A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS

The Vermilion BoxLandmarksListener's LureMr. InglesideOver Bemerton'sLondon LavenderCloud and SilverLoiterer's HarvestOne Day and AnotherFireside and SunshineCharacter and ComedyOld Lamps for NewThe Hambledon MenThe Open RoadThe Friendly TownHer Infinite VarietyGood CompanyThe Gentlest ArtThe Second PostA Little of EverythingHarvest HomeVariety LaneThe Best of LambThe Life of Charles LambA Swan and Her FriendsLondon RevisitedA Wanderer in VeniceA Wanderer in ParisA Wanderer in LondonA Wanderer in HollandA Wanderer in FlorenceThe British SchoolHighways and Byways in SussexAnne's Terrible Good NatureThe SlowcoachRemember Louvain!Swollen-Headed William

and

The Pocket Edition of the Works of CharlesLamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia;III. Children's Books; IV. Poems andPlays; V. And VI. Letters. 

A BOSWELL OFBAGHDAD

WITH DIVERSIONS

BY

E. V. LUCAS

THIRD EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C. LONDON

_This Book was First Published September 20th 1917_

_Second Edition December 1917_

_Third Edition 1918_

CONTENTS

 PAGE

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD 1

DIVERSIONS--

 NURSES 93

 NO. 344260 99

 THE TWO PERKINSES 106

 ARTS OF INVASION 118

 THE MARBLE ARCH AND PETER MAGNUS 128

 THE OLDEST JOKE 133

 THE PUTTENHAMS 140

 POETRY MADE EASY 148

 A PIONEER 153

 FULL CIRCLE 158

 A FRIEND OF MAN 164

 THE LISTENER 171

 THE DARK SECRET 176

 THE SCHOLAR AND THE PIRATE 180

 A SET OF THREE 191

 A LESSON 196

ON BELLONA'S HEM (SECOND SERIES)--

 A REVEL IN GAMBOGIA 201

 THE MISFIRE 207

 A LETTER 212

 A MANOR IN THE AIR 219

 RIVALRY 223

 A FIRST COMMUNION IN THE WAR ZONE 229

 THE ACE OF DIAMONDS 234

 THE REWARD OF OUR BROTHER THE POILU 239

 NOTE 245

=A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD=

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

I. --INTRODUCTORY

A curious and very entertaining work lies before me, or, to be moreaccurate, ramparts me, for it is in four ponderous volumes, capable, each, even in less powerful hands than those of the Great Lexicographer, of felling a bookseller. At these volumes I have been sipping, beelike, at odd times for some years, and I now propose to yield some of thehoney--the season having become timely, since the great majority of theheroes of its thousands of pages hail from Baghdad; and Baghdad, afterall its wonderful and intact Oriental past, is to-day under Britain'sthumb. 

The title of the book is _Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary_, translated from the Arabic by Bn Mac Guckin de Slane, and printed inParis for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842-71, some centuries after it was written, for its author was deadbefore Edward II ascended the English throne. Who would expect SirSidney Lee to have had so remote an exemplar?

Remote not only in time but in distance. For although we may go to theEast for religions and systems of philosophy that were old and provedworthy centuries before Hellenism or Christianity, yet we do not usuallyfind there models for our works of reference. Hardly does Rome give usthose. But there is an orderliness and thoroughness about IbnKhallikan's methods which the _Dictionary of National Biography_ doesnot exceed. The Persian may be more lenient to floridity ("No flowers, by request, " was, it will be remembered, the first English editor'smotto), but in his desire to leave out no one who ought to be in and todo justice to his inclusions he is beyond praise. 

The modernity of the ancients is continually surprising us. It is one ofthe phenomena to which we are never quite inured (and could we be so weshould perhaps merely substitute the antiquity of the moderns as a newsource of wonder), but towards such inuring Ibn Khallikan shouldcertainly help, since he was eminently a gossip, and in order to gethuman nature's fidelity to the type--no matter where found, whether æonsago or to-day, whether in savage lands or, as we say, civilized--broughthome to us, it is to the gossips that we must resort: to the Pepyses andBoswells rather than to the Goethes and Platos; to the little recordersrather than the great thinkers. The small traits tell. 

Ibn Khallikan's Dictionary is as interesting as it is, not because itsauthor had any remarkable instinct as a biographer, or any gift ofselection, but because if a man sets out to take account of everything, much human nature and a little excellence are bound to creep in. 

I do not pretend to have dug in these volumes with any greatseriousness. My object has been to extract what was odd and simple andmost characteristic, in short, what was most human, and there is enoughresiduum for a horde of other miners. But I warn them that the dross isconsiderable. Ibn Khallikan's leniency to trivialities is incorrigible, and his pages are filled with pointless anecdotes, dull sayings, andpoetry whose only recommendation is its richness in the labouredconceits that he loved. So much did he esteem them that were, say, allEnglish intellectual effort in every direction at his disposal todescant upon, his favourite genius would probably be John Lyly. 

But although most of the poetry admired and quoted by Ibn Khallikan ismarked by affectation, now and then--but very rarely--it is beautifullysimple. Thus, in one of the poems of Ibn Zuhr, a learned Moslim teacherand physician of Spain (1113-99), is expressed, with a tenderness andcharm that no modern or no Greek of the Anthology could exceed, theardent desire which he felt for the sight of his child, from whom hehappened to be separated: _I have a little one, a tender nestling, withwhom I have left my heart. I dwell far from him; how desolate I feel inthe absence of that little person and that little face. He longs for me, and I long for him; for me he weeps, and I weep for him. Ouraffectionate wishes are weary with passing from him to me, from me tohim. _

II. --IBN KHALLIKAN

Let me say something as to who Ibn Khallikan was. His father, MuhammadIbn Ibrahim, was professor in the college at Arbela founded by Kukuburi, or the Blue Wolf, the governor of that city and the region of which itwas the capital, the brother-in-law of Salah Ad-Din, the sultan, whom wein England know as Saladin, the enemy of the Cross, and the son of AliIbn Bektikin, known as "Little Ali, the Ornament of Religion. " Kukuburi, who, although standing for the Crescent and all that was most abhorrentto our Crusaders, was famous as a founder of asylums, schools, hospitalsfor the blind, homes for widows, orphanages, and so forth, made specialfavourites of the family of which Ibn Khallikan was a scion. Ibn himselfwas born on September 22, 1211, and before he was two had beguninstruction by his father and was the recipient of a certificate fromZainab, a very learned lady, stating that he was an industrious pupil. 

In 1229, after having already read and studied much, particularlytheology and law, Ibn Khallikan left Arbela with his brother andentered the college at Aleppo, then an educational centre, remaininguntil 1234. After this he moved from one place to another, alwaysseeking more knowledge, until 1247-8, when he is found at Cairooccupying a seat in the imperial tribunal and acting as deputy for thekadi Sinjar, chief judge and magistrate of all Egypt. Later he himselfbecame the kadi of Al-Mahalla, and by 1256, when he was forty-five, hehad married, become a father, and had completed the first copy of his_Biographical Dictionary_, which was, of course, as we must alwaysremember in connexion with the books mentioned in these Lives, amanuscript. 

In 1261 he was appointed chief kadi over all the provinces of Syria, with his tribunal at Damascus, in which post he remained for ten years. He was not, however, sole kadi for long, as three others were appointedto assist him: a development that was meat and drink to the localsatirists, one of whom wrote: _The men of Damascus are bewildered withthe multitude of legal decisions. Their kadis are all suns, and yet theyare in the dark. _ Another said: _The people of Damascus have witnesseda perfect miracle: the greater the number of suns the more the world isin the dark. _ Being found wanting, and replaced, Ibn Khallikan took aprofessorship in Cairo, learned by heart further enormous quantities ofpoetry, and engaged in literary discussions which, judging by a specimengiven in one of his Lives, were even more futile than discussionsusually are. 

The vicissitudes of fortune, always noticeably extreme in the East, brought him again to be kadi at Damascus in 1278, when his reappointmentwas signalized by public ceremonies, including the composition bynumberless poets of congratulatory and adulatory verses, which must havebeen very dear to his simple old heart, and not the less so because hemay have discovered from his astonishing repertory that not all werestrictly original: such discoveries and the tracing back of the loans totheir fount being the greatest of his pleasures. 

Thereafter, until the year 1281, the Kadi lived with much honour, famedas the most learned and widely-read personage in Damascus, filling hishouse with scholars and discursive amateurs of verse, and engaging inconversations that are described by a friend as "most instructive, being entirely devoted to learned investigations and the elucidation ofobscure points. "

But Ibn Khallikan, who was now nearing three-score years and ten, wasdestined still to misfortune, for suddenly, in 1281, he was deposed fromhis kadi-ship and, more than that, thrown into prison on the charge ofhaving made a remark detrimental to the sultan, Kalavun. A pardon soonafter arriving, he was liberated and again reinstated; but after tenmore months as a kadi he was, in 1282, dismissed finally, and this timehe refused ever more to leave his house, and died there in the sameyear. 

Not a word (you will say) so far as to Baghdad. But although IbnKhallikan spent most of his life in Egypt or Syria, the greater numberof his heroes were, as I have said, citizens all of the city of theromance which recently has fallen to Sir Stanley Maude's gallant forces. Yet of the romance which we shall always associate with Baghdad he knewnothing. To him it was delectable (and perhaps even romantic too--eachof us having his own conception of what romance is) because gravebearded men there taught religion, explained the _Koran_, disputed asto points of grammar, exchanged sarcasms and swapped verses. Not, however, as I hope to show, unamusingly. 

What indeed I particularly like about the book is the picture that itgives of sardonic pleasantry and intellectual and sophisticatedvirtuosity going quietly on side by side with all the splendours andbarbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws anew or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet--not even inBloomsbury, where the poets meet--have we in England anything quite likeit; whereas when Baghdad and Damascus were the theatres of thesepoetical and hair-splitting competitions our ancestors had but just gotthe woad off. 

III. --MEN OF LETTERS

Those of us who know Baghdad only through the _Arabian Nights_ and theingenious productions of Mr. Oscar Asche, were not prepared for such acomplete foreshadowing of the literary life and the literary temperamentas Ibn Khallikan gives us. 

Here, for example, is a poem by a book-lover--or manuscript-lover, tobe more exact--written by Ibn Faris Ar-Razi, the philologer, who diedbefore the Norman Conquest, which a later Occidental can cheerfullyaccept and could not much improve upon: _They asked me how I was. Ianswered: "Well, some things succeed and some fail; when my heart isfilled with cares I say: 'One day perhaps they may be dispelled. ' A catis my companion; books, the friends of my heart; and a lamp, my belovedconsort. "_ That is modern enough! Something of this kind, which is anearlier version of Omar Khayyám's famous recipe for earthly bliss, hasoften been attempted since by our own poets; but nothing better. Favourite books, a lighted lamp, a faithful cat, and the library wereparadise enow. It is odd, by the way, that Omar Khayyám himself, although his dates qualify him, is not found in this work. But to maketents, even with leanings towards astronomy, was no high road to IbnKhallikan's sympathies. Had Omar explained the _Koran_ or had views onthe suffixes of words, all would have been well. 

While on the subject of sufficient paradises let me quote some verses byIbn Sukkara Al-Hashimi, a famous Baghdad poet of the tenth century:_The winter set in, and I provided myself with seven things necessarywhen the rain prevents us from pursuing our usual occupations. Thesethings are: A shelter, a purse, a stove, a cup of wine preceded by a bitof meat, a tender maid, and a cloak. _

Ibn Khallikan does not let it stop there, but fishes up from his memorya derivative, by Ibn Al-Taawizi, running thus: _When seven things arecollected together in the drinking-room, it is not reasonable to stayaway. These are: Roast meat, a melon, honey, a young girl, wax-lights, asinger to delight us, and wine. _

So much for the modernity and sense of comfort of the Persian author, ashe flourished in Baghdad all those years ago. But there was then stillmore in publishing than yet meets the eye. The books of the juriconsult, Al-Mawardi, for example, reached posterity almost by chance. While helived he did not publish any of his works but put them all up togetherin safety. On the approach of death, however, he said to a person whopossessed his confidence: "The books in such a place were composed byme, but I abstained from publishing them, because I suspected, althoughmy intention in writing them was to work in God's service, that thatfeeling, instead of being pure, was sullied by baser motives. Therefore, when you perceive me on the point of death and falling into agony, takemy hand in yours, and if I press it, you will know thereby that none ofthese works has been accepted [by God] from me. In this case, you musttake them all and throw them by night into the Tigris. But if I open myhand and close it not, that is the sign of their having been accepted, and that my hope in the admission of my intention as sincere and pure, has been fulfilled. "

"When Al-Mawardi's death drew near, " said his friend, "I took him by thehand, and he opened it without closing it on mine, whence I knew thathis labours had been accepted, and I then published his works. "--Butwhat a responsibility for a friend!

Penmanship being, of course, the only medium between author and readersin those days, it follows that calligraphy was held in high esteem, andamong famous calligraphers was Kabus Ibn Wushmaghir, who, although "thegreatest of princes, the star of the age, and the source of justice andbeneficence, " thought it worth while (as all mighty rulers have not) towrite a most beautiful hand. When the Sahib Ibn Abbad saw pieces in hishandwriting, he used to say: "This is either the writing of Kabus or thewing of a peacock"; and he would then recite these verses ofAl-Mutanabbi's: _In every heart is a passion for his handwriting; itmight be said that the ink which he employed was a cause of love. Hispresence is a comfort for every eye, and his absence an affliction. _

The extraordinary literary activity of those times may be illustrated bythe following passage dropped casually into the biographical notice ofAli Talib: "The grandson of this thief was the famous Al-Asmai, thephilologer, who composed treatises on the following subjects: the humanframe; the different species of animals; on the _anwa_, or influence ofthe stars on the weather; on the letter _hamza_; on the long and theshort _elif_; on the difference between the names given to the membersof the human body and those given to the same members in animals; onepithets; on the doors of tents; on games of chance played with arrows;on the frame of the horse; on horses; on camels; on sheep; on tents; onwild beasts; on the first and fourth form of certain verbs; on proverbs;on words bearing each two opposite significations; a vocabulary; onweapons; on dialects; on the springs of water frequented by the nomadicArabs; a collection of anecdotes; on the principles of discourse; on theheart; on synonymous terms; on the Arabian peninsula; on the formationof derivative words; on the ideas which usually occur in poetry; onnouns of action; on _rajaz_ verses; on the palm-tree; on plants; onhomonymous terms; on the obscure expressions met with in the Traditions;on the witticisms of the desert Arabs. " Ibn closes the list with theword "etc. " The late John Timbs could hardly beat this record ofindustry and versatility. 

There is hope for authors in the following story of Ibn Al-Khashshab, who knew the _Koran_ by heart and was a scholar of considerableattainments. "When he died, " says the Katib Imad Ad-Din, "I was inSyria, and I saw him one night in a dream, and said to him: 'How has Godtreated thee?'

"'Well, ' he replied. 

"'Does God show mercy to literary men?'

"'Yes. '

"'And if they have been remiss?'

"'A severe reprimand will be given, but, ' Al-Khashshab was moved to add, and let us never forget it, 'then will come eternal happiness. '"

There are other scraps of consolation, scattered about the volumes, which apply not alone to men of letters. The Prophet, for example, oncesaid: "Every lie shall be written down as a lie by the recording angels, with the exception of three: a lie told in order to reconcile two men; alying promise made by a man to his wife; and a lie in which a man, whenengaged in war, makes a promise or a threat. "

But the most solacing sentiment in the whole four volumes is by the poetAbu Nuwas Ibn Hani, who carried Hedonism very far: _Multiply thy sins tothe utmost, for thou art to meet an indulgent Lord. When thou comestbefore Him, thou shalt behold mercy and meet the great, the powerfulKing. Then thou shalt gnaw thy hands with regret, for the pleasureswhich thou avoidedst through fear of hell. _--It is, says Ibn Khallikan, a "very fine and original thought. " It could certainly be a verystimulating one. 

IV. --THE FIRST GRAMMARIAN

Grammarians and Traditionists (both given also to poesy) being IbnKhallikan's real heroes, let me say something of each. A Traditionistwas a learned man intimate with the _Koran_, whose duty it was toseparate the spurious traditions which so naturally would have collectedaround such a figure as Muhammad from the true. As to the importance ofthe _Koran_ in Moslim life and its place as the foundation of all Moslimlearning, let the translator of Ibn Khallikan be heard. "The necessity, "he says, "of distinguishing the genuine Traditions from the false gaverise to new branches of literature. A just appreciation of the credit towhich each Traditionist was entitled could only be formed from aknowledge of his moral character, and this could be best estimated froman examination of his life. Hence the numerous biographical worksarranged in chronological order and containing short accounts of theprincipal Traditionists and doctors of the law, with the indication oftheir tutors and their pupils, the place of their birth and residence, the race from which they sprung, and the year of their death. This againled Moslim critics to the study of genealogy and geography. The use ofwriting existed in Arabia before the promulgation of Islamism, butgrammar was not known as an art till the difficulty of reciting the_Koran_ correctly induced the khalif Ali to make it an object of hisattention. He imposed on Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali the task of drawing upsuch instructions as would enable the Moslims to read their sacred bookand speak their language without making gross faults. "

Another version of the beginnings of grammar eliminates the khalif Alialtogether. The story goes that as Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali (603-88)entered his house on a certain day, one of his daughters said to him:"Papa! what is most beautiful in the sky?"

To this he answered: "Its stars. "

But she replied: "Papa, I do not mean what is the most beautiful objectin it; I was only expressing my admiration at its beauty. "

"In that case you must say, " he observed, "'How beautiful is the sky!'"

Upon thinking this over, says Ibn Khallikan, Abu 'l-Aswad invented theart of grammar. 

Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali thus is the father of this book, for had therebeen no grammarians I am sure that Ibn Khallikan would never havewritten it. Poetry tickled him; but grammar was his chief delight, as itwas the chief delight of all his friends and, one gathers, of allBaghdad. Here is an example: "Al-Mamun, having asked Al-Yazidi aboutsomething, received from him this answer: 'No; and may God accept mylife as a ransom for yours, Commander of the Faithful!'

"'Well said!' exclaimed the khalif. 'Never was the word _and_ betterplaced than in the praise which you have just uttered. '" He then madehim a present. 

We get an insight both into the passion for the new science of grammarand what might be called the physical humour of the East in thisanecdote. Abu Safwan Khalid Ibn Safwan, a member of the tribe of Tamim, was celebrated as an eloquent speaker. He used to visit Bilal Ibn AbiBurda and converse with him, but his language was frequentlyungrammatical. This grew at length so irksome that Bilal said to him: "OKhalid! you make me narrations fit for khalifs to hear, but you commitas many faults against grammar as the women who carry water in thestreets. "

Stung with this reproach, Khalid went to learn grammar at the mosque, and some time after lost his sight. From that period, whenever Bilalrode by in state, he used to ask who it was, and on being answered thatit was the Emir, he would say: "There goes a summer-cloud, soon to bedispelled. "

When this was told to Bilal, he exclaimed: "By Allah! it shall not bedispelled till he get a full shower from it;" and he then ordered him awhipping of two hundred strokes. 

When books were so few and most learning came through the ear, memoryhad to be cultivated. The Traditionist, Ibn Rahwaih, was a Macaulay inhis way. "I know, " he used to say, "by heart seventy thousandtraditions; I have read one hundred thousand, and can recollect in whatwork each is to be found. I never heard anything once without learningit by heart, nor learned anything by heart which I afterwards forgot. "

The sittings of the teacher, Ibn Al-Aarabi (767-846), who knew by heartmore poetry than any man ever seen, were crowded by people anxious forinstruction. Abu 'l-Abbas Thalah said: "I attended the sittings held byIbn Al-Aarabi, and saw there upwards of one hundred persons, some askinghim questions and others reading to him; he answered every questionwithout consulting a book. I followed his lessons upwards of ten years, and I never saw him with a book in his hand; and yet he dictated to hispupils camel-loads of philological information. "

The grammarian Moad Ibn Muslim Al-Harra left some good poetry, which hegave as having been uttered by genii, demons and female demons. Thecaliph Ar-Raschid once said to him: "If thou sawest what thou hastdescribed, thou hast seen wonders; if not, thou hast composed a nicepiece of literature. "

An-Nahhas the grammarian who, on being given a turban-cloth, would cutit into three from avarice, met his death, in 950, in an unfortunatemanner--being, although living in so remote a period, mistaken for a"profiteer. " I quote Ibn Khallikan's words: "He had seated himself onthe staircase of the Nilometer, by the side of the river, which was thenon the increase, and began to scan some verses according to the rules ofprosody, when a common fellow who heard him said: 'This man ispronouncing a charm to prevent the overflow of the Nile, so as to raisethe price of provisions. ' He then thrust him with his foot into theriver and nothing more was heard of him. "

Not all these learned men were philosophical, even though they werephilosophers. Abu Nizar Ibn Safi Malik An-Nuhat assumed the title"Prince of Grammarians, " but if any other name was given to him by thoseaddressing him he would fly into a passion. 

The old fellows could be superstitious too. It is amusing to read thatAbu Obaida, when repeating passages of the _Koran_ or relatingTraditions, made mistakes designedly: "For, " said he, "grammar bringsill luck. "

V. --THE FIRST PROSODIST

After grammar, prosody. That a falling apple should lead Sir IsaacNewton's thoughts to the problem of gravity is not so remarkable, butthat the laws of prosody should result from an equally capriciousoccurrence strikes one as odd. I mention the discoverer's name partlythat schoolboys may remember him, or not, in their prayers. It wasAl-Khalil Ibn Ahmad who, at Mecca, had besought Allah to bestow upon hima science hitherto unknown. Allah being in a complaisant mood, itfollowed that not long after, walking in the bazaar, Al-Khalil inventedprosody as he passed a coppersmith's and heard him hammering a basin. 

Once started on his career as an inventor, he continued; but a laterdiscovery cost him dear, for having resolved on devising "a method ofcalculation so simple that any servant girl who knew it could go to ashopkeeper's without incurring the least possible risk of being deceivedby him in the sum she would have to pay, he entered the mosque with histhoughts occupied on the subject, and he there struck against a pillar, which his preoccupation hindered him from perceiving. The violence ofthe shock threw him on his back, and death was the result. "

Al-Khalil used to remark that a man's reason and intelligence reachedperfection when he attained the age of forty, the age of the Prophetwhen God sent him forth on his mission; but that they undergo alterationand diminution when the man reaches sixty, the age in which God took theProphet's soul to himself. He said, again, that the intelligence isclearest at the dawn of day. 

VI. --A GROUP OF POETS

No matter what the profession or calling of these Persians--whether theywere lawyers or lawgivers, grammarians or warriors--they all, or almostall, adored verbal felicity and tried their hands at verse. Poetry maybe called the gold dust on their lives. 

Ibn Nubata the poet knew how to say thank you. Saif Ad-Dawlat Ibn Hamdanhaving given him a horse, this is how he acknowledged it: _O prince!thou whose generous qualities are the offspring of thy naturaldisposition, and whose pleasing aspect is the emblem of thy mind, I havereceived the present which thou sentest me, a noble steed whose portlyneck seems to unite the heavens to the earth on which he treads. Hastthou then conferred a government upon me, since thou sendest me a spearto which a flowing mane serves as a banner? We take possession of whatthou hast conferred and find it to be a horse whose forehead and legsare marked with white, and whose body is so black that a single hairextracted from that colour would suffice to form night's darkest shades. It would seem that the morning had struck him on the forehead and thusmade it white, for which reason he took his revenge by wading into theentrails of the morning, and thus whitening his legs. He paces slowly, yet one of his names is Lightning; he wears a veil, having his facecovered with white, as if to conceal it, and yet beauty itself would behis only rival. Had the sun and the moon a portion only of his ardour, it would be impossible to withstand their heat. The eye cannot followhis movements, unless you rein him in and restrain his impetuosity. Theglances of the eye cannot seize all his perfections, unless the eye beled away captive by his beauty and be thus enabled to follow him. _--Ilike the extravagance of that. So should the friend of man be extolled. 

Emirs did not disdain to be poets. Majd Ad-Din Al-Mubarak Ibn Munkid, although at once "The Sword of the Empire" and "The Glory of Religion, "wrote poetry, and not always on the most exalted themes. Among hispoems, for example, is one on fleas, in which those insects, of whichEmirs should know nothing, are thus described: _A race whom man ispermitted to slay, and who profane the blood of the pilgrim, even in thesanctuary. When my hand sheds their blood, it is not their own, butmine, which is shed. _ "It is thus, " says Ibn Khallikan gravely, "thatthese two verses were recited and given as his, by Izz Ad-Din Abu'l-Kasim Abd Allah Ibn Abi Ali Al-Husain Ibn Abi Muhammad Abd Allah IbnAl-Husain Ibn Rawaha Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Rawaha Ibn Obaid IbnMuhammad Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Rawaha Al-Ansari, a native of Hamat. "

Ibn Khallikan's greed for poetry led him, as I have said, not only toquote most things that he could remember of each poet, but to cite alsothe poems of which those reminded him. Sometimes he quoted before hewas sure of the author; but it made no difference. Thus, of Al-Farra thegrammarian he says: "No verses have been handed down as his exceptingthe following, which were given by Abu-Hanifa Ad-Dinauri on theauthority of Abu Bakr At-Tuwal: _Lord of a single acre of ground, youhave nine chamberlains! You sit in an old ruin and have door-keepers whoexclude visitors! Never did I hear of a door-keeper in a ruineddwelling! Never shall the eyes of men see me at a door of yours; a manlike me is not made to support repulses from door-keepers. _" Having gothis quotation safely into print, Ibn Khallikan adds: "I since discoveredthat these verses are attributed to Ibn Musa 'l-Makfuf. God knows best!"It is a charming way of writing biography. The grass does not grow uponthe weir more easily. With such a rectifying or excusatory phrase as"God knows best" one can hazard all. And how difficult it is to be thefirst to say anything!

Here is a poem by an Emir's vizier, Al-Wazi Al-Maghribi: _I shall relateto you my adventure, and adventures are of various kinds. I one nightchanged my bed and was abandoned by repose; tell me then how I shall beon the first night which I pass in the grave?_

Another vizier, Ibn Al-Amid, the katib, who lived in the eleventhcentury, wrote as follows: _Choose your friends among strangers, andtake not your near relations into favour. Relations are like scorpionsor even more noxious. _ Asked which was the worse of his two recurringmaladies, gout or colic, he replied: "When the gout attacks me I feel asif I were between the jaws of a lion devouring me, mouthful by mouthful;when the colic visits me, I would willingly exchange it for the gout. "

Poetry in those days ran in families. The family which had the greatestskill in the art was that of Hassan Ibn Abi Hafsa, for it produced sixpersons, in succession, all of them poets. These were: Said, his fatherAbd Ar-Rahman, his father Hassan, his father Thabit, his fatherAl-Mundir, and his father Hizam. Abd Ar-Rahman began very young. It isrelated that having been stung by a wasp, he went crying to his father, who asked what was the matter. He replied: "I have been stung by aflying thing, dressed, as it were, in a double cloak of striped cloth. "

"By Allah!" exclaimed the delighted father, recognizing a chip of theold block, "thou hast there pronounced a verse. "

The family of Abi Hafsa came next to that of Hassan in poetical gifts. The reason was, according to one statement, that they could "all touchthe point of their nose with their tongue, and this denotes a talent forspeaking with elegance and precision. " "God knows, " Ibn Khallikan adds, "how far that may be true!"

It was Marwan Ibn Abi Hafsa, of this family, who made such a mistake (ina poet depending on the beneficence of the exalted) as to commit himselfto the sweeping statement, in his elegy on the death of Maan, the Emir, that patronage had died with him. "It is said, " Ibn Khallikan relates, "that Marwan, after composing this elegy, could never gain anything byhis verses, for, as often as he celebrated the praises of a khalif or ofany other person less elevated in rank, he to whom the poem wasaddressed would say to him: 'Did you not say, in your famous elegy:_Whither should we go, since Maan is dead? Presents have ceased and arenot to be replaced?_' So the person he meant to praise would not givehim anything nor even listen to his poem. "

But once--having the persistency of the needy--Abi Hafsa scored. Thestory goes that, entering into the presence of the khalif Al-Mahdi witha number of other poets, he recited to him a panegyric. 

"Who art thou?" said the khalif. 

"Thy humble poet, Marwan, the son of Abi Hafsa. "

"Art thou, " said the khalif with great presence of mind, remembering thepoet's useful indiscretion, "not he who said: _Whither should we go, since Maan is dead?_ and yet thou hast come to ask gifts from us!_Presents have ceased_; we have nothing for thee. Trail him out by theleg!"

They trailed him out by the leg, but, twelve months later, Marwan oncemore contrived to gain admittance with the other poets, who, at thattime, were allowed to enter into the khalif's presence once a year. Hethen stood before him and recited the kasada which begins thus: _Afemale visitor came to thee by night; salute her fleeting image. _

Al-Mahdi at first listened in silence, but as the poet proceeded, hebecame gradually more and more agitated, till at length "he rolled onthe carpet with delight. "

He then asked how many verses were in the poem and, on being answered, "One hundred, " he ordered the author a--present of one hundred thousandpieces of silver. 

The poet Ibn Ar-Rumi met his necessary end with composure. Al-Kasim IbnObaid Allah Ibn Sulaiman Ibn Wahb, the vizier of Al-Motadid, dreading toincur the satirical attacks of this writer and the outbursts of hismalignant tongue, suborned a person called Ibn Firas, who gave him apoisoned biscuit whilst he was sitting in company with the vizier. 

When Ibn Ar-Rumi had eaten it, he perceived that he was poisoned, and herose to withdraw; on which the vizier said to him: "Where are yougoing?"

"To the place, " replied Ibn Ar-Rumi, "where you sent me. "

"Well, " observed the vizier, "you will present my respects to myfather. "

"I am not taking the road to hell, " retorted the poet. 

Another poet, Ibn Sara As-Shantarini, falling upon evil days, became abookbinder. As such he wrote the following poem: _The trade of abookbinder is the worst of all; its leaves and its fruits are nought butdisappointment. I may compare him that follows it to a needle, whichclothes others but is naked itself!_

VII. --POETRY'S REWARDS

The Patron was a very real factor in the poetical life of Baghdad. 

Here is a story told by the poet Abu Bakr Ibn Al-Allaf. "I had passed anight at the palace of Al-Motadid with a number of his other companions, when a eunuch came to us and said: 'The Commander of the Faithful sendsto tell you that, after you withdrew, he did not feel inclined to sleep, and composed this verse: _When the vision of my mistress, fleetingthrough the shades of night, awoke me, behold! my chamber was deserted, and far off was the place of our meeting_. He says also, ' continued theeunuch, 'that he cannot complete the piece, and will give a rich presentto anyone who adds to it a second couplet to his satisfaction. '

"Those who were present failed in accomplishing the task, although theywere all poets of talent, on which I, " says Abu Bakr, "hastened topronounce the following verse: _On this I said to my eyes: 'Sleep again;perhaps the vision, in its night visits, may return to me!'_"

The eunuch then retired, bearing Abu Bakr's not very remarkable effortwith him, and having come back, said: "The Commander of the Faithfuldeclares that your verse is perfect, and he has ordered you a present. "

Sometimes the passion for verse enjoyed and encouraged by these courtlygentleman seems to reach absurd lengths. Thus Abu Tammam At-Tai, thepoet, once recited to the Emir Abu Dolad Al-Ijli the following lines:_At the sight of dwellings abandoned like these, and places of joyousmeetings now deserted, our tears, long treasured up, were shed intorrents!_

Abu Dolad so admired the piece that he gave the poet fifty thousanddirhems, saying: "By Allah! it is less than your poem is worth; andthat idea is only surpassed in beauty by your elegy on the death ofMuhammad Ibn Hamid At-Tusi. "

"Which, " asked Abu Tammam, "does the Emir mean?"

"Why, " said Abu Dolad, "your poem commencing thus: _Now let misfortunedo its worst, and time inflict its evils! There is no excuse for eyeswhich have not shed their tears. _ I wish, by Allah! that this elegy hadbeen composed by you on me. "

"Nay!" said the poet, "may I and my family die to save the Emir, and mayI leave the world before you!"

To this Abu Dolad replied: "He whose death is deplored in verses likethose is immortal. "

Surely the palmy days of poetry have passed away. How one would like tothink of Mr. Kipling, say, being summoned to Buckingham Palace to speaka piece and retiring with a cheque for £1025, which is what fiftythousand dirhems come to. 

Gratitude, even when it is excessive, is always a good theme. In thefollowing case the proportions were respected with more fitness. Al-Wazir Al-Muhallabi was both vizier and poet. He was also a very poorvegetarian, and once, on a journey, being unable to obtain flesh-food, he recited extempore these verses: _Where is death sold, that I may buyit? for this life is devoid of good. Oh! let death, whose taste to me issweet, come and free me from a detested life! When I see a tomb fromafar, I wish to be its inhabitant. May the Being who grantethtranquillity have compassion on the soul of the generous man who willbestow death, as a charity, upon one of his brethren!_ These versesbeing heard by a person who was travelling in the same caravan with him, and whose name was Abd Allah As-Sufi (or, by another account, Abu'l-Hasan Al-Askalani), he bought for Al-Muhallabi a dirhem's worth ofmeat, cooked it, and gave it to him to eat. 

"They then, " says Ibn, "separated, and Al-Muhallabi having experienced achange of fortune, became vizier to Moizz Ad-Dawlat at Baghdad, whilethe person who had travelled with him and purchased the meat for him wasreduced to poverty. Having then learned that Al-Muhallabi was a vizier, he set out to find him and wrote to him these lines: _Repeat to thevizier, for whose life I would sacrifice my own--repeat to him the wordsof one who reminds him of what he has forgotten. Do you remember when, in a life of misery, you said: 'Where is death sold, that I may buyit?'_ The vizier on reading the note recollected the circumstance, and, moved with the joy of doing a generous action, he ordered seven hundreddirhems to be given to the writer, and inscribed these words on thepaper: _The similitude of those who lay out their substance in theservice of God is as a grain of corn which has produced seven ears andin every ear a hundred grains; for God giveth many-fold to whom Hepleaseth. _ He then prayed God's blessing on him, and clothed him in arobe of honour, and appointed him to a place under government, sothat"--the corollary seems hardly worth adding--"he might live in easycircumstances. "

Poetry was, you see, worth practising in Baghdad in those days; nor hadthe poets any shame in accepting presents. What princes liked to give itwas not for poets to analyse or refuse. Al-Moizz Ibn Badis, sovereign ofIfrikya and the son of Badis, was a patron indeed. "Poets, " says IbnKhallikan, "were loud in his praise, literary men courted his patronage, and all who hoped for gain made his court their halting-place. "

To the modern mind he was too easily pleased, if the following story istypical. He was sitting, one day, in his saloon with a number ofliterary men about him, when, noticing a lemon shaped like a hand andfingers, he asked them to extemporize some verses on that subject. AbdAbu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn Rashik Al-Kairawani at once recited the followinglines: _A lemon, with its extremities spread out, appears before alleyes without being injured. It seems to hold out a hand towards theCreator, invoking long life to the son of Badis. _

Al-Moizz declared the verses excellent and showed more favour to theauthor than to any other literary man in the assembly. 

Ready wit not less than poetical ingenuity could always win the respectof these gentlemen, whose cynical cold-bloodedness and implacabilitywere ever ready to be diverted, provided that the diversion wasintellectual. For instance, it is related that Al-Hajjaj said to thebrother of Katari: "I shall surely put thee to death. "

"Why so?" replied the other. 

"On account of thy brother's revolt, " answered Al-Hajjaj. 

"But I have a letter from the Commander of the Faithful, ordering theenot to punish me for the fault of my brother. "

"Produce it. "

"I have something stronger than that. "

"What is it?"

"The book of Almighty God, wherein He says: 'And no burdened soul shallbear the burden of another. '"

Al-Hajjaj was struck with his answer, and gave him his liberty. 

Among the lavish patrons of poets Saif Ad-Dawlat stands high. It isrelated that he was one day giving audience in the city of Aleppo, andpoets were reciting verses in his praise, when an Arab of the desert, insqualid attire, stepped forward and repeated these lines: _My means arespent, but I have reached my journey's end. This is the glory of allother cities, and thou, Emir! art the ornament whereby the Arabs surpassthe rest of men. Fortune, thy slave, has wronged us; and to thee we haverecourse against thy slave's injustice. _

"By Allah!" exclaimed the prince, "thou hast done it admirably. " He thenordered him a present of two hundred gold pieces. 

Abu 'l-Kasim Othman Ibn Muhammad, a native of Irak and kadi of AinZerba, relates as follows: "I was at an audience given by Saif Ad-Dawlatat Aleppo, when the kadi Abu Nasr Muhammad Ibn Muhammad An-Naisapuriwent up to him, and having drawn an empty purse and a roll of paper outof his sleeve, he asked and obtained permission to recite a poem whichwas written on the paper. He then commenced his kasada, the first lineof which was: _Thy wonted generosity is still the same; thy power isuncontrolled, and thy servant stands in need of one thousand pieces ofsilver. _

"When the poet had finished, Saif Ad-Dawlat burst into a fit of laughterand ordered him a thousand pieces of gold, which were immediately putinto the purse he had brought with him. "

Here is a delightful account of the relations between a crafty poet anda patron who was not wholly a fool. Abu Dulaf was a spirited, noble, andgenerous chief, highly extolled for his liberality, courage, andenterprise, noted for his victories and his beneficence. Mendistinguished in literature and the sciences derived instruction fromhis discourse, and his talent was conspicuous even in the art of vocalmusic. His praises were celebrated in kasadas of the greatest beauty. Bakr Ibn An-Nattah said of him: _O thou who pursuest the study ofalchemy, the great alchemy consists in praising the son of Isa. Wasthere but one dirhem in the world, thou wouldst obtain it by thismeans. _

It is stated that, for these two verses, Abu Dulaf gave Ibn An-Nattahten thousand dirhems. The poet then ceased visiting him for some timeand employed the money in the purchase of a village or estate on theriver Obolla. He afterwards went to see him, and addressed him in thesewords: _Thanks to thee, I have purchased an estate on the Obolla, crowned by a pavilion erected in marble. It has a sister beside it whichis now on sale, and you have always money to bestow. _

"How much, " said Abu Dulaf, "is the price of that sister?"

The poet answered: "Ten thousand dirhems. "

Abu Dulaf gave him the money, and said: "Recollect that the Obolla is alarge river, with many estates situated on it, and that each of thesesisters has another at her side; so, if thou openest such a door asthat, it will lead to a breach between us. Be content with what thouhast now got, and let this be a point agreed on. "

The poet then offered up prayers for his welfare and withdrew. 

VIII. --A BRAVE POET

The end of the munificent and splendid Ibn Bakiya was tragic, and itleads to so fine and characteristic a story that I must tell it here:partly in Ibn Khallikan's words and partly in my own. During the warwhich was carried on between the two cousins Izz Ad-Dawlat and AdudAd-Dawlat, the former seized on Ibn Bakiya and, having deprived him ofsight, delivered him over to Adud Ad-Dawlat. That prince caused him tobe paraded about with a hood over his head, and then ordered him to becast to the elephants. Those animals killed him, and his body wasexposed on a cross at the gate called Bab At-Tak, near his own house. 

On his crucifixion, an adl of Baghdad, called Abu 'l-Hasan Muhammad IbnOmar Ibn Yakub Al-Anbari, deplored his fate in a beautiful poem, ofwhich this is one line: _I never saw a tree, before this, enabled tosustain all that was generous. _

Abu 'l-Hasan, on composing his elegy, copied it out and threw it intoone of the streets of Baghdad. 

It fell into the hands of the literati, who passed it one to another, till Adud Ad-Dawlat was at length informed of its existence. He causedit to be recited in his presence, and, struck with admiration at itsbeauty, he exclaimed: "O that I were the person crucified, not he! Letthe poet be brought to me!"

During a whole year strict search was made for the author, and the SahibIbn Abbad who was then at Rai, being informed of the circumstance, wroteout a letter of protection in favour of the poet. When Abu 'l-Hasanheard of this, he went to the court of the Sahib and was asked by him ifit was he who had composed the verses. He replied in the affirmative, onwhich the Sahib expressed the desire to hear them from his own mouth. When Abu 'l-Hasan came to the verse, _I never saw a tree, before this, enabled to sustain all that was generous_, the Sahib rose up andembraced him, kissing him on the lips; he then sent him to AdudAd-Dawlat. 

When he appeared before Adud Ad-Dawlat, that prince said to him: "Whatmotive could have induced thee to compose an elegy on the death of myenemy?"

Abu 'l-Hasan replied: "Former obligations and favours granted longsince; my heart therefore overflowed with sorrow, and I lamented hisfate. "

There were wax-lights burning, at the time, before the prince, and thisled him to say to the poet: "Canst thou recollect any verses onwax-lights?" and to this the other replied by the following lines: _Thewax-lights, showing their ends tipped with fire, seemed like the fingersof thy trembling foes, humbly stretched forth to implore thy mercy. _

On hearing these verses, Adud Ad-Dawlat clothed him in a pelisse ofhonour and bestowed on him a horse and a bag of money. 

IX. --A WESTERN INTERLUDE

That beautiful phrase of the poet on his crucified hero--_I never saw atree, before this, enabled to sustain all that was generous_--has anoddly close parallel, which I am tempted to record here: a phrase, notless beautiful, used by a modern Frenchman, also of a dead man and atree. It occurs in a letter written by François Bonvin on the death ofhis brother, Léon, the painter of flowers. Léon Bonvin's work is littleknown and there is little of it, but those who possess examples treasurethem like black pearls. François Bonvin, who is represented in theNational Gallery, in the modern French and Dutch room, by a scene ofcattle painted with great decision and confidence and breadth, and whodied in 1888, was the son of a policeman at Vaugiraud, on the outskirtsof Paris: an old soldier who divided his time between protecting theproperty of the market gardeners and constructing rockeries for poorpeople's windows. Another, and the youngest son, was Léon, who after ashy and lonely boyhood and youth, under the tyranny of his father, whichwas mitigated by rambles in the neighbouring forest of Meudon, gatheringflowers and painting them under his brother's encouragement with afelicity and fidelity that have not been surpassed, fell, when stillquite young, into the hands of a shrewish vulgar wife, and with heropened a tavern. No couple could be more ill-assorted than this gentlecreature, full of poetry and feeling, whose one ambition was to setexquisitely on paper the blossoms which gave him pleasure, and thenoisy, bustling, angry woman whom he had married. 

The union and the commercial venture were alike disastrous; unhappinesswas accompanied by poverty, and after a short period of depression theunfortunate artist, early one morning, in his thirty-third year, wandered into the forest of Meudon, where the world had once spread sohappily before his eyes, and hanged himself. 

All this happened in the middle years of the last century, when the samerevival of nature-worship was inspiring painters in France as had, fiftyyears earlier, flushed Wordsworth's poetry, and such famous and morefortunate contemporaries of Léon Bonvin as Corot and Rousseau and Milletand Daubigny and Jacque and Dupré were painting in the forest ofFontainebleau. Theirs to succeed; poor Léon found life too hard, and wasdead when still far from his prime. 

And what of the notable phrase? It is one that I know I shall neverforget, one that will remain indissolubly linked to the name of Bonvin, whether it is Léon who inspired it or François who penned it and who hadbeen so useful in providing his brother with the materials for his oneabsorbing pleasure and had always exhorted him to "do everything fromnature. " Writing to some one of influence in Paris, François told thestory of his brother's death. In a postscript he added the informationthat the weight of Léon's body had broken a branch of the tree. Thencame the words: "This is the only damage he ever did. "

Could there be a more beautiful epitaph or a more poignant commentary ona world askew?

X. --PERSIAN HUMOUR

Persian humour is a stealthier thing than English humour. We like tolaugh; the sudden surprise pleases us. But these old ruminativeobservers of life, even if they rapped out a sarcasm now and then, werenormally happiest when their fancy was playing quietly around an idea:fetching similes for it from every quarter and accumulatingextravagances. Thus: "It is related by Abu 'l-Khattab Ibn Aun Al-Hariri, the poet and grammarian, that he went one day to visit An-Nami, andfound him seated. His hair was white like the Thaghama when in flower, but one single black hair still remained. 

"'Sir!' said Ibn Aun, 'there is a black hair in your head. '

"'Yes, ' replied An-Nami, 'it is the sole remnant of my youth, and I ampleased with it; I have even written verses on it. '

"Then, at the request of Ibn Aun, he recited these lines: _In that heada single hair still appeared, preserving its blackness; 'twas a sightwhich rejoiced the eyes of my friends. I said to my white hairs, whichhad put it in fear: 'I implore you! respect it as a stranger. A darkAfrican spouse will not long remain in the house where the second wifeis white of skin. '_"

One of the worthiest representatives of the humorists of the book is AbuDulama, a black Abyssinian, whose wits never failed him. Here is thepoem which he recited when ordered by Ruh, the governor of Basra, toattack one of the enemy single-handed: _I fly to Ruh for refuge; lethim not send me to a combat in which I shall bring disgrace upon thetribe of Asad. Your father Al-Muhallab left you as a legacy the love ofdeath; but such a legacy as that I have inherited from none. And this Iknow well, that the act of drawing near to enemies produces a separationbetween souls and bodies. _

Ruh positively declared, however, that Abu Dulama should go forth andfight, enforcing the command with the pertinent question, "Why do youreceive pay from the sultan?"

"To fight for him, " replied Abu. 

"Then, " said Ruh, "why not go forth and attack that enemy of God?"

"If I go forth to him, O Emir, " replied the Abyssinian, "I shall be sentto join those who are dead and gone; and the condition I made with thesultan was, to fight for him, but not to die for him. "

Another wit, Osama Ibn Murshid, having had a tooth drawn, produced thefollowing verses, either at the time, for the delectation of thedentist, or afterwards, when seated among his friends: _I had acompanion of whom I was never tired, who suffered in my service, andlaboured with assiduity; whilst we were together I never saw him; andwhen he appeared before my eyes, we had parted for ever. _

This is how Osama wrote when the house of a miser was burnt down: _Seehow the progress of time constrains us to acknowledge that there is adestiny. Ibn Talib never lit a fire in his house, through avarice, yetby fire it was destroyed. _

"One thing, " says Ibn Khallikan, in the notice of this satirist, "bringson another. " He then proceeds: "Abu 'l-Hasan Yahya Abd Al-Azim Al-Misri, surnamed Al-Jazzar, recited to me the following verses which he hadcomposed on another literary man at Cairo, far advanced in age, who, being attacked by a cutaneous eruption, anointed himself with sulphur:_O, learned master, hearken to the demand of a friend devoid of sarcasm:thou art old, and of course art near to the fire of hell; why thenanoint thyself with sulphur?_"

As a further quite unnecessary proof of the antiquity of jests which wethink new, I might append to this excellent sarcasm by a friend devoidof sarcasm the story, often now told, of the rival chemists in aprovincial town, one of whom was old-fashioned and costly, and the othernew and cheap. To the costly one, who had asked too much for sulphur, acustomer remarked that if he went to the new shop opposite he could getit for fourpence; which brought from the old-fashioned chemist, weary ofthis competition, the admirable retort that if he went still farther, toa certain place, he would get it for nothing. 

East and West join hands again. When I was a boy living in a town by thesea, one of my heroes in real life--whom I never knew, but admiredfearfully from a distance--was a famous stockbroker, whose splendid nameI could give if I chose. One of his many mansions was here, and I usedto see him often as he managed the finest pair of horses on the southcoast, which he drove in a phaeton with red wheels, always smoking acigar as he did so. Many were the stories told of his princely VictorRadnor-ish ways, one of which credited him with a private compartment onthe train, into which his guests walked without a ticket--a magnificentidea!--and another stated that he bought his trousers a hundred pairsat a time. And then I open this book and read that Barjawan, anEthiopian eunuch, after being stabbed to death by the prince'sumbrella-bearer, was found to possess a thousand pairs of trousers. 

Not a little of the humorous effect of these Persian sayings comes fromtheir dry frankness. For example: Ibn Omair, a trustworthy traditionist, when, once, he was ill, and a person sent his excuses for not going tovisit him, answered: "I cannot reproach a person for not visiting me, whom I myself should not go to visit were he sick. " Modern would-be witsmight take the hint; for with candour so scarce, and self-criticismusually ending in a verdict of complete innocence, the blurted nakedtruth, not unaccompanied by a sidelong thrust at the speaker's ownfallibility, would always produce the required laugh. 

XI. --THE SATIRISTS

Al-Yazidi, a story of whom I quoted above, was a teacher of Koranicreadings, a grammarian and a philologer, who taught in Baghdad in theninth century. He was also a famous satirist; but satire seems to havebeen easier then than now. So at least I gather from the epigram whichAl-Yazidi wrote upon Al-Asmai Al-Bahili: _You who pretend to draw yourorigin from Asma, tell me how you are connected with that noble race. Are you not a man whose genealogy, if verified, proves that you descendfrom Bahila?_ "This last verse, " said Ibn Al-Munajjim, "is one of themost satirical which have been composed by the later poets. "

I need hardly say that Ibn Khallikan, with his eagle eye and fiercememory, does not let the originality of this pass unchallenged. Theidea, he tells us, is borrowed from the verse in which Hammad Ajradattacked Bashshar, the son of Burd. I like its directness. _You callyourself the son of Burd, though you are the son of another man. Or, grant that Burd married your mother, who was Burd?_

In sarcasms Al-Yazidi was hard pressed by Abu Obaida, who was a very Mr. Brown (_vide_ Bret Harte) in being of "so sarcastic a humour that everyone in Basra who had a reputation to maintain was obliged to flatterhim. " When dining once with Musa Ibn Ar-Rahman Al-Hilali, one of thepages spilled some gravy on the skirt of Abu Obaida's cloak. 

"Some gravy has fallen on your cloak, " said Musa, "but I shall give youten others in place of it. "

"Nay!" replied Abu Obaida, "do not mind! _Your_ gravy can do no harm. "

Another of Al-Yazidi's satirical efforts, which has no forerunner in IbnKhallikan's recollection, is this, levelled at another meanacquaintance; meanness, indeed, being one of the unpardonableoffences--especially in the eyes of poets who lived on patronage: _Becareful not to lose the friendship of Abu 'l-Mukatil when you approachto partake of his meal. Breaking his crumpet is for him as bad asbreaking one of his limbs. His guests fast against their will, andwithout meaning to obtain the spiritual reward which is granted tofasting. _

Apropos of sarcasm, the Merwanide Omaiyide, who reigned in Spain, received from Nizar, the sovereign of Egypt, an insulting and satiricalletter, to which he replied in these terms: "You satirize us because youhave heard of us. Had we ever heard of you, we should make you areply. "

None of the sarcastic wits are more pointed than the blind mawla Abu'l-Aina (806-96), whose tongue was venomously barbed, and who, likeother blind men, often used his malady as a protection when his satirehad been excessive. Viziers were his favourite butts. Being one day inthe society of one of them, the conversation turned on the history ofthe Barmekides and their generosity, on which the vizier said to Abu'l-Aina, who had just made a high eulogium of that family for theirliberality and bounty: "You have praised them and their qualities toomuch; all this is a mere fabrication of book-makers and a fable imaginedby authors. "

Abu 'l-Aina immediately replied: "And why then do book-makers not relatesuch fables of you, O vizier?"

Again, having gone one day to the door of Said Ibn Makhlad and askedpermission to enter, Abu 'l-Aina was told that the vizier was engaged inprayer. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "there is a pleasure in novelty. "

"I am told, " said a khalif to him, "that thou hast an evil tongue. "

"Commander of the Faithful!" replied Abu 'l-Aina, "the Almighty himselfhas spoken praise and satire, " and he then quoted this poem: _If Ipraise not the honest man and revile not the sordid, the despicable, andthe base, why should I have the power of saying, "That is good and thisis bad"? And why should God have opened men's ears and my mouth?_

Having one day a dispute with a descendant of the Prophet, his adversarysaid to Abu 'l-Aina: "You attack me, and yet you say in your prayers:'Almighty God! bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad. '"

"Yes, " replied Abu 'l-Aina, "but I add--'who are virtuous and pure. '"

Here is one of the stories which Abu 'l-Aina used to tell. "I was oneday sitting with Abu 'l-Jahm, when a man came in and said to him: 'Youmade me a promise, and it depends on your kindness to fulfil it. '

"Abu 'l-Jahm answered that he did not recollect it, and the otherreplied: 'If you do not recollect it, 'tis because the persons like meto whom you make promises are numerous; and if I remember it, 'tisbecause the persons like you to whom I may confidently address arequest are few. '

"'Well said! Blessings on your father!' exclaimed Abu 'l-Jahm, and thepromise was immediately fulfilled. "

That blind men should be self-protective is of course, natural, and theEast has always been rich in them. "The learned Muwaffak Ad-DinMuzaffar, the blind poet of Egypt, having gone to visit Al-Kadi As-SaidIbn Sana Al-Mulk, the latter said to him: 'Learned scholar! I havecomposed the first hemistich of a verse, but cannot finish it, althoughit has occupied my mind for some days. '

"Muzaffar asked to hear what he had composed, and the other recited asfollows: _The whiteness of my beard proceeds from the blackness of herringlets--_

"On hearing these words, Muzaffar replied that he had found theircompletion, and recited as follows:--_even as the flame with which Iburn for her acquired its intensity from her pomegranate-flower [herrosy cheeks]_. 

"As-Said approved of the addition, and commenced another verse on thesame model; but Muzaffar said to himself: 'I must rise and be off, orelse he will make the entire piece at the expense of my wits. '"

XII. --AN EARLY CHESS CHAMPION

Much has been written of the origin of chess, and many countries contendfor the honour of its inception. According to my encyclopædia, China, India, Persia, and Egypt have each a claim, but it is probable that thegame existed, in some form or other, before history. The theory is thatthe Arabs introduced it to Europe in the eighth century. Thus thecautious encyclopædia; but Ibn Khallikan has no such hesitancy. From himwe get names and dates. Ibn Khallikan gives the credit boldly to oneSissah, who, says he, "imagined the game for the amusement of KingShihram. " Whether Sissah built it out of a clear sky, or had foundationson which to erect, is not stated. Anyway, the pastime was a completesuccess. "It is said that, when Sissah invented the game of chess andpresented it to Shihram, the latter was struck with admiration andfilled with joy; he ordered chess-boards to be placed in the temples, and considered that game as the best thing that could be learned, inasmuch as it served as an introduction to the art of war, as an honourto religion and the world, and as the foundation of all justice. 

"He manifested also his gratitude and satisfaction for the favour whichHeaven had granted him in illustrating his reign by such an invention, and he said to Sissah, 'Ask me for whatever you desire. '

"'I then demand, ' replied Sissah, 'that a grain of wheat be placed inthe first square of the chess-board, two in the second, and that thenumber of grains be progressively doubled till the last square isattained: whatever this quantity may be, I ask you to bestow it on me. '

"The king, who meant to make him a present of something considerable, exclaimed that such a recompense would be too little, and reproachedSissah for asking for so inadequate a reward. 

"Sissah declared that he desired nothing but what he had mentioned, and, heedless of the king's remonstrances, he persisted in his demand. 

"The king, at length, consented, and ordered that quantity of wheat tobe given him. When the chiefs of the government office received ordersto that effect, they calculated the amount, and answered that they didnot possess near so much wheat as was required. 

"These words were reported to the king, and he, being unable to creditthem, ordered the chiefs to be brought before him. Having questionedthem on the subject, they replied that all the wheat in the world wouldbe insufficient to make up the quantity. He ordered them to prove whatthey said, and, by a series of multiplications and reckonings, theydemonstrated to him that such was the fact. 

"On this, the king said to Sissah: 'Your ingenuity in imagining such arequest is yet more admirable than your talent in inventing the game ofchess. '"

Ibn Khallikan was at pains to investigate the matter. Having, he says, "met one of the accountants employed at Alexandria, I received from hima demonstration which convinced me that the declaration was true. Heplaced before me a sheet of paper in which he had doubled the numbers upto the sixteenth square, and obtained thirty-two thousand seven hundredand sixty-eight grains. 'Now, ' said he, 'let us consider this quantityto be the contents of a pint measure, and this I know by experiment tobe true'--these are the accountant's words, so let him bear theresponsibility--'then let the pint be doubled in the seventeenth square, and so on progressively. In the twentieth square it will become a waiba(peck), the waibas will then become an irdabb (bushel), and in thefortieth square we shall have one hundred and seventy-four thousandseven hundred and sixty-two irdabbs. Let us suppose this to be thecontents of a corn store, and no corn store contains more than that;then in the fiftieth square we shall have the contents of one thousandand twenty-four stores; suppose these to be situated in one city--and nocity can have more than that number of stores or even so many--we shallthen find that the sixty-fourth and last square gives sixteen thousandthree hundred and eighty-four cities. Now, you know that there is not inthe world a greater number of cities than that, for geometry informs usthat the circumference of the globe is eight thousand parasangs; sothat, if the end of a cord were laid on any part of the earth, and thecord passed round it till both ends met, we should find the length ofthe cord to be twenty-four thousand miles, which is equal to eightthousand parasangs. ' This demonstration is decisive and indubitable. "

Of Sissah I know no more, except that he was from India and that hisgame became popular. Up to the time of Ibn Khallikan, in the thirteenthcentury, its best player was one As-Suli, famous as an author and aconvivialist, who died one hundred and twenty years before the NormanConquest. "To play like As-Suli" was indeed a proverb. Among thisproficient's friends was his pupil, the khalif Ar-Radi, who had thegreatest admiration for As-Suli's genius. One day, for instance, walkingwith some boon companions through a garden filled with beautifulflowers, Ar-Radi asked them if they ever saw a finer sight. To this theyreplied, speaking as wise men speak to autocratic rulers, that nothingon earth could surpass it. 

The retort of the khalif must have given them the surprise of theirlives. "You are wrong, " said he: "As-Suli's manner of playing chess isyet a finer sight, and surpasses all you could describe!" So might wenow refer to Hobbs on his day at the Oval, on a hard wicket, againstfast bowling, with Surrey partisans standing four deep behind the seats, or to Stevenson nursing the balls from the middle pocket to the topleft-hand pocket and then across to the right. 

One more anecdote of the Persian Steinitz, and I have done. I tell itbecause it rounds off this interlude with some symmetry by bringing usback to my own consultation of the encyclopædia at the beginning of it. As-Suli had a famous library of books in which he had jotted down thefruits of his various reading. When asked a question on any subject, instead of answering it he would tell his boy to bring such and such avolume in which the matter at issue was treated. This trait led to anepigram being written upon him by a rival scholar, Abu Said, to theeffect that "of all men As-Suli possessed most learning--in hislibrary. " There are still men learned on the same terms, but, nowadays, we do not have to collect the information for ourselves but go to _TheTimes_ and Messrs. Chambers for it. 

XIII. --COURTESY AND JUSTICE

Harun Ar-Raschid passing near Manbij with Abd Al-Malik Ibn Salih, whowas the most elegant speaker of all the surviving descendants ofAl-Abbas, observed a well-built country-seat and a garden full of treescovered with fruit, and asked to whom that property belonged. 

Abd Al-Malik replied: "To you, Commander of the Faithful! and then tome. "

This Abd Al-Malik was so famous, as a story-teller that a wise man saidof him: "When I reflect that Abd Al-Malik's tongue must sooner or latermoulder into dust, the world loses its value in my sight. "

Abu 'l-Amaithal, the poet, was also a most efficient courtier. As hekissed one day the hand of Abd Allah Ibn Tahir, that prince complainedof the roughness of the poet's moustachios, whereupon he immediatelyobserved that the spines of the hedgehog could not hurt the wrist of thelion. Abd Allah was so pleased with this compliment that he ordered hima valuable present. 

Another graceful compliment. Of Ishak Ibn Ibrahim Al-Mausili, who wasfamous for his voice and was a "constant companion of the khalifs intheir parties of pleasure, " the khalif Al-Motasim charmingly said:"Ishak never yet sang without my feeling as if my possessions wereincreased. "

Another compliment that goes still deeper. Abu Nuwas, in a lamentcomposed on the death of the khalif Al-Amin, said of him: _His death wasthe only thing I feared, and now nothing remains for me to dread. _

These, however, were but speeches. Compliments may be conveyed also bydeeds, as we find in the case of Imam Al-Haramain, who was so learnedand acceptable a teacher that, at the moment of his death, his scholars, who were four hundred and one in number, broke their pens and inkhorns;and they let a full year pass over before they resumed their studies. Ofthese Persians we can believe in the sincerity; but the motives ofEnglish scholars performing a similar act of renunciation might be opento suspicion. 

Badi Az-Zaman Az-Hamadani was famous for his epistolary style. Here is apassage which, though written in Persia in the tenth century, might haveaptness in English country houses at this moment: _When water has longremained at rest, its noxious qualities appear; and when its surface hascontinued tranquil, its foulness gets into motion. Thus it is with aguest: his presence is displeasing when his stay has been protracted, and his shadow is oppressive when the time for which he should sojournis at an end. Adieu. _

The khalif Ali Ibn Ali Talib was a very just man. Some one havingcommitted a theft was brought before him. "Bring me witnesses, " saidAli, "to prove that he purloined the object out of the saddle-bag. "

Unmistakable evidence to that effect being given, Ali immediatelyordered the fingers of his hand to be cut off. 

On this some person said to him: "Commander of the Faithful! why not cutit off by the wrist?"

"God forbid!" exclaimed the khalif; "how could he then lean on hisstaff? How could he pray? How could he eat?"

In the Life of Ibn Abd Al-Barr, a Traditionist of Cordova, who, "it isstated, died in the year 380 (A. D. 990), but God knows best, " a numberof good stories are collected. This is one. "It is related that, whenAdam was sent out of Paradise and down to earth by Almighty God, theangel Gabriel went to him and said: 'O Adam! God here sends you threequalities, so that you may select one of them for yourself and leave thetwo others. '

"'What are they?' said Adam. 

"Gabriel replied: 'Modesty, Piety, and Intelligence. '

"'I choose Intelligence, ' said Adam. 

"The angel then told Modesty and Piety to return to Heaven, because Adamhad made choice of Intelligence. 

"They answered: 'We will not return. '

"'How!' said he. 'Do you mean to disobey me?'

"They replied: 'We do not, but our orders were, never to quitIntelligence wherever she might be. '"

Another story showing how destructively effective may be the use offairness--politeness with the buttons off--is of an Arab who, on beinginsulted copiously by a stranger, remained silent. To the question whyhe did not reply, he said: "I know not the man's vices and am unwillingto reproach him with defects he may not have. "

Two other anecdotes are of the famous jester, Al-Jammaz. The first tellshow at Basra a man perceiving the new moon, which indicated thebeginning of the month of fasting, Ramadan, pointed it out eagerly tohis companions. "When the moon which indicates the end of the fast wasnearly due, Al-Jammaz knocked at the door of this too officious personand said: 'Come! get up and take us out of the scrape into which youbrought us. '"

Al-Jammaz was delighted with the following example of his readiness. "One rainy morning, " he said, "I was asked by my wife what was best tobe done on such a day as that, and I answered: 'Divorcing a troublesomewife. ' This stopped her mouth. "

Al-Mubarrad used frequently to recite these lines at his assemblies: _Oyou who, in sumptuous array, strut about like princes and scorn thehatred of the poor, know that the saddle-cloth changeth not the natureof the ass, neither do splendid trappings change the nature of the packhorse. _

When Al-Mubarrad died a poet wrote of him: _Behold the mansion ofliterature half-demolished, and destruction awaiting the remainder. _That was in 899. 

To excuse himself for a want of social ceremony, Ibn Abi 's-Sakr, "anamateur of the belles-lettres, " who died in 1105, composed these verses:_An indisposition called eighty years hinders me from rising to receivemy friends; but when they reach an advanced age, they will understandand accept my excuse. _

Old age occurs also in a poem of Al-Otbi, who died in 842: _When Sulaimasaw me turn my eyes away--and I turn my glances away from all whoresemble her--she said: "I saw thee mad with love"; and I replied:"Youth is a madness of which old age is the cure. "_ This phrase, saysIbn Khallikan, afterwards became a proverb. Most nations have anecdotesin which the idea occurs. 

The following anecdote of the kadi Shuraih, who was famous not only forhis "great skill in distinguishing right from wrong" but also for hishumour, is very pleasing. Adi Ibn Arta, who was blind, went to thekadi's house one day, and the following dialogue ensued:

"Where are you, kadi? May God direct you!"

"I am between you and the wall. "

"Listen to me. "

"I can hear very well. "

"I am a native of Syria. "

"It is a distant land. "

"And I have married a wife from your country. "

"May you live happily and have many children!"

"And I wanted to take her on a journey. "

"Each man has the best right over his own family. "

"But I engaged not to remove her from her native place. "

"Engagements are binding. "

"Judge then between us. "

"I have already done so. "

"And against whom have you given it?"

"Against your mother's son. "

"On whose evidence?"

"On the evidence of your maternal aunt's sister's son. "

I find a similar quality--not un-Johnsonian--in the reply of At-Tirmidithe juriconsult to a question, as reported by Abu 't-Taiyib Ahmad IbnOthman As-Simsar. "I was, " said he, "at Abu Jaafar At-Tirmidi's when aperson consulted him about the saying of the Prophet, that God descendedto the heaven of the world (i. E. The lowest of the seven heavens). Thisperson expressed his desire to know how there could, in that case, beanything more exalted than the lowest heaven?

"At-Tirmidi replied: 'The descent is intelligible; the manner how isunknown; the belief therein is obligatory; and the asking about it is ablameable innovation. '"

The kadi Yahya Ibn Aktham, although famous for his licentiousness, wasorthodox to the marrow. It was he who said: "The _Koran_ is the word ofGod, and whoever says that it has been created by man should be invitedto abandon that opinion; and if he do not, his head should be struckoff. "

The following dialogue between Yahya and a man is very characteristic ofdry Persian sagacity. The man began it, thus: "May God preserve you! Howmuch should I eat?"

Yahya replied: "Enough to get over hunger and not enough to attainsatiety. "

"How long may I laugh?"

"Till your face brightens, but without raising your voice. "

"How long should I weep?"

"Weeping should never fatigue you, if it be through fear of God. "

"What actions of mine should I conceal?"

"As many as you can. "

"What are the actions which I should do openly?"

"Those which may serve as examples to good and virtuous men, whilst theysecure you from public reprobation. "

On this the man exclaimed: "May God preserve us from words which abidewhen deeds have passed away!" It is possible that there were reserves ofmeaning in this final speech, for Yahya's surname Aktham signifieseither "a corpulent man" or "sated with food. "

I have not borrowed much from Ibn Khallikan's heroics, but this is good. Al-Moizz having conquered Egypt, he entered Old Cairo. His pretensionsto be a descendant of Ali had already been contested, and on hisapproach the people of the city went forth to meet him, accompanied by aband of sharifs, and Ibn Tabataba, who was one of the number, asked himfrom whom he drew his descent. 

To this question Al-Moizz replied: "We shall hold a sitting to which allof you shall be convened, and there we shall expose to you the entirechain of our genealogy. "

Being at length established in the castle of Cairo, he gave a publicaudience, as he had promised, and having taken his seat, he asked if anyof their chiefs were still alive?

"No, " replied they, "not one of any consequence survives. "

He then drew his sword half-way out of the scabbard and exclaimed: "Thisis my genealogy! And here, " said he, scattering a great quantity of goldamong them, "are proofs of my nobility!"

On this they all acknowledged him for their lord and master. 

XIV. --THE ASCETICS

Of Bishr Ibn Al-Harith Al-Hafi, one of Baghdad's holiest ascetics, it istold that his choice of the life of saintliness thus came about. Happening to find on the road a leaf of paper with the name of Godwritten on it, which had been trampled underfoot, he bought ghalia withsome dirhems which he had about him, and, having perfumed the leaf withit, deposited it in a hole in a wall. 

Afterwards he had a dream, in which a voice seemed to say to him: "OBishr! thou hast perfumed my name, and I shall surely cause thine to bea sweet odour both in this world and the next. "

When he awoke, he gave up the world, and turned to God. 

Bishr being once asked with what sauce he ate his bread, replied: "Ithink on good health, and I take that as my sauce. "

One of his prayers was this: "O, my God! deprive me of notoriety, ifthou hast given it to me in this world for the purpose of putting me toshame in the next. "

It was a true saying of another famous ascetic, Al-Fudail, that, whenGod loves a man, He increases his afflictions, and when He hates a man, He increases his worldly prosperity. 

Asceticism, however, had not robbed him of human sympathy or warped hisnature, for he said at another time: "For a man to be polite to hiscompany and make himself agreeable to them is better than to pass nightsin prayer and days in fasting. "

Abu Ali Ar-Razi said: "I kept company with Al-Fudail during thirtyyears, and I never saw him laugh or smile but on one occasion, and thatwas the death of his son. On my asking him the reason, he replied:'Whatever is pleasing to God is pleasing to me. '"

Maruf Al-Karkhi, another celebrated saint, who died in Baghdad in 805, had a sensible elasticity. Passing, one day, by a water-carrier who wascrying out: "God have mercy on him who drinketh!" he went up to him andtook a drink, although he was at that time keeping a strict fast. 

Some one, horrified at the impiety, said to him: "Art thou not keeping afast?"

He replied: "Yes, I am, but I hoped for the fulfilment of that man'sprayer. "

One of the sayings of Abd Al-Ala, a man of holy life, was this: "Buyingwhat one does not require, is selling what one requires. "

Another pious man, Abu Othman Al-Mazini the grammarian, used to tell thefollowing story against himself: "There was a person who, for a longtime, studied under me the grammar of Sibawaih, and who said to me, whenhe got to the end of the book, 'May God requite you well! As for me, Ihave not understood a letter of it. '"

Yahya, a celebrated preacher, on being asked by a descendant of theProphet, "Tell me, Master! and may God assist you! what is your opinionof us who are the people of the house, "--that is to say, the members ofMuhammad's family, --replied: "It is that which I would say of claykneaded with the water of divine revelation and sprinkled with the waterof the heavenly mission: can it give out any other odour than the muskof true direction and the ambergris of piety?"

The Alide was so highly pleased with this answer that he filled Yahya'smouth with pearls. 

Yahya, who died on March 30, 872, had a very graceful turn forapophthegms. "True friendship, " said he, "cannot be augmented bykindness nor diminished by unkindness. " And again, he said: "To him whois going to see a true friend the way never appears long; he who goesto visit his beloved never feels lonely on the road. "

The exaltation of friendship is indeed one of the beautiful things aboutthis book. And the reader can never have too much of it. Buri TajAl-Muluk was, says Ibn Khallikan, merely a man of talent, but thefollowing verse by him contains a perfectly splendid compliment: _Myfriend approached from the west, riding on a grey horse, and Iexclaimed: "Glory to the Almighty! the sun has risen in the west!"_

At-Tihami, the poet, one of whose poems, an elegy on the death of hisson, brings ill-luck when quoted, wrote these admirable lines on thesame theme: _In the company of noble-minded men there is always room foranother. Friendship, it is true, renders difficulties easy: a house maybe too small for eight persons, yet friendship will make it hold aninth. _

XV. --A NIGHT SCENE

The capriciousness of the moods of these sombre and terrible Easternautocrats--the strange sentimental chinks in their armour--are seen inthe very characteristic story which follows. "Secret information havingbeen given to Al-Mutawakkil that the imam, Abu 'l-Hasan Al-Askari, had aquantity of arms, books, and other objects for the use of his followersconcealed in his house, and being induced by malicious reports tobelieve that he aspired to the empire, he sent one night some soldiersof the Turkish guard to break in on him when he least expected such avisit. 

"They found him quite alone and locked up in his room, clothed in ahair-shirt, his head covered with a woollen cloak, and turned with hisface in the direction of Mecca, chanting, in this attitude, some versesof the _Koran_ expressive of God's promises and threats, and having noother carpet between him and the earth than sand and gravel. 

"He was carried off in that attire and brought, in the depth of thenight, before Al-Mutawakkil, who was then engaged in drinking wine. Onseeing him, the khalif received him with respect, and being informedthat nothing had been found in his house to justify the suspicions castupon him, he seated him by his side and offered him the goblet which heheld in his hand. 

"'Commander of the Faithful!' said Abu 'l-Hasan, 'a liquor such as thatwas never yet combined with my flesh and blood; dispense me thereforefrom taking it. '

"The khalif acceded to his request, and then asked him to repeat someverses which might amuse him. 

"Abu 'l-Hasan replied that he knew by heart very little poetry; butAl-Mutawakkil having insisted, he recited these lines (which anticipatePoe's "Conqueror Worm" very thoroughly): _'They passed the night on thesummits of the mountains, protected by valiant warriors; but their placeof refuge availed them not. After all their pomp and power, they had todescend from their lofty fortresses to the custody of the tomb. O what adreadful change! Their graves had already received them when a voice washeard exclaiming: "Where are the thrones, the crowns, and the robes ofslate? Where are now the faces once so delicate, which were shaded byveils and protected by the curtains of the audience-hall?" To thisdemand, the tomb gave answer sufficient: "The worms, " it said, "are nowrevelling upon those faces; long had these men been eating and drinking, but now they are eaten in their turn. "'_

"Every person present was filled with apprehension for Abu 'l-HasanAli's safety; they feared that Al-Mutawakkil, in the first burst ofindignation, would have vented his wrath upon him; but they perceivedthe khalif weeping bitterly, the tears trickling down his beard, and allthe assembly wept with him. 

"Al-Mutawakkil then ordered the wine to be removed, after which he said:'Tell me, Abu 'l-Hasan! are you in debt?'

"'Yes, ' replied the other, 'I owe four thousand dinars. '

"The khalif ordered that sum to be given him, and sent him home withmarks of the highest respect. "

XVI. --THE FAIR

The book contains the lives of very few women; but one of the privilegedof her sex is Buran, who died in 884. She became the wife of the khalifAl-Mamun, who, says Ibn Khallikan rather ungallantly, was "induced tomarry her by the high esteem he bore her father. " That her father, thevizier, saw no slight in this, but was not unwilling that his daughtershould pass under the roof of another, we may perhaps gather from thelavishness of the wedding, which was celebrated at Fam As-Silh, withfestivities and rejoicings, the like of which were never witnessed forages before. The vizier's liberality went so far that he showered ballsof musk upon the Hashimites, the commanders of the troops, the katibs, and the persons who held an eminent rank at court. Musk is an expensivething in itself, but each of these balls contained a ticket, and theperson into whose hands it fell, having opened it and read its contents, proceeded to an agent specially appointed for the purpose, from whom hereceived the object inscribed on the ticket, whether it was a farm orother property, a horse, a slave-girl, or a mameluk. The vizier thenscattered gold and silver coins and eggs of amber among the rest of thepeople. 

Capricious generosity marked many of these rulers. Thus it is told ofIbn Bakiya, the vizier, that in the space of twenty days he distributedtwenty thousand robes of honour. "I saw him one night at a drinkingparty, " says Abu Ishak As-Sabi, "and, during the festivity, he changedfrequently his outer dress according to custom: every time he put on anew pelisse, he bestowed it on one or other of the persons present; sothat he gave away, in that sitting, upwards of two hundred pelisses. 

"A female musician then said to him: 'Lord of viziers! there must bewasps in these robes to prevent you from keeping them on your body!'

"He laughed at this conceit, and ordered her a present of a casket ofjewels. "

Another of the ladies whom Ibn Khallikan so seldom leaves his high roadto notice is As-Saiyida Sukaina, who, however, could not well beexcluded, since she was "the first among the women of her time [she diedA. D. 735] by birth, beauty, wit, and virtue. " Part of her fame restsupon her repartees to poets: a most desirable form of activity. Thus, Orwa had a brother called Abu Bakr, whose death he lamented in someextravagant verses of which these are the concluding lines: _My sorrowis for Bakr, my brother! Bakr has departed from me! What life can now bepleasing after the loss of Bakr?_

When Sukaina heard these verses, she asked who was Bakr? And on beinginformed, she exclaimed: "What! that little blackamoor who used to runpast us? Why, everything is pleasing after the loss of Bakr, even thecommon necessaries of life--bread and oil!"

Another female intruder. It is told of Ibn As-Sammak, a pious sage and"professional relater of anecdotes, " that having held a discourse oneday in the hearing of his slave-girl, he asked her what she thought ofit. She replied that it would have been good but for the repetitions. 

"But, " said he, "I employ repetitions in order to make those understandwho do not. "

"Yes, " she replied, "and to make those understand who do not, you wearythose who do. "

One of the sayings of Ibn As-Sammak was: "Fear God as if you had neverobeyed Him, and hope in Him as if you had never disobeyed Him. "

XVII. --THE GREAT JAAFAR

The father of the great Jaafar was Yahya the Barmekide, the friend andvizier of Harun Ar-Raschid. From this family Ibn Khallikan claimeddescent. Yahya was "highly distinguished for wisdom, nobleness of mind, and elegance of language. " One of his sayings was this: "Three thingsindicate the degree of intelligence possessed by him who does them: thebestowing of gifts, the drawing up of letters, and the acting asambassador. "

Another: "Spend when Fortune turns toward you, for her bounty cannotthen be exhausted; spend when she turns away, for she will not remainwith you. "

He said also, very comfortingly: "The sincere intention of doing a goodaction and a legitimate excuse for not doing it are equivalent to itsaccomplishment. "

He died in 805, after long imprisonment by the illustrious khalif whosepleasure it had been to address him always as "My father. "

Such was Jaafar's parent. One of the greatest men in the whole work isJaafar himself, called Jaafar the Barmekide, also vizier to HarunAr-Raschid. Of his somewhat sardonic shrewdness this is a good example. Having learned that Ar-Raschid was much depressed in consequence of aJewish astrologer having predicted to him that he would die within ayear, he interviewed the Jew, who had been detained as a prisoner by thekhalif's orders. 

Jaafar addressed him in these terms: "You pretend that the khalif is todie in the space of so many days?"

"Yes, " said the Jew. 

"And how long are you yourself to live?" said Jaafar. 

"So many years, " replied the other, mentioning a great number. 

Jaafar then said to the khalif: "Put him to death, and you will be thusassured that he is equally mistaken respecting the length of your lifeand that of his own. "

This advice was followed by the khalif, who then thanked Jaafar forhaving dispelled his sadness. 

At the other extreme--though akin in sardonic humour--is this incident. It is related that one day, at Jaafar's, a beetle flew towards Abu Obaidthe Thakefite, and that Jaafar ordered it to be driven away, when AbuObaid said: "Let it alone; it may perhaps bring me good luck; such is atleast the vulgar opinion. "

Jaafar on this ordered one thousand dinars to be given him, saying: "Thevulgar opinion is confirmed. "

The beetle was then set at liberty, but it flew towards Abu Obaid asecond time, and Jaafar ordered him another present of the same amount. 

Such was the affection the khalif felt for Jaafar that he caused a robewith two collars to be made which they could wear at the same time. 

Fickle, however, are princes, and Jaafar's end came in the usual way, through treachery. He was killed, by the khalif's orders, by Yasir. Yasir having put Jaafar to death, carried in his head and placed itbefore the khalif. 

The khalif looked at the head for some time, and then ordered Yasir tobring in two persons whom he named. When they came, he said to them:"Strike off Yasir's head, for I cannot bear the sight of Jaafar'smurderer. "

XVIII. --LOVE AND LOVERS

As I have said, these four great volumes are a mine from which manydifferent metals may be extracted. My own researches having tendedrather to a certain ironic quality, I have passed many lovers by; butlet me make an exception or so. There is, for example, Kuthaiyr. In theaccount of this celebrated Arabian amorist, we come upon a very prettystory. Being once in the presence of Abd Al-Malik, this prince said toKuthaiyr: "I conjure thee by the rights of Ali Abi Ibn Talib to informme if thou ever sawest a truer lover than thyself. "

To this Kuthaiyr replied: "Commander of the Faithful! conjure me by yourown rights, and I shall answer you. "

"Well, " said the prince, "I conjure thee by my own rights; wilt thou nottell it to me now?"

"Certainly, " said Kuthaiyr; "I will. As I was travelling in a certaindesert, I beheld a man who had just pitched his toils to catch game, andI said to him: 'Why art thou sitting here?' And he replied: 'I and mypeople are dying with hunger, and I have pitched these toils that I maycatch something which may sustain our lives till to morrow. ' 'Tell me, 'said I, 'if I remain with thee and thou takest any game, wilt thou giveme a share?' He answered that he would; and whilst we were waiting, behold, a gazelle got into the net. We both rushed forward; but heoutran me, and having disentangled the animal, he let it go. 'What, 'said I, 'could have induced thee to do so?' He replied: 'On seeing herso like my beloved Laila in the eyes, I was touched with pity. '"

Little men who are disposed to envy the big on account of fair ladiesmay take comfort from Kuthaiyr, for although so ardent and successful, he was absurdly small: so short indeed that, when he went to visit AbdAl-Aziz Ibn Marwan, that prince used to banter him and say: "Stoop yourhead, lest you hurt it against the ceiling. "

He was called Rabb Ad-Dubab (the king of the flies) for the same reason. One of his contemporaries said: "I saw him making the circuits round theKaaba; and if anyone tell you that his stature exceeded three spans, that person is a liar. "

Abu Omar Az-Zahid Al-Mutarriz, although he "ranked among the mosteminent and the most learned of the philologers, " and was famous for his"mortified life, " could write love poems too. Here is one: _Overcomewith grief, we stopped at As-Sarat one evening, to exchange adieus; and, despite of envious foes, we stood unsealing the packets of everypassionate desire. On saying farewell, she saw me borne down by thepains of love, and consented to grant me a kiss; but, impelled bystartled modesty, she drew her veil across her face. On this I said:"The full moon has now become a crescent. " I then kissed her through theveil, and she observed: "My kisses are wine: to be tasted, they must bepassed through the strainer. "_ (It seems, however, from Ibn Khallikan'sanxious dubiety on the matter, that this poem, after all, may have beenwritten, like the Iliad, by another poet of the same name. God onlyknows. )

Another Anacreontic, this time by Ibn Zuhr: _Whilst the fair ones layreclining, their cheek pillowed on the arm, a hostile inroad of the dawntook us by surprise. I had passed the night in filling up their cups anddrinking what they had left; till inebriation overcame me, and my lotwas theirs also. The wine well knows how to avenge a wrong; I turned thegoblet up, and that liquor turned me down. _

The poetry of love comprises, alas! also the poetry of despair. Here isan example by Ibn As-Sarraj, the grammarian: _I compared her beauty withher conduct, and found that her charms did not counterbalance herperfidy. She swore to me never to be false, but 'twas as if she hadsworn never to be true. By Allah! I shall never speak to her again, even though she resembled in beauty the full moon, or the sun, orAl-Muktafi!_

The inclusion of the khalif Al-Muktafi seems to have been anafterthought, added when the poet first saw him. Struck by hiscomeliness, he recited the poem to some companions and inserted his nameat the end. The sequel is amusing and very characteristic. "Some timeafter, the katib Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Ismail Ibn Zenji repeatedthe verses to Abu 'l-Abbas Ibn Al-Furat, saying that they were composedby Ibn Al-Motazz, and Abu 'l-Abbas communicated them to the vizierAl-Kasim Ibn Obaid Allah. The latter then went to the khalif and recitedthe verses to him, adding that they were by Obaid Allah Ibn Abd AllahIbn Tahir, to whom Al-Muktafi immediately ordered a present of onethousand dinars. 

"'How very strange, ' said Ibi Zenji, 'that Ibn As-Sarraj should composeverses which were to procure a donation to Obaid Allah Ibn Abd Allah IbnTahir!'"

Abu Bakr Ibn Aiyash, the Traditionist and scholar, discovered a remedyfor lovers which is too simple, I fear, to commend itself to lessphilosophic Occidentals affected by the pains of longing. "I wassuffering, " he says, "from an anxious desire of meeting one whom Iloved, when I called to mind the verse of Zu 'r-Rumma's: _Perhaps a flowof tears will give me ease from pain; perhaps it may cure a heart whosesole companion is sad thoughts. _ On this I withdrew to a private placeand wept, by which means my sufferings were calmed. "

XIX. --TO DISARM CRITICS

And so we come to an end. And how can an author do better than to quoteIbn Khallikan's own concluding words, which, though written so long agoabout a biographical dictionary, may be borrowed by all literary handsas palliation for whatever shortcomings their work may have?--"If anywell-informed person remark, in examining this book, that it containsfaults, he should not hasten to blame me, for I always aimed at beingexact, as far as I could judge; and, besides, God has allowed no book tobe faultless except His noble _Koran_. "

=DIVERSIONS=

DIVERSIONS

Nurses

The conversation turning, as, round English fires, it often does, on thepeculiarities of an old nurse of the family, I was struck again by thetenderness and kindness, shot through with humour, that are alwaysevoked by this particular retrospective mood. I would even say thatpeople are at their best when they are remembering their nurses. Torecall one's parents is often to touch chords that vibrate toodisturbingly; but these foster parents, chosen usually with such strangecarelessness but developing often into true guardian angels, with goodinfluences persisting through life--when, in reminiscent vein, we setthem up, one against the other, can call from the speakers qualitiesthat they normally may conspicuously lack. Quite dull people can becomeinteresting and whimsical as their thoughts wander back through theyears to the day when old Martha or old Jane, or whoever it was, mouldedthem and scolded them and broke the laws of grammar. Quite hard peoplecan then melt a little. Quite stern people can smile. 

And quite funny people can become intensely funny, as I have melancholyreason to know, for, listening to these new anecdotes, I recalled thelast occasion on which the fruitful theme of a Nanna's oddities had beendeveloped; when the speaker was that fascinating athlete and gentleman, E. B. , a gallant officer with a gift of mimicry as notable as his senseof fun and his depth of feeling, who, chiefly for the amusement of twochildren, but equally--or even more--to the delight of us older ones, not only gave us certain of his old nurse's favourite sayings, in herown voice, but reconstructed her features as he did so. All good mimicryastonishes and entertains me, and this was especially good, for ittriumphed over the disabilities of a captain's uniform. Something verycurious and pretty, and, through all our laughter, affecting, in thespectacle of this tall, commanding soldier painting with little lovingcomic touches the portrait of the old Malapropian lady with her heart ofgold. That was a few short months ago, and to-day E. B. Lies in a Frenchgrave. 

Malapropisms and old nurses are, of course, inseparable. Indeed, theyformed again the basis of our talk the other evening, each of us havinga new example to give, all drawn from memories of childhood. Wonderfulhow these quaint phrases stick--due, I suppose, to the fact that thechild does not hear too much to confuse it, and when in this tenaciousstage notices the sharp differences between the conversation of theliterate, as encountered in the dining-room and drawing-room, and themuch more amusing illiteracy below stairs. It will be a bad day forEngland when education is so prevalent that nursemaids have it too. Muchless interesting will the backward look then become. 

How far forward we have moved in general social decency one realizesafter listening to such conversations as I have hinted at, where respectand affection dominate, and then turning to some of the children's booksof a century ago--the kind of book in which the parents are alwaysright and made in God's image, and the children full of faults. In oneof these I found recently a story of a little girl who, being rude andwilful with her maid, was rebuked by her kind and wise mamma in somesuch phrase as, "Although it has pleased the Almighty to set you andSarah in such different positions, you have no right to be unjust toher. "

Reflecting upon how great a change has come upon the relation ofemployers and employed, and how much greater a change is in store, itseems to me that one of the good human kinds of book that does not atpresent exist, and ought to be made, would bring together between twocovers some of the best servants in history, public and private, andpossibly in literature too. Nurses first, because the nurse is so muchmore important a factor in family life, and because, to my mind, she hasnever had honour enough. I doubt if enough honour could be paid to her, but the attempt has not been sufficiently made. And to-day, of course, the very word as I am using it has only a secondary meaning. By "nurse"to-day we mean first a cool, smiling woman, with a white cap andpossibly a red cross, ministering to the wounded and the sick. We haveto think twice in order to evoke the guardian angel of our childhood, the mother's right hand, and often so much more real than the motherherself. I would lay special emphasis on the nurse who, beginning as ayoung retainer, develops into a friend and to the end of her days moveson parallel lines with the family, even if she is not still of it. Theseold nurses, the nurses of whom the older we grow the more tenderly andgratefully we think--will no one give them a book of praise? I shouldlove to read it. And there should not be any lack of material--withStevenson's Alison Cunningham by no means last on the list. 

But if on examination the material proved too scanty, then the otherdevoted servants might come in too, such as Sir Walter Scott's TomPurdie, who should have a proud place, and that wonderful gardener ofthe great Dumas, whose devotion extended to confederacy. 

Without Dumas' gardener, indeed, no book in honour of the fidelity ofman to man could be complete. For just think of it! The only approach tothe house of the divine Alexandre being by way of a wooden bridge, thisimmortal tender of flowers and vegetables so arranged the planks thatany undesired caller bearing a writ or long-overdue account would fall, all naturally and probably through his own confused carelessness, intothe river; and, on being pulled out and restored to happy life, wouldnot only abandon the horrid purpose of his visit, but, gratitudeprompting, be generous enough to go at least part of the way towardspaying the gardener's wages, which otherwise that resourceful benefactormight never obtain. 

On a place in the volume for this exemplary character, I insist. But, asI say, nurses first. 

No. 344260

Coming, the other day, after every kind of struggle, at last intopossession of one of the new pound notes, I was interested in placing itquickly under the microscope, so to speak, in order that, in case Inever saw another, I should be able to describe it to my grandchildren. How indigent I have been may be gathered from the circumstance that thisnote, being numbered 344260, had three hundred and forty-four thousandtwo hundred and fifty-nine predecessors which had eluded me. 

As a work of art it is remarkable--almost, indeed, a gallery in itself, comprising as it does portraiture, design, topography, and thedelineation of one of the most spirited episodes in religious history. After the magic words "One Pound, " it is, of course, to St. George andthe Dragon that the eye first turns. What Mr. Ruskin would say of thelatest version of the encounter between England's tutelary genius andhis fearsome foe, one can only guess; but I feel sure that he would becaustic about the Saint's grip on his spear. To get its head rightthrough the dragon's chest--taking, as it has done, the longest possibleroute--and out so far on the other side, would require more vigour andtension than is suggested by the casual way in which the thumb rests onthe handle. Dragons' necks and bosoms are, I take it, not only scalywithout but of a sinewy consistency within that is by no means easy topenetrate, and in this particular case the difficulty must have beenincreased by the creature's struggles, which, the artist admits, bentthe spear very noticeably. None the less, the Saint's hold is mostdelicate, and his features are marked by the utmost placidity. 

As a matter of fact, the Saint is not sufficiently armed on our £1notes; for in real life, and particularly when he rode out on the Libyanplain to do battle with the dragon, he had a sword as well as a spear. But he could not have had both if he were dressed as the Treasury artistdresses him, unless he carried the sword between his teeth; which he isnot doing. There is no better authority than _The Golden Legend_, and_The Golden Legend_ (in the translation of Master William Caxton)testifieth thus: "Then as they [St. George and the King's daughter, whomthe dragon desired, ] spake together, the dragon appeared and camerunning to them, and St. George was upon his horse, and drew out hissword and garnished him with the sign of the cross, and rode hardilyagainst the dragon which came towards him, and smote him with his spear[spear, now, take notice], and hurt him sore and threw him to theground. " The absence of the sword is one error that never ought to havegained currency. Another is the grievousness of the wound which isdepicted; for in real life the wound was so slight, although sufficient, that the King's daughter--but let Master Caxton continue, for he writethbetter than I ever shall. Having conquered the foe, St. George, according to _The Golden Legend_, "said to the maid: 'Deliver to me yourgirdle, and bind it about the neck of the dragon, and be not afeard. 'When she had done so, the dragon followed her as it had been a meekbeast and debonair. " It was later, and not until St. George hadbaptized the King and all his people (which was his reward), that hesmote off the dragon's head. 

To my mind _The Golden Legend_ is too gentle with this contest. I like areal fight, and here one is almost as much defrauded as in the story ofDavid and Goliath. In treating the victory over the dragon with equallightness, perhaps the Treasury artist, even though he has not followedthe authority closely enough in other ways, is justified; but he shouldhave read the text more carefully, for no one can pretend that a dragonso drastically perforated as this one could follow a princess into thecity. Indeed, it is such a _coup de grâce_ as no self-respecting anddetermined dragon, furnished with wings, inflammable breath, and all theusual fittings, would have submitted itself to. Because, given wings, neither of which is broken, how would it have allowed itself to comeinto that posture at all?

Saints, however, must be saints; and their adversaries know this. 

It was only, as I have said, with incredible difficulties that I couldget this pound note to study; imagine, then, what pains and subterfugeswere, in 1917, necessary in order to obtain the loan of a sovereign withwhich to compare the golden rendering of the same conflict. Eventually, however, I was successful, and one of the precious discs passedtemporarily into my keeping. It lies beside No. 344260 on the table as Iwrite. In this treatment--Mr. Ruskin's strictures upon which arefamiliar--one is first struck by the absurdity of the Saint's weapon: ashort dagger with which he could never do any damage at all, unlesseither he fell off his horse or the dragon obligingly rose up to meetthe blow. Fortunately, however, the horse has powerful hoofs, and one ofthese is inflicting infinite mischief. Other noticeable peculiarities ofthe sovereign's rendering are the smallness of the horse's head and thelength of St. George's leg. The total effect, in spite of blemishes, ismore spirited than that of No. 344260, but both would equally fill aRenaissance Florentine medallist with gloom. 

So much for the St. Georges and the Dragons of Treasury artists. Butwhen it comes to No. 344260's portrait of Mr. John Bradbury, Secretaryto the Treasury, over his facsimile autograph, in green ink, I have nofault to find. This is a strong profile treatment, not a little like theKing, and I am glad to have seen it. One likes to think of regalfeatures and tonsorial habits setting a fashion. Mr. John Bradbury doeswell and loyally to resemble as closely as he can his royal master. 

Having reached this point, I turned No. 344260 over and examined theback, which represents the Houses of Parliament as seen from Lambeth. There are three peculiarities about this picture. One is that all theemphasis is laid--where of late we have not been in the habit of lookingfor it--on the House of Lords; another is that Parliament is notsitting, for the Victoria Tower is without its flag; and the third isthat Broad Sanctuary has been completely eliminated, so that the Abbeyand the Victoria Tower form one building. No doubt to the fortunatepersons through whose hands one pound notes pass, such awful symbolismconveys a sense of England's greatness and power; but I think it wouldbe far more amusing if the back had been left blank, in case some laterRobbie Burns (could this decadent world ever know so fine a thingagain) wished to write another lament on it:

 For lack o' thee I've lost my lass, For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass. 

Or, if not blank, thirty (say) spaces might be ruled on it, in which thenames of its first thirty owners could be written. By the time thespaces were filled it would be a document historically valuable now andthen to autograph collectors. It would also be dirty enough to call in. 

The Two Perkinses

Walking in the garden in the cool of the July evening, I was struckafresh by the beauty of that climbing rose we call Dorothy Perkins, andby her absolute inability to make a mistake. There are in this gardenseveral of these ramblers, all heritages from an earlier tenant and allvery skilfully placed: one over an arch, one around a window, and threeor four clambering up fir posts on which the stumps of boughs remain;and in every case the rose is flowering more freely than ever before, and has arranged its blossoms, leaves, and branches with an exquisiteand impeccable taste. Always lovely, Dorothy Perkins is never so lovelyas in the evening, just after the sun has gone, when the green takes ona new sobriety against which her gay and tender pink is gayer and moretender. "Pretty little Dolly Perkins!" I said to myself involuntarily, and instantly, by the law of association--which, I sometimes fondlysuppose, is more powerful with me than with many people--I began tothink of another evening, twenty and more years ago, when for the firsttime I heard the most dainty of English comic songs sung as it shouldbe, with the first words of the chorus accentuated like hammer blows inunison:

 For--she--was--as--

and then tripping merrily into the rest of it:

 --beautiful as a butterfly, As fair as a queen, Was pretty little Polly Perkins Of Paddington Green. 

It is given to most of us--not always without a certain wistfulregret--to recall the circumstances under which we first heard ourfavourite songs; and on the evening when I met "Pretty Polly Perkins" Iwas on a tramp steamer in the Mediterranean, when at last the heat hadgone and work was over and we were free to be melodious. My own positionon this boat was nominally purser, at a shilling a month, but in realitypassenger, or super-cargo, spending most of the day either in readingor sleeping. The second engineer, a huge Sussex man, whose favouritetheme of conversation with me was the cricket of his county, was, itseemed, famous for this song; and that evening, as we sat on a skylight, he was suddenly withdrawn from a eulogy of the odd ways and deadlyleft-handers of poor one-eyed "Jumper" Juniper (whom I had knownpersonally, when I was a small school-boy, in a reverential way) to givethe company "Pretty Polly Perkins. " In vain to say that he was busy, talking to me; that he was dry; that he had no voice. "Pretty PollyPerkins" had to be sung, and he struck up without more ado:

 I'm a broken-hearted milkman, In woe I'm arrayed, Through keeping the company of A young servant maid--

and so forth. And then came the chorus, which has this advantage overall other choruses ever written, that the most tuneless singer on earth(such as myself) and the most shamefaced (I am autobiographical again)can help to swell, at any rate, the notable opening of it, and thusensure the success of the rest. 

That evening, as I say, was more than twenty years ago, and I hadthought in the interval little enough of the song until the other prettyPerkins suggested it; but I need hardly say that the next day came afurther reminder of it (since that is one of the queer rules of life) inthe shape of a Chicago weekly paper with the information that Americaknows "Pretty Polly Perkins" too. 

The ballads of a nation for the most part respect their nationality, butnow and then there is free trade in them. It has been so with "PrettyPolly Perkins"; for it seems that, recognizing its excellence, anAmerican singer prepared, in 1864, a version to suit his own country, choosing, as it happens, not New York or Washington as the background ofthe milkman's love drama, but the home of Transatlantic culture itself, Boston. Paddington Green would, of course, mean nothing to Americanears, but Boston is happy in the possession of a Pemberton Square, whichmay, for all I know, be as important to the Hub of the Universe asMerrion Square is to Dublin, and Polly was, therefore, made comfortablethere, and, as Pretty Polly Perkins of Pemberton Square, became asfamous as, in our effete hemisphere, Pretty Polly Perkins of PaddingtonGreen. The adaptor deserves great credit for altering as little aspossible. Beyond Polly's abode, and the necessary rhymes to mate withSquare, he did nothing, so that the song, while transplanted to America, remained racy of the English capital. It was still the broken-heartedmilkman who sang it, and the _dénouement_, which is so veryEnglish--and, more than English, Cockney--was unaltered:

 In six months she married, That hard-hearted girl; It was not a squire, And it was not a nearl. It was not a baronet, But a shade or two wuss-- 'Twas the wulgar old driver Of a twopenny 'bus. 

But the story of Polly is nothing. The merit of the song is its air, thenovelty and ingenuity of its chorus, and the praises of Polly which thechorus embodies. The celebration of charming women is never out of date. Some are sung about in the Mediterranean, some in Boston, and some allthe world over; others give their names to roses. 

So far had I written--and published--in a weekly paper, leaving open aloophole or two for kind and well-instructed readers to come to my aid;and as usual (for I am very fortunate in these matters) they did so. Before I was a month older I knew all. I knew that the author, composer, and singer of "Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green" were one andthe same: the famous Harry Clifton; and that Polly married "not thewulgar old driver" of a twopenny 'bus, as was my mistaken belief, butquite the reverse--that is to say, the "bandy-legged conductor" of thesame vehicle. A gentleman in Ireland was even so obliging as to send meanother ballad by Harry Clifton, on the front of which is his portraitand on the back a list of his triumphs--and they make very startlingreading, at any rate to me, who have never been versatile. The number ofsongs alone is appalling: no fewer than thirty to which he had also putthe music and over fifty to which the music was composed by others, butwhich with acceptance he sang. Judging by the titles and the firstlines, which in the advertisement are always given, these songs of thesixties were very much better things than most of the songs of ourenlightened day. They seem to have had character, a humoroussententiousness, and a genial view of life. And judging by his portraiton the cover, Harry Clifton was a kindly, honest type of man, to whomsuch accessories of the modern comic singer's success as thewell-advertised membership of a night club, or choice of an expensiverestaurant, were a superfluity. 

Having read these letters and the list of songs, I called on a friendwho was at that moment lying on a bed of sickness, from which, alas! henever rose--the late George Bull, the drollest raconteur in London andone of the best of men, who, so far as I am concerned, carried away withhim an irreplaceable portion of the good humour of life; and I foundthat the name of Harry Clifton touched more than one chord. He had heardHarry Clifton sing. As a child, music-halls were barred to him, butHarry Clifton, it seems, was so humane and well-grounded--hisfundamentals, as Dr. Johnson would say, were so sound--that he sang alsoat Assembly Rooms, and there my friend was taken, in his tender years, by his father, to hear him. There he heard the good fellow, who wasconspicuously jolly and most cordially Irish, sing several of his greathits, and in particular "A Motto for Every Man, " "Paddle Your OwnCanoe, " and "Lannigan's Ball" (set to a most admirable jig tune whichhas become a classic), one phrase from which was adopted into the Irishvernacular as a saying: "Just in time for Lannigan's ball. " Cliftonmight indeed be called the Tom Moore of his day, with as large a public, although not quite so illigant a one. For where Moore warbled to theladies, Clifton sang to the people. Such a ballad as that extolling themare of Pat of Mullingar must have gone straight to the hearts of thecountrymen of Mr. Flurry Knox:

 They may talk of Flying Childers, And the speed of Harkaway, Till the fancy it bewilders As you list to what they say. But for rale blood and beauty, You may travel near and far-- The fastest mare you'll find belongs To Pat of Mullingar. 

An old lady in Dublin who remembers Clifton singing this song tells methat the chorus, "So we'll trot along O, " was so descriptive, both inwords and music, that one had from it all the sensations of a "joult. "

Harry Clifton seems to have had three distinct lines--the comic song, ofwhich "Pretty Polly Perkins" may be considered the best example; theIrish song; and the Motto song, inculcating a sweet reasonableness andcontent amid life's many trials and tribulations. Although, no doubt, such optimism was somewhat facile, it cannot be denied that a littledose of silver-lining advice, artfully concealed in the jam of a goodtune and a humorous twist of words, does no harm and may have abeneficial effect. The chorus of "A Motto for Every Man, " for example, runs thus:

 We cannot all fight in this battle of life, The weak must go to the wall. So do to each other the thing that is right, For there's room in this world for us all. 

An easy sentiment; but sufficient people in the sixties were attractedby it to flock to hear Harry Clifton all over England and Ireland, andit is probable that most came away with momentarily expanded bosoms, anda few were stimulated to follow its precepts. 

Looking down this remarkable list of titles and first lines--which maybe only a small portion of Harry Clifton's output--I am struck by hiscleanliness and sanity. His record was one of which he might well beproud, and I think that old Fletcher of Saltoun, who had views on themakers of a nation's ballads, would probably have clapped him on theback. 

Another thing. If many of the tunes to these songs are as good as thatto "Polly Perkins, " Harry Clifton's golden treasury should be worthmining. The songs of yesterday, when revived, strike one as being veryantiquated, and the songs of the day before yesterday also rarely bearthe test; but what of the songs of the sixties? Might their melodies notstrike freshly and alluringly on the ear to-day? Another, and to-day abetter known, Harry--Harry Lauder--whose tunes are always good, hasconfided to an interviewer that he finds them for the most part in oldtraditional collections, and gives them new life. He is wise. JohnStuart Mill's fear that the combinations of the notes of the piano mightbe used up was probably fantastic, but the arrival of the luckless daywould at any rate be delayed if we revived tunes that were old enoughfor that process; and why should not the works of Harry Clifton beexamined for the purpose? But perhaps they have been. .. . 

And then we come back to the marvel, to me, of the man's variousness. Ican plead guilty to having written the words of a dozen songs or so inas many years, but to put two notes of music together is beyond me, andto sing anything in tune would be an impossibility, even if I had theassurance to stand up in public for that purpose. Yet Harry Clifton, who, in the picture on the cover of the song which the gentleman inIreland sent me, does not look at all like some brazen lion comiques, not only could sing acceptably but write good words and good music. Ihope he grew prosperous, although there is some evidence that his nativegeniality was also a stumbling-block. Your jolly good fellows so oftenare the victims of their jolly goodness. Nor had the palmy days of comicsinging then begun. There were then no £300 a week bribes to lure acomic singer into _revue_; but the performers, I guess, were none theworse for receiving a wage more in accordance with true proportion. Isay true proportion, because I shall never feel it right thatmusic-hall comedians should receive a bigger salary than a PrimeMinister; at least, not until they sing better songs and take a finerview of life in their "patter" than most of them now do. 

Arts of Invasion

All people living in the country are liable to be asked if they do notknow of "some nice little place that would just suit us. " "Forweek-ends, chiefly"--the inquirer usually adds. "A kind of_pied-à-terre_, you know"--the inquirer always adds. 

Cautious, self-protective people answer no. Foolish, gregarious peopleactually try to help. 

Addressing that large and growing class, the _pied-à-terre_ hunters, notas a potential neighbour, but as a mere counsellor and very platonicfriend, I would say that I have recently discovered two ways ofacquiring country places, both of which, although no doubt neither isinfallible, have from time to time succeeded. 

It was at the end of a fruitless day on the same quest that I hit uponthe first. After tramping many miles in vain, I was fortunate in gettinga fly at the village inn to drive me to the nearest station. I don'tsay I had seen nothing I liked, but nothing that was empty. As a matterof fact, I had seen one very charming place, but every window had acurtain in it and the chimneys were sending up their confounded smoke. In other words, it was, to use one of the most offensive words in thelanguage, occupied. Hence I was in a bad temper. None the less, when alittle man in black suddenly appeared before me and begged to be allowedto share my cab (and its fare), I agreed. He began to talk at once, andhaving disposed of the weather and other topics on which one can bestrictly and politely neutral, he said that his business took him a gooddeal into unfamiliar places. 

Being aware that he wished it, I asked him what his business was. 

"I'm an unsettler, " he said. 

"An unsettler?"

"Yes. It's not a profession that we talk much about, because the veryessence of it is secrecy, but it's genuine enough, and there are not afew of us. Of course, we do other things as well, such as insuranceagency, but unsettling pays best. "

"Tell me about it, " I said. 

"Well, " he explained, "it's like this. Say you are thinking of movingand you want another house. You can't find an empty one that you like, of course. No one can. But you differ from other persons in beingunwilling to make a compromise. You will either wait till you find onethat you do like, or you will go without. Meanwhile you see plenty ofoccupied houses that you like, just as every one else does. But youdiffer from other persons in being unwilling to believe that you can'thave what you want. Do you follow me?"

Naturally I followed him minutely, because he was describing my owncase. 

"Very well, then, " he continued. "This makes the unsettler'sopportunity. You return to the agent and tell him that the only houseyou liked is (say) a white one at East Windles. 

"'It was not one on your list, ' you say; 'in fact, it was occupied. Itis the house on the left, in its own grounds, just as you enter thevillage. There is a good lawn, and a wonderful clipped yew hedge. '

"'Oh yes, ' says the agent, 'I know it: it used to be the Rectory. '

"'Who lives there?' you ask. 

"'An old lady named Burgess, ' says the agent--'Miss Burgess. '

"'Would she leave?' you ask. 

"'I should very much doubt it, ' says the agent, 'but I could, of course, sound her. '

"'I'll give you twenty-five pounds, ' you say, 'if you can induce her toquit. ' And off you go. 

"It is then that the unsettler comes in. The agent sends for me andtells me the story; and I get to work. The old lady has got to bedislodged. Now what is it that old ladies most dislike? I ask myself. Itdepends, of course; but on general principles a scare about the water issafe, and a rumour of ghosts is safe. The water-scare upsets themistress, the ghost-scare upsets the maids; and when one can't getmaids, the country becomes a bore. As it is, she had the greatestdifficulty in keeping them, because there's no cinema near. 

"Very well, then. Having decided on my line of action, I begin to spreadreports--very cautiously, of course, but with careful calculation, andnaturally never appearing myself; and gradually, bit by bit, MissBurgess takes a dislike to the place. Not always, of course. Sometenants are most unreasonable. But sooner or later most of them fall tothe bait, and you get the house. That's my profession. "

"Well, " I said, "I think it's a blackguard one. "

"Oh, sir!" he replied. "Live and let live. "

"It's funny, all the same, " I added, "that I should have run across you, because I've been looking for a house for some time, and the only one Iliked was occupied. "

He pulled out a pocket-book. "Yes?" he said, moistening his pencil. 

But that is enough of him. 

So much for my first way, which, as I happen to know, has succeeded, atany rate once. Now for the other, which is less material. In fact, somepeople might call it supernatural. 

I was telling a lady about my friend the unsettler and his methods; butshe did not seem to be in the least impressed. 

"All very well, " she said; "but there's a more efficient and morerespectable way than that. And, " she added, with a significant glance ather husband and not without triumph, "I happen to know. "

She sat at the dinner-table in the old farm-house--"modernized, " as theagents have it, "yet redolent of old-world charm. " By modernized theymean that the rightful occupiers--the simple agriculturists--had gonefor ever, and well-to-do artistic Londoners had made certain changes tofit it for a week-end retreat. In other words, it had become a_pied-à-terre_. Where the country folk for whom all these and smallercottages were built now live, who shall say? Probably in mean streets;anyway, not here. The exterior remains often the same, but inside, instead of the plain furniture of the peasantry, one finds wickerarm-chairs and sofa-chairs, all the right books and weekly papers, andcigarettes. 

This particular farm-house was charming. An ingle-nook, Heal furniture, old-pattern cretonnes and chintzes, an etching or two, a Japanese printor two, a reproduction of a John, the poems of Mr. Masefield and RupertBrooke, a French novel, the _New Statesman_, and where once had been agun-rack a Della Robbia Madonna. 

"It's delightful, " I said; adding, as one always does: "How _did_ youget to hear of it?"

"Hearing of it wasn't difficult, " she said, "because we'd known about itfor years. The trouble was to get it. "

"It wasn't empty, then?" I replied. 

"No. There was a Mr. Broom here. We asked him if he wanted to go, and hesaid No. We made him an offer, and he refused. He was mostunreasonable. " (It was the same word that the unsettler had used. )

I agreed: "Most. "

"So there was nothing for it but to will his departure. "

"Will?"

"Yes. Concentrate our thoughts on his giving notice, and invite ourfriends to do the same. I wrote scores of letters all round, impressingthis necessity, this absolute, sacred duty, on them. I asked them tomake a special effort on the night of March 18th, at eleven o'clock, when we should all be free. It sounds rather dreadful, but I always holdthat the people who want a house most are best fitted to have it. Onecan't be too nice in such matters. "

"Well?" I asked. 

"Well, you'll hardly believe it--and I shan't be a bit vexed if youdon't--but on the morning of the 20th of March I had a letter from Mr. Broom saying that he had decided to leave, and we could have the firstcall on his house. It was too wonderful. I don't mind confessing that Ifelt a little ashamed. I felt it had been too easy. "

"It is certainly a dangerous power, " I said. 

"Well, " she continued, "I hurried round to see him before he couldchange his mind. 'Do you really want to leave?' I asked him. 'Yes, ' hesaid. 'Why?' I asked. 'Well, ' he said, 'I can't tell you why. I don'tknow. All I know is that all of a sudden I have got tired and feelvaguely that I want a change. I am quite sure I am making a mistake andI'll never find so good a place; but there it is: I'm going. ' I assureyou I felt for a moment inclined to back out altogether and advise himto stay on. I was even half disposed to tell him the truth; but I pulledmyself together. And--well, here we are!"

"It's amazing, " I said. "You must either have very strong-mindedfriends, or the stars have played very oddly into your hands, or both. "

"Yes, " she said; "but there's a little difficulty. One has to be socareful in this life. "

"One has, " I fervently agreed. "But what is it?"

"Some of my friends, " she explained, "didn't quite play the game. Instead of willing, as I explicitly indicated, that our Mr. Broom shouldleave the Manor Farm, they willed merely that Mr. Broom should leave hishouse, and the result is that all kinds of Mr. Brooms all over thecountry have been giving notice. I heard of another only this morning. In fact, our Mr. Broom's brother was one of them. It's a very perilousas well as a useful gift, you see. But we've got the farm, and that'sthe main thing. "

She smiled the smile of a conqueror. 

"But, " remarked another of the guests, who had told us that she waslooking for a _pied-à-terre_, "there's a catch somewhere, isn't there?Don't you see any weak point?"

Our hostess smiled less confidently. "How?" she asked uneasily. 

"Well, " the guest continued, "suppose. .. . It couldn't, I mean, be inbetter hands. For the moment. But suppose some one else wanted it? Takecare. Willing is a game that two can play at. "

"You don't mean----?" our hostess faltered. 

"I do, most certainly, " the guest replied. "Directly I go away from hereI shall make a list of my most really obstinate, pushful friends to helpme. "

"But that would be most unfair, " said our hostess. 

"No one is fair when hunting the _pied-à-terre_, " I reminded her. 

The Marble Arch and Peter Magnus

Finding myself (not often in London on the day that comes so mercifullybetween the Saturday and Monday) beside the enisled Marble Arch, I spenthalf an hour in listening to the astonishing oratory that was going onthere. Although I had not done this for many, many years, there was solittle change in the proceedings that I gained a new impression ofperpetual motion. The same--or to all intents and purposes thesame--leather lungs were still at it, either arraigning the Deity orcommending His blessed benefactions. As invariably of old, a Hindu waspresent; but whether he was the Hindu of the Middle Ages or a new Hindu, I cannot say. One proselytizing Hindu is strangely like another. Hismatter was familiar also. The only novelty that I noticed was a littleband of American evangelists (America being so little in need ofspiritual assistance that these have settled in London) in the attiremore or less of the constabulary of New York, the spokesman among whom, at the moment I joined his audience, was getting into rather deep waterin an effort to fit the kind of halo acceptable to modern evangelicalson the head of Martin Luther. 

As I passed from group to group, with each step a certain inevitablequestion grew more insistent upon a reply; and so, coming to one ofLondon's founts of wisdom and knowledge, I put it to him. "I suppose, " Isaid, indicating the various speakers with a semicircular gesture, "theydon't do all this for nothing?" The policeman closed one eye. "Notthey, " he answered; "they've all got sympathizers somewhere. "

Well, live and let live is a good maxim, thought I, and there surelynever was such a wonderful world as this, and so I came away; and it wasthen that something occurred which (for everything so far has been sheerprologue) led to these remarks. I was passing the crowd about one of thegentlemen--the more brazenly confident one--who deny the existence of abeneficent Creator, when the words, "Looking like a dying duck in athunderstorm, " clanged out, followed by a roar of delighted laughter;and in a flash I remembered precisely where I was when, forty and moreyears ago, I first heard from a nursemaid that ancient simile and was sostruck by its humour that I added it to my childish repertory. And fromthis recollection I passed on to ponder upon the melancholy truth thatoriginality will ever be an unpopular quality. For here were two orthree hundred people absolutely and hilariously satisfied with such abattered and moth-eaten phrase, even to-day, and perfectly content thatthe orator should have so little respect either for himself or for themthat he saw no disgrace in thus evading his duty and inventing somethingnew. 

But was that his duty? That was my next thought; and a speech by thateternally veracious type whom Mr. Pickwick met at Ipswich, and who, forall his brief passage across the stage of literature, is more real thanmany a prominent hero of many chapters, came to mind to answer it. Irefer to Mr. Peter Magnus, who, when Mr. Pickwick described Sam Welleras not only his servant and almost friend, but an "original, " replied inthese deathless words: "I am not fond of anything original; I don't likeit; don't see any necessity for it. " And that's just it. The tribe ofMagnus is very large; it doesn't like originality, and doesn't see anynecessity for it--which, translated into the modern idiom, would run"has no use for it. " Hence the freethinker was right, and the longer hecontinues to repose his faith in ancient comic _clichés_ the greaterwill be his success. 

And then I thought for the millionth time what an awful mistake it is tobe fastidious. Truly wise people--and by wisdom I mean an aggregation ofthose qualities and acceptances and compromises that make for a fairlyunruffled progress through this difficult life--truly wise people arenot fastidious. They are easily pleased, they are not critical, and--andthis is very important--they allow of no exceptions among human beings. Originals bore them as much as they did Mr. Magnus. One of the astutestmen that I know has achieved a large measure of his prosperity andgeneral contentment by behaving always as though all men were alike. Because, although of course they are not alike, the differences are tootrifling to matter. He flatters each with the same assiduity andgrossness, with the result that they all become his useful allies. Thosethat do not swallow the mixture, and resent it, he merely accuses ofinsincerity or false modesty; yet they are his allies too, because, although they cannot accept his methods, being a little uncertain as towhether his intentions may not have been genuinely kind, or his judgmenthonestly at fault, they give him the benefit of the doubt. 

The Oldest Joke

Many investigators have speculated as to the character of the firstjoke; and as speculation must our efforts remain. But I personally haveno doubt whatever as to the subject-matter of that distant pleasantry:it was the face of the other person involved. I don't say that Adam wascaustic about Eve's face or Eve about Adam's: that is improbable. Nordoes matrimonial invective even now ordinarily take this form. But aftera while, after cousins had come into the world, the facial jest began;and by the time of Noah and his sons the riot was in full swing. Inevery rough and tumble among the children of Ham, Shem, and Japhet, Ifeel certain that crude and candid personalities fell to the lot, at anyrate, of the little Shems. 

So was it then; so is it still to-day. No jests are so rich as thosethat bear upon the unloveliness of features not our own. The tinieststreet urchins in dispute always--sooner or later--devote their retortsto the distressing physiognomy of the foe. Not only are they conformingto the ancient convention, but they show sagacity too, for to sum up anopponent as "Face, " "Facey, " or "Funny Face, " is to spike his gun. Thereis no reply but the cowardly _tu quoque_. He cannot say, "My face is notcomic, it is handsome"; because that does not touch the root of thematter. The root of the matter is your opinion of his face asdeplorable. 

Not only is the recognition of what is odd in an opponent's countenanceof this priceless value in ordinary quarrels among the young and theill-mannered (just as abuse of the opposing counsel is the best way ofcovering the poverty of one's own case at law), but the music-hallhumorist has no easier or surer road to the risibilities of most of hisaudience. Jokes about faces never fail and are never threadbare. Sometimes I find myself listening to one who has been called--possiblythe label was self-imposed--the Prime Minister of Mirth, and heinvariably enlarges upon the quaintness of somebody's features, often, for he is the soul of impartiality, his own; and the first time, nowthirty years ago, that I ever entered a music-hall (the tiny stuffy oldOxford at Brighton, where the chairman with the dyed hair--it was morepurple than black--used to sit amid a little company of bloods whoseproud privilege it was to pay for his refreshment), another George, whose surname was Beauchamp, was singing about a siren into whoseclutches he had or had not fallen, who had

 an indiarubber lip Like the rudder of a ship. 

--So you see there is complete continuity. 

But the best example of this branch of humour is beyond all questionthat of the Two Macs, whose influence, long though it is since theyeclipsed the gaiety of the nation by vanishing, is still potent. Thoughgone they still jest; or, at any rate, their jests did not all vanishwith them. The incorrigible veneration for what is antique displayed bylow comedians takes care of that. "I saw your wife at the masked balllast night, " the first Mac would say, in his rich brogue. "My wife wasat the ball last night, " the other would reply in a brogue of deeperrichness, "but it wasn't a masked ball. " The first Mac would thenexpress an overwhelming surprise, as he countered with the devastatingquestion, "Was _that_ her face?"

"You're not two-faced, anyway. I'll say that for you, " was theapparently magnanimous concession made by one comedian to another in arecent farcical play. The other was beginning to express hisgratification when the speaker continued: "If you were, you wouldn'thave come out with that one. " Again, you observe, there is no answer tothis kind of attack. Hence, I suppose, its popularity. And yet perhapsto take refuge in a smug sententiousness, and remark crisply, "Handsomeis as handsome does, " should now and then be useful. But it requiressome self-esteem. 

There is no absolute need, however, for the face joke to be applied toothers to be successful. Since, in spite of the complexion creams, "plumpers, " and nose-machines advertised in the papers, faces willcontinue to be here and there somewhat Gothic, the wise thing for theirowners is to accept them and think of other things, or consolethemselves before the unflattering mirror with the memory of thosemortals who have been both quaint-looking and gifted. Wiser stillperhaps to make a little capital out of the affliction. Public men whoare able to make a jest of the homeliness of their features never loseby it. President Wilson's public recital of the famous lines on hiscountenance (which I personally find by no means unprepossessing) didmuch to increase his popularity. 

 As a beauty I am not a star, There are others more handsome by far. But my face, I don't mind it, For I keep behind it; It's the people in front get the jar. 

And an English bishop, or possibly dean, came, at last, very near earthwhen in a secular address he repeated his retort to the lady who hadcommented upon his extraordinary plainness: "Ah, but you should see mybrother. " There is also the excellent story of the ugly man before thecamera, who was promised by the photographer that he should have justicedone to him. "Justice!" he exclaimed. "I don't want justice; I wantmercy. "

The great face joke, as I say, obviously came first. Because there werein the early days none of the materials for the other staple quips--suchas alcohol, and sausages, and wives' mothers. Faces, however, werealways there. And not even yet have the later substitutes ousted it. Just as Shakespeare's orator, "when he is out, " spits, so does the funnyman, in similar difficulties, if he is wise, say, "Do you call that aface?" and thus collect his thoughts for fresh sallies. If all "dials"were identical, Mr. George Graves, for example, would be a stagebankrupt; for, resourceful as he is in the humour of quizzicaldisapproval, the vagaries of facial oddity are his foundation stone. 

Remarkable as are the heights of grotesque simile to which all theGeorges have risen in this direction, it is, oddly enough, to the otherand gentler sex that the classic examples (in my experience) belong. Ata dinner-party given by a certain hospitable lady who remained somethingof an _enfante terrible_ to the end of her long life, she drew theattention of one of her guests, by no means too cautiously, to thefeatures of another guest, a bishop of great renown. "Isn't his face, "she asked, in a deathless sentence, "like the inside of an elephant'sfoot?" I have not personally the honour of this divine's acquaintance, but all my friends who have met or seen him assure me that thesimilitude is exact. Another lady, happily still living, said of theface of an acquaintance, that it was "not so much a face, as a part ofher person which she happened to leave uncovered, by which her friendswere able to recognize her. " A third, famous for her swift analyses, said that a certain would-be beauty might have a title to good looks butfor "a rush of teeth to the head. " I do not quote these admirableremarks merely as a proof of woman's natural kindliness, but to show howeven among the elect--for all three speakers are of more than commonculture--the face joke holds sway. 

The Puttenhams

I

From _The Mustershire Herald and Oldcaster Advertiser_

"The new volume of _The Mustershire Archæological Society's Records_ is, as usual, full of varied fare. .. . But for good Oldcastrians the mostinteresting article is a minute account of the Puttenham family, so wellknown in the town for many generations, from its earliest traceable datein the seventeenth century. It is remarkable for how long the Puttenhamswere content to be merely small traders and so forth, until quiterecently the latent genius of the blood declared itself simultaneouslyin the constructive ability of our own millionaire ex-townsman, SirJonathan Puttenham (who married a daughter of Lord Hammerton), and inthe world-famous skill of the great chemist, Sir Victor Puttenham, thediscoverer of the Y-rays, who still has his country home on our borders. The simile of the oak and the acorn at once springs to mind. "

II

Miss Enid Daubeney, who is staying at Sir Jonathan Puttenham's, to herSister

MY DEAR FLUFFETY, --There are wigs on the green here, I can tell you. Aunt Virginia is furious about a genealogy of the Puttenham family whichhas appeared in the county's archæological records. It goes back ever sofar, and derives our revered if somewhat stodgy and not-too-generousuncle-by-marriage from one of the poorest bunches of ancestors a knightof industry ever had. Aunt Virginia won't see that, from such loins, thefarther the spring the greater the honour, and the poor man has had nopeace and the article is to be suppressed. But since these things arepublished only for subscribers and the volume is now out, of coursenothing can be done. Please telegraph that you can't spare me anylonger, for the meals here are getting impossible. Not even the peachescompensate. --Your devoted ENID

III

Sir Jonathan Puttenham to the Rev. Stacey Morris, Editor of _TheMustershire Archæological Society's Records_

DEAR SIR, --I wish to utter a protest against what I consider a seriousbreach of etiquette. In the new volume of your _Records_, you print anarticle dealing with the history from remote times of the family ofwhich I am a member, and possibly the best-known member at the presentday. The fact that that family is of humble origin is nothing to me. What I object to is the circumstance that you should publish thismaterial, most of which is of very little interest to the outside world, without first ascertaining my views on the subject. I may now tell youthat I object so strongly to the publication that I count on you tosecure its withdrawal. --I am, Yours faithfully, JONATHAN PUTTENHAM

IV

Horace Vicary, M. D. , of Southbridge, to his old friend the Rev. StaceyMorris

MORRIS, --It's a good volume, take it all round. But what has given me, in my unregeneracy, the greatest pleasure is the article on thePuttenhams. For years the Puttenhams here have been putting on airs andholding their noses higher than the highest, and it is not only (as theysay doubly of nibs) grateful and comforting, but a boon and a blessing, to find that one of their not too remote ancestors kept a public-house, and another was a tinsmith. And I fancy I am not alone in mysatisfaction. 

Yours, H. V. 

V

Sir Victor Puttenham, F. R. S. , to the Editor of _The MustershireArchæological Society's Records_

DEAR SIR, --As probably the most widely-known member of the Puttenhamfamily at the present moment, may I thank you for the generous spacewhich you have accorded to our history. To what extent it will bereadable by strangers I cannot say, but to me it is intenselyinteresting, and if you can arrange for a few dozen reprints in paperwrappers I shall be glad to have them. I had, of course, some knowledgeof my ancestors, but I had no idea that we were quite such anundistinguished rabble of groundlings for so long. That drunkenwhipper-in to Lord Dashingham in the seventeen-seventies particularlydelights me. --I am, Yours faithfully, VICTOR PUTTENHAM

VI

From Sir Jonathan Puttenham to the Editor of _The Mustershire Herald andOldcaster Advertiser_

DEAR SIR, --I shall be obliged if you will make no more references in_The Herald_ to the new _Mustershire Archæological Records'_ article onthe Puttenhams. It is not that it lays emphasis on the humble origin ofthat family. That is nothing to me. But I am at the moment engaged in acorrespondence with the Editor on the propriety of publishing private orsemi-private records of this character without first asking permission, and as he will possibly see the advisability of withdrawing the articlein question there should be as little reference to it in the Press aspossible. --I am, Yours faithfully, JONATHAN PUTTENHAM

VII

The Rev. Stacey Morris to Sir Jonathan Puttenham

The Editor of _The Mustershire Archæological Society's Records_ begs toacknowledge Sir Jonathan Puttenham's letter of the 15th inst. He regretsthat the publication of the Puttenham genealogy should have so offendedSir Jonathan, but would point out, firstly, that it has for years been acustom of these Records to include such articles; secondly, that thevolume has now been delivered to all the Society's members; thirdly, that there are members of the Puttenham family who do not at all shareSir Jonathan's views; and, fourthly, that if such views obtainedgenerally the valuable and interesting pursuit of genealogy, of whichour President, Lord Hammerton, to name no others, is so ardent a patron, would cease to be practised. 

VIII

Miss Lydia Puttenham, of "Weald View, " Rusper Common, Tunbridge Wells, to Lady Puttenham

DEAR COUSIN MILDRED, --I wonder if Sir Victor has seen the article on ourfamily in _The Archæological Records_. I am so vexed about it, not onlyfor myself and all of us, but particularly for him and you. It is notright that a busy man working for humanity, as he is doing, should beworried like that. Indeed I feel so strongly about it that I have sentin my resignation as a member of the Society. Why such things should beprinted at all I cannot see. It is most unfair and unnecessary to gointo such details, nor can there be the slightest reason for doing so, for the result is the dullest reading. Perhaps Sir Victor could get itstopped. Again expressing my sympathy, I am, Yours affectionately, LYDIA PUTTENHAM

IX

The Rev. Stacey Morris to Ernest Burroughs, the compiler of thePuttenham genealogy

MY DEAR BURROUGHS, --We are threatened with all kinds of penalties by SirJonathan Puttenham, the great contractor, over your seamy revelations. It is odd how differently these things are taken, for the other greatPuttenham, the chemist, Sir Victor, is delighted and is distributingcopies broadcast. Equal forms of snobbishness, a Thackeray would perhapssay. But my purpose in writing is to say that I hope you will continuethe series undismayed. 

Yours sincerely, STACEY MORRIS

Poetry made Easy

In the admirable and stimulating lecture given to the EnglishAssociation by Professor Spurgeon on "Poetry in the Light of War, " Icame again upon that poem of Rupert Brooke's in which he enumeratescertain material things that have given him most pleasure in life. "Ihave been so great a lover, " he writes, and then he makes a list of hisloves, thus following, perhaps all unconsciously, Lamb's _John Woodvil_in that rhymed passage which, under the title "The Universal Lover, " hasbeen detached from the play. But Lamb, pretending to be Elizabethan, dealt with the larger splendours, whereas Rupert Brooke's modernity tookcount of the smaller. John Woodvil's list of his loves begins with thesunrise and the sunset; Rupert Brooke sets down such mundane anddomestic trifles as white plates and cups, the hard crust of bread, andthe roughness of blankets. 

This, to strangers to the poem, may not sound very poetical, but theymust read it before they judge. To me it is at once one of the mostsatisfying and most beautiful leaves in the Georgian anthology. Here isa passage:

 Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter too; and body's pain Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks, and shining pools on grass; --All these have been my loves. 

My reason in quoting these fine and tender lines is to point out howsimple a thing poetry can be; how easily we, at any rate for a fewmoments--even the most material, the most world-brutalized of us, --canbecome poets too. For I hold that any man searching his memory for thethings that from earliest days have given him most delight, andsincerely recording them, not necessarily with verbal garniture at all, is while he does so a poet. A good deal of Whitman is little else butsuch catalogues; and Whitman was a great poet. The effort (even withoutthe reward of this not-always-desired label) is worth making, because(and this is where the poetry comes in) it forces one to visit the pastand dwell again in the ways of pleasantness before the world was toomuch with us and life's hand had begun to press heavily: most of suchloves as Rupert Brooke recalls having their roots in our childhood. Hence such poetry as we shall make cannot be wholly reading withouttears. 

I find that on my list of loves scents would take a very importantplace--the scent of gorse warmed by the sun coming almost first, gorseblossoms rubbed in the hand and then crushed against the face, geraniumleaves, the leaves of the lemon verbena, the scent of pine trees, thescent of unlit cigars, the scent of cigarette smoke blown my way from adistance, the scent of coffee as it arrives from the grocer's (see whata poet I am!), the scent of the underside of those little cushions ofmoss which come away so easily in the woods, the scent of lilies of thevalley, the scent of oatcake for cattle, the scent of lilac, and, forreasons, above all perhaps the scent of a rubbish fire in the garden. 

Rupert Brooke mentions the feel of things. Among the loves of the senseof touch I should include smooth dried beans, purple and spotted, andhorse-chestnuts, warm and polished by being kept in the pocket, andptarmigan's feet, and tortoiseshell spoons for tea-caddies. And amongsounds, first and foremost is the sound of a carriage and pair, but veryhigh in position is that rare ecstasy, the distant drum and panpipes ofthe Punch and Judy. Do they play the panpipes still, I wonder. And howshould I behave if I heard them round the corner? Should I run? I hopeso. Scent, sound, touch, and sight. Sight? Here the range is too vast, and yet here, perhaps, the act of memory leads to the best poetry ofall. For to enumerate one's favourite sights--always, as Rupert Brookemay be said to have done, although not perhaps consciously, in the moodof one who is soon to lose the visible world for ever--is to become, nomatter how humble the list, a psalmist. 

The mere recollecting and recording even such haphazard memories asthese has had the effect of reconstructing also many too-long-forgottenscenes of pure happiness, and has urged me about this dear England ofours too, for I learned to love gorse on Harpenden Common, and pinewoodsat Ampthill, and moss in Kent, and the scent of coffee in the kitchen ofa home that can never be rebuilt, and--but poetry can be pain too. 

A Pioneer

To be the first is always an achievement, even though the steps falter. To be the first is also a distinction that cannot be taken away, becausewhoever comes after must be a follower; and to follow is tame. Itoccasionally happens that the first, no matter how many imitate him, isalso the best; but this cannot be said of Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, retiredmedical officer on pension, a tiny pamphlet by whom has just flutteredmy way. 

Mr. Dutt's pioneer work was done in the realms of poesy, somewhen in theeighteen-sixties, and the fruits are gathered together in this_brochure_ under the title _Songs_, published at Chittagong, in India, which, in some bewildering way, reached a second edition in 1886. In theopening "distich" Mr. Dutt makes the claim to be the first Asiatic poetto write in English, and if that is true this insignificant workbecomes the seed of which the full flower is the gifted Rabindra, son ofTagore, whose mellifluous but mystic utterances lie, I am told, on everyboudoir table. Me they, for the most part, stump. 

Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, although a pioneer, made no claim himself to haveoriginated the startling idea of writing songs "in English word" andEnglish rhyme; he merely accepted the suggestion and acted upon it. Thesuggestion came, under divine guidance, from Mr. J. D. Ward, theChittagong magistrate. Here are the lines, setting forth thatepoch-making moment, in an address to the Deity:

 I thank Thee for an idea that Thou has created in my heart On which through the faculty I met now a very fresh art. 

 . .. 

 Being myself desired by the Chittagong magistrate, Mr. J. D. Ward, Got encouraged and commence writing a few songs in English word. 

To Mr. Ward, then, much honour; and, indeed, one of Ramkinoo Dutt'spleasantest qualities is his desire always to give honour where it isdue. Mr. Ward was perhaps his especial darling among the white sahibsof Chittagong, but all are praised. Thus, in another invocation toHeaven, we read:

 King, conqueror of nations, encourage two sorts of mortals, One skilled in war, the other in counsel. 

 If so, why not Captain Macdonald should be the former? If so, why not Mr. J. D. Ward would be the latter?

And here is part of a "distich on arrival of 38th N. I. ":

 We paid a visit upon Captain John A. Vanrenen, He is a high-spirited hero and jolly gentleman, So is the Lieutenant George Fergus Graham, So is the Lieutenant Henry Tottenham. 

The last poem of all is wholly devoted to eulogies of Chittagongworthies. For example, Mr. H. Greavesour, the judge, Is a pious and righteous man, Administering justice with mental pain. 

Of Mr. D. R. Douglas:

 There is Mr. D. R. Douglas, Joint Magistrate, His judgment is pure, yes, on the highest rate. 

And Mr. A. Marsh, Magistrate-Collector:

 He is devout, holy man, naturally shy, His mind seems runs through righteous way. 

And the Executive Engineer, Mr. C. A. Mills:

 The energitic gentleman is getting on well. 

All these were living and probably in daily reception of the obeisancesof the retired medical officer who esteemed them so highly; but Dr. Beatson was dead:

 We lost, lately lost, Dr. W. B. Beatson. We again shall never gain him in person. .. . He is a Dr. Philanthropist, He is a Dr. Physiognomist, He is a Dr. Anatomist, He is His Lordship's personal Surgeon. 

It will be seen already that Mr. Dutt had not yet mastered hisinstrument, but he did not lack thoughts: merely the power to expressthem. Throughout these thirty odd pages one sees him floundering in themorass of a new language, always with something that he wants to say butcan only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line byline more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With allthe mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings andgropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to Christianity have been more frank. 

 I would not accept a second creation, I thank the Omnipotent for his kind protection. From my minority, I profess the mendacity, Passed days in poverty, From my minority. Perpetually my duty, Sobbing under perplexity. Nothing least prosperity, But sad and emotion. 

 I gave up the heathenism, And its favouritism, Together with the Hinduism. 

 I gave up the heathenism. Neither the fanaticism, Nor the paganism, Or my idiotism, Could enrich me with provision. 

Such was the poetical pioneer, Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, who (supposingalways that we may accept his statement as true) was the first Hindu towrite English verse. 

Full Circle

I have lately been the witness of two phenomena. 

Not long ago two officers and gentlemen (whom I had never seen beforeand one of whom, alas! I shall never see again) descended from a bluesky on to a neighbouring stretch of sward; had tea with me in my garden;and, ascending into the blue again, were lost to view. Since it isseldom that the heavens drop such visitants upon us in the obscureregion in which I live, it follows that while the aviators were absentfrom their machine the news had so spread that by the time they rejoinedit and prepared to depart, a crowd had assembled not unworthy of beingcompared, in point of numbers, with that which two workmen in London canbring together whenever they begin to make a hole in the wood-blockpaving. I had not thought so many people lived in the neighbourhood. Every family, at any rate was represented, while the rector looked onwith the tolerant smile that the clergy keep for the wonders of science, and just at the last moment up panted our policeman on his bicycle, andpulling out his notebook and pencil for the aviators' names (Heavenknows why), set upon the proceedings the seal of authority. 

Whatever may be said against aeroplanes in full flight, and there isquite a long indictment--that they are, for instance, not at all likebirds, and much more like dragon-flies, and are too noisy, and toorigid, and so forth, --no one in his senses can deny that as they risefrom the ground--especially if you are behind them and they are recedingswiftly in a straight line from you, and even more so if you arepersonally acquainted with the occupants--they have beautiful andexciting qualities. Not soon shall I forget the sight as my guests intheir biplane glided exquisitely from the turf into the air and, afterone circular sweep around our bewildered heads, swam away in thedirection of the Hog's Back. 

That was phenomenon No. 1. Phenomenon No. 2--also connected with themechanics of quicker movement than Shanks's mare ever compassed--wasone of those old high bicycles, a fifty-two inch, I should guess, datingfrom the late eighteen-seventies, which, although the year was 1916, wasbeing ridden along the Brighton front. 

I am, unhappily, old enough to have been the owner of a bone-shaker, upon which I can assure you I had far more amusing times than on any ofits luxurious progeny, even though they were fitted with every devicethat all the engineers' brains in the world, together with the white hatand beard of Mr. Dunlop, have succeeded in inventing. Being able toremember the advent of the high bicycle and the rush to the windows andgates whenever word went forth that one was approaching (much as a fewof the simpler among us still run when the buzz of the aeroplane isheard), I was, as I watched the interest aroused among Brighton'sbutterflies by this antique relic, in a position to reflect, not I trustsardonically, but at any rate without any feelings of triumph, upon thesymmetrical completion of--I must not say one cycle of mechanicalenterprise, but one era. For this high bicycle (which was perhaps builtbetween thirty and forty years ago) wobbling along the King's Road drewevery eye. Before that moment we had been looking at I know notwhat--the _Skylark_, maybe, now fitted with auxiliary motor power; orthe too many soldiers in blue clothes, with only one arm or one leg, andsometimes with no legs at all, who take the sun near the Palace Pier andare not wholly destitute of female companionship. But when thisoutlandish vehicle came we all stopped to gaze and wonder, and wewatched it out of sight. 

"Look at that extraordinary bicycle!" said the young, to whom it wassomething of the latest. 

"Well, I'm blessed, " said the old, "if there isn't one of those highbicycles from before the Flood!"

And not only did it provide a diverting spectacle, but it gave ussomething to talk about at dinner, where we compared old feats perchedon these strange monsters, in the days when the road from John o' Groatsto Land's End was thick with competitors, and half the male world worethe same grey cloth, and the Vicar of Ripley strove every Sunday forthe cyclist's soul. 

Being myself didactically disposed, I went farther than reminiscence andbored my companions with some such reflections as those that follow. Itis not given (I said) to many of us to have a second time on earth, butthis bicycle is having it, and enjoying it. In the distanteighteen-seventies or eighties it was, as a daring innovation, a marveland a show. Then came (I went on) all the experiments and developmentsunder which cycling has become as natural almost as walking, duringwhich it lay neglected in corners, like the specimen in the LondonMuseum in the basement of Stafford House. And then an adventurous boydiscovered it, and riding it to-day bravely beside that promenade ofsun-beetles, assisted it (I concluded) to box the compass and transformthe Obsolete into the Novelty. 

Some day, if I live, there may visit me from the blue as I totter amongthe flower-beds an aeroplane of so scandalous a crudity and immaturitythat all the countryside, long since weary of the sight and sound offlying machines, then so common that every cottager will have one, willagain cluster about it while its occupants and I drink our tea. 

For with mechanical enterprise there is no standing still. Man, soconspicuously unable to improve himself, is always making his inventionsbetter. 

A Friend of Man

In Two Parts

I. THE FALLEN STAR

Once upon a time there was a pug dog who could speak. 

I found him on a seat in Hyde Park. 

"Good afternoon, " he said. 

Why I was not astonished to be thus addressed by a pug dog, I cannotsay; but it seemed perfectly natural. 

"Good afternoon, " I replied. 

"It's a long time, " he said, "since you saw any of my kind, I expect?"

"Now I come to think of it, " I replied, "it is. How is that?"

"There's a reason, " he said. "Put in a nutshell it's this: Peeks. " Hewheezed horribly. 

I asked him to be more explicit, and he amplified his epigram into:"Pekingese. "

"They're all the rage now, " he explained; "and we're out in the cold. Ifyou throw your memory back a dozen years or so, " he went on, "you willrecall our popularity. "

As he spoke I did so. In the mind's eye I saw a sumptuouscarriage-and-pair. The horses bristled with mettle. The carriage was onC-springs, and a coachman and footman were on the box. They wore claretlivery and cockades. The footman's arms were folded. His gloves were ofa dazzling whiteness. In the carriage was an elderly commanding ladywith an aristocratic nose; and in her lap was a pug dog of plethorichabit and a face as black as your hat. 

All the time my new acquaintance was watching me with streaming eyes. "What do you see?" he asked. 

I described my mental picture. 

"There you are, " he said; "and what do you see to-day? There, look!"

I glanced up at his bidding, and a costly motor was gliding smoothly by. It weighed several tons, and its tyres were like dropsical life-belts. On its shining door was a crest. The chauffeur was kept warm by costlyfurs. Inside was an elderly lady, and in her arms was a russetPekingese. 

"So you see what went when I went, " the pug said, after a noisy pause. "It wasn't only pugs that went; it was carriages-and-pairs, and thesound of eight hoofs all at once, and footmen with folded arms. Wepassed out together. Exeunt pugs. Enter Peeks and Petrol. And now we areout in the cold. "

I sympathized with him. "You must transfer your affection to anotherclass, that's all, " I said. "If the nobs have gone back on you, thereare still a great many pug-lovers left. "

"No, " he said, "that's no good; we want chicken. We must have it. Without it, we had better become extinct. " He wept with the sound of anumber of syphons all leaking together, and waddled away. 

At this moment the man who has charge of the chairs came up for mymoney. I gave the penny. 

"I'm afraid I must charge you twopence, " the man said. 

I asked him why. 

"For the dog, " he said. "When they talks we has to make a charge forthem. "

"But it wasn't mine, " I assured him. "It was a total stranger. "

"Come now, " he said; and to save trouble I paid him. 

But how like a pug!

II. THE NEW BOOK OF BEAUTY

A hundred years ago the Books of Beauty had line engravings by CharlesHeath, and long-necked, ringleted ladies looked wistfully or simperinglyat you. I have several examples: _Caskets_, _Albums_, _Keepsakes_. Thenew Book of Beauty has a very different title. It is called _ThePekingese_, and is the revised edition for 1914. 

The book is different in other ways too. The steel engravers having longsince all died of starvation, here are photographs only, in largenumbers, and (strange innovation!) there are more of gentlemen than ofladies. For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as anystudent of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering asphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a wordcan be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft andvoluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other. Beautiful ladies are here in some profusion, but the first place is forbeautiful and guinea-earning gentlemen. 

In the old Books of Beauty one could make a choice. There was always onelady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than theothers. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to bemore perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I havebeen through the work a score of times and am still wondering on whom myaffections and admiration are most firmly fixed. 

How to play the part of Paris where all the competitors have someirresistibility, as all have of either sex? Once I thought that Wee Moof Westwood was my heart's chiefest delight, "a flame-red little dogwith black mask and ear-fringes, profuse coat and featherings, flat wideskull, short flat face, short bowed legs and well-shaped body. " But thenI turned back to Broadoak Beetle and on to Broadoak Cirawanzi, andYoung Beetle, and Nanking Fo, and Ta Fo of Greystones, and Petshé AhWei, and Hay Ch'ah of Toddington, and that superb Sultanic creature, King Rudolph of Ruritania, and Champion Howbury Ming, and Su Eh ofNewnham, and King Beetle of Minden, and Champion Hu Hi, and Mo Sho, andthat rich red dog, Buddha of Burford. And having chosen these I mightjust as well scratch out their names and write others, for every maleface in this book is a poem. 

The ladies, as I have said, are in the minority, for the obvious reasonthat these little disdainful distinguished gentlemen figure here aspotential fathers, with their fees somewhat indelicately named: sincethere's husbandry on earth as well as in heaven. 

Such ladies as are here are here for their beauty alone and are beyondprice. Among them I note with especial joy Yiptse of Chinatown, MandarinMarvel, who "inherits the beautiful front of her sire, Broadoak Beetle";Lavender of Burton-on-Dee, "fawn, with black mask"; Chi-Fa ofAlderbourne, "a most charming and devoted little companion"; Yeng Loo ofIpsley; Detlong Mo-li of Alderbourne, one of the "beautiful reddaughters of Wong-ti of Alderbourne, " Champion Chaou Chingur, of whomher owner says that "in quaintness and individuality and in lovingdisposition she is unequalled, " and is also "quite a 'woman of theworld, ' very _blasée_ and also very punctilious in trifles"; Pearl ofCotehele, "bright red, with beautiful back"; E-Wo Tu T'su; Berylune TzuHsi Chu; Ko-ki of Radbourne and Siddington Fi-fi. 

Every now and then there is an article in the papers asking andanswering the question, What is the greatest benefit that has come tomankind in the past half-century? The answer is usually the camera, ormatches, or the Marconi system, or the cinema, or the pianola, or theturbine, or the Röntgen rays, or the telephone, or the bicycle, or LordNorthcliffe, or the motor-car. Always something utilitarian orscientific. But why should we not say at once that it was theintroduction of Pekingese spaniels into England from China? Because thatis the truth. 

The Listener

Once upon a time there was a man with such delicate ears that he couldhear even letters speak. And, of course, letters lying in pillar-boxeshave all kinds of things to say to each other. 

One evening, having posted his own letter, he leaned against thepillar-box and listened. 

"Here's another!" said a voice. "Who are you, pray?"

"I'm an acceptance with thanks, " said the new letter. 

"What do you accept?" another voice asked. 

"An invitation to dinner, " said the new letter, with a touch of pride. 

"Pooh!" said the other. "Only that. "

"It's at a house in Kensington, " said the new letter. 

"Well, _I'm_ an acceptance of an invitation to a dance at a duchess's, "was the reply, and the new letter said no more. 

Then all the others began. 

"I bring news of a legacy, " said one. 

"I try to borrow money, " said another, rather hopelessly. 

"I demand the payment of a debt, " said a sharp metallic voice. 

"I decline an offer of marriage, " said a fourth, with a wistful note. 

"I've got a cheque inside, " said a fifth, with a swagger. 

"I convey the sack, " said a sixth in triumph. 

"I ask to be taken on again, at a lower salary, " said another, withtears. 

"What do you think I am?" one inquired. "You shall have six guesses. "

"Give us a clue, " said a voice. 

"Very well. I'm in a foolscap envelope. "

Then the guessing began. 

One said a writ. 

Another said an income-tax demand. 

But no one could guess it. 

"I'm a poem for a paper, " said the foolscap letter at last. 

"Are you good?" asked a voice. 

"Not good enough, I'm afraid, " said the poem. "In fact I've been out andback again seven times already. "

"A war poem, I suppose?"

"I suppose so. I rhyme 'trench' and 'French. '"

"Guess what I am, " said a sentimental murmur. 

"Anyone could guess that, " was the gruff reply. "You're a love-letter. "

"Quite right, " said the sentimental murmur. "But how clever of you!"

"Well, " said another, "you're not the only love-letter here. I'm alove-letter too. "

"How do you begin?" asked the first. 

"I begin 'My Darling, '" said the second love-letter. 

"That's nothing, " said the first; "I begin 'My Ownest Own. '"

"I don't think much of either of those beginnings, " said a new voice. "Ibegin, 'Most Beautiful. '"

"You're from a man, I suppose?" said the second love-letter. 

"Yes, I am, " said the new one. "Aren't you?"

"No, I'm from a woman, " said the second. "I'll admit your beginning'srather good. But, how do you end?"

"I end with 'A million kisses, '" said the new one. 

"Ah, I've got you there!" said the second. "I end with 'For ever andever yours. '"

"That's not bad, " said the first, "but my ending is pretty good in itsway. I end like this: 'To-morrow will be Heaven once more, for then wemeet again. '"

"Oh, do stop all this love talk, " said the gruff voice again, "and besensible like me. I'm a letter to an Editor putting everything right andshowing up all the iniquities and ineptitudes of the Government. I shallmake a stir, I can tell you. I'm It, I am. I'm signed 'Pro BonoPublico. '"

"That's funny!" said another letter. "I'm signed that too, but I stickup for the Government. "

But at this moment the listener was conscious of a hand on his arm and alantern in his face. 

"Here, " said the authoritative tones of a policeman, "I think you'vebeen leaning against this pillar-box long enough. If you can't walk I'llhelp you home. "

Thus does metallic prose invade the delicate poetical realm ofsupernature. 

The Dark Secret

It was the most perfect September day that anyone could remember. Thesun had risen in a dewy mist. The early air was pungent with yellowingbracken. 

Then the mist cleared, the dew disappeared from everywhere but theshadows, and the Red Admirals again settled on the Michaelmas daisies. 

A young man walked up and down the paths of the garden and drank in itssweetness; then he passed on to the orchard and picked from the wetgrass a reddening apple, which he ate. Something pulled at his flanneltrousers: it was a spaniel puppy, and with it he played tillbreakfast-time. 

He was staying with some friends for a cricket match. It was the last ofthe season and his only game that year. As one grows older and busier, cricket becomes less and less convenient, and on the two occasions thathe had arranged for a day it had been wet. 

He had never been a great hand at the game. He had never made 100 oreven 70, never taken any really good wickets; but he liked every minuteof a match, so much so that he was always the first to volunteer tofield when there was a man short, or run for some one who was lame, oreven to stand as umpire. 

To be in the field was the thing. Those rainy interludes in the pavilionwhich so develop the stoicism of the first-class cricketer had no powerto make a philosopher of him. All their effect on him was detrimental:they turned him black. He fretted and raged. 

But to-day there was not a cloud; nothing but the golden September sun. 

It was one of the jolly matches. There was no jarring element: no bowlerwho was several sizes too good; no bowler who resented being taken off;no habitual country-house cricketer whose whole conversation was thejargon of the game; no batsman too superior to the rest; no acerbitouscaptain with a lost temper over every mistake; no champagne for lunch. Most of the players were very occasional performers: the rest weregardeners and a few schoolboys. Nice boys--boys who might have come fromWinchester. 

He was quickly out, but he did not mind, for he had had one gloriousswipe and was caught in the deep field off another, and there is nobetter way of getting out than that. 

In the field he himself stood deep, and the only catch that came to himhe held; while in the intervals between wickets he lay on the sweetgrass while the sun warmed him through and through. If ever it was goodto be alive. .. . 

And suddenly the sun no longer warmed him, and he noticed that it hadsunk behind a tree in whose hundred-yard-long shadow he was standing. For a second he shivered, not only at the loss of tangible heat, but atthe realization that the summer was nearly gone (for it was still earlyin the afternoon), and this was the last cricket match, and he hadmissed all the others, and he was growing old, and winter was coming on, and next year he might have no chance; but most of all he regretted theloss of the incredible goodness of this day, and for the first time inhis life the thought phrased itself in his mind: "No sooner do we graspthe present than it becomes the past. " The haste of it all oppressedhim. Nothing stands still. 

"A ripping day, wasn't it?" said his host as they walked back. 

"Perfect, " he replied, with a sigh. "But how soon over!"

They stopped for a moment at the top of the hill to look at the sunset, and he sighed again as his thoughts flew to that print of the"Melancholia" which had hung on the stairs in his early home. 

"Notice the sunset, " some visitor had once said to him. "Some day youwill know why Dürer put that in. "

And now he knew. 

That evening he heard the Winchester boys making plans for the wintersports at Pontresina in the Christmas vac. 

The Scholar and the Pirate

In an old bookshop which I visit, never without making a discovery ortwo--not infrequently, as in the present case, assisted in my goodfortune by the bookseller himself--I lately came upon an edition ofLong's _Marcus Aurelius_ with an admirable prefatory note that is, Ibelieve, peculiar to this issue--that of 1869. And since the eyes of thepresent generation have never been turned towards America so often andso seriously as latterly, when our Trans-Atlantic cousins have becomeour allies, blood once more of our blood, the passage may be reprintedwith peculiar propriety. Apart, however, from its American interest, thedocument is valuable for its dignity and independence, and it had theeffect of sending me to that rock of refuge, _The Dictionary of NationalBiography_, to inquire further as to its author. There I found thatGeorge Long, whose translation of the Imperial Stoic is a classic, wasborn in 1800; educated at Macclesfield Grammar School and TrinityCollege, Cambridge; in 1821 was bracketed Craven scholar with Macaulayand Professor Malden, but gained a fellowship over both of them; and in1824 went to Charlotteville, Virginia, as professor of ancientlanguages. Returning in 1828 to profess Greek at University College, London, he was thenceforward, throughout his long life, concerned withthe teaching and popularizing of the classics, finding time, however, also to be called to the Bar, to lecture on jurisprudence and civil law, and to help to found the Royal Geographical Society. His _MarcusAurelius_ is his best-known work, but his edition of Cicero's Orations, his discourse on Roman Law, and his Epictetus also stand alone. Aftermany years' teaching at Brighton College, Long retired to Chichester, where he died in 1879. 

Late in life he brought out anonymously a book of essays, entitled _AnOld Man's Thoughts about Many Things_, in which I have been dipping. Ido not say it would bear reprinting now, but anyone seeing it on afriend's shelf should borrow it, or in a bookshop should buy it, because such kindly good sense, such simple directness and candour andlove of the humanities are rare. It has its mischief, too. The oldscholar's opinion on statue-making in general and on London's statues inparticular are expressed with a dry frankness that is refreshing. I makeno effort to resist quoting a little:

 "It is in the nature of things that statues should be made. They were made more than two thousand years ago, and I believe the business has never stopped, for when people could not get good statues, they were content with bad, as we are now. 

 "If I might give advice to the men now living, who look forward to the honour, if it is an honour, of being set up in bronze in the highways, or in marble in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's; if I might advise, I would say, leave a legacy in your will for your own statue. It will save much trouble and people will think better of you when you are gone, if you cost them nothing. As to their laughing at you for looking after your own statue, be not afraid of that. 

 "It is very disagreeable nowadays to see a man standing for ever on his legs in public, doing nothing but stand, and seeming as if he were never going to do anything else. 

 "If a man shall try to persuade me that a statue should be nothing more than the effigy of a man standing on a pedestal, I shall never be convinced. I would rather see a living man standing on an inverted cask, as I have seen a slave when he was sold, not that the sale is a very pleasant thing to see, but the man produced a much better effect than many of our statues, for he expressed something and they express nothing. 

 "As we cannot or at least ought not to make our statues naked or blanket-dressed, and as body and legs are merely given to a statue in order to support the head, for the legs and body might be any legs and any body, would it not be wise to be satisfied with the head only? This would be a great saving, and though the sculptor would get less for a head than for a head with body and legs to it, he would have more heads to make. This is a hint, which I throw out by the way, for the consideration of committees who sit on statues, by which I mean men who sit together to talk about a thing of which most of them know nothing. 

 "When the negroes of Africa have been brought to the same state of civilization as the white man, they will make statues and set them up in public; and as we who are white make black statues, they who are black will of course make white statues. 

 "Can anybody say what sin Dr. Jenner committed for which he does perpetual penance, not in white, but in black, his face black and his hands too, seated in the most public part of London, fixed to his chair, with no hope of rising from it?

 "This seated figure might be anybody. I see nothing by which I recognize Dr. Jenner; to say nothing of a cow, there is not even a calf by his side, with the benevolent physician's hand on the animal. 

 "I cannot approve of a seated black statue in the open air--a black man sitting, and no more. 

 "I sincerely pity our seated gentlemen in London, poor Cartwright, who looks like an old cobbler on his stool, and Fox, worse treated still, blanket-dressed, fat and black. No wonder some shortsighted man from the new Confederate States once took Fox for a negro woman, the emblem of British philanthropy and a memorial of the abolition of the slave trade. 

 "The only beasts on which we can now place our heroes are horses. I may be wrong in my opinion, but I see no beauty in a horse standing still and a man's legs dangling down from the beast's back; nor do I think that the matter is mended by the horse and rider being of colossal size, though they ought to be larger than life. Perhaps we shall not have any more of these statues; but is it impossible to remove those that we have?

 "As we are a fighting people, we have been great makers of statues of fighting men. We put them even in churches. This reminds that when the time shall come for finishing and adorning the inside of St. Paul's, there will be an enormous quantity of old stone to dispose of, which is now in the shape of generals, captains, admirals, lions and other animals. 

 "It is singular, or it is not singular, I can't say which, that we who box, wrestle, run and in many ways work our bodies, more than any other nation, have not employed our sculptors to immortalize our athletic heroes. Some of them would make good subjects for the artist. He might strip the boxer or runner naked, if he liked, and exhibit his art in the representation of strength and beauty of form. I have some misgivings about the faces of boxers, which are not remarkable for beauty, but the artist may improve them a little without destroying the likeness; and besides, in a naked figure we look less at the face than at the body and limbs. The champion of England would certainly have had a statue by Lysippus or some artist as good, if he had been lucky enough to live in ancient times. .. . We shall, of course, want a place to put these statues in, for we may be sure they will not get into the churches, which are only made for statues of fighting men who have killed somebody or ordered somebody to kill somebody. 

 "I could go on much longer, but I don't choose. I write to amuse myself, and also to instruct, and when I am tired, I stop. I see no reason why I should exhaust the subject. I should only be giving my ideas to people who have none, who make a reputation out of other folks' brains, who pounce on anything that they find ready to their hand, and flood us with books made only to sell. "

It is already, I imagine, abundantly clear that Long would not have muchliked many things that we do to-day. Writing of "Place and Power, " hesays: "At that very distant time when all members of Parliament shall beAndrew Marvells and will live on two hundred a year, poor men may do ourbusiness for us; but for the present I prefer men who are rich enough tolive without the profits of place. I wish somebody would move for areturn of all the visible and invisible means of support which everymember of the Commons has. I want to know how much every man in theHouse receives of public money, whether he is soldier, sailor, place-holder, sinecurist, or anything else; and also how much he has bythe year of his own. " Elsewhere he says: "There is no occasion to printany more sermons. .. . I have always wondered why so much is written onthe doctrines and principles of Christianity and on good living, when wehave it done long ago in a few books which we all refer to as ourauthority. " And this is good: "I wish Euclid could have secured aperpetual copyright. It might have helped the finances of the Greeks. "

But I am not proposing to dissect Long's essays; it is the fine rebuketo an American publisher that I want to bring to your notice, for thereLong's habitual serenity takes an edge. His protest runs thus:

 "I have been informed that an American publisher has printed the first edition of this translation of M. Antoninus. I do not grudge him his profit, if he has made any. There may be many men and women in the United States who will be glad to read the thoughts of the Roman Emperor. If the American politicians, as they are called, would read them also, I should be much pleased, but I do not think the emperor's morality would suit their taste. 

 "I have also been informed that the American publisher has dedicated this translation to an American. I have no objection to the book being dedicated to an American, but in doing this without my consent the publisher has transgressed the bounds of decency. I have never dedicated a book to any man, and if I dedicated this, I should choose the man whose name seemed to me most worthy to be joined to that of the Roman soldier and philosopher. I might dedicate the book to the successful general who is now the President of the United States, with the hope that his integrity and justice will restore peace and happiness, so far as he can, to those unhappy States which have suffered so much from war and the unrelenting hostility of wicked men. 

 "But, as the Roman poet said, Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni;

 and if I dedicated this little book to any man, I would dedicate it to him who led the Confederate armies against the powerful invader, and retired from an unequal contest defeated, but not dishonoured; to the noble Virginian soldier, whose talents and virtues place him by the side of the best and wisest man who sat on the throne of the Imperial Cæsars. --GEORGE LONG. "

That is excellent prose, is it not? The general to whom Long woulddedicate the edition was Robert Edward Lee, who had then become head ofthe Washington College and survived only until 1870. The President atthe time that Long wrote was General Grant, to whom Lee surrendered. 

One or two anecdotes of Long which have recently come my way would aloneconvince me, apart from the evidence of his record and his writings, that here was a very sterling and very independent "character" of whommuch more should be known. Some day I hope to know more. Meanwhile Irelate one of the stories. An appeal for cast-off clothing for the poorclergy being made, some one took the line that such an appeal was _infradig_. Long smoked, pondered, and thus delivered himself: "But is it notparamount that these gentlemen should have trousers?"

A Set of Three

The other day I saw three sights, and, although they have no connexionwith each other, each was in its way sufficiently evocative of thoughtto make that day a little more interesting than most. 

It was the first day of the tardy spring of 1917, or rather the firstday into which had crept those hints that the power of the long, cruelwar-winter must some day be broken. The sun was almost visible, and atenderness now and then touched the air, and no one who is at allresponsive to weather conditions could fail to be a little elated andbelieve once more not only in a future of sorts but also in a lurkingbenignancy somewhere. Stimulated myself in this way, even although I wasapproaching a rehearsal of a _revue_, I came suddenly in the King's Roadupon that disused burial-ground opposite the Six Bells, and was awarethat, sitting there on seats facing the road, in white aprons and caps, with shawls over their shoulders, were five of the saddest old ladies Ihave ever seen--occupants, I presume, of a neighbouring workhouse. Therethey sat, saying nothing, and watching without enthusiasm the passers-byand the 'buses and the taxis and all the hurry and scurry of anexistence from which they are utterly withdrawn and which they will soonleave for ever. Being on my frivolous errand, I was pulled up very shortby the spectacle of five such stallholders as these whom the bigger_revue_ which we call life had left so cold; and not only cold, but sotired and so white, as life loves to do. There was a poignancy in theirvery placidity, in the folded hands and the incommunicableness of them, that was very searching. There was criticism too. Hardly more sentientthan the mummies which were displayed to the guests at Egyptian feasts, they were equally admonitory. .. . 

I was glad again to be in the theatre listening to the familiar tones ofthe producer wondering why in thunder no one but himself had thefaintest respect for punctuality. 

Later in the day I saw a blinded officer, with both eyes bandaged, beingled along Sloane Street. Blinded men are, alas! not rare, and it was notthe officer himself that attracted my notice, but two fine, upstandingyoung soldiers who as they passed him saluted with as much punctilio asthough he could see them. Of this salute he was, of course, whollyunconscious, but the precision with which it was given, and, indeed, thefact that it was given at all, could not but make an impression on theobserver. It seemed to comprise so thoroughly both the spirit and theletter of discipline. 

And late that night I watched in the Tube, after the theatres, a manand a small eager-faced boy talking about something they had been tosee. Although sitting exactly opposite them, I have no idea what theysaid, but they amused each other immensely as they recalled this jokeand that. Nothing extraordinary in this, you will say. But there was. The reason why I was so profoundly interested to be a witness of thescene was that they were deaf and dumb, and the whole conversation wascarried on by signs; not by the alphabet that one learnt at school inorder to communicate during class, but a rapid synthetic improvementupon it, where two or three lightning-quick movements--gesturegrammalogues--sufficed to convey whole sentences of meaning. It isperhaps curious, but I had never before been brought into such closecontact with the deaf and dumb; I have never even been--as, since Iprofess to explore and study London, I should have been--to that churchin Oxford Street, opposite the great secret emporium, where the deaf anddumb worship and by signs are exhorted to be good. Beyond watching thatboys' school which one sees gesticulating on the Brighton front, I hadnever until this night seen these afflicted creatures in intimate andsparkling talk. I found the sight not only interesting, but as cheeringas those poor old things in the King's Road oasis had been saddening. Because the unfortunates were making such a splendid fight for it. Noboy with every faculty about him could have been gayer or merrier thanthis mute with the dancing eyes; nor can I conceive of a spokenconversation that contained a completer interchange of ideas in the samespace of time. 

At Oxford Circus they got out, and left me pondering on deafness anddumbness. To be dumb, of course, is, comparatively speaking, nothing;for most of the perplexities of life come from talk. But to be deaf--tolive ever in silence, to see laughing lips moving, to see handswandering over the keys, to see birds exulting, and be denied theresultant harmonies: that must be terrible. Yet terrible only to thosewho have known what the solace and gaiety of words and the beauty ofsound can be. To have been born deaf is different, and I have no doubtwhatever that the deaf and dumb have delectable lands of their own intowhich we can never stray, where wonderful flowers of silence grow. It iseven possible, since all the visible world is theirs, that they neverenvy us at all. 

A Lesson

God--it is notorious--works in a mysterious way to get morality anddecency into us; which is another way of saying that not all light iscommunicated by the Episcopal bench, by clerks in holy orders, bydivines who do not conform, or by editors at Whitefield's Tabernacle. 

The other day, for example, I had lunch with a very charming actress ina pleasant restaurant. 

"Rather a funny thing happened the last time I was here, " she remarked. 

"Yes?" I replied languidly. 

"About you. "

"Oh!" I said with animation. "Do tell me. "

"It was also at lunch, " she explained. "The people at the next tablewere talking about you. I couldn't help hearing a little. A man theresaid he had met you in Shanghai. "

"Not really!" I exclaimed. 

"Yes. He met you in Shanghai. "

"That's frightfully interesting, " I said. "What did he say about me?"

"That's what I couldn't hear, " she replied. "You see, I had to pay someattention to my own crowd. I only caught the word 'delightful. '"

Ever since she told me this I have been turning it over in my mind; andit is particularly vexing not to know more. "Delightful" can be suchjargon and mean nothing--or, at any rate, nothing more than amiability. Still, that is something, for one is not always amiable, even whenmeeting strangers. On the other hand, it might be, from this man, thehighest praise. 

The whole thing naturally leads to thought, because I have never beenfarther east than Athens in my life. 

What did the man mean? Can we possibly visit other cities in our sleep?Has each of us an _alter ego_, who can really behave, elsewhere?

Whether we have or not, I know that this information about my Shanghaidouble is going to be a great nuisance to me. It is going to change mycharacter. In fact, it has already begun to change it. Let me give youan example. 

Only yesterday I was about to be very angry with a telegraph boy whobrought back a telegram I had dispatched about two hours earlier, sayingthat it could not be delivered because it was insufficiently addressed. Obviously it was not the boy's fault, for he belonged to our countrypost office, and the telegram had been sent to London and was returnedfrom there; and yet I started to abuse that boy as though he were notonly the Postmaster-General himself but the inventor of red-tape intothe bargain. And all for a piece of carelessness of my own. 

And then suddenly I remembered Shanghai and how delightful I was there. And I shut up instantly, and apologized, and rewrote the message, andgave the boy a shilling for himself. If one could be delightful inShanghai one must be delightful at home too. 

And so it is going to be. There is very little fun for me in the future, and all because of that nice-mannered double in Shanghai whom I must notdisgrace. For it would be horrible if one day a lady told him that shehad overheard some one who had met him in London and found him to be abear. 

=ON BELLONA'S HEM=

(SECOND SERIES)

ON BELLONA'S HEM

A Revel in Gambogia

There are certain ebullitions of frivolity about which, during the war, one has felt far from comfortable. To read reports of them, side by sidewith the various "grave warnings" which every one has been uttering, isto be almost too vividly reminded of England's capacity for dividedaction. But there are also others; and chief among these I should setthe fancy-dress carnival of munition-workers at which I was privilegedto be present one Saturday night. Here was necessary frivolity, if youlike, for these myriad girls worked like slaves all the week, day andnight, and many of them on Sundays too--and "National filling, " as theirparticular task is called, is no joke either--and it was splendid to seethem flinging themselves into the fun of this rare careless evening. 

Fancy dress being the rule, it was only right and proper that thereshould be prizes for the best costumes; and since the lady who shed herbeneficence over this prismatic throng does nothing by halves, she hadcalled in the assistance of two artists to adjudicate. I will not makepublic their names; that would be to overstep the boundaries of decorumand turn this book into sheer journalism. But I will say that one ofthem is equally renowned in Chelsea for his distinguished brushwork andhis wit; and that the other's extravaganzas cheer a millionbreakfast-tables daily. How I, who am not an artist, and so little of acostumier that I did not even wear evening dress, got into this _galère_is the mystery. I can explain it only by a habit of good fortune, for Ichanced to be in the studio of the Chelsea artist at the moment when thebeneficent lady arrived to put her request to him, and, noticing mypathetic look, she in her great kindness included me in the invitation. 

Deciding on the best costume when there are many hundreds of them, andthey pass before the dazzled eye in a swift procession of couples, isnot easy; and only very remarkable men could perform the task. Womenmight find it easier, because they would not be influenced, as one ofour judges obviously was, by the external claims of personal beauty. Awoman would look at the costume and nothing else, make her notes withscientific precision, and prepare for the next. But when the competitorsare all--or almost all--girls, and most of them pretty and all jolly, why, how can you expect impartiality, especially in artists, and at anyrate without a struggle? But in spite of the difficulties set up by theimpact of so much charm upon the emotional susceptibilities of at anyrate one judge, the process of selecting a first, second, and third wasaccomplished with, I should say--speaking as a calm, detached spectator, with all my feelings well under control--absolute equity. 

The first prize went to a slender lady of whose features I can saynothing because I never saw them, her Eastern costume including a veilthat covered her face. But it seemed to these not too discerning eyesthat she was otherwise of an attractive shapeliness. As to her, thejudges were unanimous; but when it came to the second they were divided. The Chelsea judge, again swayed by passion, and possibly recalling oldtriumphs in his Latin Quarter days, preferred a French costume; theother was firm for an Indian. What would have happened I dare not think, for each was a powerful and determined man, ready to stick at nothing, had I not, in my cool-headedness, been inspired to suggest tossing upfor it, and the result was that, the coin showing heads, the Indian won, and the French costume naturally took the third prize. There were thentwo prizes to be awarded for the most original costumes, the previousones having been for the prettiest costumes, and here the winner was ajovial lady who with her own hands had transformed herself into anadvertisement for a certain soup powder. 

The iron laws of etiquette (or is it finance?) which so cramp the styleof any writer who refers to advertisements forbid me to state whatparticular soup powder this was; but according to the hoardings, the wayin which a pennyworth will nourish and rejoice the human frame is, asthe Americans say, something fierce. If the applause of the company wasa guide, this prizewinner is a very popular figure among our "Nationalfillers. " The second prize went to a very ingenious costume called"Tommy's Parcel, " consisting of most things that a soldier likes toreceive, and so thorough in design as to comprise, tied to the lady'sshoes, two packets of a harmful necessary powder without a copioussprinkling of which no trench is really like home. If the approvingglances at "Tommy's Parcel" from a young officer who was at my side areany indication, there are few of our warriors who would not welcome itwith open arms. 

And then--the prizes being all awarded--all these nice girls, on whoseactivities England has been so largely depending for safety, set againto partners. 

But why, you ask, Gambogia? I thought you would want to know that. It isbecause in the making of munitions at the factory from which these girlsall come there are certain chemicals which have the effect of turningthe skin yellow. And among these merry revellers were some thus--but, Ihope and believe, only temporarily--disfigured. The cheerfulness withwhich they are prepared to run these risks, not to mention others moreperilous but less menacing to personal vanity, is not the least of thefinenesses of character which the war has brought out; and the thoughtof that and of their hard work and their gay courage made the spectacleof the happy high spirits of this evening of playtime even more asatisfaction. 

The Misfire

When I entered the third smoker there was, as there now always is, asoldier in one corner. 

Just as we were starting, another soldier got in and sat in the oppositecorner; and within two minutes they knew all about each other's camp, destination and regiment, and had exchanged cigarettes. 

The first soldier had not yet left England and was stolid; the new-comerhad been in the trenches, had been wounded in the leg, had recovered, was shortly going back, and was animated. His leg was all right, exceptthat in wet weather it ached. In fact he could even tell by it when wewere going to have rain. His "blooming barometer" he called it. Here helaughed--a hearty laugh, for he was a genial blade and liked to hearhimself talk. 

The first soldier did not laugh, but was interested. He thought it aconvenient thing to have a leg that foretold the weather. 

"Which one is it?" he asked. 

"The left. "

The first soldier was disproportionately impressed. 

"The left, is it?" he said heavily, as though he would have understoodthe phenomenon in the right easily enough. "The left. "

Completely unconscious of the danger-signals, the second soldier nowbegan to review his repertory of stories, and he started off with thatexcellent one, very popular in the early days of the war, about thewealthy private. 

For the sake of verisimilitude he laid the scene in his own barracks. "Afunny thing happened at our place the other day, " he began. He hadevidently had great success with this story. His expression indicatedapproaching triumph. 

But no anticipatory gleam lit the face of his new friend. It was in factone of those faces into which words sink as into sand--a white, puffy, long face, with a moustache of obsolete bushiness. 

"I thought I should have died of laughing, " the narrator resumed, utterly unsuspicious, wholly undeterred. 

In the far corner I kept my eye on my book but my ears open. I could seethat he was rushing to his doom. 

"We were being paid, " he went on, "and the quartermaster asked one ofthe men if he did not wish sixpence to be deducted to go to his wife. The man said, 'No. ' 'Why not?' the quartermaster asked. The man said hedidn't think his wife would need it or miss it. 'You'd better begenerous about it, ' the quartermaster said; 'every little helps, youknow. '"

He paused. "What do you think the man said to that?" he asked his newfriend. "He said, " he hurried on, "'I don't think I'll send it. You see, I allow her four thousand a year as it is. '"

The raconteur laughed loudly and leaned back with the satisfaction--orat least some of it--of one who has told a funny story and told it well. 

But the other did not laugh at all. His face remained the dull thing itwas. 

"You see, " said the story-teller, explaining the point, "there are allsorts in the Army now, and this man was a toff. He was so rich that hecould afford to allow his wife four thousand pounds a year. Fourthousand pounds! Do you see?"

"Oh yes, I see that. He must have been very rich. Why was he just aprivate?"

"I don't know. "

"Funny being a private with all that money. I wonder you didn't askhim. "

"I didn't, anyway. But you see the point now. No end of a joke for thequartermaster to try and get a man who allowed his wife four thousand ayear to deduct sixpence a week to send to her! I thought I should havedied of laughing. "

The first soldier remained impassive. "And what happened?" he asked atlast. 

"What happened?"

"Yes, what was done about it? The sixpence, I mean. Did he agree to sendit?"

The second soldier pulled himself together. "Oh, I don't know, " he saidshortly. "That's not the point. "

"After all, " the other continued, "the regulations say that married menhave to deduct sixpence for their wives, don't they?"

"Yes, of course, " the other replied. "But this man, I tell you, alreadygave her four thousand a year. "

"That doesn't really touch it, " said the first soldier. "The principle'sthe same. Now----"

But I could stand the humiliation of the other honest fellow, sobrimming with anecdote and cheerfulness, no longer; and I came to hisrescue with my cigarette case. For I have had misfires myself. 

A Letter

(_From Captain Claude Seaforth to a novelist friend_)

MY DEAR MAN, --You asked me to tell you if anything very remarkable camemy way. I think I have a story for you at last. If I could only write Iwould make something of it myself, but not being of Kitchener's Army Ican't. 

The other day, while I was clearing up papers and accounts, and all overink, as I always get, the Sergeant came to me, looking very rum. "Twoyoung fellows want to see you, " he said. 

Of course I said I was too busy and that he must deal with them. 

"I think you'd rather see them yourself, " he said, with another oddlook. 

"What do they want?" I asked. 

"They want to enlist, " he said; "but they don't want to see thedoctor. "

We've had some of these before--consumptives of the bull-dog breed, youknow. Full of pluck but no mortal use; knocked out by the first routemarch. 

"Why don't you tell them that they must see the doctor and have donewith it?" I asked the Sergeant. 

Again he smiled queerly. "I made sure you'd rather do it yourself, " hesaid. "Shall I send them in?"

So I wished them farther and said "Yes"; and in they came. 

They were the prettiest boys you ever saw in your life--too pretty. Onehad red hair and the other black, and they were dressed like navvies. They held their caps in their hands. 

"What's this rubbish about not seeing a doctor?" I asked. You know mybrutal way. 

"We thought perhaps it could be dispensed with, " Red Hair said, drawingnearer to Black Hair. 

"Of course it can't, " I told them. "What use to the Army are weaklingswho can't stand the strain? They're just clogs in the machinery. Don'tyou see that?"

"We're very strong, " Red Hair said, "only----"

"Only what?"

"Only----" Here they looked at each other, and Red Hair said, "Shallwe?" and Black Hair said, "Yes"; and they both came closer to me. 

"Will you promise, " said Red Hair, "that you will treat as confidentialanything we say to you?"

"So long as it is nothing dangerous to the State, " I said, rather proudof myself for thinking of it. 

"We want to fight for our country, " Red Hair began. 

"No one wants to fight more, " Black Hair put in. 

"And we're very strong, " Red Hair continued. 

"I won a cup for lawn-tennis at Devonshire Park, " Black Hair added. 

"But----" said Red Hair. 

"Yes, " I replied. 

"Don't you believe in some women being as strong as men?"

"Certainly, " I said. 

"Well, then, " said Red Hair, "that's like us. We are as strong as lotsof men and much keener, and we want you to be kind to us and let usenlist. "

"We'll never do anything to give ourselves away, " said Black Hair; but, bless her innocent heart, she was giving herself away all the time. Every moment was feminine. 

The rum thing is that, although I had been conscious of something odd, Inever thought they were girls. Directly I knew it, I knew that I hadbeen the most unobservant ass alive; for they couldn't possibly beanything else. 

"My dear young ladies, " I said at last, "I think you are splendid and anexample to the world; but what you ask is impossible. Have you thoughtfor a moment what it would be like to find yourselves in barracks withthe ordinary British soldier? He is a brave man and, when you meet himalone, he is nearly always a nice man; but collectively he might not doas company for you. "

"But look at this, " said Red Hair, showing me a newspaper-cutting abouta group of Russian girls known as "The Twelve Friends, " who have beenthrough the campaign and were treated with the utmost respect by thesoldiers. 

"And there's a woman buried at Brighton, " said Black Hair, "who foughtas a man for years and lived to be a hundred. "

"And think of Joan of Arc, " said Red Hair. 

"And Boadicea, " said Black Hair. 

"Well, " I said, "leaving Joan of Arc and Boadicea aside, possibly thoseRussians and that Brighton woman looked like men, which it is certainyou don't!"

"Oh!" said Black Hair, who was really rather peculiarly nice. "Then whydidn't you spot us before?"

One for me. 

"I have no doubt I should have done so in a moment more, " I said. "Thefact is"--what cowards we are!--"I was preoccupied when you came in. "

Black Hair looked adorably as if she didn't believe it. 

"But anyway, " I went on, "we must be serious. What would your peoplesay?"

"We left word, " said Red Hair, "that we were going off to do somethingfor our country. They won't worry. Oh, please be kind and help us!"

Here all four of their beautiful eyes grew moist. 

I could have hugged both of them, especially perhaps Black Hair, but Ikept an iron hand on myself. 

"You nice absurd creatures, " I said, "do be reasonable. To begin with, passing the doctor is an absolute necessity. That shuts you out. Buteven if you got through, how do you think you would be helping yourcountry? All the men would be falling in love with you; and that's badenough as it is after working hours; it would be the ruin of discipline. And you could not bear the fatigue. No, go back and learn to be nursesand let your lovely hair grow again. "

They were very obstinate and very unwilling to entertain the thought ofdrudgery such as nursing after all their dreams of excitement; but atlast they came to reason, and I sent for a cab and packed them off in it(I simply could not bear the idea of other people seeing them in thatmasquerade), and told them that the sooner they changed the better. 

After they had gone the Sergeant came in about something. 

I said nothing, and he said nothing, each of us waiting for the other. 

He moved about absolutely silently, and I dared not meet his glancebecause I knew I should give myself away. The rascal has not beenrunning his eye over young women all these years without being able totell them in a moment, even in navvy's clothes. 

At last I could stand it no longer. "Damn it, " I said, "what are youdoing? Why don't you go? I didn't send for you. " But still I didn't darelook up. 

"I thought perhaps you had something to say to me, sir, " he said. 

"No, I haven't, " I replied. "Why should I? What about?"

"Only about those two young men, sir, " he replied. 

"Get out, " I said; but before he could go I had burst into laughter. 

"Better not mention it, " I managed to say. 

He promised. 

There--won't you find that useful?

Yours, C. S. 

A Manor in the Air

The stately homes of England have ever numbered some very odd names. Every one remembers that beautiful Southern retreat whither, to thedelight of the wags, Mr. Balfour often journeyed for his week-endholiday--"Clouds, " the seat of the Wyndhams. Could there be a much morefascinating name than "Clouds"? And then there is "Wrest, " the late LordLucas's Bedfordshire home, afterwards transformed, how suitably, into ahospital for soldiers. And there is that Midland paradise which, in thedays of placid, even life, the editors of illustrated weeklies alwaysrecollected with gratitude when they were short of otherpictures--"Compton Wynyates. "

But the new name which I have just discovered, and which fills theinward eye with joy, is a house on a smaller scale than these--amanor-house rather than a mansion, perhaps one of the smallest that canbe described as a "gentleman's place, " but assuredly that. Somewhere inSussex, western Sussex. 

It is not near the station, and to reach it you walk or drive alongwinding roads just now sodden with rain, but smelling of the good wetSussex leaves and mast and soil, with the Downs rising not too manymiles away in the South. Then a turn into a narrow lane, with the baretrees of a copse on either side and a scurrying pheasant in front ofyou, and behold the white gate! There is no lodge--the house is just toosmall for that, as you can now see for yourself, for there it is, underthe protection of the wood that rises behind it, so quiet andself-contained that you almost gasp. 

Very old it is, but good for many years more. The frame is of timber andplaster, and a Horsham stone roof. These stones are a little damp andmoss-covered (for our ancestors insisted on building in a hole, or wherewould Friday's fish come from?), and the place is as Tudor as Queen Bessherself, in whose reign its foundations were dug. The chimney stacks, all smoking with the thin blue smoke of logs, are of tiny Tudor bricks, and the chimneys are set not square with the house but cornerways. Along low façade with the central door in a square porch; the whole gravebut serene. 

A path of more Horsham stone leads to the door, with thyme and lavenderspringing from the interstices undismayed by the feet of man, and smoothlawns on each side, and under the diamond-paned windows a bed where insummer would be night stock and lemon verbena and tobacco plant andmignonette. On the roof a few white fantails; a spaniel near the door;and a great business of rooks in the sky. Through the windows of thelower rooms you see the greenery at the back of the house and asuggestion here and there of books and pictures--everything that makes ahouse a home. 

Beside the house on the right are the stables; and on the other side isa dark shrubbery, and beyond that are more lawns and gardens and thefish-pond. 

Do you see it? Perhaps you have already seen it differently; for howcould you help forming some mental picture of it when in every carriageon the L. B. & S. C. R. Is posted up the notice, "Passengers to LowerBlinds"?

To me "Lower Blinds, " whither all these fortunate passengers arejourneying, is just such a manor-house as that. 

Rivalry

When I sat down on the seat facing the Row there was already on it asoldier in the familiar blue clothes. He had the red moustache whichinevitably leads to the nickname of "Ginger, " or possibly "Carrots, " andhe was smoking a cigarette. By his side were his crutches. After aminute or so a very tall figure, also in blue, hobbled towards us andtook the space between Ginger and myself. 

The freemasonry of arms has, I suppose, always, among rankers, made anyintroduction needless; but there has unhappily come in a new and a superfreemasonry which goes beyond anything that uniform could do. I mean thefreemasonry of mutilation. By reason of their wounds these strangerswere as brothers. 

At first they talked hospitals. Then regiments. Then Haig, of whom ithas so finely and finally been said, by another British hero: "'Aig 'edon't say much; 'e don't, so to say, say nothin'; but what 'e don't saydon't mean nothin', not 'arf. But when 'e do say something--my Gawd!"Then they came to grips and mentioned the cause of theirinjuries--bullet or shrapnel. Then the time and the place. Both had beenhit in the knee, and this coincidence, operating like all coincidences, added to their friendliness. Their cigarettes finishing simultaneously, Ginger gave Six-foot-two one of his; and Six-foot-two offered his littlepacket to Ginger in exchange. 

"Do you often come here?" Ginger asked. 

"Every fine day, " said Six-foot-two, "unless there's a ride in a brakeor a free matinee on the tappy. "

"I must look you up again, " said Ginger. 

"Do, " said Six-foot-two. "When do you expect to leave?"

"I can't say, " replied Ginger. "There's no knowing. You see mine's avery extraordinary case. " He smiled complacently. 

"That's funny. So's mine, " said Six-foot-two. 

"How do you mean--extraordinary?" the other asked a little sharply. 

"Why, the doctors have had so much difficulty with it. It's a unique, they say. How many operations did you have?"

"How many did you have?" Ginger replied, with the caution of thechallenged. 

"Go on--I asked you first, " said Six-foot-two. "Was it more than eight, anyway?"

"It was ten, " said Ginger. 

"Well, I had eleven, " said Six-foot-two proudly. "They went after thosebullets eleven times. But they're all out now. I had every doctor in theplace round me. "

"So did I, " said Ginger, "and one of my bullets isn't out yet. It'sright in the bone. They're going to try again soon. " He had quiterecovered his good-humour. 

"What about your patella?" Six-foot-two inquired after a pause. 

"My what?"

"Your patella. Do you mean to say the doctors didn't talk about that?"

"I dare say they may have done, but I don't remember. Still, _our_doctors don't talk much--they act. "

"Well, so do ours. There aren't better doctors in the world than at ourplace, I can tell you. It's common knowledge. Why, Sir Rashleigh Hewittis there every day--the great Sir Rashleigh Hewitt, the King's doctor. "

"Well, the King has more than one. Sir Frank Carver is another, and he'sat our place day and night. He's a masterpiece. "

"I've always understood, " said Six-foot-two, "that Sir Rashleigh is atthe very head of his profession. The nurses say so. "

"He may be for some things, " Ginger conceded. "But not the knee. SirFrank Carver is the crack knee man. Now if you'd been at our place Idare say that one operation would have been enough for you. "

"Enough? What rot! How could it be enough, with all the complications? Itell you it's a unique, my case. "

"Yes, it may be. But what I'm getting at is that it might not be ifyou'd had Sir Frank Carver, the great knee specialist, at it at once. "

"Oh, give Sir Frank Carver a rest. Sir Rashleigh Hewitt's good enoughfor me and for anyone else who knows. "

"All right, " said Ginger. "Keep your hair on!"

"My hair's on right enough, " said Six-foot-two. "It's you who aregetting ratty. "

There was a pause, and both lighted new cigarettes, each taking one ofhis own. 

"What puzzles me, " Six-foot-two began slowly, "is no one saying anythingabout your patella. That's the great marvel of my case--my patella. It'sfull of holes, like a sieve. There's never been one like it before. Theprofession's wild about it. That's what makes me so interesting tothem. "

"Where is it, anyway?" Ginger snapped out. 

"In the knee, of course. "

"In the knee! Well, if it's in the knee mine must be full of holes too. I've got everything you can have in the knee, I tell you. Everything. "

"Have they written anything about you in the papers?" Six-foot-twoasked. "No. Ah, " he went on triumphantly, "they have about me. There's amedical paper with a piece in it all about my patella. I sent it homeand they've framed it. It's the most astonishing thing in surgery thatI should be able to be walking about at all. "

"That's what they tell _me_, " Ginger replied. "But, anyhow, your bulletsare all out. I've got another one yet, and by the time that's out I daresay I shall have had twenty operations and a whole column in the papers. But as for articles in papers, they're nothing. Have you got your X-rayphotograph?"

"No, " Six-foot-two admitted. 

"They gave me mine, " said Ginger. "I sent it home. It's over themantelpiece, my mother says. People come from miles to look at it. It'sa pity you didn't get yours. That was foolish of you, if I may say so. Well, so long. I'm having tea to-day with one of our grand lady visitorsin Rutland Gate. If you don't see me here when you come again, thechances are I shall be having my next operation. So long!"

"So long!" said Six-foot-two. 

Ginger on his crutches moved away. 

"Extraordinary, " Six-foot-two murmured, either to me or to himself or tothe Park at large, "how some blokes always want to be the most importantthings in the world. "

A First Communion in the War Zone

Everyone who has made a stay in Paris or in any French town, and hasbeen at all observant, must have noticed, either singly or in littlegroups, that prettiest of the flora and fauna of Roman Catholiccountries, a "first communicant" in her radiant and spotlessattire--from white shoes to white veil, and crown of innocence over all. One sees them usually after the ceremony, soberly marching through thestreets, or flitting from this friend to that like runaway lilies. Prinking and preening a little in the shop windows, too; and no wonder, for it is something to be thus clad and thus important; and never willsuch clothes be worn by these wearers again. Meanwhile the youngerchildren envy, and little attendant bodies of proud relations somewherein the vicinity admire and exult. 

If I write as if all "first communicants" are little girls, it isbecause it is the little girls who are the most noticeable. And whocares about little boys anyway? Yet boys communicate too, and in theirbroad white collars and with their knots of white ribbon they may alsobe seen, although less frankly delighted; indeed, often a littleself-conscious and ashamed. But the little girls, who know instinctivelythat women are the backbone of the Roman Catholic Church, they arenatural and full of happy pride; they carry it off with style. 

In the spring of 1915 it was my fortune not only to know personally abouquet of these eager little French pietists, but to be present as oneof the congregation at the great event--their _première communion_. Itwas not in Paris, nor in a town at all, but far away in the country, ina village where the guns of Verdun could be heard in the lulls of theservice. There were six little girls in all, and I saw them pass intothe safe keeping of their new mother, the Church of Rome, and in visibletoken receive from the officiating hands a pictorial certificate sochromatically violent that it could not but satisfy any childish eyesand, under such conditions of emotional excitement, must ever remain asa symbol of their consecration. I heard, too, the curé's address tothese lambs, in which he briefly outlined the life and character ofChrist and of certain of the disciples, coming to each with much thesame tender precision and ecstasy as a fastidious and enthusiasticcollector to the choicest porcelain. 

But what chiefly interested me was the form of the vow which the goodcuré--one of the best of men, who, in September 1914, saw his churchreduced to ruins and most of his parish destroyed by fire by theinvading Huns, and never budged from his post--had himself recentlydrawn up for such occasions. What the usual form of such documents is Icannot say, but in view of the serious plight of France and therenaissance of patriotic fervour in the brave and unconquerable Frenchnation, the curé had infused into this one an element of public dutyhitherto omitted. 

At the end of the "jolie cérémonie, " as in conversation he called it, and as it truly was, I asked him for a copy of this admirable catechism, and here are a few of its questions and answers. 

The title is "A Promise to be a good Christian and a good Citizen ofFrance":

_Q. What is the road to Heaven?_

_A. That which my mother, the Holy Roman Church, shows me. If I followit, I am convinced that, while gaining happiness for myself, I shallincrease the glory of my family and the honour of my country. _

_Q. Does the Church command you to obey the legitimate laws of yourcountry?_

_A. Yes; and I must be ready, if needful, to give my blood for her. _(Poor little white peacocks!)

_Q. On whom do you count to assist you?_

_A. Here, on earth, on my parents and on my instructors. Above, on God, on the angels and the saints, and principally on my guardian angel, onthe holy Saint Peter, and on the blessed Joan of Arc. _

_Q. Who are your enemies?_

_A. The enemies of France, and those who, all unenlightened, attack theChurch. _

_Q. What is your ambition?_

_A. To see France victorious and united in a bond of love with theChurch, to see her add to the tricolour the Image of the Sacred Heart, and to see her take soon her place at the head of the nations. _

Is not that rather fine? It must be to the good thus to blend religionand patriotism. I know that, especially on that soil over which theGermans had spread so devastatingly, one could not listen to these freshyoung voices raised together in such idealism without a quickenedheart. 

The Ace of Diamonds

The French, always so quick to give things names--and so liberal aboutit that, to the embarrassment and undoing of the unhappy foreigner, theysometimes invent fifty names for one thing--have added so many words tothe vocabulary since August 1914 that a glossary, and perhaps more thanone, has been published to enshrine them. Without the assistance of thisglossary it is almost impossible to understand some of the numerousnovels of Poilu life. 

By no means the least important of these creations is the infinitesimalword "as"--or rather, it is a case of adaptation. Yesterday "as descarreaux" (to give the full form) stood simply for ace of diamonds. To-day all France, with that swift assimilation which has ever been oneof its many mysteries, knows its new meaning and applies it. And what isthis new meaning?

Well "as" has two. Originally it was applied strictly to flying men, andit was reserved to signify an aviator who had brought down his fifthenemy machine. Had he brought down only four he was a gallant fellowenough, but he was not an "as. " One more and he was an ace of diamonds, that card being the fifth honour in most French games as well as inBridge. 

So much for the first and exact meaning of the term. But later, as Igather from a number of _La Baïonnette_ devoted to its uses, the wordhas been extended to cover all kinds of obscure heroes, the men, andthey are by no means rare, who do wonderful things but do not get intothe papers or receive medals or any mention in dispatches. We all knowthat many of the finest deeds performed in war escape recognition. Onedoes not want to suggest that V. C. 's and D. S. O. 's and Military Crossesand all the other desirable tokens of valour are conferred wrongly. Nothing of the kind. They are nobly deserved. But probably there neverwas a recipient of the V. C. Or the D. S. O. Or the Military Cross whocould not--and did not wish to--tell his Sovereign, when the covetedhonour was being pinned to his breast, of some other soldier not lessworthy than himself of being decorated, whose deed of gallantry wasperformed under less noticeable conditions. The performer of such a deedis an "as" and it is his luck to be a not public hero. 

The "as" can be found in every branch of the army, and he is recognizedas one by his comrades, even although the world at large is ignorant. Perhaps we shall find a word for his British correlative, who must benumerically very strong too. The letter A alone might do it, signifyinganonymous. "Voilà, un as!" says the French soldier, indicating one ofthese brave modest fellows who chances to be passing. "You see thatchap, " one of our soldiers would say; "he's an A. "

That satirical child of the war, _La Baïonnette_ every week devotesitself, as its forerunner, _L'Assiette an Beurre_, used to do, to onetheme at a time, one phase or facet of the struggle, usually in thearmy, but also in civil life, where changes due to the war steadilyoccur. In the number dedicated to the glory of the "as" I find recordedan incident of the French Army so moving that I want to tell it here, very freely, in English. It was, says the writer, before the attack atCarency--and he vouches for the accuracy of his report, for he washimself present. In the little village of Camblain-l'Abbé a regiment wasassembled, and to them spoke their captain. The scene was the yard of afarm. I know so well what it was like. The great manure heap in themiddle; the carts under cover, with perhaps one or two American reapersand binders among them; fowls pecking here and there; a thin predatorydog nosing about; a cart-horse peering from his stable and now and thenscraping his hoofs; a very wide woman at the dwelling-house door; theold farmer in blue linen looking on; and there, drawn up, listening totheir captain, row on row of blue-coated men, all hard-bitten, weary, all rather cynical, all weather-stained and frayed, and all ready to goon for ever. 

This is what the captain said--a tall thin man of about thirty, speakingcalmly and naturally as though he was reading a book. "I have just seenthe Colonel, " he said; "he has been in conference with the Commandant, and this is what has been settled. In a day or two it is up to us toattack. You know the place and what it all means. At such and such anhour we shall begin. Very well. Now this is what will happen. I shall bethe first to leave the trench and go over the top, and I shall be killedat once. So far so good. I have arranged with the two lieutenants forthe elder of them to take my place. He also will almost certainly bekilled. Then the younger will lead, and after him the sergeants in turn, according to their age, beginning with the oldest who was with me atSaïda before the war. What will be left by the time you have reached thepoint I cannot say, but you must be prepared for trouble, as there is alot of ground to cover, under fire. But you will take the point and holdit. Fall out. "

That captain was an "as. "

The Reward of our Brother the Poilu

We often talk of the best poem which the war has produced; and opinionsusually vary. My own vote, so far as England is concerned, is stillgiven to Julian Grenfell's lyric of the fighting man; but if France isto be included too, one must consider very seriously the claims of _LaPassion de Notre Frère le Poilu_, by Marc Leclerc, which may be had in alittle slender paper-covered book, at a cost, in France, where it hasbeen selling in its thousands, of one franc twenty-five. This poem Ihave been reading with a pleasure that calls to be shared with others, for it is not only very touching and very beautiful, but it has alsocertain of those qualities which are more thoroughly appreciated incompany. Beauty and tenderness can make their appeal alone; but humourdemands two at least and does not resent a crowd, and the humour ofthis little masterpiece is very deep and true. 

Did I say I had been reading it? That is to use words with unjustifiablelooseness; rather should I say that I have been in part reading and inpart guessing at it; for it is written in the Angevin patois, which isfar beyond my linguistic capacity. Not that Captain Leclerc is a rustic;on the contrary, he is a man of culture and the author of several books, chiefly on and about Anjou, one of which has illustrations from his ownhand; but it has amused him in this poem to employ his native dialect, while, since he, like so many French authors, is fighting, the soldierlypart of it is authentic. 

It was a poor devil of a Poilu--it begins--and he went to the war, automatically enough, knowing without any words about it that the soilwhich he cultivated must also be defended. That was his duty. Aftersuffering the usual ills of the campaign, suddenly a 210 burst near him, and he never rallied. He just had time to give a few messages to thecorporal before he died. "You must tell my wife, " he said, "but do itgradually; say, I'm ill first. Give what money I have here to my pals, "and so forth. Then, after repeating his testament, he passed quietlyaway. 

On reaching the gate of Heaven the Poilu finds St. Peter beating themats. "Wipe your shoes, " St. Peter says, "and take the right-handcorridor. The Judgment Hall is at the end. " All trembling, the poorfellow passes along the corridor, at the end of which an angel in whitetakes down particulars as to his name, his class, and so forth, andtells him that he is expected. Entering the Judgment Hall, the Poilu isbewildered by its austerity and splendour. The Good God is at the head, between Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. All the saints are there, and the Poilu notices particularly the military ones--St. George, St. Hubert, St. Michael, St. Leonard, St. Marcel, St. Charlemagne, St. Martin, St. Sulpice, St. Barbe, St. Maurice, and St. Jeanne d'Arc. Seeing all these famous soldiers, he exclaims, "It's a Conseil deGuerre! Perhaps I can slip away. " But escape is impossible, and at thismoment the Good God tells him to begin his history. 

"What did you do before the war?" He asks. The Poilu replies that hewas a farmer in a very small way; he worked on the land, and he had somestock--two oxen, a horse, a cow, a wife, some fowls, "and, saving yourpresence, a pig. " "Ah!" exclaims St. Anthony, "a pig! That reminds me!Pigs! Sois béni, mon frère. " But the Good God frowns, and St. Anthonymakes himself very small. 

And then, the Poilu continues, he became a soldier, which leads to theawkward question, had he always behaved himself as such? Alas! itappears that he had not. For one thing, he has not always been sober, heis confessing, when Noah interrupts with the comment that insobriety isnot such a very serious affair. In fact, he himself once . .. And by thistime the reader begins to get the drift of this joyous humane fantasy, the point being that the hierarchy of Heaven are all on the side of thebrave simple soldier who has died that France might live. As how couldthey not be? Another time, the Poilu continues, he was sent to prisonfor cutting a piece from his coat in order to mend the seat of histrousers--in other words, for injuring Government property; and here St. Martin breaks in with indignation at the punishment. "Why, when I didvery much the same, " he says, "and cut my cloak to cover a paralytic, Iwas canonized for it!" And so on. 

Then comes a graver note. The Poilu, feeling an effort to be necessary, for the Good God has never relaxed His sternness throughout, becomeseloquent. Not only was he killed, but before that, he says, he sufferedmuch. The hardships of war on the Western front are terrible. He hadbeen famished, he had been frozen, he had been burned by the sun. He hadbeen sleepless, he had been footsore, and the sweat had poured from himunder his heavy burdens, for often he had carried not only his ownhaversack but those of his comrades. In short. .. . But here St. Simon, speaking softly to Christ, says, "Like you, Lord, at Golgotha. " In myprose this is, of course, too crude; but I assure you that in the poemit is a great moment. And another follows it, for as the Good God stillsays nothing, the Poilu points to the blue robe of the Blessed Virgin, and to the great white beard of the Good God himself, and to the redcloak of our Lord, and exclaims, "Voilà mes trois couleurs. The threecolours of France. It was for them that I have lost my life; fightingfor them has brought me to this Judgment Hall!"

That is fine, is it not? Only the French genius is capable of just sucha splendid blend of naïveté, emotion, and the best kind oftheatricalism. And at these words at last the Good God smiles, andbehind Him Heaven opens for the Poilu to enter. 

There is a little more--for it seems that Heaven is full of Poilus withblue caps, and golden helmets, and wings that remove the possibility ofgetting wet feet or weary feet any more for ever and ever. And our Poilujoins these others, who look happy and are happy, and sings with them"Glory to God in the highest, " while the angels, not perhaps whollywithout irony, answer, "Peace on earth and goodwill to men. "

Note

With the exception of a few pages, the longest essay in this book--thatwhich gives it its title--is now published for the first time. Thepapers grouped under the headings "Diversions" and "On Bellona's Hem"which follow have already appeared in print, in _Punch_ and _TheSphere_, but in their present form have been always revised and oftenextended. 

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD. , EDINBURGH

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