Singing—­

Cheerily, O lady mine,
Cheerily, my sweetheart true,
For the blest Blue Peter’s flying and I’m rolling home to you;
For I’m tired of Spanish ladies and of tropic afterglows,
Heart-sick for an English Spring-time, all afire for an English ring-time,
In love with an English rose. 
Rolling home!

* * * * *

MISGIVINGS.

Walking recently by Hyde Park Corner I met a man in a comic hat.  He was an elderly man, very well set up, marching along like an old officer—­quite an impressive figure with his grey moustache and grey hair, had not this ridiculous affair surmounted him.  It was not exactly a hat, and not exactly a cap, but something between the two, and it was so minute as to be almost invisible and wholly absurd.  Yet there was every indication that its wearer believed that it suited him, for he moved both with confidence and self-satisfaction.

And as I watched him, and after he had passed, swinging his stick and surveying the world with the calm assurance of a connoisseur of most of the branches of life I began to entertain some very serious and disturbing doubts.  For (thought I) here is quite a capable kind of fellow, of mature age, making a perfect guy of himself under the profound conviction that he is doing just the reverse and that that pimple of a hat suits him.  No doubt, judging by the cut of his clothes and his general soigne appearance, he stands before his glass every morning until he is satisfied.  Had he (thought I) any accuracy of vision he would see himself the grotesque thing he is in that idiotic little cap.  But his vision is distorted.

It was then that I began to go hot and cold all over, for I suddenly realised that my vision might be distorted too.  My hat hitherto had satisfied me; but suppose that that too was all wrong.  And then I wondered if anyone really gets a true return from the mirror, or if we are not all bemused; and, remembering those astounding hats in which WINSTON used to be photographed a few years ago, I asked myself, “Where are we, when even the great legislators can go so wrong?”

Although all this soul-searching occurred several days ago, I am still nervous, and I never catch sight of my reflection in a shop window without suspicion racking me; while to see a smile on the face of an approaching pedestrian is agony.

But (you will say) why not ask the hatter or some intimate friend to select the hat for you?  I guessed you would suggest that.  But it won’t help; I’ll tell you why.  Some years ago I knew a fat man with a big head—­a journalist of great ability—­who made himself undignified by perching upon the top of that great and capable head a little bowler.  Its inadequacy had always annoyed me, but never more so than when, on my arriving at our place of servitude one morning (we were on the same paper) in a new and perfectly becoming hat, he said to me, “That hat’s all wrong.  You should never choose a hat for yourself.  I never do.  I get my wife to choose mine for me.”  Remembering this I am even more unsettled than before.  I see no hope.