THE GREAT MAN.
Every Saturday, about four P.M., I am to be found worshipping at the Shrine of the Open Mind. Once within its portals I put off the subfuse vestments of J. Watson, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, and become simply Uncle James. This alone is a tonic. To-day as I ascended the steps of the temple there floated down to me the voices of the priestesses chanting, evidently in a kind of frenzy, and to the air of a famous Scottish reel, this rhyme——
"Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant, a Sergeant!
Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant of Police."
So I opened the nursery door and went in. An uncle has no honour in his own country, and my two small nieces assaulted me immediately. Phyllis dragged me to a chair, while Lillah shrieked unrelentingly in my ear that Daddy was a sergeant.
"So the special constables have seen that your father is a born policeman?" I said as I sat down.
"The special ones," nodded Phyllis with profound pride.
"Magnificent," I murmured. "He has at last justified his choice of the law as a profession."
"Tell us," said Lillah, with the air with which one speaks of a self-made man who has just appeared in the Honours List—"tell us how Daddy started."
"He went to the Bar," I said.
"Bar?" echoed Lillah.
"Why, yes," I said; "it's a place where people wait."
"Like a station?"
"Only the trains don't always come in. Anyway, on one side of the bar are a lot of young men waiting for something to turn up, and on the other a lot of old men writing autobiographies."
"But aren't there any middling-olders?" This is Phyllistian for men of middle age.
"Not allowed," I said. "At the Bar you are either a junior or a reminiscer."
"What's that?"
"It's an illness that attacks people who aren't really famous."
Phyllis stared. "Like measles?"
I nodded.
"Oh," cried Lillah eagerly, "do the reminiscers go all pink?"
"They ought to," said I.
There was a silence. The round eyes of Phyllis were full of suspicion.
"Daddy said," she remarked slowly, "that he did law."
"So he does," I answered.
"Well, what's that, then?"
Small girls ask questions in two words which wise men must write books to answer.
"The law," I answered warily, "gives reasons for things that are unreasonable."
"Like what?" said Phyllis.
I laughed a little uneasily. This was getting difficult.
"Oh—er—things like getting married," I said, "and refraining from shooting little girls who ask questions."
I admit that this sort of joke is the last infirmity of an uncle's otherwise noble mind. They regarded me sadly.
Then Lillah turned to Phyllis with a detached air. "Uncle James is being grand," she said, "because he doesn't know what law is."
"Don't you?" said Phyllis.
"Perhaps not," I murmured feebly. The nursery makes very small beer of the cynic. There was a moment's silence.
"You've told us wrong," said Phyllis sternly. "Daddy isn't ever wrong."
"So he's risen from his bar to be a sergeant," added Lillah, with the air of one finishing a story with a moral.
I'm afraid I chuckled. It was in very bad taste, of course, but I couldn't help it. I suppose George is one of the most egregious Micawbers of the English Bar, whereas I—— why, I remember noticing a brief on the mantelpiece in my chambers only last month.
"Poor Uncle James," said Phyllis in her best drawing-room tones, "perhaps if you tried very hard——"
They had mistaken my laughter for that bitter disappointed kind you get in the theatres.
"I know," said Lillah; "we'll play Germans, and Uncle James can pretend he's a sergeant."
Yes, they were sorry for me. The table was pushed into the window and became a waterworks of importance.
The invidious part of the alien enemy fell to Lillah. It was admitted that she could glare best. "Besides," said Phyllis, "Lillah can make growly noises come up from her tummy."
The complete Hun, as you perceive.
Phyllis became a "special," while I was her sergeant, the star part of the piece. But the show was a frost, though Lillah gave an excellent imitation, with the aid of a toy spider, of a Hun inserting bacilli into the nation's aqua pura. Yes, I'm afraid I was the failure. I couldn't get to grips with my part, and the whole thing was so obviously a charity performance, with Phyllis ordering herself sternly about to try and help me through.
We were halfway through the second house when a well-known step was heard on the stairs.
Lillah turned, her eyes ablaze with worship. Phyllis trembled with excitement. As I sat down I couldn't help thinking that we grown-ups are just a little absurd. There is more than one thinks in the relativity of things.
Adoration? George was never going to get anything like it again in this world. My mind mused on ambition. Why, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself——
The door-handle turned and I heard the small voice of Phyllis in my ear.
"Mummie says," she whispered, "we can't all be great."
Nice little maid!
Then we all lined up to receive the Sergeant.
Mother. "No, Betty darling, I can't button your boots for you. Now you have a little sister you must learn to do things for yourself."
Betty. "Shall I always have to do fings for myself?"
Mother. "Yes, darling."
Betty. "Then I don't fink I shall like life."
"
turkish communiqué
.
Constantinople, Saturday.—On the Canadian front there were outpost duels and local fighting at several points. These skirmishes are still going on."—Evening Paper.
Forthcoming volume by Sir Max Aitken—Canada in Turkey.
From a description of a new enemy aeroplane:—
"The whole machine is armoured, and the supper part is shaped like a reversed roof." Provincial Paper.
Trust the Germans for looking after the commissariat.