rkable ability. But
always when you feel like that cordial handshake and talking to him with
brusque familiarity, there is the intuitive feeling that one of the two,
perhaps both, might live to regret it.

You cannot absorb the atmosphere of such a man. Whatever the sterling
qualities of his character, the approximate miracles of his achievements,
the warlike strategy of his career, you judge him at last by that
indefinable but inexorable law of common congeniality. To live at close
range with Beaverbrook, to become part of his daily scheme of vibrations,
to work either with, or for, or even over him as a regular part of one's
programme would be to a normal man a penalty almost amounting to a crime.

Though of course tastes differ, even in companions. There are people who
rather like hobnobbing with Beaverbrook. Some are interested in his
idiosyncrasies, as though he were a good subject for a novel. Some enjoy
the sensation of playing moth to a social flame. Others--perhaps--have a
deep respect for his money which, like Carnegie's, is supposed to be a
perplexity to himself to know how to spend it that he may die poor.

Well, the noble lord has his idioms. Discussing the details of the
little dinner already referred to a flippant but devoted critic said:

"I think he would enjoy speaking right in front of that huge fireplace.
He would consider it Napoleonic."

As to the social orbit of Beaverbrook, one may suspect that it is a
rather exotic atmosphere in which the sense of true human equation is
lost in a jumble. A man who can entertain almost simultaneously, at his
country home, financiers, politicians, authors, and actresses from his
own theatre at Hammersmith, may be regarded as a shrewd social mergerist
but scarcely as a subtle entertainer of congenial souls. As for the
discomfort of knowing what to do with his money, Beaverbrook has never
complained; during his latest visit to Canada he was offered and he
refused the purchase of two bankrupt newspapers each of which thought
that the acquisition of such a side line to the _Daily Express_ might
enable him to do some of the good in this country which he failed to
achieve while he lived here.

Estimating this man by the superficial but rather subtle qualities by
which he has achieved success, it seems a sort of irony to think what he
might have done and did not do for the country of his birth. What did he
ever do for Canada? Before the war--nothing. He