nes and the Puritans. It pays to pick the period
you queen it over rather carefully. Elizabeth had better luck. To be
Elizabethan is to be everything gay and dashing and out-doory and
adventuresome, with insatiable curiosity and the gift of song. Of
course, Shakespeare, Drake, Raleigh, ought to have the credit--but
they don't get it, any more than Tennyson comes in on the Victorian
discredit. The head that wears a crown may well lie uneasy.

The memory of many a man has been perpetuated, all unwittingly, by the
manufacturers and advertising agencies. Here I tread on dangerous
ground, but surely I shall not be accused of commercial collusion if I
point out that so "generously good" a philanthropist as George W.
Childs became a name literally in the mouth of thousands. He became a
cigar. Then there was Lord Lister. He, too, has become a name in the
mouths of thousands--as a mouth wash. And how about the only daughter
of the Prophet? Fatima was her name.

Who was Lord Raglan, or was he a lord? He is a kind of overcoat sleeve
now. Who was Mr. Mackintosh? Was it Lord Brougham, too? Gasolene has
extinguished his immortality. Gladstone has become a bag, Gainsborough
is a hat. The beautiful Madame Pompadour, beloved of kings, is a kind
of hair-cut now. The Mikado of Japan is a joke, set to music, heavenly
music, to be sure, but with its tongue in its angelic cheek. An
operetta did that. You cannot think of the Mikado of Japan in terms of
royal dignity. I defy you to try. Ko-ko and Katisha keep getting in
the way, and you hear the pitty-pat of Yum-Yum's little feet, and the
bounce of those elliptical billiard balls. Gilbert and Sullivan's
operetta is perhaps the most potent document for democracy since the
Communist Manifesto!

The other day I heard a woman say that she had got to begin banting. A
nice verb, to bant, though not approved of by the dictionary, which
scornfully terms it "humorous and colloquial". The humor, to be sure,
is usually for other people, not for the person banting. Do you know,
I wonder, the derivation of this word? It means, of course, to induce
this too, too solid flesh to melt, by the careful avoidance of
farinaceous, saccharine and oily foods, and occasionally its meaning
is stretched by the careless to include also rolling on the bedroom
floor fifteen times before breakfast, and standing up twenty minutes
after meals. Yet the word is derived from the name of William Banting,
who was a London cabin