"Of course, young Norman comes along, and instead of picking out some healthy _buxom_ girl, he falls in love with this bit of tinsel china! It's criminal, and should not be _allowed_. What kind of children will they have, if any! He calls her his _Beatrice_--Heaven knows why! "They are together _constantly_. I would write to the _Times_ about it if I thought that Lord Northfellow would publish it. We should have a Minister of _Eugenics_! Surely Winston Churchill would be better employed at that than trying to build up a huge navy we'll never need! By the way, I see he's taken to writing _novels_ now! "Do talk to young Norman! Tell him your uncle is doing very well with pigs in Canada; and why not induce your friend to go _there_, and get some _common-sense_, because every Canadian I meet has a head on his shoulders? It must be the climate! "I am going to stay here for a month, and then visit my cousin in Scotland. She has six children. Whatever induced her to marry a minister? He has no money and no _prospects_--except more children, I suppose! "Does that Mulvaney woman see that your room is kept aired? When you write you should have the window open and a cap on your head. "I hope you will never write books! It is quite a _distinction_ nowadays not to. "Where did you go for Christmas?--Your loving aunt, "HANNAH. "Feby. 8/1914." The only way I can account for my aunt's love of exclamation-marks was her delight at seeing a sentence round to a good finish. I have known authors to be so overcome with the dramatic significance of their work that they put them in as a sort of public recognition thereof. _En passant_.... I wonder why my aunt never wrote a serial story for one of the London dailies. IX War. Our world of artificiality lay like a cracked eggshell. As drowning men, we clutched at everything that seemed stable ... to find nothing that was not made of perishable stuff. Our pens that had criticized so long mocked us as we gazed at the pages which seemed to reject our thoughts before we gave them life. A few of us turned into special war writers and comforted the nation with statistics. We showed that Germany was beaten--it was a mathematical truth that could be proved. While we demonstrated our immense superiority to the enemy in figures, a little British Army was fighting against odds of six to one. And the Fates stood by with poised shears, ready to cut the thread of Britain's destiny. It is not pleasant to recall the arraignment of the year 1914. The Boer War had shown our weakness to every nation but ourselves; our educated men had graduated into the world using their abilities as obstructionists. We had discouraged everything that had the very odor of progress.