lives would vanish. You, sir, who find it so easy to nag at home and so
difficult to say the kind thing that you know to be true, would be
discovered to your great advantage and to the peace of your household.

Yes, I think the world would go very well if we all had tongues that told
our true thoughts in spite of us. But what a lot of us would be found out.
My own face crimsons at the thought. So, I think, does yours.




ON BOSWELL AND HIS MIRACLE


As I passed along Great Queen Street the other evening, I saw that
Boswell's house, so long threatened, is at last falling a victim to the
housebreaker. The fact is one of the by-products of the war. While the Huns
are abroad in Belgium the Vandals are busy at home. You may see them at
work on every hand. The few precious remains we have of the past are
vanishing like snows before the south wind.

In the Strand there is a great heap of rubbish where, when the war began,
stood two fine old houses of Charles II.'s London. Their disappearance
would, in normal times, have set all the Press in revolt. But they have
gone without a murmur, so preoccupied are we with more urgent matters. And
so with the Elizabethan houses in Cloth Fair. They have been demolished
without a word of protest. And what devastation is afoot in Lincoln's Inn
among those fine reposeful dwellings, hardly one of which is without some
historic or literary interest!