"There's 'cattle,'" I said, remembering 'The War-song of Dinas Vawr.'
"No use just now," said 'war.' "'Rattle' is the only rhyme at the moment; just as General French has his favourite one, and that's 'trench.' If 'battle' and 'rattle' are like the Siamese Twins, 'French' and 'trench' are like Castor and Pollux. Now and then the Commander-in-chief makes the enemy 'blench,' but for one 'blench' you get a thousand 'trenches.' No, I feel very sorry, I can tell you, for some of these words condemned to such a monotony of conjunction; and really I oughtn't to complain. And to have got rid of 'star' is something."
I shook him by the hand.
"But there's one thing," he added, "I do object to, which not even poor old 'battle' has to bear, and that's being forced to march with a rhyme that isn't all there. I have to do that far too often; and it's annoying."
I asked him to explain.
"Well," he said, "those poets who look forward are too fond of linking me to 'o'er'—'when it's 'o'er,' don't you know (they mean 'over'). That's a little humiliating, I always think. You wouldn't like constantly going about with a man who'd lost his collar, would you?"
I said that I shouldn't.
"Well, it's like that," he said, "I am not sure that I would not prefer 'star' to that, or 'scar,' after all. They, at any rate, meant well and were gentlemanly. But 'o'er'? No.
The new book for schools: "Kaiser: De Bello Jellicoe."