A PERSONAL TRIUMPH.
Always at the same point of my railway journey North I drop my paper and wait till a certain trim red-roofed ivy-clad cottage comes into view across the fields to the right. Till yesterday there were two reasons why I should hail this cottage with delight. First of all, it stands where trim cottages are rarer than pit-heads and slag heaps; and, secondly, GEORGE STEPHENSON once lived there. From now onwards, however, I have a third and more compelling reason for respecting the old building. You shall hear.
Know, then, that I have a friend called Smithson. The Athenians would have had a short way with him; and I admit that there have been times in the course of our relationship when hemlock would really have been the only thing to meet the case. Our conversations (it is no fault of mine) are always dialectical. They take the following form. Light-heartedly I enunciate a proposition. Smithson is interested and asks for a clearer statement. I modify my original position. Smithson purrs. Seeing trouble imminent, I modify my modification, and from that point onwards I make a foredoomed but not (as I flatter myself) an unplucky fight against relentless logic. The elenchus comes soon or late, but it always comes. Only in dreams am I ever one up on Smithson. The old trick of cramming up hard parts of the Encyclopædia overnight is no good. I tried it once with "Hegesippus" and "The Hegira." You don't know what either of these words mean? Smithson did—and he knew the articles. No doubt he and Mr. GLADSTONE had written them in collaboration.
Well, yesterday, Smithson and I were in the neighbourhood of the cottage which I have told you of. Having an hour to spare from work of national importance, we took our sandwiches and were eating them in view of the jolly old house.
"What's that thing over the door?" I said.
"That I take to be a sun-dial," said Smithson with his accustomed reserve of strength.
"What a delightful stile," I said. (You always have stiles on sun-dials. I knew that).
"Quâ stile it is perfect. What do you make of the inscription?"
I went at it bald-headed. "Percunt et imputantur," I said.