  Just lately I have been thinking often of Them. But Their image has never been more vividly in my mind than now, when I sit here among the aftermath of festival. I wonder, for example, are the homes in which They live pervaded with this same dÉbris of Christmas (or, as They themselves are so fond of calling it, Yuletide)? Does dismembered turkey coldly furnish forth Their meals? Are there too many calendars, and a litter of crumpled paper? And cards—do They send each other cards? Stupendous thought! Most of all is my fancy busy with Them to-morrow, Tuesday, December the twenty-eighth. I see Them rising, a little wearily, perhaps, and heavy-eyed. Breakfast They snatch, and so out into the winter morning towards that place where, unknown and unrecognised, They pursue throughout the year Their changeless toil. I imagine Them gathering with mutual greetings in the workroom—a little company about whose features I have so often speculated. Poets are there, and artists; probably some among the men may wear their hair a trifle longer than the military fashion of to-day; but the greater part of the crowd are almost certainly women. Now the talk dies down; presently They are all once more bending in silence over Their appointed tasks. Yes, here at one desk is the artist to whose genius we owe the obese robin perched upon a horse-shoe, or the churchyard by moonlight after (apparently) a severe spangle-storm. Here again a poet, whose eye in a fine frenzy rolling proclaims an inspiration, or at least some subtle variant upon a familiar theme. He stoops and, even as I watch, has traced swiftly, with vibrant pen, this couplet:— "The old, old wish I send to thee, Jocund may thy Xmas be!" Then, with a little sigh, he leans back, satisfied that for him the holiday intermission had not rusted the fine edge of originality. "Jocund" proved that. Behind him perhaps sits a maiden like Fate, who with abhorred shears fashions strange shapes and borderings of foliage unknown to mere nature. And further still, in yonder obscure and shadowy corner, is one who by her art can penetrate the future and outstrip the foot of Time himself. For see, upon her cards, there is already written— "With every blessing good and true May the New Year be packed, And 1917 bring to you What 1916 lacked." I wonder—how does their work seem to Them upon this morning after Boxing-day? What to do with our Boys.
Portsmouth Evening News. Not from the Cocoa Press.
The following advertisement appeared on Dec. 23:—
She was not going to risk her own Christmas stocking.
The figurative has no chance with the actual. |
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