visited
By a smart sample of the plague.
I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships
Are sincere and clean-thinking men.
I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,
Out of sheer public spirit
And with a view to bettering the condition
Of the city over which you preside.
In other words, I impute no motives:
That is to say, no base motives.
But, my dear Worships,
Why, in the name of Heaven, would you abolish
The harmless, necessary barmaid?
Have you never been young?
Have you never known the tender delight
Of whiling away a morning
With your elbow on the zinc
And threepennyworth of Bass before you?
What, may I ask your Worships,
Is Bass without a barmaid?
I grant that, taking them all in all,
The barmaids of Scotland
Are not what you might term
An altogether bewitching lot.
Years ago, when I was young and callow,
Fate threw me into the propinquity
Of a lady of this ilk;
She hailed from Glasgow,
And she was not beautiful;
On the other hand, I was young.
And, out of an income which was even slenderer then
Than it is now,
I purchased for that dear lady of the North
Many bottles of perfume,
Many pairs of kid gloves,
And a Prayer Book or so;
And, when I had consumed innumerable Basses
At her altar,
And the time had, as I thought, become ripe,
I offered her matrimony,
To which she replied, in limpid Doric:
"Gang awa hame to yer mither."
That, my dear Worships,
Is Glasgow!
If you can weed out of Glasgow
All young females
Possessed of this particular kind of temperament,
I am not so sure
But that you would have my blessing.
On the other hand, I am free to admit
That I hae my doots as to your capacity for so doing.
The perfume-bottle,
The kid gloves,
The Prayer Book
And "Na, na, na, I winna,"
Will always remain the prerogatives
Of the Glasgae lassies,
If I know anything of them.
Also, my dear Worships,
One thing is absolutely certain,
That, if the magistrates of all the cities
In the United Kingdom
Would take the step you have taken,
We should have gone a very considerable way
Towards solving the drink problem,
And putting Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
Into a fearful hole for money.

P.S.—I hate Scotch men,
But I sometimes think that Scotch women
Are rather bonnie.

TO A BOOKSELLER

My dear Sir,—
"There lies a vale in Ida
Lovelier
Than all the valleys
Of Ionian hills."
I take it
That this is a geographical fact.
Anyway it is Tennyson,
And I quote it
In order that you may perceive
That I have some acquaintance
With the higher walks of Literature,
And am therefore a man
Of entirely different build from yourself.
I was born a poet,
And have stuck to my trade
Unto this last.
Possibly you were born a bookseller.
I am willing to give your credit for it,
But I doubt it all the same,
For I often think the average bookseller
Must have been born a draper.
The other day I had occasion to do a little book-buying.
It was my first essay
In what I now believe to be
An altogether elegant and delightful form
Of intellectual recreation.
Of course, I went into a shop:
From the yawning Cimmerianity at the back of that shop
There came unto me swiftly and in large boots
A fat youth.
He bowed, and he bowed, and he bowed.
"I want a good edition of Shelley," I said.
And he replied straightway
"Ninepenceshillingnetoneandsixpencenethalfa-
        crownnettwoandeightpencethreeandnine-
        pencefiveshillingsnethalfaguineaandkindly-
        stepthisway."
I said, "Thank you,
But I want Shelley,
Not egg-whisks."
Whereat he smiled and banged under my nose
A heavy volume,
Bound like a cheap purse,
And murmured, "There you are,
The best line in the market,
Two-and-eight."
And because I opened it,
And looked disconsolately at the stodgy running-titles
And the entrancing red-line border,
He cast upon me eyes of contempt and disgust,
And told me that I could not expect
Kelmscott Press and tree-calf
At the money.
In fact, that fat youth
Annoyed me.
He
Was
A bookseller.
Ah, my dear Sir,
When I reflect that whatever I may write,
No matter how excellent it may be,
Must ultimately pass into the hands
Of that fat youth
And become to him
Something
At ninepenceashillingneteighteenpencetwoandsix-
        netthreeandninefiveshillingsnetorhalfaguinea-
        andkindlystepthisway
The spirit of my fathers quails within me,
I know that authorship
Is a trade for fools.
Go to!
Ninepence me no ninepences,
Two-and-sixpence me no nets,
Bring yourself at once
To your logical conclusion,
And next time I call upon you
For Shelley,
Sell him to me,
As you appear to sell "Temporal Power."
By the pound
Avoirdupois.