Part 3

"I'm awfully sorry, dear," said Ursula, entering the study with an air of contrition. "It isn't my fault; but the Carter girls are here having tea, and the eldest one has brought her birthday-book." She held out the detestable little volume as she spoke.

"You know perfectly well that I never---- Is the eldest the one with dark eyes?"

"Yes, that's the girl. She's going to be a lady-gardener."

It was like a voice from heaven. "For this once," I said benevolently, "I will make an exception." I took the book, already open at some absurd date in April, and wrote in a clear hand:--

"The professional horticulturist should beware lest he (or she) make that a master which should remain a mistress."

Ursula read it twice. "It's awfully clever," she said, "and on the spur of the moment too! I can't imagine how you think of these things."

"Oh, they just come," I said. So it was not wholly wasted, though I own I should have preferred cash on delivery. Still we can't have everything.

* * * * *

FLOWERS FOR THE RED CROSS.

[Lines written for the Catalogue of the Royal Horticultural Society's Exhibition to be held at the Society's Hall in Vincent Square, on June 27, 28 and 29, for the benefit of the Red Cross.]

Think not that Earth unheeding lies Tranced by the summer's golden air, Indifferent, under azure skies, What blows of War her children bear.

She that has felt our tears like rain, And shared our wounds of body and soul, Gives of her flowers to ease our pain, Gives of her heart to make us whole.

O. S.

* * * * *

"A Swiss cinematograph periodical learns that the hissing of the Kaiser's picture occurred decently at one of the largest cinema houses in Berlin."--_Glasgow Evening Times._

One of the few decent things the Prussians have done in this War.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE TEACHER TAUGHT.

Essay-writing in my schooldays certainly was not my forte; "Lack of concentration" always figured in the term's report, And my undistinguished diction made my worthy master snort.

Now enlisted as an usher--so a freakish fate ordains-- I employ my best endeavours and the remnant of my brains Setting and correcting essays written by scholastic swains.

"Whether they derive advantage from this mental interplay, Modesty, if not misgiving, makes it hard for me to say, But I'm much inclined to fancy that it's just the other way.

Anyhow, from this experience I have learned a lot of things Hidden from the ken of scholars or Prime Ministers or Kings, Though revealed to youthful schoolboys lately freed from leading-strings.

On the relative importance of the classics, "maths," and "stinks"; On the charm of pink-hued ices, on the choice of gaseous drinks; On the special sort of sermon which induces forty winks;

On the various ways of pulling pompous seniors by the leg; On effective ways of bringing uppish juniors down a peg; On the scientific mode of blowing any kind of egg;

On the forms of condescension which the human boy insult; On the picture-palace mania, on the CHARLIE CHAPLIN cult; On the latest modern weapons which supplant the catapult--

On these elemental matters, and indeed on many more, I have now accumulated quite a valuable store Of instructive, entertaining and authoritative lore.

And I hope, on my returning to my humdrum normal life-- When we've scotched the KAISER's yearning after sanguinary strife-- Fortified by modern learning, to electrify my wife.

* * * * *

"VAN (sleeping), on iron wheels, to accommodate two men, not under 12ft. by 6ft."--_Glasgow Herald._

Such giants should certainly go in the van.

* * * * *

Resuscitation.

Extract from official memo.:--

"This man has been medically examined ... with the result that he is believed to be feigning decease. The penalty attached to trial by C.M. on this charge has been explained to him, and he has elected to return to duty."

* * * * *

In the Line of Methuselah.

"In France the northern men were accorded high honours. Louis had a bodyguard of twenty-four Scotsmen, and this band continued in existence as a Royal guard to nine monarchs for one hundred and fifty years." _The War Illustrated._

What happened at this point of their interesting career we are not told--possibly they went into the Reserves.

* * * * *

WAR RISKS OF AN UNCLE.

I have been made a fool of by the Government. No, you needn't all hold up your hands at once. Mine Was different from yours. I have always looked upon myself as an efficient uncle, but now--well, one more incident of this kind and I shall be definitely _passé_.

The technique of being an uncle I mastered quite early. For instance, at stated seasons in the year I choose with some concentration two toys and two improving books. The toys I give to my nieces, Lillah and Phyllis; the books I send to a hospital. In the same spirit, when I take them for a treat and they over-eat themselves, I simply finance the operation and at the same time buy a large bottle of castor oil and send it anonymously to St. Bartholomew's. You see the idea? It is simply technique. I have explained this system to Margaret, their mother. But she is not one who sees reason very easily.

In spite of opposition, however, I continue to do my duty.

In this spirit I dashed into the nursery the other day and declared my afternoon and my finances at the service of Lillah and Phyllis. Margaret definitely forbade a cinema, from a curious notion that their patrons consisted exclusively of bacilli. So Lillah and Phyllis declared at once for CHARLIE CHAPLIN or nothing. This was only natural, so I bought two tickets for the latest exhibition of War cartoons and sent them to my Aunt Julia at Harpenden. Then I took the children to the Pictures.

This is just to show you that I know my job. But mark now how Fate rushed me on to destruction.

"Uncle James," said Lillah, "I love you!"

I braced myself up.

"So do I," said Phyllis.

It looked like trouble.

"Can we go and see the tin soldiers before they go to bed?" said Lillah.

"The horseback ones," added Phyllis.

Oh, this was too simple: a nice quiet look at the guardians of Whitehall, with perhaps a glimpse for the infant mind of the vast resources of the British Empire; a word in season, perhaps, from Uncle James; and a detailed report to Margaret of instruction combined with amusement.

Of course we went.

"This," I said, as Phyllis gazed round-eyed at one of the motionless warriors--"this is but a symbol of the dignity of that great Empire upon which the sun----"

"Soldiers," said Phyllis with a wisdom beyond her years, "like girls to look at them ever so long."

Then she went away to Lillah, and I saw them with their heads close together. A wonderful thing, the child-mind. Only beginning perhaps, but they were learning doubtless to think imperially. The foundation of that pride of race----? I broke the thread of thought and looked up. Instantly I was gibbering with horror.

Phyllis, standing on tiptoe and clinging precariously to his saddle-cloth, was dropping a roll of paper neatly into the jackboot of Hercules.

"Phyllis!" I gasped. "What are you doing?"

She turned to me happily.

"That's what Nannie does," she said, without a blush for her sex. "I put 'I love you.--PHYLLIS.' Do you think he'll be pleased?"

I seized both girls and hurried into the Park. My soul cried out for the open spaces. I stole a look at Hercules over my shoulder, but he was granite.

On Olympus the Olympians are above shame.

"Phyllis," I said gravely, "don't you think that was very naughty of you?"

"No," said that small Delilah firmly; "soldiers like it."

The even voice of Lillah broke in.

"And soldiers ought to have what they like, oughtn't they?"

"Certainly," I answered patriotically.

"Well, then," said Phyllis crushingly.

"If I had done that I should feel very much ashamed of myself," I said.

"Well, you didn't," said Lillah, and that finished it.

They evidently had an offensive and defensive alliance against this sort of thing.

"If your mother," I began.

"Sand!, Sand!" shrieked Phyllis.

"Sand,", echoed Lillah, and both children were gone.

They had just noticed the present possibilities of the empty lake as a substitute for Margate. Two best frocks! Essentially a moment for efficiency.

I stepped firmly across the railings. And there the British Government stepped in. I turned to regard a policeman (out-size).

"May I call your attention to this, Sir?" he said.

I gazed at the notice like a fish:--

"ONLY CHILDREN ARE ALLOWED ON THE BED OF THE LAKE."

It is still there; you can go and see it for yourself. I argued, I entreated. Either the constable had a sense of humour (and should be reported) or else a perverted sense of duty.

A crowd collected. Out of the corner of my eye I could see those two best frocks.

"As usual," I said bitterly but with dignity, "the British Government is too late."

By the time I had persuaded the children that tea was superior to sand castles their clothes--but no, why repeat what Margaret said? I'm sure she regretted it when I had gone.

But my reputation as an uncle of any technical knowledge is finished.

I was so moved that I even forgot my gift to St. Bartholomew's after tea--and now I am writing a personal letter to Mr. SAMUEL about that notice in the Park.

* * * * *

THE ROUTE MARCH.

(_In Training._)

We've got our foreign-service boots--we've 'ad 'em 'alf a day; If it wasn't for the Adjutant I'd sling the brutes away; If I could 'ave my old ones back I'd give a fortnight's pay, And chuck 'em in the pair I got this morning!

We've marched a 'undred miles to-day, we've 'undreds more to go, An' if you don't believe me, why, I'll tell you 'ow I know-- I've measured out the distance by the blister on my toe, For I got my foreign-service boots this morning!

We've got our foreign-service boots--I wish that I was dead; I wish I'd got the Colonel's 'orse an' 'im my feet instead; I wish I was a nacrobat, I'd walk upon my 'ead, For I got my foreign-service boots this morning!

We're 'oppin' and we're 'obblin' to a cock-eyed ragtime tune, Not a soul what isn't limpin' in the bloomin' 'ole balloon. But buck you up, my com-e-rades, we're off to Flanders soon, For we got our foreign-service boots this morning!

* * * * *

"The full tale of the German losses is being sedulously concealed. Their battered ships are licking their wounds under the Kaiser's moustache, which has been badly singed."--_The Star._

It is thought that by this time they have had quite enough of his lip.

* * * * *

"No further infantry attack had been delivered by either side in this area between June 3rd and June 5th. At least four battleships belonging to three different German regiments have been identified as having taken part in the original attack."

_Newcastle Daily Journal._

Now we understand why the Germans were in such a hurry to get home from Jutland.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

If you only like listening to a talker with whom you agree, who is of your type and school, then don't bother with _What is Coming?_ (CASSELL), which purports to be H. G. WELLS'S forecasts of things after the War. It's perhaps hardly so serious as that, but just good speculative talk, the kind that offers the first thing that is signalled to the lips from a quick reflective brain without pauses to consider objections by the way. Yet perhaps, after all, the author cannot be dismissed too lightly as a prophet. He did see further into the air than most, at the time when the experts were blandly proving all sorts of impossibilities; and, as he recalls, he made a lucky shot in foretelling the immobility of trench warfare. He still believes in the BLOCH deadlock, and gives victory to the Allies merely for better staying power. For British training and method he naturally has nothing but scorn, which takes him further than most of us can follow him. At least when he says that the university-trained class has been found "under the fiery test of war an evasive, temporising class of people, individualistic, ungenerous and unable either to produce or obey vigorous leadership," he badly needs to justify the confining of that diagnosis to _that_ particular class. And when he further says of British administration of subject territories that "the British are a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to give a black people and no disposition to give"--well, it isn't an obvious truth. These are blemishes of a kind to which a quick-thinking man, a little too anxious to set everybody right by wholesale methods, is naturally subject. But you will miss a good deal of fresh-air sanity, of illumination (for the man _can_ see and find the vivid phrase to express his vision) on war and peace and education and feminism and internationalism and citizenship, if you let yourself be alienated by such lapses. So please don't.

* * * * *

"If only those old things could speak, what stories, etc., etc.!" Most of us, at one time or another, have endured or inflicted that well-intentioned banality. And here is Miss MARJORIE BOWEN, most skilful of historical romancers, setting out to tell us precisely what stories. She calls her volume _Shadows of Yesterday_ (SMITH, ELDER), explaining in a preface that is by no means the least attractive chapter that they are supposed to be the histories attached to a collection of antique oddments in a little Italian museum. No one who remembers with what persuasive charm Miss BOWEN has handled her long costume novels will be astonished at the atmosphere with which she manages to invest these little episodes; a ring, a jewel, a CHARLES II. jug--these are the materials out of which by aid of fancy she recreates the past. Of the lot, I myself should give the palm to the jug's story, a spirited little thing enough, in which a country maid, awaiting in a cottage the coming of a lover, whom she knows as "Lord Anthony," meets instead my Lady CASTLEMAINE, who tells her that the defaulting swain is really His Majesty, and explains that there exist (to put it tactfully) certain prior engagements of the royal affection. The end is a brilliant comedy stroke, which I will not spoil by anticipation for you. It is this capacity for the unexpected that saves Miss BOWEN from the danger, obviously inherent in her plan, of being too tightly bound down by the need of forcing her catalogue of relics into prominence. She has done larger work, but nothing more agreeable.

* * * * *

I could not, if I would, apply quite the customary severities of criticism to _Twilight_ (HUTCHINSON). It is too personal, and the death of its author, the clever woman who elected to be known as FRANK DANBY, is too fresh in memory for me to regard it with detachment. It is one of the tragedies of literature that only in her last two books, this and the one that preceded it, did the author give the world a taste of her true quality. There is evidence in _Twilight_ of gifts that might well have raised its writer to a place among the greatest. But frankly it is not possible to consider it apart from the circumstances of its origin. Two stories there are in it: one personal, autobiography at its most intimate; the other a work of imagination. It is supposed that the writer, a woman novelist, wrecked with disease and the drugs that bring endurance, goes down into the country and there becomes obsessed with the history of another woman, in circumstances much like to her own, who had once lived and loved in the same remote house. So, side by side, you have the two tragedies, one of the sick bed, one of the soul, both told with an incisive and compelling art, and with a realism often painful. But, as at once a document of fact and imagination, the book is perhaps unique. Certainly no one can read it without feeling that the death of its author has left literature poorer by the loss of a personality whose real power was yet to be shown.

* * * * *

The demand for an eleventh edition of Lord ERNEST HAMILTON'S book, _The First Seven Divisions_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is no more than a deserved tribute to what has already taken rank as the best history, so far, of the most critical period of the World War. Lord ERNEST HAMILTON writes as one having authority. He tells the facts as he knows them--facts in many cases hitherto undisclosed, and given here with adequate detail and just; enough of explanation to make the account clear even to the most unmilitary reader. There has been no attempt by the writer to embellish his theme. It remains a simple story of sheer heroism, told in a straightforward soldierly manner--and the reading of it must make the most unemotional Briton feel the thrill of pride and pity and gratitude. "Nothing," says the writer, "can ever surpass, as a story of simple sublime pluck, the history of the first three months of England's participation in the Great War." This is what you can follow day by day in these pages. There are many new maps in the present edition, which greatly help to explain the situation, as it developed from Mons, through the battle of the Marne, to the trenches before Ypres. I can only say that I hope there will soon be few school libraries in which this most inspiring book has not an honourable place.

* * * * *

* * * * *

When Mr. FRANKFORT MOORE is not out to be funny I enjoy his novels, and _The Rise of Raymond_ (HUTCHINSON) is pleasantly free from humorous intent. _Raymond's_ father, a cheap house-furnisher by trade, was a terribly blighting person of peculiar religious views. By rod and rote he tried to instil his narrow creed into his son, and the latter's suffering during this process is revealed all the more forcibly because it is not unduly insisted upon. Though _Raymond_ has his quiverful of virtues, one's powers of belief in them, though taxed heavily enough, are not super-taxed. It may seem curious that this young man, whose vocation it was during some of the best years of his life to handle and sell uninspiring things like linoleum, should have had artistic tastes; but as the reason for this endowment is not given away until the very end of the story I prefer not to give it away at all. In contrast to the scorn and ridicule scattered over the puritanical sect of which _Raymond's_ parents were members, the Church of England parson, _Mr. Bosover_, receives a very warm pat on the back. "The tradition of gentleman is kept alive by the English parson. He is the only remaining interpreter of that ancient _culte_." So now you know.

* * * * *

_A Woman in the Balkans_ (HUTCHINSON) is a book of which the publishers very properly observe that it "will undoubtedly make a wide appeal at the present moment." These are times when the records of anybody intelligent "in the Balkans" must be attractive reading; and Mrs. WILL GORDON (WINIFRED GORDON) is not only intelligent, but--what is even more important in the writer of a popular memoir--excellent good company. Her vivid account of her pre-War travels in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Roumania gives one the feeling of being the fortunate friend of a correspondent whose views on home-writing are not confined to picture post-cards. In short a pleasant, not too professional, record of adventure and observation. The many excellent photographs that illustrate it are in precisely the same style, being, many of them, the successful little snapshots of an artistic amateur, such as often convey a far better impression of places and people than the more ambitious products of expert science. Not all the pictures, however, are from the writer's own camera. Two, which, with a grim sense of drama, are placed next to each other, represent the Coronation of King PETER of Serbia, and the tragic ride of the Monarch from his invaded country. There is a whole tremendous chapter of European history in the contrasted pictures. Small wonder if books about the Balkans should make "a wide appeal."

* * * * *

From a trade circular:--

"Since the beginning of the War we have encouraged our men to enlist, and have filled their places with girls of military ineligibles."

But why not give the girls of our fighting men a chance?