[Illustration: _Visitor._ "WHY DOES YOUR SERVANT GO ABOUT THE HOUSE WITH HER HAT ON?"
_MISTRESS._ "OH, SHE'S A NEW GIRL. SHE ONLY CAME THIS MORNING, AND HASN'T YET MADE UP HER MIND WHETHER SHE'LL STAY."]
(_As viewed dispassionately by a looker-on._)
WHEN dog with dog elects to fight I take no hand in such disputes, Knowing how hard they both would bite Should I attempt to part the brutes.
So in the case of man and wife My rooted habit it has been, When they engage in privy strife, Never to go and barge between.
Nor do I join the fighting front When Liberal sections disagree, One on the Coalition stunt And one on that of Freedom (Wee).
Though tempted, when I see them tear Each other's eyes, to say, "Be good!" As an outsider I forbear, Fearing to be misunderstood.
Fain would I use my gift of tact And take a mediatorial line, But shrewdly recognise the fact That this is no affair of mine.
Yet may I venture to deplore A great tradition cheaply prized, And yonder, on the Elysian shore, The ghost of GLADSTONE scandalised.
But most for him I mourn in vain Whom Fate has dealt so poor a fist (Recalling SHAKSPEARE'S gloomy Dane, That solid-fleshed soliloquist)--
O curséd spite that he was born (ASQUITH, I mean) to close the breach And save a party all forlorn By mere rotundity of speech.
My friend Arthur's hobby is the stupendous. He conceives himself to be the direct successor of the mediæval travel-story merchants. War-tales, of course, are barred to him, for nothing is too improbable to have happened during the War, and all the best lies were used by professionals while Arthur was still serving. Once, however, in his career he has realised his ambition to be taken for a perfect liar, and that time he happened to be speaking the simple truth. I was his referee and he did it in this wise.
When ALLENBY was making his last great drive against the Turk, he was no doubt happy in the knowledge that Arthur and I were pushing East through Bulgaria to take his adversary in the rear. We pushed with speed and address, but just when it looked as if we should exchange the tactical for the practical we stopped and rusticated at the hamlet of Skeetablista, on the Turco-Bulgarian frontier.
Skeetablista was under the control of Marko and Stefan and an assorted following of Bulgar cut-throats. Although the mutual hatchet had been interred a bare three weeks we found ourselves among friends. Thomas Atkins was soon talking Bulgarian with ease and fluency, while his "so-called superiors," as the company Bolshevik put it, celebrated the occasion by an international dinner in Marko's quarters. The dinner consisted chiefly of rum (provided by us) and red pepper (provided by Marco and Stefan).