Alone | Page 6

other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean.
Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me?
An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. 6d. per week.
H'm.
The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on the premises.
So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore:
"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?"
"I loafed, my boy."
"That was naughty, grandpapa."
"Naughty, but nice...."

ALONE
Mentone
Italiam petimus....
Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities.
One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at Mentone?
�� propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments in the hands of Frenchmen?
The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend on your side.
And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to this inane Riviera existence....
I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in