Chapter 3

We would cruise by fairy islands where the gaudy parrot screeches And the turtle in his soup-tureen floats basking in the calms; We would see the fire-flies winking in the bush above the beaches And a moon of honey yellow drifting up behind the palms.

We would crown ourselves with garlands and tread a frolic measure With the nut-brown island beauties in the firelight by the huts; We would give them rum and kisses; we would hunt for pirate treasure, And bombard the apes with pebbles in exchange for coco-nuts.

When we wearied of our wand'rings 'neath the blazing Southern heaven And dreamed of Kentish orchards fragrant-scented after rain, Of the cream there is in Cornwall and the cider brewed in Devon, We would crowd our yards with canvas and sweep foaming home again,

_Singing_--

Cheerily, O lady mine, Cheerily, my sweetheart true, For the blest Blue Peter's flying and I'm rolling home to you; For I'm tired of Spanish ladies and of tropic afterglows, Heart-sick for an English Spring-time, all afire for an English ring-time, In love with an English rose. Rolling home!

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MISGIVINGS.

Walking recently by Hyde Park Corner I met a man in a comic hat. He was an elderly man, very well set up, marching along like an old officer--quite an impressive figure with his grey moustache and grey hair, had not this ridiculous affair surmounted him. It was not exactly a hat, and not exactly a cap, but something between the two, and it was so minute as to be almost invisible and wholly absurd. Yet there was every indication that its wearer believed that it suited him, for he moved both with confidence and self-satisfaction.

And as I watched him, and after he had passed, swinging his stick and surveying the world with the calm assurance of a connoisseur of most of the branches of life I began to entertain some very serious and disturbing doubts. For (thought I) here is quite a capable kind of fellow, of mature age, making a perfect guy of himself under the profound conviction that he is doing just the reverse and that that pimple of a hat suits him. No doubt, judging by the cut of his clothes and his general _soigné_ appearance, he stands before his glass every morning until he is satisfied. Had he (thought I) any accuracy of vision he would see himself the grotesque thing he is in that idiotic little cap. But his vision is distorted.

It was then that I began to go hot and cold all over, for I suddenly realised that my vision might be distorted too. My hat hitherto had satisfied me; but suppose that that too was all wrong. And then I wondered if anyone really gets a true return from the mirror, or if we are not all bemused; and, remembering those astounding hats in which WINSTON used to be photographed a few years ago, I asked myself, "Where are _we_, when even the great legislators can go so wrong?"

Although all this soul-searching occurred several days ago, I am still nervous, and I never catch sight of my reflection in a shop window without suspicion racking me; while to see a smile on the face of an approaching pedestrian is agony.

But (you will say) why not ask the hatter or some intimate friend to select the hat for you? I guessed you would suggest that. But it won't help; I'll tell you why. Some years ago I knew a fat man with a big head--a journalist of great ability--who made himself undignified by perching upon the top of that great and capable head a little bowler. Its inadequacy had always annoyed me, but never more so than when, on my arriving at our place of servitude one morning (we were on the same paper) in a new and perfectly becoming hat, he said to me, "That hat's all wrong. You should never choose a hat for yourself. I _never_ do. I get my wife to choose mine for me." Remembering this I am even more unsettled than before. I see no hope.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.)

The idea of publishing _Frederick the Great: The Memoirs of his Reader, Henri de Catt_ (_1758-1760_) (CONSTABLE) was that we are all so passionate against Prussianism that we want to plank down our money for two volumesful of observations at first hand about the man who was the source and origin of that dark and swollen stream. Personally, we doubt the general zeal in this matter--not of Prussianism but of FREDERICK. However, DE CATT, looking at a king from a queer angle, is extraordinarily diverting. "Reader" was a euphemism for a patient audience, including _claque_. FREDERICK, _incognito_ on a Dutch barge, picked up the young scholar and marked him down as one who could be induced by florins and flattery to take on the job of listening to his patron's bad French verses and his after-dinner flutings of little things of his own, his approving observations on his own conduct, his battles, his philosophy of life and politics, no doubt calculating that it would all be jotted down on fateful scraps of paper and given a favourable colouring for the edification of the world. Well, the great FREDERICK put it over me all right. Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions. I ought, of course, to add that a learnedly allusive preface by Lord ROSEBERY graces the volume, and that the very competent translation is by F.S. FLINT.

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These are days when the more we know about Russia and things Russian the better. Specially timely, then, is the appearance, in an English translation, of _The Fishermen_ (STANLEY PAUL), by DIMITRY GREGOROVITSH. It is a wonderfully appealing story, which has been put into English--presumably by Dr. ANGELO RAPPOPORT, though he is only credited on the title-page with the authorship of the Preface--in such a way that the spirit of the original is admirably preserved. I had not read a couple of pages before the charm of the style laid hold upon me. The story is quite simple, concerned only with a group of peasants, fisher-folk, living on the banks of a great river. GREGOROVITSH is like TOURGENIEV in his devotion to peasant and country types, but otherwise more akin to our own younger school of realists in the minuteness of his observation. Throughout the story abounds in character-study of a kind that, while building up the figure with a thousand details, will add suddenly some vivid touch that brings the whole wonderfully and unforgettably to life. An example of this is _Akim_, that perfect type of the hopeless incompetent, whose very futility, while it rightly exasperates his fellows, makes him a delight to the reader; so that his death, at the end of the first part, comes with an effect of personal loss. For my own part, as poor _Akim_ had never once before accomplished what he set out to do, I was quite expectant of his recovery, and proportionately disappointed. Throughout also there are pen-pictures of Russian scenery, full of vivid colour; while the story itself, though inevitably in a somewhat minor key, is never sordid or pessimistic. Emphatically therefore a book for everyone to read who cares to know the best in the literature of our great Ally.

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MARGARET DELAND'S well-proved pen gives us a spirited sketch of a modernist American woman in _The Rising Tide_ (MURRAY). I don't quite know how this enigmatic sentence, which 1 have long puzzled over and frankly given up, came to escape both author and reader: "Once Mrs. Childs said to tell Fred her Uncle William would say it was perfect nonsense." I feel sure it is not good American. However, _Freddy Payton_ is a young girl who tells the inconvenient truth to everybody about everything, and you may guess that such candour does not make for peace. _Mrs. Payton_ elects to keep her idiot son in the house, and _Freddy_ thinks an asylum is the proper place for him, and says so. The late _Mr. Payton_ was a rake, and _Freddy_ derides her mother's weeds on the ground that the widow is really in her heart waving flags for deliverance, but daren't admit it. _Freddy_ offers cigarettes to the curate, which is apparently a much greater crime over there than here. _Freddy_ finally, carried along by the rising tide, asks the man she loves to marry her, mistaking his friendship for something stronger, and learns that, as the old-fashioned people like her mother realise, men are essentially hunters and "won't bag the game if it perches on their fists." I wonder! But _Freddy_ got a better man--the diffident elderly man who was waiting round the corner. In fact, _Freddy_ is rather a sport, and if Mrs. DELAND intended her as a tract for the times, in the manner of Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, her shot has miscarried--at least so far as I am concerned.

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_Edmund Layton_, thick in the arm and at times, be it confessed, thick in the head, was so thoroughly in love with _The Bright Eyes of Danger_ (CHAMBERS), and the brighter eyes of _Charlotte Macdonell_, Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends was longing to give him warning. For instance, when that taking villain, _Philip Macdonell_, after beating him in the race for the French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship (_vide_ the frontispiece mystery chart), soon after fell comfortably into his hands, he had no more discretion than to take him out to fight a duel; whereon, as we others foresaw, the wily villain incontinently disappeared and the fun was all to begin again. Maybe we might forgive him that, for of such staple are good yarns spun, but why in heaven's name should bold _Edmund Layton_ of Liddesdale go about to make himself and us miserable with feckless scruples that ruined the happy ending we had fairly earned? Either he was right to let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and Mr. JOHN FOSTER'S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such a subtlety. All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as well as bright eyes, and with more than a smack of STEVENSON.

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I fancy that I ought perhaps already to know _The Wood-Carver of 'Lympus_ (MELROSE), which, hailing originally from America, seems to have made many friends over here before reaching me in its present form. I am glad, more especially at the present season, to extend a grateful welcome to so kindly and charming a story. Miss MARY E. WALLER has written a singularly refreshing and happy book, full of passages that reveal a great sympathy for country life and the hearts of simple people. _Hugh Armstrong_, the central figure, is a youth in a New England mountain farm, condemned to perpetual inactivity through an accident. At the beginning of the story we see him, in the depths of misery, visited by a casual passenger from the stage coach, whose attention has been caught by his story as related by the driver. Thenceforward things mend for _Armstrong_. The stranger interests him in wood-carving; orders pour in, which help to bring comfort to the farm; books and letters arrive from unknown city dwellers. Thus the tale is a record of increasing happiness, but kept (an important thing) from cloying by the tragedy upon which it is built. If you will not be put off by American dialect or by the rather startling discovery that one of the kindliest characters is named _Franz_, you will, I believe, find a brief stay upon '_Lympus_ most beneficial to your spirits.

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HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR BANKER.

"The bankers of General Chang Tsolin, the Military Governor of Mukden, who suffered from financial troubles, were summarily executed by shooting on the charge of having disturbed the money market."--_Shanghai Mercury_.

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"The DarDdaDneDlDleDs Commissioners sat again to-day at the House of Lords, when General Sir John Maxwell was examined."--i>Provincial Paper_.

Please do not imagine that that is what the gallant officer called them.

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"A LARGE BLACK DOG, no colour, strayed."--_The Times_.

"THE LUCKY BLACK CAT, in all colours, made to order."--_The Queen_.

This is the kind of thing that drives a chameleon mad.

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