Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties and Epigrams

BRIEF DIVERSIONS
Short, but there’s salt in’t.... The Double-Dealer
Cambridge Bowes & Bowes 1922
N EARLY all these pieces have appeared in the Cambridge Review, and I thank the Editor for his courtesy in allowing me to reprint them. A few travesties and epigrams have been added, and others have been revised. Most of the tales were written during the War, many of them while I was in Flanders, and at that time, being away from books, I imagined I was doing something new, being either ignorant or forgetful of the work of better men, such as Lord Dunsany and Mr T. W. H. Crosland, in a very similar form. To such gentlemen, I can only offer an apology if I seem to enter their little pleasaunces and tread clumsily where they who went before me stepped so lightly and delicately.
J. B. P.



A PROFITEER , a Priest of Nebt-het, from Heliopolis, and a Fool were walking together one day, when they met the grim figure of War belching flame and fury.
‘Who is that?’ asked the fool and the priest of each other, quickening their pace. But the profiteer raised his hat, bowed humbly, and stayed to chat for a few moments with the terrible figure, before rejoining his companions.
Presently, they came upon Death, mumbling to himself by the roadside. The fool and the profiteer raised their eyebrows, and passed on, but the priest of Nebt-het touched his forehead and made certain strange signs with his hands, to which Death replied in like manner.