Dramatis Personae

THE STATESMAN
THE HOUSEKEEPER
THE DOCTOR
THE PRIMROSES


His Favourite Flower

A Political Myth Explained

_The eminent old Statesman has not been at all well. He is sitting up in
his room, and his doctor has come to see him for the third time in three
days. This means that the malady is not yet seriously regarded: once a day
is still sufficient. Nevertheless, he is a woeful wreck to look at; and
the doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his
querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain,
repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument:
its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane
of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the
polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more
in those tired old hands, shiny with rheumatic gout, and now twitching
feebly under the discomfort of a superimposed malady, the reins of
democratic and imperial power. The dark, cavernous eyes still wear their
look of accumulated wisdom, a touch also of visionary fire. The sparse
locks, dyed to a raven black, set off with their uncanny sheen the
clay-like pallor of the face. He sits in a high-backed chair, wrapped in