| "I'LL DOUBLE YOUR LEGAL
FARE." "DOUBLE THAT AGIN AN' I'LL TAKE YER—'ALF-WAY." | "AN', MIND YER, I WOULDN'T 'AVE BROUGHT YER AS FAR AS THIS ONLY I 'APPENED TO 'AVE BIN COMIN' ANY'OW. I LIVE UP 'ERE." |
NIGHTMARES.
I.
OF A FORM MASTER WHO DREAMS THAT HE HAS CALLED ON THE WAR CORRESPONDENT OF "THE DAILY MAIL" FOR A LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE CÆSAR'S DE BELLO GALLICO.
"Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est." Is it fanciful to say of the three parts into which all Gaul is divided that by their colours may they be known, the blue, the brown and the ghastly, ghoulish, intolerable, bestial, but, thank God, passing, grey? Yes, thank God, the blight of greyness cannot last long; even now the scabrous plague is being burnt up and swept back and overwhelmed by the resistless flood, eager yet cautious, persistent yet fiery, of the blue and the brown. Hideous, pitiable, soul-searing are the scars that it leaves in its mephitic wake, but the cleansing tide of the brown and the blue sweeps on, and the healing wand of time waves over them, and soon the shell-holes and the waste places and the abominations of desolation are covered with little flowers—or would be if it were Spring.