AMUSING STORIES OF LIFE IN ENGLISH SOCIETY

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 276, 18 May 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMUSING STORIES OF LIFE IN ENGLISH SOCIETY

Humour, and good humour, embellishes the paiges of Sir Evelyn Wood's "Winnowed Memories," recently published in London by Messrs. Cassell. There is perhaps nothing neater in the. volume tliaji the answer of his own daughter to a dinner table symposium on " whether a woman in society would prefer to bo clever or pretty.'' " Pretty, please, till I'm thirty," she sa'd; "clever afterward." Sir Evelyn tells a romantic story connected with the family that used to own Marks Hall, a beautiful old mansion in East Angha. Colonel , a member of the Essex branch of the family, went to India while still a boy. "On his return atfcr nearly twenty years' service, like many young men coming back from the East, he fell in love with a beautiful girl, to whom he became engaged. Before the marriage took place the colonel saw another face which lie fancied more, and' wrote to the first young lady asking her to release him from his engagement and to say that she did not mind doing so. She replied:—'You asked me to marry and you have changed your mind. Now leave me alone and voir will not be troubled further in the matter.' LEFT AT THE CHURCH. "The colonel persistently asked that she would write to him to the effect that she acquiesced in the cancelling of the engagement which she steadily refused to do, and eventually he asked her to meet h'm at the church, and they were married. At the church door the colonel left her, saying:—'l have redeemed my promise, but I never undertook to livo with you, and I am returning xo India immediately.' " The sequel was even more romantic. Many years afterward, when the colonel —by that time become a general—returned home on pension, he went to livo at Bath, and was asked by p. friend one evening to accompany him to a reception by a namesake of his own, who was described as a "very handsome and pleasant woman." "On entering the room he was received and greeted by his wife, but h • 1 no opportunity of talking to her, for, being a popular lady, her rooms were crowded for more than an hour. The General outsayed all other guests, and then, going up to her, said: 'I have long thought that I treated you badly, but now I see you I realise my folly, and I am thinking, can you ever forgive me?' She replied, 'General, I have loved you since I first met you. It was for that reason I could not honestly say that I released you willingly. I was very sorrv when you left me, and I am very glad that you have come back.' He saiid : —'Oh, seeing it is so, if you will allow me, I will send for my portmanteau. ' And, in the words of the story books, they lived happily ever afterward.' " HOW TO GET RECRUITS.

While Sir Evelyn was Adjutant-Gen-eral one of his most important duties was the filling up of the army and the question of attracting recruits was constantly present in his mind. "While the question of attracting recruits was present n my mind I often asked ladies whom I met in society to help me with their advice. 'lf you were a housemaid,' was one of my questions, 'would you preferably walk out with a. soldier who wore an aiguillette or shoulder scales—that is a diminutive .epaulette?'' One ladv helped me materially by answering-'I would much sooner walk out with an ugly man in the Seventeenth Lancers' uniform than with the handsomest man I could find in any other regiment.' " On one occasion a 'General, who, though practically an abstainer, had an extraordinarily ruddy complexion, was inspecting a battalion. After praising several good points he had noticed, he observed with much emphasis: "But, men, there is a great deal too much drink going on—drink, drink, drink, I say!'' The adjutant, afterward on the Aldershot staff with Sir Evelyn, heard a private in the rear rank say :—"Aye, Jock, that's no sae bad, aifter a', fr,oe sic a whisky-faced aii'ld de'il." HIS MOTHER HIS TEACHER. There is a little story of a fond mother whose son failed in a military examination, in geography for one thing. She remarked, "I'm sure there is a mistake, for I taught him geography myself." There is another of an officer who went to a a race meeting against orders and thought he came out well when he was never misssed. " But," said a friend, "is it not rather sad noi to 1)0 missed ?" Sir Eelyn is himself the hero of th's conversation between two otiier guests at a dinner given by "a brother Gold Stick":—■ " I)o you know, madam, that man has never had a brandy and soda or whisky and sock in his life?" The lady raised from her lap a long-handled] pair of eye-glasses, and, atfer gazing fixedly at me for half a minute, on dropping them, remarked: —"Poor old gentleman ! What a lot of pleasure he has missed in his life!" Man y amusing anecdotes have l>eon told of Dean Hole, but the following, which was related bv Sir Evelyn at n dinner party one night, is quite one of the best:— "When he was an old man he talked in a public park to a girl ten or twelve years of age who was sitting 011 a bene 1i when he sat down. After a time he said to her : 'My dear, I am heavy; will you help me up?' When he was 011 his feet lie observed, - l hope I wa-> not too heavy fo ryoir?' To which she replied, 'Oh, no, not at all, s'r; I often help up father when lie is much more drunk than you are.' FIGHTING IN SLIPPERS. Fn these days soldiers sometimes attack in strange improvisations in the way of kit, but it is difficult to imagine a brigadier in Indian Mutiny days going into action 111 carpet slippers. '" In the operations outside Onwnpore, 1«:>7, in which General Wyndham was defeated by the Gwalior contingent, an infirm brigadier-general was, 011 Lord Clyde's return from Lucknow, removed from his command and sent home. Mv old -i-rvant in after years, bad belonged to the Thirtv-fourth, which came out best of all in an unsatisfactory fight, and I asked him if he hid seen th'» brigadier that day, and he replied, 'Yes. he couldn't jret on his horse without help, and rode about in carpet slip-