I think they must have had a successful day.
As the posters should have said, "It is worse than unpatriotic, it is bad form, to wear new clothes in war-time."
George and I had been discussing the prospect for elderly and slightly shop-soiled _littérateurs_ under present circumstances. The result was not wholly enlivening.
"If I had a few hundreds clear," said George at last, "I'd give up Fleet Street and start a farm. I've always loved the country."
"My dear George," I answered, speaking slowly, "for a man to take a farm because he loves the country is to make a master of what should remain a mistress."
Just like that. Because I was going slowly I was able at the last moment to substitute the word "mistress" for "servant," which would have been merely banal. Not till then did I recognise the bright perfection of the completed remark. No wonder George stared enviously.
"Nothing as yet." But I had already determined that it should not long remain unset. I mean, in these days one simply can't afford to go chucking gems about in gratuitous conversation. The difficulty was what exactly to do with it.
The sparkling _causerie_ was my first idea. That evening I refilled my fountain-pen, opened a fresh packet of foolscap, and began:--
"It has been wittily observed that for a man to start farming because----"
But there the adverb began to worry me. After all, perhaps it wasn't quite so witty as I had hoped, or at least others might not think it so. And in any case I got no personal credit. Subsequent pages recorded other attempts, as--"Who was the cynical philosopher who----?" or "It may perhaps be objected by the prudent that for a man to start----"
After this I must have decided against starting at all, for nothing more came of the _causerie_.
My next attempt took the form of fiction. I resolved to enshrine the masterpiece in a short story. "The Farm that Failed" seemed to me, and does still, an attractive title. You see the idea of it? Pastoral humour; George, as an amateur husbandman, scored off by sheep and confused by cows. Arrival of town friend, _Amber Dextrius_, on visit. Some sort of love interest. And finally the Epigram. "Ah, my dear fellow," said _Dextrius_, as he flung away his cigarette, "after all you have only proved the great truth that----" And so on.