Music was once regarded as the staple nourishment of the tender passion, and in my younger days the haunting strains of “The Blue Danube” assisted many a budding love-affair to blossom.  But these non-stop stridencies of the modern ballroom, even if they left a man with breath enough to propose, would effectually prevent the girl from catching the drift of the avowal.  You can’t roar, “Will you be mine?” into a maiden’s ear as if you were conversing from the quarterdeck, and if you did she’d only think you were ecstatically emulating the coloured gentleman in the orchestra with the implements of torture and the misguided voice.

I will pass over in the silence of despair such other symptoms of national decadence as zigzag painting, whirlpool poetry, cinema star-gazing and the impossibility of procuring a self-respecting Stilton (which assuredly is not “living at this hour").  Nor can I trust myself to speak of the spirit of Bolshevism that seems to animate our so-called Labour Party, though I comfort myself with the conviction that this doctrine will not wash, any more than will its authors.

I will conclude these few reflections by drawing attention to the manners of the modern girl, who is so busily engaged in kicking over the traces that formerly kept her in her proper place.  Nowadays flappers who should still be in the schoolroom consider themselves called upon to teach their grandmothers how to conduct their lives; and, to complete the chaos, the grandmothers are eagerly lapping it up, and in the matter of dress and deportment are even bettering the instruction. Si vieillesse savait!

Oh for a prophet’s tongue to lash our visionless leaders into a realisation of the rocks on to which we are drifting!  We need the scourge of a Savonarola, but all we get is the boom of a Bottomley.

  “Gone are our country’s glories.
  O tempora, O mores!”

* * * * *

ALL SORTS.

  It takes all sorts to make the world, an’ the same to make a crew;
  It takes the good an’ middlin’ an’ the rotten bad uns too;
  The same’s there are on land (says Bill) you’ll find ’em all at sea—­
  The freaks an’ fads an’ crooks an’ cads an’ ornery chaps like me.

  It takes a man for all the jobs—­the skippers and the mates,
  A chap to give the orders an’ a chap to chip the plates;
  It takes the brass-bound ‘prentices—­an’ ruddy plagues they be—­
  An’ chaps as shirk an’ chaps as work—­just ornery chaps like me.

  It takes the stiffs an’ deadbeats an’ the decent shell-backs too,
  The chaps as always pull their weight an’ them as never do;
  The sort the Lord ’as made ’em knows what bloomin’ use they be,
  An’ crazy folks an’ musical blokes an’ ornery chaps like me.

  It takes a deal o’ fancy breeds—­the Dagoes an’ the Dutch,
  The Lascars an’ calashees an’ the seedy boys an’ such;
  It takes the greasers an’ the Chinks, the Jap and Portugee,
  The blacks an’ yellers an’ half-bred fellers and ornery folk like me.