WHEN AND IF.
(It is rumoured that Mr. Balfour is shortly going to the House of Lords.)
When Balfour goes to the Lords—
For the Upper Chamber's adorning—
The Lower House, if it has any nous,
Will have solid reason for mourning;
For he has no axes to grind;
His strategy injures no man,
And his keen sword play in the thick of the fray
Is a joy to friend and foeman.
When Balfour goes to the Lords,
To strengthen that gilded muster,
'Twill be sad and strange if he has to change
The name he has crowned with lustre;
For already there's "B. of B.,"
A baron of old creation;
And Whittingehame is an uncouth name
For daily pronunciation.
If Balfour goes to the Lords,
Will the atmosphere, I wonder,
With the placid balm of its dreamful calm
Bring his nimble spirit under?
Or will he act on the Peers
Like an intellectual cat-fish,
Or startle their sleep with the flying leap
Of a Caribbean bat-fish?
If Balfour goes to the Lords—
But can the Commons spare him?
Besides I'm sure that a coronet's lure
Is the very last thing to ensnare him;
And I'd rather see him undecked
With the gauds that merely glister,
In the selfsame box with Pitt and Fox
And Gladstone—a simple Mister.
Still if he goes to the Lords,
Whatever, his style and title,
For the part he has played in his country's aid
'Twill be but a poor requital;
For he never once lost his nerve
When the outlook was most alarming,
And always remained, with shield unstained,
Prince Arthur, the good Prince Charming.
"Mrs. Hawke would be glad to employ a Wren for domestic work."
Advt. in Daily Paper.
Will she have to "live in"?
"If it be true, as Shelley said, that 'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever,' the good people of Roydon are to be congratulated on the new bridge over the River Stort."
Local Paper.
But, supposing Keats, for instance, said it, will that make any difference?
Enlightened Minister. "I canna understand your objection to dancing, Mr. McTavish. We have biblical authority for it. David himself danced."
Elder. "Ay, but no wi' a pairtner."
PRISCILLA FAILS TO QUALIFY.
"So it runned out of its little grassy place and went all round the garden," said Priscilla, emerging suddenly in pink from under the table.
"What are you playing at now, Priscilla?" I inquired.
"I'm a little pussy-cat."
"And what is this?" I asked, pointing to the waste-paper basket which she had planted beside my chair.
"It's the pussy-cat's basket of milk. It's to drink when she's firsty," she explained.
I sighed. It did not appear to me that the child's education was proceeding upon proper lines. I had been reading portions of the diary of Miss Opal Whiteley, written when she was seven years old, a work which has just lifted for America the Child-authoress Cup. I had hoped to find in Priscilla some faint signs that the laurels lost by Miss Daisy Ashford might be wrested back. The latest feature in nursery autobiography, so far as I could gather, was to have a profound objective sympathy with vegetables and a faculty for naming domestic animals after the principal figures in classical mythology. If you have these gifts you get published by The Atlantic Monthly, with a preface by Viscount Grey. But I doubted whether Priscilla had them. I thought I would try.
"Priscilla," I said, "be a little girl again and tell me what flower you like best."
"Woses."
"What do the roses say to each other when you aren't there?"
"Oh, they don't say anyfing," she said with great contempt.
This was bad.
"Priscilla," I continued, "what do you call the dog next-door?"
"Bill," she said; "but it's runned away."
"There you are!" I exclaimed, turning to the child's mamma. "Bill, indeed! If she were being properly educated she would be calling it Jupiter Agamemnon Wilcox by now. Does she ever speak to you at all of the star-gleams amongst the cabbage-leaves?"
"I don't think there are any star-gleams amongst the cabbages in this garden," she replied. "Only slugs."
"I don't care," I said; "the fact remains that Priscilla ought to be constantly wondering what the cabbages do say to each other when they have lonesome feels at night."
"Priscilla," I began again, "in about three years you will be seven years old and quite a big girl. What will you play at then?"
"Oh, I san't play at all," she said. "I sall go visiting and sopping."
"Anything else?"
"Oh, yes, I sall have a knife."
"A pocket-knife?"
"No, not a pocket-knife, a knife to cut meat wiv, of course."
I had forgotten this goal of maidenly desires.
"And won't you go long walks in the big woods with me and tell me the names of all the flowers and what they are thinking about?"
"Yes," she replied rather doubtfully. "Are there beasts in the woods?"
"Only rabbits, I think."
"We must be very careful, then, 'cos they're very wild creatures, aren't they?"
"Oh, not very wild."
"Will you buy a gun at the gun-sop and soot them and we take them home and eat them?"
Bless the child, I thought, there seems to be no getting her away from this eating business.
"Priscilla," I began again, "in the woods there is a great big lake, with trees and rushes all round it, and there are water-lilies floating about and forget-me-nots at the edge."
Now, I thought, we shall perhaps have something about the lullaby songs of the trees and the willow that does sing by the creek.
"Are there fiss in the lake?" inquired Priscilla.
"Yes," I said, "beautiful shining fish."
"And sall we catch the fiss and put them on the fire?"
"I suppose we might," I admitted.
"And will they sizzle?"
"Araminta," I said, "the child is hopeless. She has no soul. She will never be a great authoress. The Cup must remain in Oregon, and Priscilla will never tell the world how the wind did go walking in the field, talking to the earth voices, with a preface by Sir Auckland Geddes or Lord Reading. She thinks about nothing but her food."
"Perhaps you had better try again after she's said her prayers," suggested Araminta. "She may be feeling a little more soulful then."
I attended the ceremony, which was performed with the utmost decorum and gravity. When it was ended Priscilla looked up.
"I said them very somnly and in rarver a low voice, didn't I?" she announced, and then went off into gurgles of laughter.
I determined to make one last despairing effort.
"Priscilla," I asked, "which of your books do you like the best?"
"The Gobbly Goblin," she said.
"Araminta," I cried, "I give it up. She has no bent for literature. There can never have been any great authoress, young or old, who started with such a materialistic mind."
"You forget Mrs. Beeton," she replied.
Evoe.
