the
postmark on the envelope was Beaconsfield. Still, you never know, do
you?

MARGE.

When Pentonville's over and comes the release,
With a year's supervision perhaps by the p'lice,
Your longing to meet all your pals may be large,
But make an exception, and do not ask Marge.

She's Aspasia, Pavlova, Tom Sayers, Tod Sloan,
Spinoza, and Barnum, and Mrs. Chapone;
For a bloke that has only just got his discharge,
She's rather too dazzling a patchwork, is Marge.

Never mind, never mind, you have got to go slow,
One section a year is the most you can know;

If you study a life-time, you'll jest on the barge
Of Charon with madd'ningly manifold Marge.

By the way, whenever we change houses a special pantechnicon has to be
engaged to take all the complimentary verses that have from time to time
been addressed to me. Must be a sort of something about me somehow,
don't you think?

I cannot pretend that I was on the same terms of intimate friendship
with Mr. Lloyd George. I spoke to him only once.

It was when we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us
there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I
gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, as loudly as I could:

"Lloyd George! Lloyd George!"

Most of the others in the crowd said the same thing with equal force.
Then an uneducated policeman came up to me and asked me to pass along,
please, adding that Mr. Lloyd George was not in London. So, simply
replying "All right, face," I passalongpleased.

However, in spite of all that bound me so closely to the great political
world, I could not help feeling the claims of literature. I am sensitive
to every claim. It is the claim of history, for example, that compels me
to write my autobiography. I seem to see all around me a thousand human
arts and activities crying for my help and interest. They seem to say
"Marge, Marge, more Marge!" in the words that Goethe himself might have
used. And whenever I hear the call I have to give myself.

I doubt if any girl ever gave herself away quite as much as I have done.

One day in November I met Chummie Popbright in the neighbourhood of
Cambridge Circus. He was a man with very little _joie de vivre_, _ventre
a terre_, or _esprit de corps_. He had fair hair and no manners, and was
very, very fond of me. He held a position in the Post Office, and was,
in fact, e