b. "Keep back; wait till I see if the coast is clear."

c. "Ask the man next to you if he'll let me see his programme."

d. "Hark! What was that?"

e. "It's too steep--he'll never make it--oh, this is terrible!"

* * * * *

For the cheery evening's reading, if you happen to be feeling low in
your mind, let me recommend that section of "The Effective Speaking
Voice" which deals with "the Subdued Range." The selections for the
practice-reading include the following well-known nuggets in lighter
vein:

"The Wounded Soldier," "The Death of Molly Cass," "The Little Cripple's
Garden," "The Burial of Little Nell," "The Light of Other Days," "The
Baby is Dead," "King David Mourns for Absalom," and "The Days That Are
No More."

After all, a good laugh never does anyone any harm.

LIX

THOSE DANGEROUSLY DYNAMIC BRITISH GIRLS

It is difficult to get into Rose Macaulay's "Dangerous Ages" once you
discover that it is going to be about another one of those offensively
healthy English families. Ever since "Mr. Britling" we have been deluged
with accounts from overseas of whole droves of British brothers and
sisters, mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who all get
out at six in the morning and play hockey all over the place. Each has
some strange, intimate name like "Bim," or "Pleda," or "Goots," and you
can never tell which are the brothers and which the sisters until they
begin to have children along in the tenth or eleventh chapter.

In "Dangerous Ages" they swim. Dozens of them, all in the same family,
go splashing in at once and persist in calling out health slogans to one
another across the waves. There are _Neville_ and _Rodney_ and _Gerda_
and _Kay_, and one or two very old ladies whose relationship to the rest
of the clan is never very definitely established. Grandma, for some
reason or other, doesn't go in swimming that day, doubtless because she
had already been in before breakfast and her suit wasn't dry.

These dynamic British girls are always full of ruddy health and current
information. They go about kidding each other on the second reading of
the Home Rule bill or fooling in their girlish way about the chances of
the Labor candidate in the coming Duncastershire elections. It is
getting so that no novel of British life will be complete without
somewhere in its pages a scene like the following:

"A chance visitor at The Beetles some autumn morning along