Mar. 4.
Some historians assert that history does not really repeat: itself according to popular idea, but moves in a spiral, coming back only approximately to the same point and on a higher plane. Which theory betrays an optimism not tod common with histor-jans and certainly out of fashion among modern thinkers. But whether we believe that man does better himself in' the course of his peregrinations through this ''valley of the shaddock," or agree with a very old pessimist that everything stands on the edge of a downfall and seldom avoids toppling over, there is no denying that successive generations ape their predecessors in a most extraordinary degree. Only the other day, with the amused irony of age ' S.H." let us all down gently on the subject of registration of servants, which, he showed, was actually tried in the sixties, agitated for in the nineties and now reappears masquerading as a brand new idea. Strictly speaking, this is not a correct instance of the repetition of history, for there are rarely more than one or two solutions for a given problem, and, the servant question being perennial, it would be surprising if restless minds in successive ages did not hit on the same idea for an answer to it. Tt is in the realm of fashions and pastimes that we must look for the true repetitions of history, in those apparently causeless crazes which, like Spanish influenza, suddenly seize on society in all lands. Nobody knows who begins them any more than it can be said what governs the seasons of hopscotch, marbles, tops, etc., among London street urchins, In this too the boy appears father of the man.
Who, for instance, decides when the world is to go mad about roller-skating, which, by the way, ought to be nearly due again, judging by the periods at which it has been fashionable in the past forty years, first in the early eighties, again in the nineties, last about 1910? Another curious repetition was the jig-caw puzzle. Anybody over forty years of age will remember that in his childhood large pictures of the kings and queens of England, maps and so forth, stuck on wood or millboard and cut into small irregular pieces, were a favourite educational instrument of torture. A year or so before the war these idiotic contrivances reappeared as a pastime for the adult, large ones costing considerable sums and being gravely kept on a special table where the infatuated victim. or patient, might return to his incomplete and useless task day after day. Quite a hundred years ago the famous house of Mordan (and many others) made what were known until fairly recently as pencil cases, with a loose lead that screwed up and a little compartment at the end for more leads. These were super-soded by silver tubes holding a wooden pencil, the popularity of which was, in turn, threatened by fountain pens. And now the old pencil case is back again, very little different in general idea from Mordan's but industriously boomed og something absolutely new and rushed after accordingly. Only a few days ago, readers will remember, we showed that Put and Take' was nothing but a revival, even to the symbols on the top, of the teetotum, at which, something like century ago, Miss Edgeworth's Frank won a lot of money and a silver watch from the General's son and "the boy with a bad countenance." And finally from what one learns from the less discreet memoirs, the Directoire ladies were very much the great-grandmothers of modern votaries of jazz.
One most curious symptom of fashion swinging back to bygone models is to be found in the series of conversations on topics of the! day which has been appearing latterly in Punch." The talkers are all members of the "Upper Ten " and the amazing thing is that they talk academic) English, do not clip g's or use slang and quote familiarly from Meredith. Can it be that the art of conversation is coming back? Tf so we may surely look forward to the age of prunes, prisms, prunella boots, and young ladies walking to church with a footman behind them to carry their Bibles and prayer books. There is no inherent impossibility in it. Every action appears to have its reaction or so, We believe, science teaches: and the thought may support us through many irritations. As the popular saying is, anticipating for the future what it realizes in the past, Tt will all be the same a hundred years hence.""
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.