SOME HUMOURS OF THE EAST END IN WAR TIME.
To Tim EDITOR or Tim .ErrersToa"1
SIR,—When visiting that part of London where every stranger addressee one as "My dear," one's path is greatly lightened by the unexpected point of view and phraseology of the relations of our brave defenders. What could be more refreshing than to be told by a mother of "my son's money lying, so to speak, dormouse in the bank "P When, however, I hastily signed a paper for an elderly woman, unused to handling a pen, to have " What a lovely scholar 1" murmured in my ear left me dumb, and I bad to wait until a heavy orom had been impressed on the document before I could think of any complimentary rejoinder. It is all a little unexpected, as when, trying sympathetically to take particulars of an absent husband, the wife suddenly throws in : "And I only 'ope 'ell serve the Germans as 'e served me." There is a good deal of confusion relating to locality, as in the case of one mother, who said her eon was in France, she thought "working at the basement." One delightful old lady, in a conspicuously clean room, described her health as never having been good since the hot summer, when she "made too free with water." She was sure the complications of her son's finances would be straightened out if I would write to the "coloured sergeant." For real dramatic opening of a conversation I thought the following hard to beat. Sitting next to a woman at one of the Club concerts, she suddenly turned to me and said : "I've 'ad a lot of trouble since my 'usband left, what with burying the children and the police in the house," and then, alas ! an urgent job swept me from her side before I could hear the conclusion of this series of misfortunes. It is small wonder that, amid so much that is new and unusual, the actual work of these soldier sons should prove somewhat puzzling, though here again the strange and unknown is often reconstituted into the already familiar. Thus one mother described her younger son as being now in the "ny corpse," while the elder one "had joined the ditch patch riders."—I am, Sir, dm, MELESINA BETON-CHRISTOPHER.
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