C.  Don’t forget what I want it for.  And not too far from London or my wife will dislike it.

Our Mr. P.  Yes, you told me that.  I’ve got a note of it here.

C.  And you won’t forget about the acreage?

Our Mr. P.  No.”

C.(addressing me). I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting.

I (like the craven liar I am). It’s all right.

[Client ultimately withdraws, but still with reluctance, and after two or three hesitations and half-turns back.

And the tragic part of it is that his name is Legion.

That is why if I had a boy I should teach him the art of leaving. 
Almost nothing else matters.

* * * * *

OFFICIAL EUPHEMISM.

DR. ADDISON has stated that for some time past it has been the practice riot to use the word “pauper” in official documents when it was possible to use another expression; and no well-conditioned person will cavil at the spirit which has prompted the use of a less invidious substitute.  But surely the process might be carried a good deal further.  The practice of giving a dog a bad name is not only condemned by the proverbial philosophy of the ancients but by the most emancipated of the orthopsychical educationists of to-day.

If you keep on calling a man a “criminal,” you will end by making him one.  How much wiser it would be to refer to the impulses which occasionally bring him into conflict with the custodians of law and order as emanating from a dynamic individualism!  In that way you may very possibly convert him into a static individualist and sterilize his potential malignance by a subliminal serum..

The amount of harm done by disparaging nomenclature is incalculable.  Take the word “thief,” for example.  Its meaning can be expressed with infinitely greater precision and delicacy in the phrase, “one who is unable to discriminate between meum and tuum.”  Here you have in place of one mean little word a well-cadenced phrase of ten.  Euphony as well as humanity prompts the variation.

Classical writers may have objected to the use of sesquipedalian words, but we know better, and Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL’S famous synonym for “lie” is permanently enshrined in the annals of circumlocution.  One of the most offensive words in the language is “idiot”; yet it can be shorn of nearly all its sting when replaced by the definition, “a person of infra-normal mentality.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Demolilisation Officer.  “WHAT IS THE NUMBER OF YOUR GROUP?”

Private.  “I DON’T KNOW, SIR.  I WAS A TURF ACCOUNTANT.”

Demobilisation Officer.  “AH!  AGRICULTURE—­GROUP 1.”]

* * * * *