Mr. Spragg, of Pittsburg. He was going to have the old castle taken across in bits and set up again in Pennsylvania; and he was taking all the family portraits, the mausoleum, the old trees in the park and the stags at a valuation, as well as the village itself with all its cottages and people, in order that the castle might have its proper setting out there. There were two more things he wanted included in the bargain—a village idiot and a family ghost ("hereditary spectre," he called it).
Ah, my dear! all this belongs to the happy old days of a hundred years ago, when we were all three or four weeks younger. The man from Pittsburg, so far from being able to buy Blairbinkie, hardly knows where to look for his next meal, and as for shipping castles and trees and mausoleums and village idiots and family ghosts across the Atlantic he only wishes he could get himself across, even if he had to work his passage!
Josiah is at the uttermost ends of the earth. He went in June, about rubber-mines or oil-concessions, I'm not sure which. I had a cable from him the other day from a place that began with "Boo" and ended with "atty"—I forget what came between. He told me not to be anxious, that he'd get back when and how he could. My answer was, "Not anxious. Wherever you are you'd better stay there, or you may get taken prisoner by those creatures, and then I'd never forgive you!"
Talking of prisoners reminds me of a rumour about the Bullyon-Boundermeres. They were cruising somewhere in their new big steam-yacht when war broke out, and now there 's a report that the enemy have taken the yacht and turned it into a cruiser; that the Bullyon-Boundermere people are prisoners on board, and that they're making her wash dishes and forcing him to work as a stoker or a bulkhead or some fearful thing of that kind! This is not official, my dear, but I give it you for what it's worth.
I called a little meeting here yesterday about a scheme of mine. Beryl and Babs and your Blanche and several more of us are really crack shots, and I want to form us into a band of rifle-women and ask the Powers that be to let us guard some important place—a bridge or a bank or a powder magazine. We should wear a distinctive uniform, and we wouldn't let anyone come near! Babs said she hoped the uniform would be smart and becoming, but I soon shut her up. "This is not a time to think of cut or colour," I told her. "Myself, I shouldn't care how my uniform was cut—even if the shoulder seams were at the elbows. And as for colour I'd wear grass-green, though it's a colour in which I look a mere fiend, if it would help my country!" And Beryl and Babs cried and kissed me.
Ever thine, Blanche.
The Lady of the House. "Just the person I wanted to see. I've started ten committees in connection with the war and I want your help."
Visitor. "My dear! I've just started twelve and I simply counted on you!"
"The Suez Canal has brought St. Helena much closer than in Napoleonic days."
T. P.'s Weekly.
In the same way the opening of the Panama Canal has made Heligoland much more adjacent than in Lord Salisbury's days.
