you in this manner. Should you notsend the money I shall try to get to know you personally, and will have something to say about it.

—If the art of letter-writing is to state clearly one's own position, that is as good a letter as any written. Every word expresses not only the intention of the writer but his state of mind. No one could improve upon it except in essentials.

And here is a letter by a Pole partially Americanised. It was recently addressed to a Chicago firm:

Dear Gentlemen,—Seaing Your Advertisement in the Daily News that you wanted a Agent in Chicago I am a Temperance Polish bachelor. I am 35 years of age, I live 30 years in Chicago have a clear record. I love all Nations, I am inteligent i worked in Metal line 10 years. I am a fine talker I lived in 4 parts of Chicago. I have a mild disposition I have 100. cash. I am a Orphan. I work for a Jewish Real Estate man on Commission he is worth 50,000 dollars he made that in 7 years. i want a small salary and Commission to act as General Agent. I have a 4 room flat and furnished for my own money and i have a roomer he has 5000 cash. I am a fine Business talker used to being in Cigar and Grocery and Candy Business some years agow. I will purchase a 25000 dollar share in your Business Dear Gentlemen if you find me a wife that has 50000 dollars cash or more. with best success to you dear gentlemen, I will take a Widow, a white woman i love children.Very truly, etc.

Very truly, etc.

With Baboo broken English we have long been familiar. Whole books have been devoted to its exploitation; but the supply is continuous and something new is ever emerging from India. Here is a recent effort by a Calcutta student in search of pleasure. Writing to a firm of job-masters in that city, he says:—

Dear Sir,—It is to approach you for a kind consideration. I am a student. I want a carriage either a tandaum or a phaeton for evening drive now and then but not everyday. It is to know from you whether you allow your carriages to be engaged for part of a day say from 5 to 9 or 10 in the evening and if the answer be in the affirmative at what rate you do so. If you have no such rule will you be kind enough to consider the case of a young man who wants a carriage for joy-driving. It rests solely with you and be good and kind enough to grant him what he wants. As regards charges in the first instance let me tell you and which you perhaps know thoroughly well that the student is generally poor but merry, the best for him is to have it free of any charge and if such cannot be the case, be kind enough to let me know what least you can charge him for the same. I shall inform you by phone or by a letter the date and time when I shall require the carriage, you will send it with your syce and at the end of every month I shall pay off the bill. I know driving but not very nicely; and if you kindly grant me my humble prayer you may send me a nice and well trained horse and I shall do well with it. In a month's time I may require it 6 or 7 times in the evening. Now, Sir, I do not know how far I havebeen able to express fully what I wish to but I hope you have fully understood what I mean and I pray you, Sir, to give it a kind consideration and let me know of it at your earliest convenience. This may seem to you like a fancy but I am sure you have understood what I mean and desire, and again I request you to grant me my humble prayer for which act of kindness I shall remain ever obliging to you. Please try to give it free of any charge; this will not affect your huge business the least on the other hand will provide a student with a merriest job for which act he will pray to the Almighty for the prosperity and good-name of the firm. You have understood what I mean so kindly excuse me for the language used. Please keep this secret and confidential.A favourable reply is expected at the earliest possible convenience by—Sincerely yours,

A favourable reply is expected at the earliest possible convenience by—Sincerely yours,

The African supplicant has now entered the lists too, and there are few mails from the West Coast that do not bring to a certain London publishing firm appeals for catalogues and books. The difference between the Baboo and the African is very striking. The Baboo approaches the patron almost on his stomach, certainly with a cringe, whereas the African smiles light-heartedly, baring all his white teeth with cheerful confidence. Here is a typical letter from a student in Ashanti to the firm in question:

Dear Sir,—I am with much pleasure to indite you about your name that has come to my hand withgreat joy. On the receipt of this letter, know that I want to be one of your fellow friends. You have been reported to me by a friend of mine of your good attention and benevolences. My openion of writing you is to say, I want to take you as my favourite friend. Everything or news that may be happened there at your side, I wish you to report same to me. And I also shall report same to you satisfaction. Will you be good enough to agree with me? Then I hope to get few lines of news from you being as you consented or disconsented. To have a friend at abroad is something that delights the life. I am earnestly requested to hear from you soon. I beg to detain, dear Sir, Yours truly,

Thus does another ambitious youth, also in Ashanti, in whose veins the virus of English civilisation has begun to work, put his needs and his hopes and his potentialities before a well-known London firm of travel agents with out-posts all over the world:—

Dear Sirs,—I have the honour most respectfully to bring this before you to ask your favour to remit me down per the very first outward mail steamer to send me passenger's ticket so that I may run up quickly to your station and stay with you, because I often hear and know that you are the best trainer in the city of London. So I wish you will send me ticket. I am orphan. The object which induces me to write you this letter is this, I wish to be an competent educated fellow, but in our Africa here there exists no better school and tutor. I hope you will do my request, and may this my humble letter meet you in good condition. I am orphan. Awaiting yourfavourable reply per the next steamer coming, I beg to be, Sirs, Your obedient Servant,

From China comes a specimen of English as fractured with the best of motives by a Chinese student. The Kaiser having been given as the subject of an essay competition by the English class in whatever celestial college it happened to be, some admirable documents resulted, from one of which I take a few salient sentences:—

The German Kaiser is not the Superior Man as deciphered by the Chinese literature; he is surely a mean fellow containing much fraudish cunnings in his deceited heart. The Superior Man is shown in the merits of excellent heart with much loving kindness to all peoples; the mean fellow is displayed in the black heart of the ungenerated devils of the hell with much loving kindness only to himself.... The German Kaiser he awfully wishing to slave the people and extinct the civilisations of the universe; he destroy the literature books, and the arts, and the ships, and mass the people of Allies Nations together with the intermediate outstanding Nations.... Thus it will be clearly seen by whole universal globe that the German Hun Kaiser he conceal much brutish iniquity in his heart, and is not fit to sit in the pail of the Allies Nations including the Chinese Republic.

There, again, the meaning of the writer could not be made more clear by perfect prose.

And here is a Japanese jewel, which theLondon office of a Tokio engineering house received not long since:

Regarding the matter of escaping penalty for non-delivery of the machine, there is a way to creep round same by diplomat. We must make a statement of big strike occur in our factory (of course, big untrue). Please address my firm in enclosed form of letter and believe this will avoid penalty of case.As Mr. B. is a most religeous and competent man and also heavily upright and godly it fears me that useless apply for his signature. Please attach name by Yokahama office making forge, but no cause to fear prison happening as this is often operated by other merchants of highest integrity.It is highest unfortunate Mr. B. so god-like and excessive awkward for business purpose. I think much better add little serpentlike wisdom to upright manhood and so found a good business edifice.

As Mr. B. is a most religeous and competent man and also heavily upright and godly it fears me that useless apply for his signature. Please attach name by Yokahama office making forge, but no cause to fear prison happening as this is often operated by other merchants of highest integrity.

It is highest unfortunate Mr. B. so god-like and excessive awkward for business purpose. I think much better add little serpentlike wisdom to upright manhood and so found a good business edifice.

From broken English to broken-hearted English is but a step, and I have before me as pretty an example of that piteous tongue as—short of a great and tragic poignancy—could be wished. It is a letter written by a little American boy named Arthur Severn Mead to his parents from his first school.

My Most Dearest Father and Mother,—I am very sick and I want to come home.O dearest father and mother I know that you wont refuse me. I have a very bad headache. I dont eatanything nor I dont sleep any. I lay awake every night thinking of home and you dearest father and mother.O dearest father and mother wilt thou father let me come home.I cannot live here. I am crying all the time.I will take it out of my money and will work for you all the time.My most dearest mother I was opening my trunk today and I found those candys you put in and O dearest mother how I thank you.O dearest Father and Mother I pray for you every night and morning and I pray to Him that you will let me come home and I know that thou wilt say "yes."I cannot go to school because I am so sick. O dearest father and mother I will love you so much and I will never worry you any more and I will be a better boy if you will only say yes.Dearest father and mother I cannot live here. O do let me come home.Write now dearest father and mother and say yes.I send my love to all.Good bye.—From your loving son,Arthur.Say yes dearest Father and Mother.

My Most Dearest Father and Mother,—I am very sick and I want to come home.

O dearest father and mother I know that you wont refuse me. I have a very bad headache. I dont eatanything nor I dont sleep any. I lay awake every night thinking of home and you dearest father and mother.

O dearest father and mother wilt thou father let me come home.

I cannot live here. I am crying all the time.

I will take it out of my money and will work for you all the time.

My most dearest mother I was opening my trunk today and I found those candys you put in and O dearest mother how I thank you.

O dearest Father and Mother I pray for you every night and morning and I pray to Him that you will let me come home and I know that thou wilt say "yes."

I cannot go to school because I am so sick. O dearest father and mother I will love you so much and I will never worry you any more and I will be a better boy if you will only say yes.

Dearest father and mother I cannot live here. O do let me come home.

Write now dearest father and mother and say yes.

I send my love to all.

Good bye.—From your loving son,

Arthur.

Say yes dearest Father and Mother.

In turning over the pages of "Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack," best of year-books, for 1919, I came upon the obituary notice of a monarch new to me, who died in April of the preceding year at the age of six-and-forty: George Tubow the Second, who reigned over Tonga and was the last of the independent kings of the Pacific. As to the qualities of head and heart displayed by the deceased ruler,Wisdenis silent; to inquire into such matters is not that annalist's province. George Tubow the Second won his place inWisden'spages because he was a cricket fan and the head of a nation of cricket fans. "His subjects became so devoted to the game that it was necessary to prohibit it on six days of the week in order to avert famine, the plantation being entirely neglected for the cricket-field."

To what lengths of passion for his game a baseball fan can go, I am not sufficiently Americanised to be able even to guess; but there is certainly something about a ball, whatever its size and consistency, that leads to extremes ofdevotion. For the wildest enthusiasts we must always go to games. But among collectors enthusiasts are numerous, too. The courts not long since were occupied with the case of a gentleman of leisure who had fallen into the moneylenders' hands very heavily through a passion for adding dead butterfly to dead butterfly; while every one knows the story of one of the Rothschilds fitting out an Arctic expedition in the hope that it would bring back, alive, even a single specimen of a certain boreal flea. All other fleas he possessed, but this was lacking. On making inquiries among friends I find that the classic example of enthusiasm is, however, not a cricketer nor a collector, but the actor who, when cast for Othello, blacked himself all over. Every one, of course, has heard the story, but its origin may not be generally known, and I am wondering if it occurred anywhere in print before Mr. Crummles confided it to Nicholas Nickleby. Was it a commonplace of the green-room or did Dickens (who was capable of doing so) invent it? Joseph Knight being no more, to lighten the small hours with gossip and erudition, who shall tell?

Meanwhile I am reminded of an incident in modern stage history which supplies a pendant to the great Othello feat. It occurred in the days when the gramophone was in its infancyand the late Herbert Campbell was approaching his end. That massive comedian, who was then engaged in his annual task of personating a dame or a queen, or whatever was monumentally feminine, in the Drury Lane pantomime—as a matter of fact, he was at the moment a dame—had been invited by one of the gramophone companies to visit their office in the City and make a record of one or more of his songs and one or more of his dialogues with the other funny man, whoever that might be. The name escapes me; all that I feel certain of is that it was long after the golden age when Herbert Campbell served as a foil to the irresponsible vivacity of Dan Leno—who in association with him was like quicksilver running over the surface and about the crevices of a rock—and still longer after those regular Christmas partnerships with Harry Nicholls which were liberal educations in worldly sagacity tempered by nonsense. The name of the other actor is, however, unimportant, for Herbert Campbell is the hero of this tale, and it was for Herbert Campbell's songs and patter that the operator was waiting and the waxen discs had been prepared and the orchestra was in attendance and the manager had taken his cheque book from his desk—for "money down" is the honourable rule of the gramophone industry. The occasion was furthermoreexceptional because it was the first time that this popular performer had been "recorded." Hitherto he had refused all Edisonian blandishments, but to-day he was to come into line with the other favourites.

And yet he did not come. Normally a punctual man, he was late. Everything was ready—more than ready—and there was no dame.

Suddenly above the ground swell of the traffic was heard, amid the strenuousness of the City Road, the unaccustomed sound of cheers and laughter. "Hurray! Hurray!" floated up to the recording-room from the distant street below, and every head was stretched out to see what untoward thing could be happening. "Hurray! Hurray!" and more laughter. And there was discerned an immense crowd, chiefly errand-boys, surrounding a four-wheeler, from which with the greatest difficulty an old lady of immense proportions, dressed, or rather upholstered, in the gaily-coloured clothes of the century before last, was endeavouring to alight, backwards. "Hurray! Hurray!" cried the boys at every new struggle. At last the emergence was complete, when the old lady, standing upright and shaking down her garments, revealed herself as no other than Herbert Campbell, the idol of "The Lane," who in order to speak a fewwords into the funnel of a gramophone had thought it needful to put on every detail of his costume and to make up that acreage of honest, genial physiognomy.

LAURA VISITS THE SICK. See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 11LAURA VISITS THE SICK.See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 11

After fighting against bondage for years I am now a slave: I have a telephone.

Although the advantages are many, it means that I have lost the purest and rarest of life's pleasures—which was to ring up from a three-pence-in-the-slot call-office (as I continually had to do) and not be asked for the money. This, in many years, has happened to me twice; and only last week I met a very rich man who is normally of a gloomy cast, across whose features played a smile brilliant with triumph, for it also had just happened to him.

On the other hand, through having a telephone of my own I now escape one of the commonest and most tiresome of life's irritations—which is to wait outside one of these call-offices while the person inside is carrying on a conversation that is not only unnecessary and frivolous, but unending. In London these offices are used both by men and women; but in the suburbs by women only, who may be thought to be romantically engaged but really are reminding their husbands not to forget the fish. The possession of a telephoneof one's own, however, does not, in an imperfect world, put an end to the ordeal of waiting. If ever a fairy godmother appeared to me (but after all these years of postponement I can hardly hope for her) with the usual offer of a granted wish, I should think long before I hit upon anything better to ask for than the restoration of all the time I had spent with my own telephone at my ear waiting to be answered. The ordinary delays can be long enough, but for true foretastes of eternity you must sit at the instrument while some one is being fetched from a distant part of the building. This is a foretaste not only of eternity but of perdition, for there is nothing to do; and to have nothing to do is to be damned. If you had a book by you, you could not read it, for your thoughts are not free to wander; all that you are mentally capable of is to speculate on the progress of the messenger to the person who is wanted, upstairs or down, the present occupation of the person who is wanted, and the probable stages of his journey to the receiver. In this employment, minutes, hours, days, weeks even, seem to drag their reluctant length along.

You can imagine also the attitude of the person who is sent for. For the telephone, common as it now is, is still associated with ceremonial. At any rate, I notice that men called to it bypage boys in restaurants and hotels have a special gait of importance proper to the occasion.

The possession of a telephone no doubt now and then simplifies life; but its complications are too many, even if you adopt the sound rule to be more rung against than ringing. One of them is the perplexity incident to delays and misunderstandings, and, above all, as to the constitution of Exchanges. We all, I suppose, have our own idea as to what they are like; there must at one time or other have been photographs in the more informing of the magazines; but I missed them, and, therefore, decline on a vague vision of machinery and wire-eared ladies. A friend is more definite: "A large building," he describes it, "like Olympia, the roof lost in darkness, and pallid women moving about, spinning tops and blowing penny trumpets." To me, as I have suggested, there is more of Tartarus than Olympus about it. A sufficient hell, indeed, for any misspent life, to be continually calling up numbers, and continually being met with the saddest words that are known to men: "Number engaged."

I want to understand the whole telephone system. I want to know how the operators all get to speak exactly alike. Women can be very imitative, I am aware: the chorus girl's transitionfrom Brixton to the Savoy restaurant can be as natural as the passage of dusk to dawn, and a change of accent is usually a part of it; but it is astonishing how the operators of the different Exchanges resemble each other. They cannot all be one and the same. Miraculous as is everything connected with the telephone—talking quietly over wires that thread the earth beneath the busiest and noisiest of pavements in the world is sufficiently magical—it would be a shade too marvellous for one operator to be everywhere at once. Therefore, there must be many. Is there, then, a school of elocution, where instruction in the most refined form of speech ever known is imparted, together with lessons in the trilling of the letter R? Why should they all say "No replay," when they mean "No reply"? And how do they talk at home? It must be terrible for their relations if they don't come down a peg or two there. The joy with which we recognise a male voice at the Exchange is another proof that woman does not really represent the gentler sex.

But these are by no means all the mysteries as to which I crave enlightenment. I want to know how the odd and alarming noises are made. There is a tapping, as of a woodpecker with delirium tremens, which at once stuns and electrifies the ear. How do they do that, anddo they know what its effect is? And why does one sometimes hear other conversations over other wires, and sometimes not? Rarely are they interesting; but now and then.... My pen falters as I record the humiliating want of perspicacity—the tragic inability to recognise a tip—which befell me on the morning of June 4th, 1919—in other words, on Derby Day: the day when the art or science of vaticination experienced in England its darkest hour, for every prophet selected The Panther. To my annoyance I had to listen to a long conversation between what seemed to be a bookmaker and his client with regard to money to be placed on Grand Parade. This at the time only irritated me, but afterwards, when Grand Parade had won at 33 to 1, and I recognised the interruption as an effort of the gods on my behalf (had I but ears to hear), how against my folly did I rail!

Telephony, it is clear, both from one's own experience and from reading the letters in the papers, is not yet an exact science. Not, that is, in real life; although on the stage and in American detective novels it seems to be perfect. The actor lifts the receiver, mentions the number, and begins instantly to talk. If he is on the film his lips move like burning rubber and his mouth becomes a shifting cavern. Do the rankand file of us, I wonder, when telephoning, thus grimace? I must fix up a mirror and see.

There are many good telephone stories. The best that I know is told of a journalist with a somewhat hypertrophied bump of reverence for worldly success, whose employer is a peer. We will call the employer Lord Forthestait and the journalist Mr. Blank. A number of the staff were talking together, in one of the rooms of the newspaper, when the telephone rang.

"You're wanted at the 'phone, Mr. Blank," said the clerk.

Blank, who was just going out to lunch, came back impatiently and snatched at the instrument.

"Yes, what is it?" he snapped out.

"Is that Blank?" came back the reply. "Lord Forthestait speaking."

"Yes, my lord," said Blank, with the meekest deference, removing his hat.

John Stuart Mill's fear that the notes of the piano might be used up and tunes give out is as nothing to mine that a time must come when there will be no more whimsical literature in the old book shops for these eyes to alight upon. Meanwhile, to renew my confidence, a friend sends me "The Compleat English Physician, or The Druggist's Shop Opened (the like not hitherto extant)" by William Salmon, who dates his preface "From my house at the Blew Ball by the Ditch-side near Holborn Bridge, London, May 5, 1693." In this exhaustive work the whole of creation, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is levied upon for cures for human ills, any of which are, in the dedication, offered by the author to the Most Serene and Illustrious Princess Mary II., if she feels herself to be in need of physic and will lay her commands upon him.

According to "The Dictionary of National Biography," which, however, does not mention this particular book, William Salmon was born in 1644, and was educated by a mountebank.After a certain amount of travel, he settled in London as an irregular practitioner, with pills for everything and horoscopes to boot. The suggestion, made in his lifetime, that he himself did not amass the lore that is found in his many and copious volumes, but was merely an amanuensis, has the "Dictionary's" support; but in the preface to "The Compleat English Physician," Salmon is very tart and coarse and emphatic about it with one of his detractors ("the nasty author of an impertinent and scurrilous pamphlet"), claiming to have had thirty years' experience of practical pharmacy. But he must have borrowed too, for thirty years, even with a ten-hours' day, could not have sufficed to gather a tenth of the mysteries contained in this astonishing work.

Although it is exclusively medical, Salmon incidentally hits upon as deadly a formula for anti-social satire as could be imagined, beyond even Swift. Not all the malignity of "Gulliver's Travels" is so powerful to remove the divine from man as this empiric's simple inclusion of him among the animals. Book V. is entitled "Of Man and Beasts," and it begins thus: "Chapter 1. Homo, Man & Woman.... They are the general inhabitants of the Universal Globe of the Earth and their food is made of Grain, Pulse, Fruits, Flowers, Roots, Herbs, andthe flesh of Beasts, Fowl, Fishes, Insects, etc." Salmon then goes on to enumerate the maladies that the various parts of man (and woman) are good for. His hair, converted to ashes and powdered, will cure the Green Sickness and other disorders too elementary to name. Made into an oil it will ease pains caused by a cold and cause new hair to grow on bald places. The rest of him and of her (I could not possibly go into details—this being not a medical journal and the date being 1920 instead of 1693) is also, either as powder, volatile oil, spirit, essence, salt, magistry, or balsam, beneficial in a vast number of troubles. It is an ironical and exasperating thought that we carry about in our bodies the cures for all the ills that those bodies suffer from.

In most of the sciences the professors of the day know more than their predecessors of yesterday. Knowledge accumulates. But, after dipping into Salmon's twelve-hundred pages, one sighs with relief that the healing art has, since 1693, become comparatively so simple; and when next sending for a doctor we shall thank God for his modern incompleatness. For in Salmon's day, in the pride of compleation, the medical man might have dosed us with our nearest dead neighbour.

Having finished the examination of man asa treasury of restoratives, Salmon passes on to Alces, the Elk; Antilopus, the Antelope; and Asinus, the Ass. All the beasts are therapeutically useful to man, but few more so than Asinus, the Ass. Howsoever valuable a living donkey may be, he cannot compare with the versatility of a donkey defunct when resolved into drugs. Equus, the Horse; Capra, the Goat; and Cercopithecus, the Monkey, are also each a well-stocked chemist's shop. In fact, nothing that moves, whether on four legs or two, fails to yield up a potent elixir; but to find man among them is the shock. Right and proper enough that the Lord of Creation should extract lotions and potions for his ailments from his soulless inferiors; but not from himself. That is a lowering thought.

The birds of the air too. Thus: the flesh of Alauda, the Lark, will ease the cholick: a thing to remember at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese. Alcedo, the Kingfisher, reduced to powder and mixed with powder made from a man's skull, and a little salt of amber, is excellent against the epilepsy. A number of swallows beaten to pieces in a mortar (terrible thought!) produce a residuum that will prevent the falling sickness. For restoring a lost memory the heart of Hirundo, the Swallow, to which the filings of a man's skull (Mr. Pelman's for choice?) anddried peony roots are added, is sovran. Even the nest of Hirundo, the Swallow, is of use; made into a cataplasm it not only eases a quinsie, but will cure the bite of a serpent. Nor are the fragile systems of Rubecula, the Robin Red-breast, and Regulus, the Wren (shade of Blake!), without medicinal utility. The flesh of Lucinia, the Nightingale, cures consumptives, while its gall mixed with honey makes an excellent collyrium for the eyes; but singing-birds surely should be exempted from active service under druggists. "Yet" (you say) "if the nightingale cures consumption, it might have cured Keats." True, but had Keats accepted that remedy he would not have been Keats.

It is when writing of Lucinia, the Nightingale, that Salmon interpolates a remark—wholly gratuitous—which gives him a place apart among authors. He perpetrates a curiosity of literature: the most unpoetical thing ever written. "A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman," is merely the least poetical line in poetry; but to say that Lucinia, the Nightingale, "grows fat in autumn," is positively to undo magic.

"Once upon a time," said the Sun, "there was a meadow surrounded by a flint walk, where I caused the buttercups to shine like burnished gold, and where the grass was high and green and as long as the pony and the donkey who inhabited the meadow would allow it to be. Here and there was a cowslip; while near the house were hen-coops with old hens in them whose anxious heads protruded through the bars querulously shouting instructions to their fluffy children.

"Such," said the Sun, "was the meadow, which was interesting to me chiefly because it was the playground of a small but very vigorous and restless boy named Nobby, whose merry inquiring face it gave me peculiar pleasure to tan and to freckle.

"A small boy can do," said the Sun, "a thousand things in a meadow like this, even without the company of a donkey and a pony, and Nobby did them all; while his collection of performing wood-lice was unique.

"But a morning came when he was absent. I was shining at my best, the buttercups were glowing, there was even an aeroplane manœuvring in the blue—which is still, I notice, a certain lure to both young and old—but no Nobby. The wood-lice crept about or rolled themselves into balls, all unnoticed and immune.

"'This is very odd,' I heard the pony say; 'he's never neglected us before.'

"'Passing strange,' said the donkey, who affected archaic speech. 'And on so blithe and jocund a morn too.'

"So saying they resumed their everlasting meal, but continually turned their eyes to the garden-gate through which Nobby would have to pass. I also kept my eyes wide for him; but all in vain; and what made it more perplexing was that Nobby's mother came in and fed the chickens, and Nobby's aunt came in with a rug and a book and settled down to be comfortable; and that meant that the boy was not absent on a visit to the town, because one of them would have gone too.

"'That settles it,' said the donkey, who had, for an ass, quite a lot of sense: 'Nobby is ill.'

"The donkey was right—or approximately so, as I afterwards found out. Nobby was ill. That is to say, he was in bed, because that morning he had sneezed—not through looking up at me,but for no reason at all—and his mother, who was a very careful mother, had at once fetched the clinical thermometer and taken his temperature, and behold it was a hundred. So Nobby was not allowed to get up, but now lay there watching my rays pouring into the room, and listening to the buzz of the aeroplane, and longing to be out in the meadow with the donkey and the pony and the wood-lice.

"That, however, would never do; for 'It all comes,' his mother had said, 'of sitting about in that long grass so much, and so early in the year too'—a line of argument hardly likely to appeal to a small and vigorous boy who does not reckon summer by dates and to whom prudence is as remote as one-pound Treasury notes.

"Anyway," said the Sun, "he was paying for it now, for was he not in bed and utterly sick of it, while the rest of the world was out and about and, warmed and cheered by me, completely jolly? Moreover, he didn't feel ill. No self-respecting boy would, of course, admit to feeling ill ever; but Nobby was genuinely unconscious of anything wrong at all. Not, however, until his temperature went down would he be allowed to get up; that was the verdict. But that was not all. Until it came down he would be allowed nothing but slops to eat.

"His mother took his temperature again beforelunch, and it was still a hundred; and then at about half-past four, when human beings, I understand, get a little extra feverish, and it was still a hundred; and then at last came the night, and Nobby went to sleep confident that to-morrow would re-establish his erratic blood.

"On the morrow he woke long before any one else," said the Sun, "and sat up and saw that I was shining again, without the vestige of a cloud to bother me, and he felt his little body to see how hot it was, and was quite sure that at last he was normal again, but he couldn't tell until his mother was up and about. The weary hours went by, and at last she came in just before breakfast with the thermometer in her hand.

"'I'm certain I'm all right to-day,' I heard Nobby say. 'I feel quite cool everywhere.'

"But, alas and alack," said the Sun, "he was a hundred still.

"'My poor mite!' his mother exclaimed, and Nobby burst into tears.

"'Mayn't I get up? Mayn't I get up?' he moaned; 'I feel so frightfully fit,' But his mother said no, not till the temperature had gone down. You see," added the Orb of Day, "when Nobbies are only-sons and those only-sons' fathers are fighting the enemy, mothers have to be more than commonly cautious andparticular. You will wonder perhaps why she didn't send for the doctor, but it was for two reasons, both womanly ones, and these were that (a) she didn't like thelocum, her own doctor being also at the War, and (b) she believed in bed and nursing as the best cure for everything.

"And so all through another long day—and when you are vigorous and robust, like Nobby, and accustomed to every kind of impulsive and adventurous activity, day can be, in bed, appallingly long—Nobby was kept a prisoner, always with his temperature at a hundred, and always with nothing to bite, and growing steadily more and more peevish and difficult, so much so that his mother became quite happy again, because it is very well known that when human invalids are testy and impatient with their nurses they are getting better.

"But when on the third morning, although Nobby's temper had become too terrible for words, his temperature was still a hundred, his mother began to be alarmed again. 'It's very strange,' she said to her sister, 'but he seems perfectly well and cool, and yet the thermometer makes him still a hundred. What do you think we ought to do?'

"Nobby's aunt, who was a wise woman, although unmarried, went up and examined her nephew for herself. 'He certainly looks allright to me,' she said, 'and he feels all right too. Do you think that the thermometer might he faulty? Let me try it'; and with these words Nobby's aunt shook the thermometer down and then put it under her tongue and gave it a good two minutes, and behold it said a hundred; and then Nobby's mother shook it down and tried it and gave it a good two minutes, and behold it said a hundred; and the cook was a hundred too, and the gardener was a hundred, and the girl who came in to help was a hundred, and probably the donkey would have been a hundred, and the pony a hundred, if they had been tested, because a hundred was the thermometer's humorous idea of normal; and so," added the Sun, "Nobby's mother and aunt rushed upstairs two or three at a time, having a great sense of justice, and pulled him out of bed and dressed him and hugged him and told him to be happy once more.

"And a couple of seconds after this," said the Sun, bringing the story to a close, "I saw him again."

Mr. Kipling, dividing, in that fine poem, men into the Sons of Martha and the Sons of Mary—the Sons of Martha being the servants and the Sons of Mary the served—characteristically lays his emphasis on those who make machinery to move. Thus:

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part,But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart;And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve or rest.It is their care, in all the ages, to take the buffet and cushion the shock.It is their care that the gear engages—it is their care that the switches lock.It is their care that the wheels run truly—it is their care to embark and entrain,Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

It is their care, in all the ages, to take the buffet and cushion the shock.It is their care that the gear engages—it is their care that the switches lock.It is their care that the wheels run truly—it is their care to embark and entrain,Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

Mr. Kipling, as I say, is thinking more of highly trained and efficient operatives than ofthe quieter ministrants; but, after all, some of Mary's Sons—possibly the majority of them—stay at home and refrain from running the Empire, and these too count upon their cousins for assistance.

A very large number of Martha's Sons, for example, become waiters; and waiters are a race to whom insufficient justice has been done by men of letters. There should be a Book of Waiters, as there was a Book of Doctors and a Book of Lawyers by the late Cordy Jeaffreson, and a Book of the Table by the late Dr. Doran. Old waiters for choice: men who have mellowed in their calling; men who have tasted wines for themselves and studied human nature when it eats and is vulnerable. I wish somebody would compile it. It should be a cosmopolitan work: England's old waiters must be there, and France's, upon whom most clubmen of any age ought to be able to enlarge fruitily. In fact, all well-stored Bohemian memories in London and Paris should yield much. And Ireland's old waiters most conspicuously must be there; but whoever is to write this book must hasten to collect the material, for in Ireland, I am told, the old waiter is vanishing. An elderly Irish gentleman with whom I was talking recently—or, rather, to whom I was listening as he searched his memory for drolleries of the past—saidthat the disappearance, under modern conditions, of the old humorous independent waiters of his earlier day is the one which he personally most regretted. No longer, said he, are to be found, except very occasionally, these worthy friends of the traveller—Martha's Sons at their best, or, at any rate, at their most needed. Slow they may have been, not always strictly sober, and often despotic; but they were to be counted upon as landmarks: they extended a welcome, they fed the hungry (in time), they slaked the thirsty (more quickly), and they made remarks amusing enough to fortify their good points and palliate their bad. "There was an old fellow named Terence at Limerick," said my friend, and there followed two or three characteristic anecdotes of old Terence at Limerick. "There was old Tim at Tralee," and he painted old Tim for me in a few swift strokes—red nose, creaking legs, and all. What though his nose was red and his legs creaked, Tralee is no longer worth visiting, because Tim is not there. That was the burden of the lament. These old fellows have passed, and the new waiters, most of whom are foreigners or girls, can never mature into anything comparable with them.

Two of my friend's stories I may tell. One is of old Dennis at Mallow, who on being asked if the light in the coffee-room could not be madebrighter, said, in that charming definitive Irish way, that it could not. "Is it always like this?" my friend then inquired. "It is not, sorr," said old Dennis; "it is often worse." Not a great anecdote, but you must brave the horrors of St. George's Channel to meet with these alluring unexpectednesses of speech. Imagine an English waiter thus surprising one! The other story is of old Florence, head waiter at a certain Irish yacht club. Some sojourners in the neighbourhood, having been elected honorary members for the period of their visit, asked a few American friends to dine there, and then, even while in the boat on their way to dinner, suddenly realised that honorary members are entitled to no such privileges. It was decided to put the case to old Florence. "Have you a rule against honorary members inviting guests?" "We have, sorr," said he. "Is it very strictly enforced? I mean, would there be any risk in breaking it?" "There would not, sorr. The only rule in this club that is never broken, sorr, is the one which forbids gratuities to be given to the waiters."

For those Sons of Martha who make their living—and not a bad one—by ministering to their hungry fellow-creatures there is no call to feel sorry. They are often not only richer but happier than their customers, and when the timecomes they retire to snug little houses (of which they not infrequently own a row) with a competence, and pass the evening of life with their pipe and glass, their friends and grandchildren, moving serenely, if perhaps with a shade too plantigrade a step (the waiters' heritage), to the grave. No call, as I say, to feel sorry for them; but what of those other Sons of Martha, the railway porters, who while helping us to travel and get away from home never travel or get away from home themselves, and for ever are carrying or wheeling heavy trunks or searching for visionary cabs?

The mere fact of never having a holiday is not in itself distressing. Holidays often are overrated disturbances of routine, costly and uncomfortable, and they usually need another holiday to correct their ravages. Men who take no holidays must not, therefore, necessarily become objects of our pity. But I confess to feeling sorry for those servants of the public who apparently not only never take a holiday themselves, but who spend all their lives in assisting others to get away.

It is probably no privation to a bathing-machine man never to enter the sea; uproariously happy in that element as his clients can be, their pleasure, in which he has no share, does not, I imagine, embitter his existence. Similarly,since a waiter either has eaten or is soon to eat, we need not waste sympathy on his unending task of setting seductive dishes before others. But it is conceivable that some of those weary and dejected men whom one sees at Victoria Station, for example, in the summer, eternally making an effort, however unsuccessful, to cope with the exodus of Londoners to the south coast, really would like also to repose on Brighton beach. But they may not. Their destiny is for ever to help others to that paradise, and remain at Victoria themselves. Just as Moses was denied the Children of Israel's Promised Land, so are the porters. The engine-driver can go, the stoker can go, the guard can go,—indeed, they must go,—but the porters get no nearer than the carriage doors and then wheel back again. And if the plight of the porters at Victoria is unenviable, think of that of the porters at the big termini on the other side of London and elsewhere when they read the labels on the luggage which they handle!—labels for the west, for the land of King Arthur; labels for the north, for delectable Highland retreats; labels for Northumberland and Yorkshire; labels for the east coast; labels for Kerry and Galway and Connemara.

It was my fortune not long since to meet again, in the flesh, the most famous of our prophets—Old Moore, whose cautious vaticination is on sale even in the streets. To my dismay he did not recognise me. Not that a want of recognition is so rare—very far from it—but the surprise is that a being gifted with such preternatural vision should thus fail, when I, who am only an ordinary person, knew him again instantly. Long habits of fixing his penetrating gaze on the murky future have no doubt rendered the backward look less simple to him. Anyway, there we stood, I challenging him to remember me and he failing to do so. This momentary superiority of my own poor wits over those of a man who (undismayed by the refusal of events always to fall into line) foretells so much, uplifted me; but the untrustworthiness of memory is so constant and lands one in such embarrassments that it is foolish for anyone to boast.

Among the marvels of the human machine, memory is, indeed, strangest. The great bewildering fact of memory at all—of the miracle of the brain—is, of course, as far beyond ourfinite apprehension as the starry heavens. Of this? I never dare to think. But the minor caprices of memory may, fittingly enough, engage our wonder. The lawlessness of our prehensile apparatus, for example—the absurdly unreasoning system of selection of such things as are to be permanent—how explain these? And why should memory be subject also to that downward tendency in life which forces us always to fight if we would save the best? It would have been just as easy, at the start, when the whole affair was in the making, to have given an upward impulse. That was not done, but the memory, at any rate, being all spirit, might have been exempted from the general law. But no; as we grow older, not only do we remember with less and less accuracy, but of what we retain much is inferior to that which once we had but now have lost.

I, for example, who once had long passages not only from the great poets, but also from the less great but often more intimate poets,—such as Matthew Arnold and William Cory, to mention two favourites,—at the tip of the tongue, now have to recite myself to sleep with a Bab Ballad. That piece of nonsense never fails me, but I cannot at this moment give the right sequence of any two of the quatrains of the "Rubáiyát" of Omar Khayyám, although once,and for years, I had the whole poem complete too. I would rather have been left the wistful Persian than Gilbert's "Etiquette," but the jade Memory had other views.

Any prose that I might once have learned naturally faded first, because there was no rhyme or metre to assist retention; but why is it that there is one sentence which, never wholly mine, flits so often before the inward eye? It is in that story of Mr. Kipling's of the mutinous elephant who refused to work because his master was too long absent. This master, one Dheesa (you will remember), having obtained leave for a jaunt, exceeded his term; and the sentence which recurs to me, hazily and hauntingly, often twice a day and usually once, with no apparent reason or provocation, is this: "Dheesa had vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own caste, and drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all knowledge of the lapse of time." Now, surely, out of all the thousands of books which I have read and more or less dimly remember, it is very strange that this should be almost the only sentence that is photographed on the mind.

Once I knew many psalms: I know them no longer, but I have never forgotten a ridiculous piece of dialogue in a book called "The World of Wit and Humour," which I was studying, onweekdays, at the same time, how many years ago:

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