Second Ditto (firmly). "No; thar I 'on't, Bo'! Work's scass enow as 't is—but if we was to hev all them Parsons tu'nned out, an' goin' 'bout Ploughin', An' Hedgin', An' Mowin', An' Harvestin', we should be wuss off than we are now!"
"THE BEARING OF IT LIES IN THE APPLICATION."
"Spare no efforts to maintain the magnificent inheritance which has descended from your forefathers," said Mr. Chamberlain, when bidding a temporary good-bye to Birmingham.
Well, it is a magnificent inheritance, and most certainly it is our duty, as well as our interest, to maintain it. But how? Magnificent as it is, it has certain incumbrances; memories of wrongs unredressed, actualities of mismanagement unremoved. To maintain these is not to improve the inheritance, and enable us to hand it down better worth maintaining by those who will inherit it from us. As stewards of the splendid patrimony of empire, we must not only keep it together, but properly—that is, justly and sagaciously—administer it, which, indeed, is the only sure and safe way of maintaining it. The accumulated mortgage of our ancestors' errors and misdeeds is, unfortunately, but inevitably, a part of our "inheritance." To pay it off may seem a burdensome duty, but a duty it is, in the resolute doing, not the haughty ignoring or cowardly shirking, of which we shall be at least as truly "maintaining our inheritance," as by stroke of sword, or statute of coercion. Verb. sap.
We see a book advertised by Messrs. Kegan, Paul & Co., called Tertium Quid. Ask an Eton Boy, about Christmas time, or when he is going back to school, what is the translation of Tertium Quid, and he will probably hold out his hand and reply, "The third sovereign—but I'll take one to go on with, or to go off with." Well, you can "owe him one" for that.
What's in a Name?—The person who ought to write a weird Christmas story is, evidently, the Author of Bootles' Baby, That Imp! &c., John Strange Winter.