"Dear Sir," I answered defiantly,--"Now that we are writing to each other I wish to call your attention to the fact that for many months past there has been a constant flow of one-fingered music from your little boy, which penetrates through the floor of my library and makes all work impossible. May I beg you therefore to see that your child is taught a new tune immediately, seeing that the National Anthem has lost its first freshness for the tenants above him?"
I was so staggered that I could only think of one adequate retort.
"Dear Sir," I wrote,--"I never have a bath."
So that's the end of Johnny, my boy prodigy, for whom I have suffered so long. It is not Johnny but Jno. who struggles with the National Anthem. He will give up music now, for he knows I have the bulge on him; I can flood his bathroom whenever I like. Probably he will learn something quieter--like painting. Anyway, Dr. John Bull's masterpiece will rise no more through the ceiling of the flat below.
On referring to my encyclopædia, I see that, according to some authorities, "God Save the King" is "wrongly attributed" to Dr. Bull. Well, I wrongly attributed it to Johnny. It is easy to make these mistakes.
With stern a-droop, a "dowie chiel," I see him lugged at Beauty's heel, A captive bound on Fashion's wheel, Down Bond Street's aisle, Far from his land of cairn and creel In grey Argyle.
I wonder if in dreams he goes Afar from streets and kindred woes, A-rabbiting with eager nose And strenuous paw In birch-woods where the west wind blows By banks of Awe;
And if his slumbers take him back To trail the mountain-fox's track, In corries of the shifting wrack Where one may spy Old Cruachan's twin Titan stack Heaved to the sky;
Or, boudoir-bred degenerate, If ne'er he knew the nobler state, The birk-clad brae, the roaring spate, The tod's dark lair, Too spiritless to grin at Fate Or greatly care.
And better this, perhaps you'd say, Than break his heart for yesterday, Uneasy in the dreams that stray Where lost trails stretch-- Well, he's my pity either way, Poor little wretch!
We were discussing London's needs. Each of us was suggesting some long-felt want which most appealed to him or her.
Some had declared that what London chiefly wanted was a tube from Victoria to Chelsea. Someone else said that what it chiefly wanted was a glass roof over Bond Street and the chief shopping area. Someone else said that what it chiefly wanted was perforated pavements to let the rain through at once--and so on.