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O. S.

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT AT A MOTOR SHOW.

Not to be outdone by Olympia we have just held a motor show in our provincial Town Hall. What though the motoring magazines, obese with the rich diet of advertisement, grew no fatter in its honour, it was at least the most successful social function we have known since the War began. The Town Hall externally was magnificent with flags by day and coloured lamps by night, and within was a blaze of bunting and greenstuff. The band of the Free Shepherds played popular music, and the luncheon and tea rooms were the scene of most delightful little gatherings. Besides all this, quite a number of cars were to be found amongst the decorations.

Nearly every demobilised officer in the county seems to have taken up an agency for a car or two, and bought himself spats on the strength of a prospective fortune. Jimmy Wrigley and I are amongst them. Wrigley in the Great War was M.T., R.A.S.C., and knows so much about cars that he can tell the make of lamps from the track of the tyres; while I was a cavalryman and know so little that I judge Jimmy's cleverness only by other people's incredulity. On our stand at the show we exhibited two cars, which, as I carefully learned beforehand from the book of the words, were a Byng-Beatty and a Tanglefoot, these being the cars for which we are what they call concessionaires. (The bât is tricky, but one picks it up loafing about garages.)

As a rule Jimmy and I do the correspondence between us—Jimmy contributing the technique and I the punctuation; but for the three days of the show his cousin Sheila volunteered to preside at a dainty little table and make jottings of our orders. Sheila is always ornamental, and as we had the stand draped to tone with her hair, and she wore a dress which harmonized like soft music with the pale heliotrope of the Tanglefoot's body-work, our display was a magnet from the word "Go."

And then on the morning of the opening day Jimmy went down with his Lake Doiran malaria and left me to it!

I am as brave as most people, but this calamity unmanned me. "Sheila," I said to a pair of pitying grey eyes, as the crowd, having heard the show declared open, massed about our stand—"Sheila, the situation is desperate. These people will ask me about the cars. They will expect me to answer them intelligently, and it's no use in the world talking horse to them—I can see that from their sordid looks. I shall disappear. You can say I have gone out on a trial run, which won't be a lie, only an understatement. And you can just hand them out the little books and let them paw the varnish. Silence will be better than anything I could say. Probably it is better than what any conscientious man could say about the Tanglefoot."

"I'll carry on, Nobby," said Sheila. "You go and buy buns for Miss Hurdlewing, and be happy. Fly! here's a purchaser."

Sheila's whisper dispersed me into the crowd and I strolled away, while she bestowed a smile and a specification pamphlet on the first of the crowd to step on to our stand.

I found it impossible to keep away for long. Sheila looked so well against the heliotrope Tanglefoot limousine that I had to go back to look at her.

The stand was surrounded by a throng, hushed and breathless with interest. Sheila was talking volubly. Hardened motorists listened with their mouths open; zealots, feverish to expend their excess profits on motoring because it was a novelty and expensive, stood spell-bound; a rival agent drank in her words with tears in his eyes—tears for his old innocence—and his cheek flushed with a sudden and splendid determination to amalgamate with our firm.

"This chassis, gentlemen," Sheila was saying, with a glance towards the Byng-Beatty, "has the most exclusive features. The torque-tube being fitted with an automatic lighter, it is possible to change tyres without leaving your seat; while by a simple adjustment of the universal joint the car will take any reasonable obstacle gracefully and without any inconvenience to the occupants. The clutch is of the Alabama type. This new pattern created a great sensation at Olympia, owing to the ease with which it permits even the amateur driver to convert the present body into a char-à-banc or a tipping-waggon. The hood is reversible, so that passengers may be sheltered from the wind when the car runs backwards. In the rear of the boot, concealed by a door flush with the panels, is an Einstein parachute, by means of which a passenger may leave the car before an imminent accident or when tired of the company."

I could not move; I did not want to either; and I certainly dared not interrupt.

"The Tanglefoot," continued Sheila, while a sigh of sheer rapture rose from the crowd, "is pre-eminently the car for a medical man or pushful undertaker. No horn is supplied, though this will be fitted if desired. The car is not cheap, but properly used will soon repay itself. Amongst the accessories supplied with the standard chassis I should like to call your attention to the collapsible game-bag and landing-net."

This went on for a long, long time, and I stayed till a man in the crowd recognised me and showed symptoms of coming out of his trance. I fled, and returned only at the luncheon interval.

"Sheila," I said—"Sheila, this may be fun for you, but James Wrigley and I may sing in the streets to pay for it."

"You great stupid"—her eyes were sparking as she spoke—"I've booked more orders than you will be able to carry out before you've learned wisdom. Look!" It was practically a nominal roll of the local capitalists that she showed me. "Nobody believes what you say about a car, so you can say what you like. The thing is to get it noticed."

"Did they study these cars much before they let you take their names?"

Sheila looked into my eyes and laughed happily.

W. K. H.

Our Eccentric Advertisers.

"Youth Wanted to Strike."

Provincial Paper.

THE DACHSWOLF.

Fritz (doubtfully). "GOOD DOG—IF YOU STILL ARE A DOG."

"Oh, auntie, 'Zymotic' is a funny word for you to be so fond of."

"My dear child, what are you talking about?"

"Well, daddy said you were very fond of the last word, so I looked it up in the dictionary."

ABOUT BATHROOMS.

Of all the beautiful things which are to be seen in shop windows perhaps the most beautiful are those luxurious baths in white enamel, hedged round with attachments and conveniences in burnished metal. Whenever I see one of them I stand and covet it for a long time. Yet even these super-baths fall far short of what a bath should be; and as for the perfect bathroom I question if anyone has even imagined it.

The whole attitude of modern civilisation to the bathroom is wrong. Why, for one thing, is it always the smallest and barest room in the house? The Romans understood these things; we don't. I have never yet been in a bathroom which was big enough to do my exercises in without either breaking the light or barking my knuckles against a wall. It ought to be a big room and opulently furnished. There ought to be pictures in it,