We are now in the height of what is called "the silly season," in London. have never learned why it is called "silly. Tt may be that it is because it occurs in the middle of summer, hence is an era of midsummer madness." We have passed over the longest day of the year. But despite this fact, we have many days of good times left to us before winter comes on with chilling frosts.
Apropos of "good times," I have been reading a pleasant novel of English life.
isa love story, of course. However it pictures everyday prose realities along with its romance of love-making poetry. At the head of one chapter, is ta Chinese Moral Maxim," and I quote it: There are plenty of acquaintances in the world, but very few real friends." This is a true maxim and I never better realised it than when I attended a Woman's Dinner" last. week at the Criterion Restauront in Piccadilly. It was the 5th or 6th annual dinner of this Club, devoted entirely to my own sex, I confess, as a rule, I prefer 'a sprinkling of men in_ public dinners, Without being at all a woman hater," I yet shrink from dinners that are like the play of Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out. Still, I went to this "hen dinner," as a celebrated London journalist once called it, seeking for a novel experience.
Alas! The dinner was not good either materially or mentally. The ten minutes" allowed to each speaker resulted in a series of deadly dull remarks with no single spice of humour in any one of them. And—I sat next to a silly old woman, once an American beauty, who cannot gr old gracefully, and with dyed hair and " made-up" face, still to think she is young and charming. Poor old Indy, she quite bored me, and she gossipped consunedly, about all the people she knew or had remotely heard of. 'Then, she presented another gossip to my acquaintance, an English woman,.who diverted me by telling me unkind things of a certain celebrat. English novelist, Mrs. Humphry Ward. On' this I fled, first having" angrily denied any possible ground for attacking so able % woman as Mistress Ward. And the Chinese maxim returned to my remembrance, for one of these two gossipping women I had once thought to be areal friend, not an acquaintance.
We are all busy just now in London whether we are " wise" of illy." Within couple of months so much, too much, is crowded, and after that. we' go to the seaside, dawdle about, disappear from public view, and prepare for autumn.
June and July are wedding months. Death has no season of its own, it obtrudes in a very awkward fashion when we least expect the visit. To-morrow we pay our last respects to the memory of one who has done more for Opera and Pantomime in England than any other English amusement caterer of the day. This gentleman who will be laid away to rest to-morrow in Brompton Cemetery, is Sir Augustus Harris of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, ete. He has been a Sheriff of London, and had his ambition fixed on the Mayoralty later on. He built up Opera here, and made Pantomime a Children's Carnival. His plans were bewildering in their extent. So, he has been cut off at 43 years of age, and after only a few days' illness. His loss is well-nigh a national calamity. I learn as I begin my chat to you that he had planned a tour of the world in Pantomime, and was looking forward to Shanghai as a great point of vantage, when death stepped in, and stilled his ambitions for ever in this world. Who can shake off the depression of such an event? Not I, for one. 2
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.