"
"BYE-BYE! SEE YOU AGAIN SOON."]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Magistrate._ "BUT, MR. GOLDSTEIN, WHY DO YOU HAVE YOUR
HOUSE AND YOUR BUSINESS IN YOUR WIFE'S NAME?"
_Mr. Goldstein._ "WELL, YOU SEE, I'M NOT A BEESNESS MAN."]
* * * * *
THE SAYINGS OF BARBARA.
The man who sets out to expose popular fallacies or to confound
time-honoured legends is bound to make enemies.
The latest legend I have been privileged to explore is not the product
of superstition and slow time, but a deliberately manufactured growth
of comparatively recent origin. It is concerned with Barbara, not the
impersonal lady who figures in the old logic-book doggerel, but an
extremely live and highly illogical person to whom for half a decade I
have had the honour to be father. It is also concerned with Barbara's
Aunt Julia and, in a lesser degree, with Barbara's mother.
From the time (just over three years ago) when Barbara first attempted
articulate speech I have been bombarded with reports of the wonderful
things my daughter has said. In the earlier years these diverting
stories, for which Julia was nearly always cited as authority, reached
me through the medium of the Field Post-Office, and, being still
fairly new to fatherhood, I used proudly to retail them in Mess, until
an addition was made to the rule relating to offences punishable by a
round of drinks.
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