Lady (diligent reader of spy articles and exposures of Anglo-German businesses) to alien window-cleaner. "Look here: you needn't come any more."
Window Cleaner. "Endirely Bridisch Gombany, Lady."
Lady. Yes, I daresay. But for all I know you might be part of the flower of the German Army."
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I can imagine the feelings of a romantic maiden who, prone to choose her novels by title, has set down on her library list The Price of Love (Methuen), and finds herself landed with one of Mr. Arnold Bennett's intimate little guides to "Bursley" and the four other drab towns. And yet if she will set her teeth and read the first fifty pages without skipping she will discover that she is being let into real secrets of real human hearts; that handsome Rachel (penniless companion to a benign old lady), and her debonair Louis (who somehow never can run straight where money is concerned), are becoming known to her as she knows few, if any, of her friends; and that, because known, they are extraordinarily interesting. She will see Rachel drawn out of the haven of her staunch and critical common sense by her infatuation for Louis; threatened by the shipwreck of despair when she realises his weakness and her irrevocable mistake, and again putting into a new harbour of determination to pay the price of her love and make the best of things. And I should not be altogether surprised if even our romantic library-subscriber finds the next live-happily-ever-after story a little flat by comparison. For there is no doubt that Mr. Bennett has some uncanny power of realising the conflict of human souls, and that there is an astonishingly adroit method in his mania for unimportant and unromantic detail. I refuse altogether to accept as adequate (or appropriate) his explanations of the adventures of the banknotes on the night of their disappearance, but I am grateful for every word and incident of this enchanting chronicle and for the portrait of Rachel in particular.
Modern Pig-Sticking (Macmillan) is a book that, appearing at this particular moment, has an air of detachment not without its own charm. Chiefly, of course, it appeals to a special and limited public—a public, moreover, that is at present too busy to give it the attention that it would otherwise command. Certainly Major A. E. Wardrop's spirited pages deserve to rank with the best that has been written about this sport. As one frankly ignorant, I was myself astonished to find how considerable a body is this literature. As for the gallant Major's own contribution, it is sufficiently well-written to make tales of sporting feats and adventures interesting to the outsider. Which is saying a lot. At the same time his sense of humour is sufficiently strong to save enthusiasm from becoming oppressive. Certainly he loves his theme, as I suppose a good pig-sticker should. "To see hog and hunter charge each other bald-headed with a simultaneous squeal of rage is," he says youthfully, "always delightful." It is all, in these more strenuous times, most refreshing and even a little wistful in its naïveté. The honest and brave gentlemen whose exploits it records are about another kind of pig-sticking now. One hopes that practice with the Indian variety may help them in their chase of the Uhlan road-hog. Here's power to their spears!
