Petherton quickly countered with:—

SIR—I am sorry that I should have appealed to you in vain. It is not a pleasure to write to you, and it is positively distasteful to have to read your absurd letters in reply. I passed George in the village this evening with his arm round your parlour-maid's waist. I was absolutely disgusted, and must emphatically protest against such familiarity even among the minor members of our households.

Joyously I rushed to respond:—

DEAR PETHERTON,—Your letters, on the contrary, are a positive delight to me. One of the reasons why I should not like to interfere is the feeling that it might put an end to our correspondence.

Personally I cannot visualize the spectacle of similar familiarity between any of the major members of our respective households.

I myself passed your man this evening as I was on my way to the Vicarage, and at the moment he was in mild dalliance with our housemaid. I say mild because they were only arm-in-arm. On my return about an hour later I passed George again, and it is true that this time he was with our parlour-maid, and had his arm round her waist as you describe.

There is no doubt that the young man has a penchant for my staff, but so far no Government secrets have reached my ears, and no details of your personal doings, past, present or future.

"Carry on" is the motto of the day, so why not let well alone? Were you never a young man?

Petherton was getting very worked-up, to judge from his reply:—

SIR,—I disapprove of your levity. This is a serious matter to me. On your own showing George's behaviour is scandalous, and although I should scarcely expect you to look at the matter in its proper light I should have thought that even you would have interfered now that matters have reached such a state. Your attitude is intolerable.

I am well able to protect the Government's secrets, and my movements could be of little interest even to you, but I do not think the society of your maids desirable for a young man like George. I strongly suspect that they are having a bad influence over him. He is becoming careless in his work.

I accidentally overheard him say, in conversation with the grocer's man, that he was—to use his own expression—walking out with a Miss Parsons. Is this either your parlour-maid or housemaid? or is it some third person?

DEAR OLD CHAP (I replied),—Thank you for your cheering letter. I hope neither of us will say or do anything that would terminate this exchange of letters, which is keeping me from dwelling too much on the War.

Miss Parsons is our cook, as worthy a young woman as ever riveted an apple-dumpling or tossed a custard. She would make George an excellent wife. Don't worry about the parlour-maid or housemaid. They would, I am sure, be delighted to be at the wedding.

Petherton's reply was prompt, personal and to the point:—

SIR,—Confound you and your entire staff! You ought all to be interned. If George ever thinks of leaving me I trust it will not be to marry one of your household. In the name of decency I must insist on your taking strong action to end what is a positive scandal.

It was Monday before I replied, then I wrote:—

DEAR FREDDY,—Let us mingle our tears. The worst is about to happen If you were as good a churchgoer as one could wish, you would have been in your pew yesterday morning, when the banns were read out (for the first time of asking) "between George Goodman, bachelor, and Emily Parsons, spinster, both of this parish," though this would not have conveyed to you the appalling fact that your man is marrying my entire staff all at once. I doubt, however, if you will be able to find cause or just impediment, etc.

The Temperance Movement in India.

"In the Punjab and Sind it has been possible to colonise uninhabited wastes, and flourishing communities, aggregating nearly two million inhabitants, are supported entirely by canal water."

Prof. STANLEY JEVONS, in "To-day."

"Girl wanted, just leaving school, for Ruling Department."—Provincial Paper.

Does this mean that we are to have a flapper in the Cabinet?

THE FOLLOW-UP METHOD.

When you respond to an advertisement offering a booklet or a sample free, you are pestered by the proprietor of the commodity advertised with numerous communications importuning your custom, until in sheer self-defence you make a purchase. Now I had occasion to answer an announcement advertising for the services of a person with attainments approximating to my own, decided that, in the event of my application attracting no response, I would adopt the methods indicated above. For the benefit of others I give below a record of my procedure and the result.

My first letter detailed my qualifications, which were very exceptional; explained that my intelligence and industry were far above the average; that I was morbidly conscientious, and willing to sacrifice all my own interests for the needs of the firm; that the reason for leaving my last position was solely a matter of circumstances over which I had no control, and that at an interview, which I craved, I would explain everything to everybody's satisfaction and prove my perfect eligibility for the post. And so forth.

I waited a fortnight. There was no reply. I therefore despatched a follow-up letter. I explained my regret at receiving no response to letter No. 1, and suggested that perhaps it had been inadvertently overlooked, or had gone astray in transit. Alternatively I hinted that perhaps the firm regarded the list of my qualifications as incredibly pretentious, and I assured them that it in no way exaggerated my good points. I had indeed become, if possible, even more conscientious and industrious since I had last written, and having recovered from a cold in the head from which I was then suffering I was actually in better physical condition than before. I reminded the firm that in granting me a preliminary interview they incurred no liability whatsoever.

Another two weeks went by, and still no answer. So I despatched Follow-up Letter No. 2.

This briefly referred to my two previous communications, and asked whether it was not clear to them that, by securing my services while I was in possession of all my faculties and the full vigour and strength of my being, there were advantages they could not possibly acquire with me in, say, another thirty years, when I should probably be suffering from rheumatism, chronic dyspepsia, deafness, dim sight, loss of memory and certainly from approaching old age. I concluded by offering them three days' free trial (I always do best in the first three days); if I failed to give satisfaction by the end of that period they could return me without incurring any obligation whatsoever.

Again two weeks passed away, and there was still no answer. So I sent Follow-up Letter No. 3.

In this I announced a Special Offer, viz., a reduction of twenty pounds sterling (£20) on the salary originally asked if the firm engaged me within ten days from the date of the offer.

I gave them twelve days in which to respond, but still received no answer, so, after allowing a further two days' grace, I despatched Follow-up Letter No. 4, stating that as they had evidently been prevented from replying to my special offer I had decided to extend the period for acceptance by fourteen (14) days, reckoning from the date of the present communication. At the end of that period the salary demanded would be increased by ten pounds (£10) over and above that asked in my first application. Thus, by accepting the existing offer of twenty pounds (£20) reduction, they would really be securing me at thirty pounds (£30) less than my market price.

I waited patiently for a further fourteen days, and then sent Follow-up Letter No. 5.

This letter was quite brief. It made no attempt to disguise the fact that I was hurt at the firm's silence, and it hinted at enquiries from other employers of labour whose needs would have to be considered. It intimated also that I could not possibly hold myself at the firm's disposal indefinitely, and that unless a prompt reply was received I could not guarantee acceptance. By way of a crushing suggestion of niggardliness on their part I enclosed a stamped addressed envelope.

An answer came by return of post as follows:—

DEAR SIR,—In reply to your letter, we beg to say that the vacancy to which you refer was filled some ten (10) weeks ago.

Yours faithfully, etc.

Now I know where I am. Without this persistence, which is the essence of the following-up business, I should simply be where I am without knowing it.

Bacchus at the Front.

Extract from a speech by the KAISER as reported by The Sun (Vancouver, B.C.):—

"The campaign ... had been conducted according to the brilliant plans of Field-Marshal von Hindenburg.... The old god of bottles directed. We were his instruments and we are proud of it."

"Among some of the best-informed bankers in the City the view taken in this respect is one which it may be well for the public at large to have repeated for their own guidance. The new War Loan, they say, will either be the last before the Allies impose on the enemy their own terms of peace, or it will not."—The Times.

We had already formed the same opinion, but we are glad to have it confirmed on such high authority.

"Barrow magistrates decided that Ideas must not be sold after the closing hour."—Daily Sketch.

Unfortunately this will not prevent the bore from continuing to give you his gratis.

Demand—

"Elderly English Girl wanted as companion to young lady for afternoon."—Egyptian Gazette.

and supply—

"The age limit for Girl Guides was formerly 18 years, but it has now been raised to 81 years by general request."—British Paper.

THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE.

MR. BLAIR, the L.C.C. Education Officer, is dissatisfied, according to The Daily Chronicle, with the questions put at school examinations, on the ground that they do not test the thoughtfulness and ingenuity of the pupil. The "Why" as well as the "What" should be developed, and to illustrate the value of the method proposed Mr. BLAIR suggests various sample questions, e.g.:—

"How do you account for the density of the population in Staffordshire?

"Find out from your atlas the distance from London to Glasgow. How long would it take you to go there by train? What would the third-class fare be at a penny a mile?

"How can we discover the minimum conditions necessary for the germination of a bean?

"ARISTOTLE remarked that a bee will visit one type of flower only during one journey from the hive. Find out if this is true, and, if true, point out its significance from the point of view of the flower."

As Mr. BLAIR remarks, a quest is better than a question. We agree, and venture to start a few more quests:—

"Find out from Who's Who the literary productions of Miss MARIE CORELLI and Mr. HALL CAINE, and trace their effect on the density of the population of Warwickshire and the Isle of Man respectively.

"ARISTOTLE remarked that one swallow does not make a summer. Find out whether this is true, and, if true, explain its bearing on the thirst of the swallower.

"Find out on your map the distance from Madrid to Jaffa, and state what would be the cost of a cargo of Spanish onions and Jerusalem artichokes delivered in the London Docks.

"What is the minimum time necessary for the incubation of a Scarlet Pimpernel?

What are the statutory dimensions of a gigantic gooseberry? Have you ever seen one, and if not why not?"

Our Youthful Heroes.

"C.Q.M.S.E.A. ——, brother of Mr. W.M. ——, Falmouth, spent his third birthday in the trenches on the 8th inst."—Royal Cornwall Gazette.

"One or two of the Councillors are on war service, and their places will be kept warm for them.... Councillors —— and J.R. —— have not once been able to sit since they donned khaki."—Southern Times.

We infer that the Councillors in question are training for the cavalry.

"The British fleet bombarded Skarvika and Semuntoltos, south of Orfano. Marshall's 7, Martyn's 2. Wakefield (3), Stone (2), Cripps, and Turbyfield scored for the winners."—Gloucestershire Echo.

We like this idea of recording the names of the successful marksmen at once, without waiting for the formal despatches.

A DREAM SHIP.

MISGIVINGS.

Walking recently by Hyde Park Corner I met a man in a comic hat. He was an elderly man, very well set up, marching along like an old officer—quite an impressive figure with his grey moustache and grey hair, had not this ridiculous affair surmounted him. It was not exactly a hat, and not exactly a cap, but something between the two, and it was so minute as to be almost invisible and wholly absurd. Yet there was every indication that its wearer believed that it suited him, for he moved both with confidence and self-satisfaction.

And as I watched him, and after he had passed, swinging his stick and surveying the world with the calm assurance of a connoisseur of most of the branches of life I began to entertain some very serious and disturbing doubts. For (thought I) here is quite a capable kind of fellow, of mature age, making a perfect guy of himself under the profound conviction that he is doing just the reverse and that that pimple of a hat suits him. No doubt, judging by the cut of his clothes and his general soigné appearance, he stands before his glass every morning until he is satisfied. Had he (thought I) any accuracy of vision he would see himself the grotesque thing he is in that idiotic little cap. But his vision is distorted.

It was then that I began to go hot and cold all over, for I suddenly realised that my vision might be distorted too. My hat hitherto had satisfied me; but suppose that that too was all wrong. And then I wondered if anyone really gets a true return from the mirror, or if we are not all bemused; and, remembering those astounding hats in which WINSTON used to be photographed a few years ago, I asked myself, "Where are we, when even the great legislators can go so wrong?"

Although all this soul-searching occurred several days ago, I am still nervous, and I never catch sight of my reflection in a shop window without suspicion racking me; while to see a smile on the face of an approaching pedestrian is agony.

But (you will say) why not ask the hatter or some intimate friend to select the hat for you? I guessed you would suggest that. But it won't help; I'll tell you why. Some years ago I knew a fat man with a big head—a journalist of great ability—who made himself undignified by perching upon the top of that great and capable head a little bowler. Its inadequacy had always annoyed me, but never more so than when, on my arriving at our place of servitude one morning (we were on the same paper) in a new and perfectly becoming hat, he said to me, "That hat's all wrong. You should never choose a hat for yourself. I never do. I get my wife to choose mine for me." Remembering this I am even more unsettled than before. I see no hope.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

The idea of publishing Frederick the Great: The Memoirs of his Reader, Henri de Catt (1758-1760) (CONSTABLE) was that we are all so passionate against Prussianism that we want to plank down our money for two volumesful of observations at first hand about the man who was the source and origin of that dark and swollen stream. Personally, we doubt the general zeal in this matter—not of Prussianism but of FREDERICK. However, DE CATT, looking at a king from a queer angle, is extraordinarily diverting. "Reader" was a euphemism for a patient audience, including claque. FREDERICK, incognito on a Dutch barge, picked up the young scholar and marked him down as one who could be induced by florins and flattery to take on the job of listening to his patron's bad French verses and his after-dinner flutings of little things of his own, his approving observations on his own conduct, his battles, his philosophy of life and politics, no doubt calculating that it would all be jotted down on fateful scraps of paper and given a favourable colouring for the edification of the world. Well, the great FREDERICK put it over me all right. Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions. I ought, of course, to add that a learnedly allusive preface by Lord ROSEBERY graces the volume, and that the very competent translation is by F.S. FLINT.

These are days when the more we know about Russia and things Russian the better. Specially timely, then, is the appearance, in an English translation, of The Fishermen (STANLEY PAUL), by DIMITRY GREGOROVITSH. It is a wonderfully appealing story, which has been put into English—presumably by Dr. ANGELO RAPPOPORT, though he is only credited on the title-page with the authorship of the Preface—in such a way that the spirit of the original is admirably preserved. I had not read a couple of pages before the charm of the style laid hold upon me. The story is quite simple, concerned only with a group of peasants, fisher-folk, living on the banks of a great river. GREGOROVITSH is like TOURGENIEV in his devotion to peasant and country types, but otherwise more akin to our own younger school of realists in the minuteness of his observation. Throughout the story abounds in character-study of a kind that, while building up the figure with a thousand details, will add suddenly some vivid touch that brings the whole wonderfully and unforgettably to life. An example of this is Akim, that perfect type of the hopeless incompetent, whose very futility, while it rightly exasperates his fellows, makes him a delight to the reader; so that his death, at the end of the first part, comes with an effect of personal loss. For my own part, as poor Akim had never once before accomplished what he set out to do, I was quite expectant of his recovery, and proportionately disappointed. Throughout also there are pen-pictures of Russian scenery, full of vivid colour; while the story itself, though inevitably in a somewhat minor key, is never sordid or pessimistic. Emphatically therefore a book for everyone to read who cares to know the best in the literature of our great Ally.

MARGARET DELAND'S well-proved pen gives us a spirited sketch of a modernist American woman in The Rising Tide (MURRAY). I don't quite know how this enigmatic sentence, which 1 have long puzzled over and frankly given up, came to escape both author and reader: "Once Mrs. Childs said to tell Fred her Uncle William would say it was perfect nonsense." I feel sure it is not good American. However, Freddy Payton is a young girl who tells the inconvenient truth to everybody about everything, and you may guess that such candour does not make for peace. Mrs. Payton elects to keep her idiot son in the house, and Freddy thinks an asylum is the proper place for him, and says so. The late Mr. Payton was a rake, and Freddy derides her mother's weeds on the ground that the widow is really in her heart waving flags for deliverance, but daren't admit it. Freddy offers cigarettes to the curate, which is apparently a much greater crime over there than here. Freddy finally, carried along by the rising tide, asks the man she loves to marry her, mistaking his friendship for something stronger, and learns that, as the old-fashioned people like her mother realise, men are essentially hunters and "won't bag the game if it perches on their fists." I wonder! But Freddy got a better man—the diffident elderly man who was waiting round the corner. In fact, Freddy is rather a sport, and if Mrs. DELAND intended her as a tract for the times, in the manner of Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, her shot has miscarried—at least so far as I am concerned.

Edmund Layton, thick in the arm and at times, be it confessed, thick in the head, was so thoroughly in love with The Bright Eyes of Danger (CHAMBERS), and the brighter eyes of Charlotte Macdonell, Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends was longing to give him warning. For instance, when that taking villain, Philip Macdonell, after beating him in the race for the French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship (vide the frontispiece mystery chart), soon after fell comfortably into his hands, he had no more discretion than to take him out to fight a duel; whereon, as we others foresaw, the wily villain incontinently disappeared and the fun was all to begin again. Maybe we might forgive him that, for of such staple are good yarns spun, but why in heaven's name should bold Edmund Layton of Liddesdale go about to make himself and us miserable with feckless scruples that ruined the happy ending we had fairly earned? Either he was right to let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and Mr. JOHN FOSTER'S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such a subtlety. All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as well as bright eyes, and with more than a smack of STEVENSON.

I fancy that I ought perhaps already to know The Wood-Carver of 'Lympus (MELROSE), which, hailing originally from America, seems to have made many friends over here before reaching me in its present form. I am glad, more especially at the present season, to extend a grateful welcome to so kindly and charming a story. Miss MARY E. WALLER has written a singularly refreshing and happy book, full of passages that reveal a great sympathy for country life and the hearts of simple people. Hugh Armstrong, the central figure, is a youth in a New England mountain farm, condemned to perpetual inactivity through an accident. At the beginning of the story we see him, in the depths of misery, visited by a casual passenger from the stage coach, whose attention has been caught by his story as related by the driver. Thenceforward things mend for Armstrong. The stranger interests him in wood-carving; orders pour in, which help to bring comfort to the farm; books and letters arrive from unknown city dwellers. Thus the tale is a record of increasing happiness, but kept (an important thing) from cloying by the tragedy upon which it is built. If you will not be put off by American dialect or by the rather startling discovery that one of the kindliest characters is named Franz, you will, I believe, find a brief stay upon 'Lympus most beneficial to your spirits.

How to deal with your Banker.

"The bankers of General Chang Tsolin, the Military Governor of Mukden, who suffered from financial troubles, were summarily executed by shooting on the charge of having disturbed the money market."—Shanghai Mercury.

"The DarDdaDneDlDleDs Commissioners sat again to-day at the House of Lords, when General Sir John Maxwell was examined."—Provincial Paper.

Please do not imagine that that is what the gallant officer called them.

"A LARGE BLACK DOG, no colour, strayed."—The Times.

"THE LUCKY BLACK CAT, in all colours, made to order."—The Queen.

This is the kind of thing that drives a chameleon mad.