Part 8 (1/2)

O dearest Father and Mother I pray for you every night andand I pray to Him that you will let me coo to school because I am so sick O dearest father and mother I will love you so much and I will never worry you any more and I will be a better boy if you will only say yes

Dearest father and mother I cannot live here O do let me come home

Write now dearest father and mother and say yes

I sendson,

ARTHUR

Say yes dearest Father and Mother

ENTHUSIASTS

In turning over the pages of ”Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack,” best of year-books, for 1919, I came upon the obituary notice of ayear at the age of six-and-forty: George Tubow the Second, who reigned over Tonga and was the last of the independent kings of the Pacific As to the qualities of head and heart displayed by the deceased ruler, _Wisden_ is silent; to inquire into such e Tubow the Second won his place in _Wisden's_ pages because he was a cricket fan and the head of a nation of cricket fans ”His subjects becaame that it was necessary to prohibit it on six days of the week in order to avert falected for the cricket-field”

To what lengths of passion for his gao, I auess; but there is certainly so about a ball, whatever its size and consistency, that leads to extreo to ga collectors enthusiasts are nu since were occupied with the case of a gentleman of leisure who had fallen into the h a passion for adding dead butterfly to dead butterfly; while every one knows the story of one of the Rothschilds fitting out an Arctic expedition in the hope that it would bring back, alive, even a single specimen of a certain boreal flea All other fleas he possessed, but this was lacking Onfriends I find that the classic example of enthusiasm is, however, not a cricketer nor a collector, but the actor hen cast for Othello, blacked himself all over Every one, of course, has heard the story, but its originif it occurred anywhere in print before Mr Crummles confided it to Nicholas Nickleby Was it a coreen-roo so) invent it? Joseph Knight being no ossip and erudition, who shall tell?

Meanwhile I ae history which supplies a pendant to the great Othello feat It occurred in the days when the gramophone was in its infancy and the late Herbert Ca his end That ed in his annual task of personating a dame or a queen, or whatever was monumentally feminine, in the Drury Lane pantomime--as a matter of fact, he was at the ramophone companies to visit their office in the City and s and one or ues with the other funny ht be The na after the golden age when Herbert Campbell served as a foil to the irresponsible vivacity of Dan Leno--who in association with hi over the surface and about the crevices of a rock--and still longer after those regular Christmas partnershi+ps with Harry Nicholls which were liberal educations in worldly sagacity tempered by nonsense The name of the other actor is, however, unimportant, for Herbert Campbell is the hero of this tale, and it was for Herbert Ca and the waxen discs had been prepared and the orchestra was in attendance and the er had taken his cheque book froramophone industry The occasion was furthermore exceptional because it was the first time that this popular performer had been ”recorded” Hitherto he had refused all Edisonian blandishments, but to-day he was to come into line with the other favourites

And yet he did not co was ready--more than ready--and there was no daround swell of the traffic was heard, amid the strenuousness of the City Road, the unaccustohter ”Hurray! Hurray!” floated up to the recording-room from the distant street below, and every head was stretched out to see what untoward thing could be happening ”Hurray! Hurray!” and hter

And there was discerned an i a four-wheeler, froreatest difficulty an old lady of iaily-coloured clothes of the century before last, was endeavouring to alight, backwards ”Hurray! Hurray!” cried the boys at every new struggle At last the eht and shaking down her garments, revealed herself as no other than Herbert Campbell, the idol of ”The Lane,” who in order to speak a feords into the funnel of a graht it needful to put on every detail of his costunomy

[Illustration: LAURA VISITS THE SICK _See ”The Innocent's Progress”--Plate 11_]

TELEPHONICS

After fighting against bondage for years I aes are many, it means that I have lost the purest and rarest of life's pleasures--which was to ring up from a three-pence-in-the-slot call-office (as I continually had to do) and not be asked for the money This, in many years, has happened to me twice; and only last week I loomy cast, across whose features played a smile brilliant with triumph, for it also had just happened to hi a telephone of my own I now escape one of the commonest and most tiresome of life's irritations--which is to wait outside one of these call-offices while the person inside is carrying on a conversation that is not only unnecessary and frivolous, but unending In London these offices are used both by men and woht to be ro their husbands not to forget the fish

The possession of a telephone of one's own, however, does not, in an i If ever a fairy Godmother appeared to me (but after all these years of postponeranted wish, I should think long before I hit upon anything better to ask for than the restoration of all the ti to be answered The ordinary delays can be long enough, but for true foretastes of eternity youfetched fro This is a foretaste not only of eternity but of perdition, for there is nothing to do; and to have nothing to do is to be damned If you had a book by you, you could not read it, for your thoughts are not free to wander; all that you are ress of the er to the person who is wanted, upstairs or down, the present occupation of the person who is wanted, and the probable stages of his journey to the receiver In this e their reluctant length along

You can iine also the attitude of the person who is sent for For the telephone, common as it now is, is still associated with ceree boys in restaurants and hotels have a special gait of importance proper to the occasion