With a sigh of relief he thrust those creative hands of his into
his trouser pockets, slightly stooped his shoulders, and appeared
to my delight exactly as he does in the photograph he handed me for
publication.
“To show you how it is done, I cannot begin better than by a little
example,” he said.
He went to a neighbouring table, rummaged about in a pile of the
_Outlook_ and _Vanity Fair_, and produced a scrap of paper upon
which there was a type-written poem. His hands trembled with
pleasure, but he controlled himself well (for he is a strong,
silent kind of man), and continued:--
“I will not weary you with the whole of this Work. I am sure you
must already be familiar with it. In the Volunteer camp where I was
recently staying, and where I slept under canvas like anybody else,
the officers knew it by heart, and used to sing it to a tune of my
own composition (for you must know that I write these little things
to airs of my own). I will only read you the last verse, which, as
is usual in my lyrics, contains the pith of the whole matter.”
Then in a deep voice he intoned the following, with a slightly
nasal accent which lent it a peculiarly individual flavour:--
“I’m sorry for Mister Naboth;
I’m sorry to make him squeak;
But the Lawd above me made me strawng
In order to pummel the weak.”
“That chorus, which applies to one of the most important problems
of the Empire, contains nearly all the points that illustrate ‘How
it is Done.’ In the first place, note the conception of the Law. It
has been my effort to imprint this idea of the Law upon the mind of
the English-speaking world--a phrase, by the way, far preferable
to that of Anglo-Saxon, which I take this opportunity of publicly
repudiating. You may, perhaps, have noticed that my idea of the Law
is the strongest thing in modern England. ‘Do this because I tell
you, or it will be the worse for you,’ is all we know, and all we
need to know. For so, it seems to me, Heaven” (here he reverently
raised the plain billy-cock hat which he is in the habit of wearing
in his drawing-room) “governs the world, and we who are Heaven’s
lieutenants can only follow upon the same lines. I will not insist
upon the extent to which the religious training I enjoyed in early
youth helped to cast me in that great mould. You have probably
noticed its effect in all my work.”