out any apparent reduction in the speed of the original stone. One hit the side of the rink and rebounded into a third stone; the other narrowly missed a retired general before impinging on two more stones and sending them off into a group of colonels. Within thirty seconds seven stones were in motion. Within a minute every stone on the ice was involved and the rink looked like the start of a game of snooker pool when someone has played a hard first shot at the red pyramid. Those of the curlers who had not been able to scramble to safety on the side had to jump again and again to let the massive stones whizz past underneath. It was a fine sight. It went on for some while. After some five minutes Percival de I'LL TELL THE WORLD. IT often happens that the strong calculated to March 31 £ 76 mind, yet in sailing a ship it is convenient to have something to put in the hold when one sets out, and something different to bring back when one returns. It is to this curious circumstance that England owes the commerce that has made her whatever she is. Whilst manufactures remained an affair of simple homely craftsmanship, such as may be studied in my books on Medieval Guilds and What About Them? and Sussex Iron and Gloucesterand an outcry is at once raised by the shire Wool, or, even better, in Patcham's more volatile organs of the daily Press, Humorous Tales of the Hanseatic League, which point out that we are giving their grimy details aroused little or no everything away to the confounded indignation in the Englishman's mind, foreigner and getting nothing out of but unfortunately the complication of him in return. scientific machinery, due to the refusal Preserving, however, his traditional to prohibit coal, has now become so phlegm, the strong silent Englishman terrific that a patriotic islander can tected a distinct slowing down on the part of one or two of the less speedy curling-stones. One or two of the curlers were also showing signs of fatigue. Others were gathering up their brooms and beginning to move towards us. So we started to leave. Did I say we were requested to go away? It was a euphemism. One or two of the ladies may have said that, but several of the retired military men put it quite differently. Their meaning, however, was clear. A. A. ELIZABETHAN MERCHANTS TRADING IN THE EAST. merely waits for some more statistics, £ s. d. The true fact is that whereas the mind of the Englishman naturally dwells with pride upon his love of adventure From the Cambridge Lent Race-Card: in far-off seas and the beauty of the English landscape at home, somewhere, The English like ships, and, though only read about industrial processes with fatigue and pain. So that the very source of the country's prosperity appears upon closer inspection to be little better than a foul blot on the body politic. Who, for instance, on being told that or "the operation which succeeds that of the drawing frame is slubbing, where the sliver has a certain amount of twist imparted to it, and is wound on a bobbin," even more terribly "its effect is to throw the wool partly out of its teeth and prepare it for being entirely removed by the doffer," or possibly worse "whilst the castings are still at a dull red heat, the pigs are detached from the sows, or irregular larger pigs, by means of a crowbar," -who, we ask, will not gaze out with relief into his garden, where already the first snowdrops are appearing, and thank Heaven that we still have TENNYSON and SHAKESPEARE to read, and can breathe the pure air of the countryside on the Cotswold Hills? Who, again, Wool-gathering is carried on in York- during the political connection of this shire, and cotton-reeling in Lancashire, country with the Kingdom of Burgundy, is now of less moment than American films. Silk stockings, now made of tin ore, are a much more important staple in these days than in the time of ALFRED THE GREAT (founder of our Navy), when "WHAT DO THEY WOT OF ENGLAND Anon. will not feel a yearning for the sunny under the auspices of Mr. MAYNARD they were not worn at all by the humhillsides of France and Italy, which manufacture scarcely anything but oil, wine and dust? And yet it is by means of such vile mechanical orgies as we have indicated that many of us are enabled to exist, and with tranquil pleasure to contemplate the glories of the eighteenth century or DRAKE and the Spanish Main. No one can regret more than the present writer that the enormous growth of English power and prestige during the nineteenth century arose out of industrial areas which the high-spirited Englishman only ob bler classes of the female peasantry. Chain-mail and arrowheads are no longer the principal product of Sheffield, and novel - making has replaced the forging of cannons in Sussex. Oxford, once a theological centre, now manufactures motor - cars, and Cambridge, once also a university town, constructs light revues. Yet the ships of England still plough the EVOE. seas. BRIGHTER BATHROOMS. You may have noticed the interesting little sideline of psychology which serves when travelling to Hoylake and | KEYNES. No effective legislation has has recently been explored by The North Berwick. But so it is. been introduced to prevent calico-bleach- Morning Post. It concerns the speed ing, paper-making or tanning. Boots with which we can think in moments of Another trouble arises from the fact and soap are manufactured at Notting- emergency, and was started by a correthat the English, having toured the ham. Ships are built by the Danes in spondent who explained that he dropped globe with profit and pleasure, began the North-East and the Picts or Goidels his safety-razor while shaving. He to teach it the industrial processes in the North-West. Tea-services are actually caught it by the handle before which they had discovered. Nation exported from the Potteries to China, it reached the floor, but before doing after nation thereupon, giving no gratitude to its mentors, started slubbing and throwing wool out of its teeth and detaching the pigs from the irregular larger pigs on its own. Yet still the Saxons trade. Whether the visitor from overseas should be invited to make a tour of the manufacturing towns of England is a moot point. They vary in the I opaqueness of their gloom, yet each has a cheerful patriotism of its own, incredible as it may seem to dwellers in the south, a distinctive rain HOME INDUSTRIES IN SUSSEX. fall and a service of trams as irritating to motorists as that of outer London itself. GEO M so he distinctly remembered thinking (a) I have dropped my razor; (b) if I don't catch it it may break; (c) but if I don't catch it carefully I shall probably cut my hand. Now this is not so bad inter pontem et fontem, as the Augustinian phrase has it, but for prompti tude and range of cerebral action I consider that it is completely overshadowed by an experience of my own the other morning. I was shaving with the oldfashioned naked razor when it slipped from my grasp. My ratiocinative process, in the strict se and coal is an import or export trade | quence of its links, ran, if my memory The most progressive municipality of It cannot be too clearly pointed out the provinces is Hull; also Widnes, that the imports, which perpetually fail Warrington, Bootle, Bradford, Burslem- to balance the export trade of the Engon-Trent, Aston Villa, West Bromwich lish, have varied from age to age, and Albion, Newcastle-on-Tyne and many conceivably may vary again. Thus the import of French wines, so essential more. (1) Damn! I've dropped my razor. (2) I am wearing thin bedroom slippers and the big toe of my right foot lies immediately in the path of the falling razor. (3) If my big toe is cut off shall I be eligible, as a duly registered reader of The Daily Gale, for benefit under The Daily Gale family insurance scheme? (5) Shall I be handicapped without a big toe? Does the absence of such a toe make any difference to one's Charleston? (6) Does it hurt to have it cut off? (7) Is it possible to procure artificial big toes? (8) Would it not be as well to take my big toe out of the way? Acting on the last link in this chain of ideas I sprang briskly to one side and the razor buried itself harmlessly in the bathroom floor. Does not the whole subject suggest a most interesting and intellectual time for bathrooms, apartments which are at present somewhat tamely given over to the priestlike task of pure ablution varied by occasional bursts of song? Could it not be made a point of honour with all users of bathrooms to see how much could be thought in them, and how swiftly, at times of crisis? I am not of course thinking of those who have often composed a complete commination service while waiting to secure vacant possession of such apartments. But the occasional crise de toilette is not exclusively concerned with razors ; and if we could have, for example, the emotional history registered between (a) stepping into a much too hot bath and leaping wildly out of it again; (b) slipping on the soap and receiving concussion of the brain; or (c) dropping a stud and seeing it roll right under a linen-press, would not the morning ritual become more significant affair and our knowledge of mental processes be most usefully increased ? Our Comprehensive Church. a THE OPENING OF THE PING-PONG CLUB. Blanche and I," she said to me joyously, "have made it up again, and I am so glad!" ciated it, because our invitation came the very next morning. "You deserved it," I said warmly. "To give up a taxi when it's raining hard and you know you've waved first There had been a coldness?" I is to attain the summit of human 'It's the worst of going out virtue." together on these half-price remnant days." asked. ་་ 'It wasn't that at all," she retorted hotly. After all, Blanche only got half the piece of silk we were looking at, and so I said at once she could have both bits; and I think it was very nice of me-don't you?" "Did Blanche?" "I expect so, but we hadn't much time, because we remembered just then we wanted to look at the cheap hats at the other end of the shop, and so we rushed off at once. And it was just as well we had to because some of the shop-people aren't very nice and get quite stuffy if any of their silly old "Isn't it?" she agreed, pleased. "Only luckily it didn't matter much, as Tom was there waiting for me in our own car, only I knew the Ping-Pong woman wanted that taxi just awfully, because of her new hat; and I think you ought always to take every chance you can of being nice to people--don't you?' "And so "I do indeed," I said. your invitation came next morning?" "Yes," she said; "only I'm not quite sure it was because of the taxi, as it seems they had changed their minds that day-they had intended to make the opening night exclusive, and then they decided to have it select instead." remnants come in half." "Is there any difference?" I asked. "Yot surely," I said with some indig-"I thought exclusive meant excluding nation, it is obvious that if to grow nobody, and select meant selecting two blades of grass where there was every one." but one before is to benefit humanity, then to make two remnants out of what was previously only one must also be to benefit the shops." "Of course," she agreed. "I must remember that. But what really upset Blanche was the opening of the new Ping-Pong Club the other day. She really was offended with me over that." "Does that mean," I asked, ready to be severe, "that the club was your fault?" "But then Blanche wouldn't mind not having an invitation when she knew so many were going out?" we had one and she hadn't; but that was no reason why she should walk right past me in Bond Street, pretending not to see." "Oh, no," she protested. "Not a "I don't suppose Blanche knew bit. But there was a lot about it in all exactly," she confessed. "I think I forthe papers, you remember-how exclu- got to tell her, and I don't think anyone sive it was going to be, and such reck-else did either. All she knew was that less luxury every where, almost like a new cinema or tea-shop, and invitations for the opening night sent to none but really well-known people." "That explains," I said meekly, "why I didn't get one." "Blanche didn't either," she said gently, and still more gently she From an article on the new Prayer-added, "We did." book: "New services of Crime and Compline." Daily Paper. Comment by enthusiastic innovator:"Prime, I call it!" "Lady (37) desires post taking cash or other light employment."-North London Paper. This advertisement does not emanate from Holloway, but the advertiser may go there if she isn't careful. "And that explains . . .?" I asked. "Blanche," she agreed. "Exactly. Only it was silly of her to be cross, because she hadn't done the work I had." "For the club?" "For the invitation," she corrected me. "That invitation cost me seven calls in one afternoon and I forget how many others as well, besides one lunch and an introduction to my own dresswith no Previous Experience of Motors and Motoring are Stepping into Well-maker, as well as giving up a taxi when paid Motor Trade Positions Every Day." "Men Advt. in Provincial Paper. And Knocking over Pedestrians Every Other Day. it was raining hard, though I just know says a bar of chocolate is ever so sus- "Oh, we didn't. The police stopped us a mile away and said that was as near as we could get in the car, and we must walk the rest of the way, and the Ping-Pong people had closed the doors because there was no more room inside, only on the roof and the window-sills, and they were fast filling up. You see, their committee actually had asked all the really well-known people in London -all, without exception; they hadn't left one out, and all of them had come, bringing their friends with them." I said warmly. "Not everyone would give up a really select and exclusive affair like that simply to give someone else the chance to go instead." "Besides," she added as we shook hands and parted, "I did think it would be such a pity if an invitation like that were quite wasted." E. R. P. "So I suppose," I said, Blanche made friends again when she found you hadn't been able to get in yourselves?" "Well, I didn't exactly tell her that, but I made up my mind on the instant, the moment the policeman told us, and I wrote a little note then and there in the car and sent it round to her by "I am officially informed that the B.B.C. special messenger with our invitation will broadcast the race for the Grand National card to say I felt, after all, she would on March 24."-Daily Paper. enjoy it more than us-like Sir PHILIP That's very thoughtful of them. Now SIDNEY and the water, you know." we shall know what to back at Aintree "Blanche must have been touched," on Friday, March 25th. THE BROWNES BRING A COUPLE OF YOUNG GUESTS FROM LONDON TO OUR VILLAGE WHIST-DRIVE. LITTLE TALKS. THE SEDATIVE. hoarse but ineffective cry, for it seems that most of the vocal organs are seated in the appendix, and so are the sneezing, coughing, nose-blowing and laughing organs, for whenever I do these simple things it hurts; at any rate my cry was futile, so I picked up Sunflowers, the detestable novel my good aunt gave me, and I flung Sunflowers at the door. tion. IT was about midnight, and all was quiet in the hospital. Nothing sounded except the continuous yowling of two cats outside my window, the puffing and blowing of steam-engines at the railway-station, the flapping of a blind, the ringing of the telephone-bell in the It hurt, but I hit the door, and the hall, the singing of revellers in the night-nurse came in. I told her I could street, the occasional arrival of a doctor not sleep, and she said I was not trying. at the front-door, and the banging of a I told her I wanted dope, but she said shutter in the basement. In spite of I must try to do without it. So I said this hush I could not sleep. It was in that case she must stay for a little about two hours since the last nurse and compose my mind with soothing had tucked me up and left me, with my conversation. So she stood in front of electric bell-push hidden handy under the fire and we had soothing conversathe pillow. To-night, if possible, I was to do without a sleeping-draught, for I was convalescent and must begin to throw off the bad habits of the invalid. (I must explain that this is a very But if I could not sleep I was to ring secretive hospital, in which the staff for the night-nurse and she would give have a strict and no doubt admirable me hot milk or some stronger soporific. I code of reticence. I have asked from extracted the bell-push and pushed it, time to time, not in vulgar curiosity and as usual the bell did not ring. I but by way of conversation, about the pushed the push at intervals for half-names and diseases of my fellow-sufan-hour and nothing happened. The ferers in the building, but it seems that cats howled, the door banged, the loco- we are all anonymous, the one to the motives hooted, the blind flapped, and other. So that I know the others only I lay in my bed forlorn, without an appendix and with not much hope. And then in the passage I heard the patter of healing feet. I uttered a I said, "How is the Abdominal in Number 17?" by their room numbers and their generical complaints; they have neither name nor title nor sex; they are the Abdominal in Number 17, or the Tubercular in 8, or the Pneumonia in Number 10, or the Child with Tonsils Upstairs. And I am referred to, I believe, as the Emergency Abdominal in 21.) The night-nurse said that the Abdominal in 17 had had hemorrhage and nearly died during the afternoon, and she asked me if I felt like sleep yet. I said "Not very," so we talked about operations, with special reference to abdominals. I asked her about my appendix, and she said I had had a nice fat appendix and if it had not come out when it did it would have burst, and then I should have had peritonitis, with tubes, and she explained how very few people are quite the same again after that; and I felt more and more like sleep. She gave a little demonstration with her fingers of the dimensions of my appendix; she compared it with other appendices she had known and placed it finally for size and interest between the appendix of an elderly bishop and the appendix of a young Hungarian who had afterwards committed suicide; and then we had a really jolly talk about insides, because I felt that, if I heard much more about insides, I should almost certainly drop off into a dreamless slumber. Well, it turned out that in the best abdominal operations they take out the whole of the inside and leave it about outside while the surgeon is cutting up |