A VOCATION.
The Vicar. "Oh—That's your Boy, Smithers? And what's he going to be? A Shoemaker, like yourself?"
Smithers. "Oh no, Sir. He's uncommon fond of Animals, you see—so we're thinking of making him a Butcher!"
"Eton of Old, or, Eighty Years Since!" exclaimed the Baron, and, taking up the handsome volume recently published by Messrs. Griffith and Farran, he was soon absorbed in its pages.
"Rather disappointing," murmured the Baron, as he closed the book, and "read no more that day." "Why, with a good memory, a lively imagination, and a pleasant style, this 'Old Colleger' might have given us something far more amusing than he has done. Of course Anybody's Anecdotes of our Grand Old School will probably be interesting up to a certain point: and they might be made 'funny, without being vulgar.' But this worthy Octogenarian, be he who he may, has produced only a very matter-of-fact book, containing historic information likely to arrest the attention of an old or young Etonian, but only now and again does the author give us anything sufficiently amusing to evoke a laugh. However, in the course of perusal, I have smiled gently, but distinctly. Had the Octogenarian already told many of these stories to his intimates, to whom their narration caused as much facile entertainment as was given to the friends of Mr. Peter Magnus, when he signed himself 'Afternoon,' in substitution for his initials, 'P.M.'?" And it is related how Mr. Pickwick rather envied the ease with which Mr. Magnus's friends were entertained. If so, then is the Baron to the Octogenarian Etonian and his intimates as was Mr. Pickwick to "P. M." and his correspondents. There are some good tales about Keat and Hawtrey, and of course the book, as one among an Etonian series, has its own value for all who care about Eton of the past.
"Perdidi diem," says the Baron, "or at least the better part of it, in reading Zero the Slaver, by Lawrence Fletcher, who seems to me to be a promising pupil in the school of Rider Haggard and Louis Stevenson, but chiefly of the former. It was a beastly day, snow falling, and North-West-by-North wind howling, bitterly cold, and so," continued the Baron, "I was reduced to Zero. The construction of the plot is clever, as is also the description of a great fight, in the latter portion of the story; but, as a whole, the story is irritatingly ill-written, and tawdrily coloured, while italics are used to bring into prominence any description of some strongly sensational situation."
Few things so annoying to me, personally, as the romancer speaking of his chief puppets as "our friends." This Lawrence Fletcher is perpetually doing. Now his heroes are not "my friends," for, when I read, I am strictly impartial, at all events, through two-thirds of the book, and, if I learn to love any one or two (or more) of them, male or female, I should still resent the author's presuming to speak of them as "our friends." To do so from the first is simply impudent presumption on the part of the author, as why, on earth, should he assume that his creations—his children—should be as dear to us as they are to him?
No—"Our friends," so used, is a mistake.
The influence of Rider Haggard is over the whole book, but in two instances the author has been unable to resist close imitation, nay, almost quotation of a well-known Haggardism, and so he writes at p. 130:—
"Just then a very wonderful and awful thing happened."
And at p. 197:—
"When suddenly, and without an instant's warning, a most awful thing happened."
Both variations on a Haggardism, and both equally spoilt in the process of transferring and adapting.
One sentence, the utterance of a Zulu chief, is well worth quoting, and it is this:—
"But empty hands are evil things wherewith to face a well-armed spook."
"The well-armed spook" is a joy for ever.
"A great black man fleeted past the rocks." "Hum!" quoth the Baron, "fleeted" is a new word to me. Not that I object to its invention and use on that account; in sound and appearance it expresses no more than "sped," or, if pursuit is to be implied, "fled."
Here is something that this novelist having written may well lay to heart,
"The man was as white-skinned as themselves, and judging from the purity of his English, must have been at one time a British subject."
"Now," quoth the Baron, meditatively, "if purity of English, with or without a white skin, is the unmistakable mark of a 'British subject,' then it follows that Mr. Lawrence Fletcher is of some nationality other than British. At least, such is the logical conclusion arrived at by his humble but critical servant,
"The Baron de B. W. 'B. B.' (British Born.)"
A New Turn.—He was an eloquent, an earnest lover, but she saw through him. When he had sworn to be true, which oath of his she didn't trust for a minute, and had implored her to do likewise, she only murmured to herself, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed——" Whereupon he vowed that such a thing was impossible; but, supposing her to possess such a heart, what would she do with it, considering it as a frame? Then she replied, softly, "I should put your portrait in it."