Various

“ I shall put on my best mustard-coloured suit and my new green Tyrolean hat—the one with the feather in it."
"I don't see why you should, simply to meet the Countess of Aire."
"But think of the romance of the meeting," I urged. "Just fancy! It is to be at the cross-roads, perhaps above the nameless grave of a suicide. There I shall be waiting at five o'clock, all dressed up in my mustard suit and tremulous with excitement. And at last there will dash up to the trysting-place some splendid equipage, a silver-plated car, or the family coach with prancing and foaming horses. ”

“ It is indeed a pleasant thought that so many hard-working people are able on this day to snatch a little leisure in the good old English fashion on the swings and roundabouts and forsake the weary routine of watching American films. These great crowds picnic also on the greensward, bringing their food in paper wrappers, so that a student of such matters can easily gauge the proportionate circulation of our principal morning dailies by taking a walk round Hampstead Heath early on Whit-Tuesday morning. ”

“ Next perhaps in interest to the boy scouts, both because of their quaint mediæval costume and the long lances which they carry in their hands, are the rangers of Hampstead Heath. Feudal retainers of the L.C.C., they sally ever and anon from their lairs with lances couched to spear up the pieces of paper which the people of London have left behind; and this paper-sticking is really the best sport to be enjoyed now on Hampstead Heath, unless one counts fishing for dace in the ponds, which I take to be the most contemplative recreation, except coal-mining, in the British Isles. ”

“ It is the only kind that suits my skin."
"But I haven't been to Paris."
"You haven't brought my soap! Why haven't you been to Paris?"
"I have been to London."
She pouted. "Why stay in London instead of Paris? What silliness!"
"And how did you get here?" I asked.
"By sledge. It was terribly exciting and illegal, of course, and dangerous. Petersburg's awful. All the pipes have burst and there are no Russians there."
"No Russians!" I exclaimed.
"Because the best people—I mean, of course, the people who won't work—have all adopted other nationalities. We are—what are we, Mother?" ”

“ It seems to me that what is chiefly wrong with houses, at any rate with our house, is the scullery. It is smaller than most bathrooms, and, though it is anything but bare, the furnishings of it are not intriguing to one who, like myself, spends therein such an undue proportion of the twenty-four hours.
Our present char comes three days a week, about eleven o'clock, has a look round with a duster in one hand till thirteen o'clock, then lunches and (probably) has a cigarette. She leaves at fifteen o'clock. ”

“ In the garden of this house the poet is said to have written his celebrated "Ode to a Nightingale," and the nightingale may still be heard on Hampstead Heath in June. Presumably it is the same bird, and the lines,
"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird;
No hungry generations tread thee down,"
must be taken as a remarkable instance of literary foresight, for crowds of people have for years been trying in vain to trample the brave bird down and have evidently been hungry, or they would never have left so much sandwich-paper about. ”

“ I can't understand how you forgot about the soap. You've no idea what bad manicurists the Finns are; they've torn my fingernails to bits."
"But when you've sold all your clothes and jewellery what do you intend to do?" I asked.
Tatiana laughed. "Then there's the house in Petersburg that will fetch quite a lot of money, and there are a number of people here who want it."
"How can you sell a house to people who can't get to it?" ”

“ It is possible, however, to visit Hampstead, if you are sufficiently venturous, by bus, tube, tram or train. If you are very rich the best way is to take a taxi-cab as far as Chalk Farm, where London's milk supply is manufactured. You cannot go further than Chalk Farm by taxi-cab, because the driver will explain that he is afraid of turning giddy, having no head for heights. ”

“ The conditions at the time when the author sailed from Enzeli with his "Dunsterforce" to raise the siege of Baku were delightfully cosmopolitan. He describes himself as "a British General on the Caspian, the only sea unploughed before by British keels, on board a ship named after a South African Dutch President and whilom enemy, sailing from a Persian port under the Serbian flag to relieve from the Turks a body of Armenians in a revolutionary Russian town." ”

“ When you have reached the last summit you will find yourself confronted by a frowning Gothic pile known as Jack Straw's Castle, and a large flagstaff on which the flag is only flown when the castellan is in residence. There is also a pond where the inhabitants of Hampstead, both old and young, swim their dogs after sticks and float a great variety of boats. ”

“ Those of us who read With the Persian Expedition know something about the Hush-Hush Army; enough, at any rate, to whet our appetites for more. Let me then recommend The Adventures of Dunsterforce (Arnold) to your notice, and assure you that it is a most lively account of as strange an enterprise as any that the War brought forth. Briefly, the object of General Dunsterville's mission was to prevent German and Turkish penetration in the area of the Caucasus, Baku and the Caspian Sea. ”

“ Suppose a lovely but selfish wife, bored to the point of flight from a well-intentioned husband, then involved in a railway smash which disfigures her beauty, destroys her memory and incidentally reforms her character ”

“ The only rug we possess which might be so described is a Persian one, and is on our cat at present. When she has done with it I intend to spread it over the only part of the bathroom floor which is permanently dry. And, suffering as our bathroom does from that lack of space which the writer on bathrooms so justly laments, the "profound chair" is out of the question. ”

“ I felt my cherished Russian nationality slipping away and my only safety seemed to lie in an instant departure. I caught her hand and kissed her polished finger-tips. She bent forward and kissed my forehead.
"Good journey," she said.
"A happy time at home," I answered, and, saluting her husband, I hurried to the door.
"I'm glad there's a little bit of Russian left in you," she called after me. "And by the way you might bring two boxes of the soap; it doesn't last long."
ONE SPORTSMAN TO ANOTHER. ”

“ Each pole is attached to a boy scout, and it has been calculated that, if all the boy scouts in Hampstead were to set their poles end to end in a perfectly straight line from the flagstaff, pointing in a south-easterly direction, they would be properly told off by their scout-masters for behaving in such an idiotic manner. ”

“ But, he goes on, "it was not so much the arms as their motto which attracted me—the motto of a man who began his brilliant career as plain Mr. F. E. Smith. Now the Latin for 'smith,' as an artisan, is faber (artificer or fabricator in the primal sense) ; so, with a fine democratic courage, Lord Birkenhead has chosen as his family motto: 'Faber meæ Fortunæ' (Architect of my own Fortune) ."
We agree; but it must not be supposed that Lord Birkenhead has an entire monopoly of this frank spirit. Other eminent men who have recently been ennobled or decorated have shown a similar frankness. ”

“ They acquire, moreover, the keen steady gaze of those who live in constant communion with the silent hills, so different from the Oriental fatalism in the eyes of the Kensingtonite, which comes from the eternal contemplation of the posters of Chu Chin Chow. ”

“ Anyhow you will find that people living in Hampstead tend more and more to regard themselves as dwellers in the mountains, and take defiantly to wearing plaid shawls and big hobnail brogues, and carry alpenstocks in the Underground with them. ”

“ The Archdeacon stepped deliberately towards our pew. I was tempted to bolt through a stained-glass window. And then, as he came near, he beamed on me.
"Don't apologise, my dear Sir, don't apologise. If you were so moved by the picture I drew of the inroads the new Divorce Law would make on the sanctity of our homes why should you not express your indignation? Enthusiasm is far better than lethargy."
"Mr. Johnson feels very strongly on the subject," said Mrs. Benham. ”

“ In practice what happens in our Parliament is that the Peers, after killing time with academic debates for two or three months, are suddenly called upon, whenever a Recess is in contemplation, to pass three or four Bills through all their stages in as many days. ”

“ Hundreds of skilful workmen, if they do not happen to be on strike, will be employed in erecting the pavilions that are to lodge the two statesmen, who will meet in open field, but not be allowed, either of them, to visit the camp of the other lest they be suspected of secret diplomacy. ”

“ The rural districts, it may be safely assumed, already know something about agriculture. But many areas are still in a state of benighted ignorance about the results of intensive culture applied to the arts. ”

“ Sir Jagadiz Chunder Bose, lecturing at Westminster School, said that plants, like human beings, are sensitive to pain. Some of the war-time allotment marrows we heard so much of must have suffered badly from obesity. ”

“ The Great Eastern have inaugurated a new plan for helping food-producers. They are sending out an instructional train, manned by experts and full of live stock—poultry and rabbits and goats—which is to traverse their system for two months. ”

“ Second ditto. "My dear! One must occupy oneself somehow after dinner till it's time to go somewhere."
MEETING THE COUNTESS.
"Could you find time to meet the Countess of Aire?" inquired the Vicar's wife with her gracious smile, after we had chanced together at a corner of our village street. "At five o'clock," she added, "at the cross-roads." ”

“ According to Sir Robert Horne the price of a best quality worsted suit, as made by a high-class tailor in this country, is approximately sixteen to eighteen guineas, and is still rising, though he thinks it should not be more than twenty guineas next winter. ”

“ The Bank now gives employment to 6,000 persons, 2,000 of whom are women. In order to accommodate them outside premises have been acquired from time to time. The chief of these new establishments is St. ”