shock and strain,
Undeviatingly urbane,
And lending London's commonplace
A touch of true heraldic grace.

* * * * *

RING IN THE OLD.

There is a shabby-looking man who (I read it in _The Times_) rings the
bell of London hospitals, asks to see the secretary, presumes (as is
always a safe thing to do) that the establishment is grievously in
need of funds, and without any further parley hands to the startled
but gratified official bank-notes to the tune of five hundred pounds.
He then vanishes without giving name or address. This unknown
benefactor is dressed in top-boots, riding breeches of honourable
antiquity, a black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the
same time (this too on _The Times'_ authority) there is an oddly and
obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals
her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her
boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on
an adjacent chair and hands him two thousand pounds.

The result of the activities of these angelic visitants is that all
the other hospital porters have had instructions from their eager
and hopeful secretaries to be careful to be polite to any and every
person, even though he or she should be in rags, who expresses the
faintest desire to enter on business; more than polite--solicitous,
welcoming, cordial; while all the secretaries are at this moment
polishing up their smiles and practising an easy manner with ladies in
last century costumes who put sudden and unexpected requests.

_The Times_, in limiting the effect of these curious occurrences
entirely to hospital servants, seems to me to lose a great
opportunity. Surely the consequences will be more wide-reaching than
that? To my mind we may even go so far as to hail the dawn of the
golden age for old clothes; for in the fear that shabbiness may
be merely a whimsical disguise or the mark of a millionaire's
eccentricity the whole world (which is very imitative and very hard
up) will begin to fawn upon it, and then at last many of us will enter
the earthly paradise.

But the gentleman who puts ease before elegance and the lady who
prefers comfort to convention have got to work a little harder yet.
They must not fold their hands at the moment under the impression that
their labours are done. The support of hospitals is humane and only
too necessary, and all honour to them for their gene