letons of departed friends with passionate longing.
He finds that life and its gaudy pleasures are as dust and ashes in the
mouth.

Having read these efforts to an admiring circle, he betakes himself with
infinite zest to the discussion of aesthetic tittle-tattle over a cup of
tea and a toasted bun. "Dear fellow," his friends will say of him at
such a moment, "he is so etherial; and his eyes, did you observe that
far-away, rapt look in them?" They will then take pleasure in persuading
one another without much difficulty, that they are the fine flower of
created beings.

The Dilettante, moreover, is a constant attendant at the first nights of
certain theatres. He figures with equal regularity as a large element in
the society gossip of weekly journals. He is a delicate eater and never
drinks too much out of the Venetian glasses, which his butler ruthlessly
breaks after the manner of domestics. There is amongst the inner circle
of the Dilettanti a jargon, both of voice and of gesture, which passes
muster as humour, but is unintelligible to the outer world of burly
Philistines. They dangle hands rather than shake them, and emphasise
their meaning by delicate finger-taps. Their phrases are distinguished
by a plaintive cadence which is particularly to be remarked in their
pronunciation of the word "dear."

At charitable concerts in aristocratic drawing-rooms the Dilettante is
in great request. On these occasions, he astonishes and delights his
friends with a new song, of which, he will have composed both the words
and the music, if he may be believed, whilst he was leaning from his
casement "watching the procession of the moon-lit clouds." He sometimes
smokes cigarettelets (a word must be coined to express their size and
strength), but he never attempts cigars, and loathes the homely pipe. In
gait and manner he affects a mincing delicacy, by which he seeks to
impress the thoughtless with a sense of his superior refinement. In
later life, he is apt to lose his hair, and to disguise the ravages of
time upon his cheeks by the aid of _rouge_. Yet he deceives nobody, and
having grown stout and wheezy is eventually carried off by a common cold
in an odour of _pastilles_. He will be buried in a wicker-work coffin
covered with lilies, and a rival Dilettante having written a limp and
limping sonnet to his memory, will take his evening.

* * * * *

COMIC SLAUGHTER!

(_The Story of the Next Battle,