To a Pretty Girl.
My Dear,—I want you to be a little more merciful. The other day, when your father, over the eggs and bacon, was reading out the news from Greece, with the defeat of Venizelos, you said lightly that exile didn't matter very much because Venizelos was a very old man. You then returned to the absorbing occupation of identifying Society people, reading from left to right. Now Venizelos is fifty-five years of age, and I cannot allow the term "very old" to be applied to him without protest; I am too nearly his contemporary. "Getting on," if you like, "mature," "ripe," but not "very old." You must keep that phrase for the people who—well, who are very old.
To a Haberdasher.
Dear Sir,—When I came to put on the collar that I bought from you yesterday (I am the tallish customer who takes sixteen and a half by two and was in a hurry to get home to dress) I found that your young man's finger-marks were on it. Why don't you make your assistants wear gloves when they handle collars?
To a Minister of Religion.
Your Far-from-serene Gloominess,—Won't you one day be a little cheerful, and wrong? Won't you send out a lifeboat to the wreck instead of watching her through your smoked field-glasses as she sinks? What you seem to forget is that most people at times are their own Gloomy Deans: some of us too often; and there can be too much of a good thing. Hopelessness butters no parsnips and it is a mood not to be encouraged or the world would be as bad as we then think it. Gloomy-deaniness, though salutary for brief intervals, should be sparingly indulged in; but you are at it all the time. There is a Chinese proverb which says, "If you can't smile don't open a shop;" and, after all, St. Paul's Cathedral is in a manner of speaking a kind of shop, isn't it?—the goods, at any rate, should be obtainable there. The phrase "there is no health in us" does not constitute the whole liturgy. Down with facile optimists by all means, but, my dear Sir——
E. V. L.