WHAT OUR TAILOR HAS TO PUT UP WITH.
Scene I. A perfect fit.
Scene II. After a week's drill.
Fleet Street was thrilled to the depths of its deepest inkpot last week when it read in The Daily Chronicle of the historic meeting between Mr. Harold Begbie and MR. W. J. Bryan in New York. The sensation was caused not so much by the announcement that Mr. Bryan "has the long mouth of the orator, the lips swelling and protruding as he speaks, thinning and compressing when he is silent," or that "the full and heavy neck, which seems to be part of the face, is corded with muscles," although either of those statement is startling enough. Nor was it Mr. Begbie's struggle to decide whether he should devote his attention to the great statesman or to the railway station in which they met, the statesman being selected only just in time. No, what nearly stopped the clock of St. Bride's church was this paragraph in Mr. Begbie's record of the event: "At this point I asked quite innocently, and with a real desire for information, an obvious but indiscreet question, which Mr. Bryan rebuked me for asking, reminding me that he was a member of the Government."
What a subject for an Academy painting in oils! Or, if Milton had been living at this hour, how he would have immortalised the touching scene!
A desire to present to our readers some fuller details of this world-staggering event prompted us to cable to a few correspondents in New York. One cables back: "The scne was dramatic in the extreme. The journalist, his big blue eyes brimming with innocence, gently breathed the question, when the great statesman shook his shaggy many and roared out his rebuke like a lion in pain. The journalist's apologetic gesture was one of the most delicate things I have ever seen."
Another tells us:—"When Mr. Begbie put his question so great a stillness reigned throughout the crowded railway station that you could have heard a goods-train shunt. Mr. Bryan looked long and earnestly at the journalist, then, placing his hand affectionately on his shoulder, he said to him in a throbbing voice, 'Oh, Harold, how can you?'"
"The Incorrigibles."
"The enemy made attacks, but each effort was repulsed with great laughter."—Star.
"One recalls in this connection the statement made by Alexander the Great, that Napoleon's invasion of Russia was defeated not by the Cossacks, but by Generals January and February."—Stock Exchange Gazette.
This reminds us of Caesar's comment on the sack of Louvain:—"Magnificens est, sed non bellum."
Above the Adiniralty,
To take the news of seamen
Seafaring on the sea;
So all the folk aboard-ships
Five hundred miles away
Can pitch it to their Lordships
At any time of day.
Their crackling whispers go;
The demon says, "Your servant,"
And lets their Lordships know;
A fog's come down off Flanders?
A something showed off Wick?
The captains and commanders
Can speak their Lordships quick.
Look up above Whitehall—
E'en now, mayhap, he's taking
The Greatest Word of all;
From smiling folk aboard-ships
He ticks it off the reel:—
"An' may it please your Lordships,
A Fleet's put out o' Kiel!"
"Much indecision prevails as to what the value of sultanas will be in the near future."
Daily Telegraph.
What the Germans want to know is the price of Sultans.
