“Dearest Wife,” he began.  Then at a shout he hastily drew in his feet as a man dashed past him with a heavy burden.  “I nearly got it in the neck a minute ago,” he wrote, “but I’m all right, and this is a fine place if it wasn’t for the noise.  They never seem to stop screeching and the smoke is fair awful, and as soon as you think everything is quiet another comes.  I am quite alone at this minute, but don’t you go for to worry; they’ll be back soon and then perhaps I’ll get a bit of something.  It’s pretty hard where I am sitting and I can’t write you much of a letter, what with the cramp in my legs and the noise and wondering how soon the Sergeant will come and tell us to move up nearer our part of the line.  I can see some of the line, not our bit, from where I am sitting.  It’s shining just lovely in the sun.

“Dear wife, this isn’t a bit like home, but it still makes me think of you at our station buying me that pencil and all, just as the train come in.  I think of you all the time wherever I am, but the noise is something cruel, and here comes the Sergeant to tell us to prepare.  I shan’t have time to get a drink first; but it don’t matter; I’d rather write to you than anything; and this pad what the minister gave me is fine.  I keep it in my left breast pocket.  Please tell him it hasn’t stopped a bit of stuff yet, but I am sure it will soon.  Remember me to everybody.  Love and kisses from your Elijah.”

Mrs. Tiddy duly received the letter and shed proud tears at the thought of her husband, obviously on the eve of a great advance, or even lying out hungry and wounded in No Man’s Land (she hovered between the alternatives), but still cheery and finding time and energy to write to his wife.

It was only a too observant neighbour who discovered that the postmark was London, S.E.  But even she has not yet decided whether Elijah Tiddy is of intention the biggest liar in the East Mudshires, or whether he only saw Waterloo Station with the eye of the literary man.

* * * * *

HISTORY PLAGIARIZES FROM FICTION.

    “Mr. Ginnell:  Everybody in the House is excited but myself. 
    Even you, Mr. Speaker, are excited.”—­Parliamentary Debates.

    “‘It’s my opinion, sir,’ said Mr. Stiggins ... that this
    meeting is drunk, sir.  Brother Tadger, sir ... you are
    drunk, sir.’”—­Pickwick Papers.

* * * * *

AN OLD SONG RESUNG.

  “O Ever since the world began
  There never was and never can
  Be such a very useful man
  As the railway porter.”

  So ran the rhyme that in my youth
  I thought perhaps outstripped the truth,
  But now, when longer in the tooth,
  Freely I endorse it.

  In calling out a station’s name
  He is undoubtedly to blame
  For failing, as a rule, to aim
  At clear enunciation;