By Onive Dun London, April 10.
Shopping has become entirely a matter of speculation and syco-Phancy. The roles of shopman and customer are reversed. No longer his to tempt you to buy, but your's to entreat him to sell. "Could you possibly let me have?"—"Do you think I might be allowed?"—It he knows you as an old customer he Will sell, or at least you can believe him when he says he hasn't got what you are pleading for. If he doesn't know you, your chances depend on (a) whether he likes the look of you, (b) whether he happens to be in a good temper, and (c) when ther the price of tke desired article is controlled. For directly that happens the controlled article vanishes like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only a particularly sardonic grin behind it.
Of course I am talking chiefly about foodstuffs, jams, marmalades and tinned foods. How the control actually works is shown by the experience of a friend of mine lunching yesterday at an inn on the upper "Thames and having as much butter put before her as she could eat. Of the allowance in a London restaurant one could say, as did the rude boy in Charlotte Yonge's story say of his grandmother's presents, "I could put em in my eye and see none the worse" Downin the West Country I am told that both eggs and cheese are sold anywhere on the prewar scale. In all these instances it does not pay at the controlled price to add the cost of carriage to London, Yet while we naturally grumble, we really do pretty well, Meat is undoubtedly the tightest fit. A shill ling's worth per week per head goes but a little way. That is what you would have paid before the war for a not too large steak in a not too dreeping roast," as the lawyers say in "Catriona" (not "Maclean." as you remember, in son's book, but Macgregor) for thousands of pounds have been spent in the fight. First, Miss Maclean established her right to be called "The Ardgour"; now she has got her full desire to be "The Maclean of Ard-gout," which carries with it the right to wear two feathers in her hat. At which she is immensely pleased; and as for the costs of the litigation, whether she has the money or the lawyers, the Government will impartially take 1t from both. There is a profane story of the late Sir Frank Lockwood, a witty barrister of Victorian days, who, being at a banquet of Highland chieftains, caused himself and his wife to be announced as "The 46 Lennox Gardens and Lady Lockwood." But then he was only an Englishman. And it was another Englishman who wrote, "What's in a name?"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.