ion of habits. I
am already guarding against it by talking about all the things that we are
going to do after the War. She quite agrees with me about them, but she
isn't enthusiastic. I put my claims pretty high. The garden is to be
reconstructed, and I am adding a wing to the house. We are going to travel
first, and I am not sure that we shan't have a new cook. And we are to have
an Airedale and an Axminster, and a Stilton and a new Panama.

As a matter of fact that is all bluff on my part. I only want to have
something in hand to bargain with. If I can ever get back to the _status
quo ante_ I will not ask for annexations.

Well, that is how it is. Most eagerly do I fall in with her latest
suggestion that I should let her clean my flannel suit with benzine (I
don't like the smell of it) instead of getting a new one. Only I live in a
growing fear that the day when peace is signed in Europe will be the signal
for an outbreak of a new form of warfare in our happy home.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mistress_ (_from upper window_). "WHATEVER ARE YOU DOING
OUT-OF-DOORS AT _THIS_ TIME OF NIGHT, JANE?"

_Romantic Maid_. "ONLY THROWING A FEW CRUMBS TO THE OWLS, MA'AM."]

* * * * *

WHAT DID MR. ASQUITH DO?

A famous story tells how a heckler once broke up a Liberal meeting by
asking with raucous iteration, "What did Mr. GLADSTONE say in 1878?" or
whatever year it was. Nobody knew, and neither did the inquirer himself,
but uproar followed and his end was achieved. Now had the question run,
"What did Mr. GLADSTONE do?" how different a result! For Mr. GLADSTONE,
apart from any trifles of statesmanship or legislation, did two priceless
things, as I will show.

Although, writes the Returned Traveller who in our last number was so
unhappy about the deterioration that has come upon taxi-drivers, I left
England only in October last, I find it a changed place; but no change, not
even the iniquitous prices demanded by London's restaurateurs, or the
increased darkness, or the queer division of _hors d'oeuvres_ into
half-courses and whole-courses (providing an answer at last to the pathetic
query, "What is a sardine?" "A whole course, of course")--no change is so
striking as the fact that when a paper now refers to the PRIME MINISTER or
the PREMIER, it means no longer HERBERT HENRY but DAVID. In a world of flux
and mutability I had come to think of Mr. ASQUITH as a rock,