My old friend, Lemmens Porter, whose name I deeply regret not to have read in the Honours List, reminds me of the painful story of SWINBURNE, who, in a fit of temper, hurled two poached eggs at GEORGE MEREDITH for speaking disrespectfully of VICTOR HUGO.  The incident is suppressed in Mr. GOSSE’S tactful life, but Mr. Porter had it direct from MEREDITH, whose bath-chair he frequently pulled at Dorking.  SWINBURNE was, I regret to say, pagan in his views, but, unlike some pagans, he was incapable of adhering to the golden mean.  ARISTOTLE, I feel certain, would never have condescended to the use of such a missile, and it is beyond “imagination’s widest stretch” to picture, say, the late Dr. JOSEPH COOK, of Boston, the present Lord ABERDEEN, or the Rev. Dr. Donald McGuffin acting in such a wild and tempestuous manner.

IV.

Still we must admit the existence of high temper even in men of high souls, high aims and high achievements.  Everyone may improve his temper.  We cannot all emulate the patience of JOB, but we can at least set before us the noble example of Professor Cawker, who redeemed the angular exuberance of his youth by the mellow and mollifying kindliness of his maturity.  Even if Mr. GLADSTONE did break chairs, we should not lightly condemn him.  You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.  Besides, chairs cannot retaliate.

MARCUS MULL.

* * * * *

A CYNICAL HEADLINE.

    “NEW BRITISH BLOW.—­BIRTHDAY HONOURS LIST.”—­Daily Mirror.

We congratulate our contemporary on its terseness. The Times took nearly a column to say the same thing.

* * * * *

BALLADE OF INCIPIENT LUNACY.

Scene.—­A Battalion “Orderly” Room in France during a period of “Rest.”  Runners arrive breathlessly from all directions bearing illegible chits, and tear off in the same directions with illegible answers or no answer at all.  Motor-bicycles snort up to the door and arrogant despatch-riders enter with enormous envelopes containing leagues of correspondence, orders, minutes, circulars, maps, signals, lists, schedules, summaries and all sorts.  The tables are stacked with papers; the floor is littered with papers; papers fly through the air.  Two type-writers click with maddening insistence in one corner.  A signaller buzzes tenaciously at the telephone, talking in a strange language apparently to himself, as he never seems to be connected with anyone else.  A stream of miscellaneous persons—­quarter-masters, chaplains, generals, batmen, D.A.D.O.S.’s, sergeant-majors, staff-officers, buglers, Maires, officers just arriving, officers just going away, gas experts, bombing experts, interpreters, doctors—­drifts in, wastes time, and drifts out again.

Clerks scribble ceaselessly, rolls and nominal rolls, nominal lists and lists.  By the time they have finished one list it is long out-of-date.  Then they start the next.  Everything happens at the same time; nobody has time to finish a sentence.  Only a military mind, with a very limited descriptive vocabulary and a chronic habit of self-deception, would call the place orderly.