A Tire of my office hours (writes a correspondent) seems to be spent in answering the telephone, and 99 per cent. of the calls are for my colleagues.
"Oh, hello," a voice will say, "i Oomps ín?"
"Im sorry: he's out."
"Oh, well I was talking to him yesterday about that business...."
"I'm sorry; Oomps isn't here."
"You see, the other people have changed their plans, and...
"I'm sorry' he isn't in."
"I mean, he ought to do something. So I suggest that...."
Yesterday I had an idea. I whistled shrilly, panied on my desk, and said "Puff-puff! Puff-eum "What was that?" said the voice. "It sounded like a train."
"It was," I replied. "This is Waterloo station. "But what happened to the man I was speaking to?"
"He jus: managed to catch that train." "Oh, I see. Oh, I'm sorry. Good-bye, then." "Not at all. Good-by:
Basil, Boofuls Mr. Basil Boofuls, our most Beautiful Thinker and King Cosy for Human Hearts, has given me a week-end message for you.
"Age and youth," he write how different they are, yet how like, if linked with eager understanding. I was partaking of a dish of tea, the other day, with a sweet old titled woman in her early hundreds, "She retains all her youthful sympathies and interests. "My son, she smiled to me with a slow, soft, quiet smile, always was a little wart, and he has not changed. I look forward so much to his visits. Perhaps—who knows?—one day I shall catch him bending and be able to fetch him a crack with my ebony walking stick for littering my carpet with cigarette ash.'
"Do you, too, look forward, and not sideways or backwards? I am sure, in my very core, that that is the secret of eager happiness and sincere aliveness.
"I AM looking forward so much," Mr, Boofuls continues, "to broadcasting next week in 'Youth Takes Its Bow-Wow for a Ta-Ta'
^I shall have my own Bow-Wow, Mr. Stench, in the studio with me.
"I do hope you will like me, specially when I and Mr. Stench tap together.
If you don't, I think I shall die.
"Do, please, telephone afterwards and say what you think of me. The number is Whatehall, wem two wem two."
Showman in the "Daily Herald."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.