But a Welshman would say it best.
"An aggressive minority succeeded in showing that the Little Navy-ites do not represent the bulk of public opinion."—Daily Express.
It is, of course, always the aggressive minority which really represents the bulk of public opinion.
A BYGONE.
When I see the white-haired and venerable Thompson standing behind my equally white-haired but much less venerable father at dinner, exuding an atmosphere of worth and uprightness and checking by his mere silent presence the more flippant tendencies of our conversation; when I hear him whisper into my youthful son's ear, "Sherry, Sir?" in the voice of a tolerant teetotaler who would not force his principles upon any man but hopes sincerely that this one will say No; and when I am informed that he promised our bootboy a rapid and inevitable descent to a state of infamy and destitution upon discovering no more than the fag end of a cigarette behind his ear, then I am tempted to recall an incident of fifteen years back, lest it be forgotten that Thompson is a man like ourselves who has known, and even owned, a human weakness.
Dinner had begun on that eventful evening at 7.30 P.M., and it was drawing within sight of a conclusion, that is, the sweet had been eaten and the savoury was overdue, at 9.45 P.M. Four of us had trailed thus far through this critical meal: my father, a usually patient widower who was becoming more than restless; the Robinsons, never a jocund brace of guests, who were by now positively sullen, and myself who, being but a boy—of twenty odd years and having little enough to say to a woman of fifty-five and her still more antique husband, had long ago settled down to a determined silence. Meanwhile Thompson, then in his first year of service with us, tarried mysteriously heaven knows where.
The intervals of preparation before each course had been growing longer and longer and the pause before the savoury threatened to be infinite. My father commanded me to ring the bell severely. Longing to escape from the table I did so with emphasis, and my ring summoned (to our surprise, for we were not aware of her existence in the house) a slightly soiled kitchen-maid.