correspondents are inclined to be even a little emphatic in their statements, they surprisingly meet with correction almost in the next issue. Even Mr. A. P. Herbert, most amusingly writing against modern regulations, forbidding the male bather to wear a slip and recalling the fact that in older, and there~ fore presumably more squeamish times, men bathed in that exiguous article of attire, is immediately. reminded that in the days to which he refers mixed bathing was prohibited on the beaches of Great Britain and therefore it did not greatly matter how much of the ugly male figure was exposed.
Then another correspondent, endeavouring to be helpful by explaining the origin of the phrase "How's your poor feet?" gets a curious "rebuff. He ingeniously dates the phrase from the Exhibition of 1851, the viewing of which involved so' much walking about that the catch-phrase of the day became a tender and sarcastic we married men dared fatter our= selves that we were worth any such outlay (a value of which we have been carefully left unaware). we must yet doubt whether a girl of 10 could know what to do with one of us if she got it, Moreover the young bachelors of London, as we see them, set out late o! nights dance In Ro marrying mood, The protestant gos on to describe what he would do if he were a young Indy of beauty and fashion and his disgust is intended, presumably, to rebuke that always prominent target, the modern girl:
Certainly I should not conceal the fair bloom of my" schoolgirl complexion beneath the coarse coating a mauve distemper, dis colour my a Warning red, caricature my natural mouth by a' scarlet margin precarious ud pour tire, nor allow my eyebrows io be plucked os if they were feathers and I a mere hen, Ju the matier of rivalry 1 should set about to make my youth fand beauty more Tasting even than my mother's; and T should regard it-og less undesirable than as impossible to compete with the ladies of the footlights away' from and unaided by the footlights, enquiry after the affected limbs. But the next day another correspondent gives an almost seditious explanation by recalling the fact that the Prince Consort, as Commander-in-Chief, during manoeuvres reported daily to his august sovereign and wife, fund in one report he incautiously admitted thay he was very foot-sore. The telegraph was then in its infancy as a means of communication and consequently the royal message to the Prince Consort acknowledging his report and ending with the tender enquiry "How are your poor feet?" somehow secured publicity and became a music-hall joke, but in deference to loyal sentiments was camouflaged by being translated into French, "Comment us portez-vous vos pauvres pleds?"
Whether the rebuff was justified is not clear, because two further correspondents declare that the phrase was current long before the Prince Consort existed or the Exhibition of 1851, and one of them, 1 peer of the realm, Lord Dartmouth to wit, supplies the popular but vulgar' answer to the enquiry, "Better since you licked them." A. less offensive association with the phrase is recorded from the life of Sir Henry Irving who in the course of a most tragic scene slowly pronounced the word "My heart is dead!" and was immediately met by voice from the gallery with the shrill enquiry, "'Ow's your poor feet?" which apparently completely dislocated the great tragedian's performance for the time being.
The reason for his pseudonymity {is explained in his last paragraph in which he admits that he has ahead of him, at no distant date, the responsibility to launch one of these expensive debutantes, and he is.atraid that if his identity were known she would double his penalty, He gets his answer from a Jady who signs her name fearless)
Bringing out a daughter to-day hag become a veritable campalin, the strategy of which means hours of work at desk and telephone, "fork luncheons," and much trotting around with an inflated addr book. But there is this to be so for all the folly and futility of the present system—young men and women meet on a wider plane of equality and have a far larger circle than the last generation ever did Gone is the glamour of the foot Lights; the chorus girl of yesterday outrivalled by the "Deb," heavily chaperoned though she be. All the Pomposity and fear in the world will not keep young men Alstance, when Jouths and. "beauty mile, In our secret hearts would we have it otherwise?
But quotation from this anthology is dangerously attractive. The letters are so full of information of the unclassifable kind, the odds and ends of history, social tradition and philosophical theory, the origin of "Sing a Song of Sixpence," the peculiarity of official English and the reason for it, the argument that "kiosk" is an unworthy importation into the English language, the use of the definite article before the name of a ship, the derivation of the word "bowler," the first Those who study the correspondlence of "The Times" carefully and have a lively recollection of recent gems from the series will be delighted to find that Mr. Woodruff has included the letter headed "The Débutante" and signed "Yours pompously, a London Magistrate." Written in the middle of the holidays, the writer of the letter Aiscusses the enormous expense of producing the modern debutante and asks:
'What, Sir, is the purpose, and is it a right One, of this draining of the family purse, this mortgaging of the old homestead in the process of inflicting upon a young Indy of 19 summers a term of six months' hard pleasure, from which she will emerge at the least with sore feet, fo become in subsequent seasons back number? Tha cynic tells us that the immediate objective is a husband for the "deb"; but even if signs of King George Th's impending madness, the identity of the first omnibus driver. Finally, in going back to links with the past, special'mention should be made of a letter dated September 8, 1924, in which the widow of Canon Paul recalls daneing with the Marquis of Huntley who, at the end of the dance, informed her that she could say that she had danced with a man who had: danced with Mario Antoinette, Mrs, Paul caps this recollection with the story of a inner table scene with her grandparents, when she heard her grendmother' say to her grand-father, "This evening you must drink to Church and Queen, my dear, and not to Church and King," and that was the way in which the news of the death of William IV and the accession of Queen Victoria broken to the family in that English household.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.