ctual attainments, like
Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like _Tarzan_ of the
Apes. It must be very nice to be able to have a heart-to-heart talk
with KRASSIN or to write articles for the Sunday picture-papers, and
very nice also to swing rapidly through the tree-tops, say, in Eaton
Square; but none of these gifts is much help when the door-handle
comes off. I hate that sort of thing to happen in a house.

In the Victorian age, of course, which was one of specialisation based
upon peace and plenty, one simply sent for a door-handle replacer and
he put it right. But nowadays the Door-handle Replacers' Union is
probably affiliated to an amalgamation which is discussing sympathetic
action with somebody who is striking, so nothing is done. This means
that for weeks and weeks, whenever one tries to go out of the room,
there is a loud crash like a 9.2 on the further side and a large blunt
dagger clutched melodramatically in the right hand, and nobody to
murder with it.

The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing
like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which
of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it
go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room
clock.

Such a man came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but
it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and
out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into
the bathroom about 8.30 A.M. when I am trying to get off to sleep.
They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the
garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places,
though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and
feel that one is safe from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is my house or
theirs, the fact remains that the electric-bells were wrong. The man
of whom I am speaking lives next-door, and he came in and pointed this
out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," he said, "that don't
ring."

I might have argued this point. I might have said that to press the
button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on
whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on
the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and
self-discipline. It is quite possible that an Eastern _yogi_ might
spend many years of beneficial calm pressing the buttons of bells that
do not ring