St. Ives was looking at me while she knitted. I raised my hat to her and
smiled. We had been such good friends all the evening--how could I ever
forget it? But she did not smile; she only stared. She seemed to think I
was mad. Macclesfield was reading his _Star_ just as if he had never hurled
himself on to the top of the 'bus. The flapper was squinting at herself in
a little pocket-mirror; she looked contemptuously at me as I passed. Old
York was half asleep. One would think they had never been rushing about in
that frantic General Post. And we were all inside the car again.
It _was_ odd!
* * * * *
[Illustration: "THE BLOKE WOT PAINTED THAT KNEW 'OW TO DO A BIT O' FOOD
'OARDING, DIDN'T 'E?"]
* * * * *
'TWAS FIFTY YEARS AGO.
(_Lines suggested by an old Magazine._)
Published the year I went to school--
The second of life's seven ages--
How fragrant of Victorian rule
Are these forgotten pages!
When meat and fruit were still uncanned;
When good CHARLES DICKENS still was writing;
And SWINBURNE'S poetry was banned
As rather too exciting.
No murmurs of impending strife
Were heard, no dark suggestions hinted;
Our novelists still looked on life
Through spectacles rose-tinted;
And Paris, in those giddy years,
Still laughed at OFFENBACH and SCHNEIDER,
Blind to the doom of blood and tears,
With none to warn or guide her.
The index and the authors' names,
Their stories and their lucubrations,
Recall old literary aims
And faded reputations;
We wonder at the influence
That SALA'S florid periods had on
His fellows, and the vogue immense
Of versatile Miss BRADDON.
And yet I read _Aurora Floyd_
In youth with rapture quite unholy--
Not in the way that I enjoyed
Mince-pies or roly-poly;
While "G.A.S." appeared to me
Like a Leonid fresh from starland,
Not the young lion that we see
Portrayed in _Friendship's Garland_.
And there are tinklings of the lute
In orthodox decorous fashion,
But altogether destitute
Of "elemental" passion;
And illustrations which refrain
From all that verges on the shady,
But glorify the whiskered swain,
The lachrymose young lady.
The sirens of the "sixties" showed
No inkling of our modern Circes,
And swells had not evolved the code
That guides our precious Percys;
Woman, in short, was grave or gay,
But not a problem or a riddle,
And maidens still were taught to play
The harp and not the fiddle.
And writers in the main eschewed
All topics tending to disquiet,
All efforts to reorganize
Our dogmas or our diet;
You could not carp at MENDELSSOHN
Without creating quite a scandal,
And rag-time on the gramophone
Had not supplanted HANDEL.
Blameless and wholesome in their way,
At times agreeably subacid,
I love these records of a day
Long dead, but calm and placid;
And with a sigh I now replace
This ancient volume of _Belgravia_
And turn the "latest news" to face
_Mutans amaris suavia_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Rector's Daughter._ "HOW SPLENDID OF JOE JARVIS'S SON TO
VOLUNTEER FOR THAT VERY DANGEROUS JOB! I'M SO GLAD HE GOT THE MILITARY
MEDAL."
_Mrs. Mullins_ (_not to be outdone_). "YES, MISS. AND _MY_ BOY COULD HAVE
GOT IT TOO IF HE'D CARED TO HAVE TAKEN THE RISK."]
* * * * *