which all handicaps were intended.

'My handicap was an honour and a spur!' said the champion in the
tramcar.

'My handicap was an honour and a spur!' said the chairman at Exeter
Hall.

Both the champion and the chairman did by means of their handicaps what
they could never have done without those handicaps. There can be no
doubt about it; handicaps were designed, not as the pitiful excuses of
the indolent, but as the magnificent inspirations of the brave.

II

GOG AND MAGOG

Gog and Magog, let it be dearly understood, are the two tall
poplar-trees that keep ceaseless vigil by my gate. I state this fact
baldly and unequivocally at the very outset in order to set at rest,
once and for ever, all controversies and disputations on that
fascinating point. Historians will reach down the ponderous and dusty
tomes that litter up their formidable shelves, and will tell me that
Gog and Magog were two famous British giants whose life-sized statues,
fourteen feet high, have stood for more than two hundred years in the
Guildhall in London. But that is all that the historians know about
it! Theologians, and especially theologians of a certain school, will
remind me that Gog and Magog are biblical characters. Are they not
mentioned in the prophecy of Ezekiel and in the Book of Revelation?
And then, looking gravely over their spectacles, these learned-looking
gentlemen will ask me if I am seriously of opinion that the inspired
writers were referring to my pair of lofty poplars. I hasten to assure
these nervous and unimaginative gentlemen that I propose to commit
myself to no such heresy. Like Mrs. Gamp, I would not presume. For
ages past these cryptic titles have provided my excellent friends with
ground for interminable speculation, and for the most ingenious
exploits of interpretation. How could I have the heart to exclusively
allocate to these stately sentinels that guard my gate the titles that
have afforded the interpreters such endless pleasure? I would as soon
attempt to snatch from a boy his only peg-top, or from a girl her only
doll, as embark upon so barbarous an atrocity. How could they ever
again declare, with the faintest scrap of confidence, that Gog and
Magog represented any particular pair of princes or potentates if I
deliberately anticipate them by walking off with both labels and coolly
attaching them to my two poplar-trees? The thing is absurd upon the
face of it. And so I repeat that for