Weary Hostess. "Yes, I've been having such trouble with baby. Every night I have to get up about twenty times, getting his things——"
Visitor. "Why don't you make your husband do something?"
Hostess. "Oh, I daren't wake my husband; if I do he always drinks baby's milk."
STUDIES IN DISCIPLESHIP.
The Times' Third Leader.
The statement made in these columns by a well-informed correspondent that the incomparable Nijinsky is so delicate that by his doctor's decree he is obliged to abstain from all forms of exercise save that involved in his beloved art, gives us, in the vivid phrase of our neighbours, "furiously to think." At the first blush incredulity prevails, but recourse to the annals of history, ancient and modern alike, furnishes us with abundant confirmation of this strange anomaly. Hannibal was a martyr to indigestion, while his great rival, Scipio Africanus, suffered from sea-sickness even when crossing the Tiber. Wherever we look we are confronted with the spectacle of genius fraying its way to the appointed goal in spite of physical drawbacks which would have paralysed meritorious mediocrity. Wolfe was a poitrinaire, and Nelson would never have passed the medical examination to which the naval cadets of to-day are subjected. But the case of Nijinsky is more tragic because abstinence from skating and riding, of which he was passionately fond, entails greater anguish on so sensitively organised a temperament than it would on a mere man of action, and the suffering of a great artist may lead to international complications which it is terrible to complicate. Russian dancing is as necessary to the well-being of our social system as standard bread, yet when we think of the sacrifices which its hierophants undergo in order to minister to our pleasure the sturdiest Hedonist cannot escape misgivings. Still, we may find consolation in the thought that sacrifice is necessary to perfection. Such sacrifices take various forms. In the case of Nijinsky we see a man of immense brain power specialising in a most exhausting form of physical culture to remedy his extreme delicacy. At the opposite extreme we find cases of men so extraordinarily powerful that they are obliged to abandon all exercise and lead a purely sedentary life in order to counteract their abnormal muscularity. Thus Lord Haldane, who in his earlier days thought nothing of walking to Cambridge one day and back to London on the next, has now become more than reconciled to the immobility imposed on the occupant of the Woolsack.
It needs no little exercise of the imagination to form a mental picture of Lord Haldane as a member of the Russian ballet, or, to put it in a more concrete form, making the famous flying exit in Le Spectre da la Rose. Could fancy be translated into fact, the drawing power of such a spectacle would be prodigious. On the other hand, and in view of the notorious adaptability of the Slavonic temperament, we can well imagine Nijinsky proving an admirable Lord Chancellor. Exchanges of this sort would add to the comity of nations besides enhancing the amenities of public life, and it is perhaps not too much to hope that provision for carrying this out may be in the Government's scheme for the Reform of the House of Lords.
"New Zealand mutton was yearly increasing in public flavour."—Times.