When the contract was signed, witnessed and posted on its way to the other signatories there was a general sense of relief that Christmas would not be very different from usual after all. Henry growled a good deal. But we know our Reverend Henry: he will do his duty when the time comes.
"The Prince of Wales noticed a private in his own regiment, the Grenadier Guards, who is six feet inches in height. He is six feet inches in height."--_Scotsman._
It sounds silly, but the writer evidently means it.
_Voice from below._ "FOR 'EAVEN'S SAKE, MUM, GET BACK. THE FIRE-ESCAPE WILL BE 'ERE IN FIVE MINUTES."
_Endangered Female._ "Five minutes? Then throw me back my knitting."
A Philistine? Then you will smile At this old willow-pattern plate And junks of long-forgotten date That anchor off Pagoda Isle;
At little pig-tailed simpering rakes Who kiss their hands (three miles away) To dainty beauties of Cathay Beside those un-foreshortened lakes.
With hand on heart they smile and sue. Their topsy-turvy world, you say, Is out of all perspective? Nay, 'Tis we who look at life askew.
Dreams lose their spell; hard facts we prize In our humdrum philosophy; But, could we change, who would not be A suitor for those azure eyes?
Who would not sail with fairy freight Piloting some flat-bottomed barge-- A size too small, or else too large-- On this old willow-pattern plate?
"The 'Figaro' publishes a telegram from Petrograd which contradicts the German announcement that Lodz is occupied by the Kermans."--_Lancashire Evening Post._
There was a battlefield, I was told, with a ruined village near it, about as far from Paris as Sevenoaks is from London, and I decided to see it. The preliminaries, they said, would be difficult, but only patience was needed--patience and one's papers all in order. It would be necessary to go to the War Bureau, opposite the Invalides.
I went to the War Bureau opposite the Invalides one afternoon. I rang the bell and a smiling French soldier opened the door. Within were long passages and other smiling French soldiers in little knots guarding the approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third. The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular military mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, smiled more than any of them, and, having heard my story, said that that was certainly the place to obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impossible to go by any other way than road, as the railway was needed for soldiers and munitions of war, and therefore I must bring my chauffeur with me, with his papers, which must be examined and passed.