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“If people would wear the same underclothing all the year round, and with or without the aid of a thermometer against their bedroom window vary their outer garments only, they would never be inconvenienced by changes of temperature.”—­Letter in Daily Paper.

And they would make an appreciable saving in their laundry bills.

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THE MUD LARKS.

“Gurr finny," says T. Atkins, and there seems no doubt about the well-known War being over at last.  Home-keeping folk, who imagine it ended when the whistle blew at the eleventh hour of November 11th, are wide, very wide, of the mark.  We have experienced some of its direst horrors since then.  Why, at one time (and not so long ago) we were without the bare necessities of life itself.

I have seen hardy old soldiers; banded like zebras with wound-stripes and field-service chevrons, offering to barter a perfectly good horse for a packet of Ruby Queen cigarettes, or swap a battery of Howitzers for a flagon of Scotch methylated.  Then came the Great Downfall.  Nabobs, who for years had been purring about back areas in expensive cars, dressed up like movie-kings, were suddenly debussed and dismantled.  Brigadiers sorrowfully plucked the batons from off their shoulder-straps and replaced them in their knapsacks.  The waste-paper baskets brimmed with red flannelette and gilt edging.  Field officers cast down their golden crowns and crept slowly back to their original units as substantive lieutenants.

And now all are gone, some home to England to write for The Times (Appointments Required column) and some to watch the Rhine and see that it gets up to no irregularities, such as running the wrong way or dry.  Here, on the fringe of the old battle-grounds, only the merest handful of us remain, deserted by the field armies, apparently forgotten by the management.

It has happened before.  Bob, our Camp Commandant, swears that a battalion of his regiment, while garrisoning some ocean isle, got mislaid for years and years, and they would have been there to this day, chatting to the crabs and watering the palm-trees with their tears, if some junior subaltern had not sent his birthday-book to KITCHENER with the request that the Field-Marshal would inscribe some verses therein.

Occasionally the boom of explosions coming from the devastated areas tells us that our brave allies the Chinese are still on deck, salvaging ammunition after their own unique fashion of rapping shells smartly over the nose-caps with sledge-hammers to test whether they be really duds or no.

Although a very courageous man, I do not linger in their whereabouts unless I have to.  I don’t follow their line of thought.  One of them unearthed a MILLS bomb the other day.  It gave off blue smoke and fizzed prettily.  When last seen he was holding it to the ear of a chum, who was smiling entrancedly, as a child smiles at the croon of a conch-shell.