veryday, one
doesn't notice these things, maybe. One has become so habituated to
"Father" drumming "Colonel Bogey" on the chair-arm; or "Little Willee"
playing "shakes" with two ha'pennies and a pen-knife--that one has
ceased to pay any attention to these minor irritations. And, when we
are among strangers, we are so busy watching that people don't put
_their_ hands into _our_ pockets, that we generally put our own hands
into them for safety. . . . Which, perhaps, accounts for the
Englishman's habit . . . who knows?

But on the stage, this custom is an almost mesmeric one to watch. We
certainly do see other people at a disadvantage when they are strutting
the Boards of Illusion . . . men especially. But to a foreigner, who
is not used to seeing a man's hands disappear the moment he is asked to
stand up, the sight must come with something of a shock. For my own
part, I think his amazement is justified. Surely God gave a man two
hands for other needs than to pick things up with or hide them?

Personally, I always think that it is a thousand pities that men are
not expected to knit. They grew up to be idle in the drawing-room, I
suppose, in times when every other woman was a "Sister Susie." But the
"Sister Susie" species is nowadays almost extinct. It requires a
German offensive to drive the modern woman towards her darning needles.

In a recent literary competition in EVE, the subject was "Bores, and
how to make the best of them." Well, personally, I could suffer
them--if not more gladly, at least with a greater resignation--if I
were allowed to recite, "Two plain; one purl" so long as their
infliction lasted. As it is, I am left with nothing else to do except
furtively to watch the clock, and secretly to ring up "OO Heaven" to
send down a bombing party to deliver me.

Men of the Latin races are far more wise in this respect. If you tied
the hands of a Frenchman, or an Italian, or even a Spaniard, up behind
his back, the odds are he would be struck dumb! But we Englishmen--we
only seem able to become eloquent when, as it were, we have voluntarily
placed our own hands into the handcuffs of our own trouser pockets.
Even Englishwomen are singularly un-self-revealing with anything except
their tongues. You have only to watch an Englishwoman singing to
realise how extremely limited are her powers of expression. She places
both hands over her heart to represent "Love," and opens them wide to
illustrate every