For the Despondent

Are you old and white haired, longing to be young and full of beans?

Are you thinking seriously of becoming a misogynist because some damsel has turned down your heart of gold for some base creature utterly unworthy of her affections?

(As a matter of fact, after such a deed, you are wondering whether she can be as wonderful as you once thought her).

Have you failed once more in that wretched exam?

Has your landlady been feasting you on raw chops for breakfast?

Is the small girl in the flat above still practising "The Merry Peasant," while below a soulful youth is tearing his heart and violin strings and nearly splitting your eardrums with Sibelius' "Valse Triste?"

Have you given up morning and afternoon tea, supper and chocolates, to achieve that fashionable silhouette and yet have put on nearly a stone?

Are you trying to grow a shingle?

In short, is the whole universe frowning on you and your attempts to create a brighter Wellington?

If so, there is one, and only one, remedy for you: walk to your bank if one owns you, otherwise beg, borrow, or steal six shillings and invest in a copy of "The Crock of Gold."^* Do not feel alarmed; never will your money have been better spent. The dict, return will be even more valuable than that of three Gigantic Art Union tickets, each winning first prize. There have been other books; there will be, I confidently though sorrowfully predict, other books; but this is a book that will live, that win never be rejected with those Seven Thousand Years belonging to yesterday; a book that will ease the agony resulting from all the complaints enumerated above, even if you, oh beloved, are suffering from each and every one of them. Misogynistic youth, learn how to end your hopeful career as did the Gyrating Philosopher; you will find that, in the committing of suicide, there is a pain- page 35 less, cleanly and simple method, so simple that by the time you have practised it to the verge of perfection, another, and this time a worthy damsel will be turning your thoughts from your altar of sacrifice to that of Hymen.

Lover of silhouettes, read about the "Thin Woman of Iris Magrath" and immediately absorb comfort and chocolates wholesale, for no sane man having studied this book will look with admiration at anyone approaching that female, whose ferocity was one with her emaciation and who attempted to curse her husband with toothache, lockjaw, rheumatism and stirabout with lumps in it, all at one fell swoop.

Student, consider! Has no new truth come to you in the course of one week? Let me believe that it is not a week, but weeks, possibly months and years, since such an event has occurred. Know then that you have attained to all the wisdom which you are fitted to bear. The Philosopher was so convinced of this in his own case that he ended his life at the end of the week. Now feel justified in following his example. A persistent course of Tramping, Cabarets, Cocktails and C.U. Retreats will doubtless be as effective for you as Gyration was for your Philosophical Predecessor.

Abstainer from Raw Meat, beseech your landlady to give you raw chops! Loving you as the Grey Woman and The Thin Woman loved their Philosophers, she will give you them gloriously over-cooked.

Small Girl, hating "The Merry Peasant" even more than He-Who-Dwells-Below, go to the fields and follow the Old He-Goat to Pan and in one instant you will learn more about music than you could by practising Schumann for ten centuries. Take with you the Soulful Youth and if possible let him perform when the Policemen are around. They will immediately seize him, but do not let this occur when it is dark, for they are not very clever and he might escape, run home, and possibly break into the Dead March, on hearing which the house and all its inhabitants would totter and fall, and finally expire in throes of direst agony.

And you, O Ancient Greybeard and Woman with Snow-White Hair, cast away all anger from you, then call upon Angus Og and he will teach you happiness and, furthermore, "the ecstasy which is Love and God and the beginning and end of all things," and you shall dance "as the sea leaps upon the shingle, panting for joy, dancing, dancing for joy."

M.L.