Sir Herbert Tree affected an almost proprietary interest in the bibulous humours of Falstaff, presenting them with an easy and leisurely restraint; and Mr. Basil Gill both in form and manner made a quite good King. The minor parts upheld the standard of His Majesty's; and a pleasant rattling of steel and shimmer of mail ran through the scenes of active service. Mr. Percy Macquoid had seen to it that the period was there, and Mr. Joseph Harker had taken good care that the jewelry of Shakspeare's verse should have the right setting, though I could easily have mistaken his Gadshill scene for a section of the Lake Country.
O. S.
A GRIEVANCE.
Nothing is too good for our fighting men. Let my subscription to that axiom be complete; and yet——
Well, it is like this. A man who is only a year or so too old for active service, but feels as fit and keen as a boy, has so many opportunities for regretting his enforced civilism and absence from the arena that it is hard when additional ones are thrust upon him.
He may do his best at home. He may guard gasworks, or organise funds, or campaign as an enlister, or visit the hospitals; but all the time he is conscious that being here is so different from being there. It galls him day and night, and the only thing that can help him at all is the society of lovely women, and now he has lost that!
I hate to grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which now and then becomes depressingly acute, is to be alleviated only in this way. Nice women must do their part.
But do they? No. They did at first, but no longer.
Let me tell you. The other evening I found myself one of the complacent hosts of a party of merry chattering young women, who seemed to be quite satisfied with our attention. All of us were just beginning to be very jolly, and I had actually forgotten my hard destiny of inactivity, when who should come into the room but an officer on crutches, who happened to be an acquaintance of each of our guests but was unknown both to me and my other just too elderly male friends. In an instant we were alone, and alone we remained for certainly half an hour, while every attention was being paid by our guests to that other. When at last they tore themselves away and returned, their conversation was wholly confined to their wounded friend's adventures, and we need not have been there at all, except to pay the bill.