THE GREAT MAN.
Every Saturday, about four P.M., I am to be found worshipping at the Shrine of the Open Mind. Once within its portals I put off the subfuse vestments of J. Watson, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, and become simply Uncle James. This alone is a tonic. To-day as I ascended the steps of the temple there floated down to me the voices of the priestesses chanting, evidently in a kind of frenzy, and to the air of a famous Scottish reel, this rhyme——
"Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant, a Sergeant!
Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant of Police."
So I opened the nursery door and went in. An uncle has no honour in his own country, and my two small nieces assaulted me immediately. Phyllis dragged me to a chair, while Lillah shrieked unrelentingly in my ear that Daddy was a sergeant.
"So the special constables have seen that your father is a born policeman?" I said as I sat down.
"The special ones," nodded Phyllis with profound pride.
"Magnificent," I murmured. "He has at last justified his choice of the law as a profession."
"Tell us," said Lillah, with the air with which one speaks of a self-made man who has just appeared in the Honours List—"tell us how Daddy started."
"He went to the Bar," I said.
"Bar?" echoed Lillah.