an climbing
Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it--no one else shall do
it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's
bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the
British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own
particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his
bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly
into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his
pictures--a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes
thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed
with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red
leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday
book, or a pocket diary--'Daily Invocations.'

"Coming back to wrathy swearing, I must confess I am sorry to see it
decay. It was such a thoroughly hygienic and moral practice. You see, if
anything annoying happens to a man, or if any powerful emotion seizes
him, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at a
tremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control in
keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his
face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work,
some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so
that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a
stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it
may rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, the
breaking of furniture, 'murther' even. For all this energy a good
flamboyant, ranting swear is Nature's outlet. All primitive men and most
animals swear. It is an emotional shunt. Your cat swears at you because
she does not want to scratch your face. And the horse, because he cannot
swear, drops dead. So you see my reason for regretting the decay of
this excellent and most wholesome practice....

"However, I must be getting on. Just now I am travelling about London
paying cabmen their legal fares. Sometimes one picks up a new variant,
though much of it is merely stereo."

And with that, flinging a playful curse at me, he disappeared at once
into the tobacco smoke from which I had engendered him. An amusing and
cheerful person on the whole, though I will admit his theme was a little
undesirable.

DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY

The story of D