So saying I handed him ten-and-sixpence.  The basket was carried out to the car by one of the guardians of law and order.  Then I headed for Kensington.

The Food Controller met us breathlessly at the door.

“Oh, what darlings!” she exclaimed.  “Do you think they will last out the master’s leave?”

“They’ve jolly well got to,” declared the master promptly.  “There are limits, Elsie, to the elasticity of conscience.  Besides, my ability to maintain a flow of official phraseology is exhausted.”

The Food Controller kissed me very sweetly.  It was cheap at ten-and-sixpence.

* * * * *

TURKISH MUSIC.

     [According to “a distinguished neutral” there is a great demand
     in Constantinople just now for pianos.]

Of all occasions to unfaithful scoffers
  Given by Turkey in this year of grace,
The unexpected homage that she offers
  To the piano holds the foremost place.

For Turkish music, vide GROVE and others,
  Meant in the past the cymbals and big drum,
And piccolo, a group which wholly smothers
  All other instruments and strikes them dumb.

Compared with this barbaric combination
  The tinkling of the keys, so soft and clear,
Is lacking in explosive concentration,
  And yet there’s more in them than meets the ear.

At least, one reason for this revolution
  Is plain; the keyboard, though its tones are cold,
Viewed as a means of rapid “execution”
  Endears itself to Turks both Young and Old.

* * * * *

     “M.  Bratiano, Rumanian Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign
     Affairs, has returned to Bukarest from Petrograd.”—­The Times.

The force of habit, we presume.  How surprised the German Governor must have been to see him.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  AT THE EXHIBITION OF THE “FORERUNNERS’ SOCIETY.”

Artist.  “I RATHER LIKE THAT.” Super-Critic. “BAH!  PRETTY-PRETTY!  CHOCOLATE BOX!”]

* * * * *

HEXAMETERS.

I have been examining a book by the POET LAUREATE, in which that learned and painstaking man puts forward for general acceptance a new theory and a new practice of metre in English poetry.  It seems that our verse is accentual, whereas it ought to be quantitative—­or it may be the other way about; my brain is in such a whirl with it all that I can’t be certain which is right, but I am sure that one of them is, and so I leave you to take your choice.  Failing that, you can buy Dr. BRIDGES’ book, which is entitled Ibant Obscuri (Oxford University Press), and thus expresses my inmost convictions about our great official poet and his followers.  We are henceforth to write hexameters in English on an entirely new plan, of which the result is that they lose all likeness to any hexameters previously encountered on the slopes of Parnassus or anywhere else and become something so blind and staggering and dreadfully amorphous that the whole mind of the reader rises up in revolt against them.