If I May | Page 6

leads them into battle by the side of the Baron
Roqueblanc....
But I must not tell you the whole story now. You can imagine for
yourself some of the more exciting things which happen. You can
picture, for instance, that vivid chapter in which the young king, at a
moment when his very life is threatened by an Ebonian baron, is saved
by the self-sacrifices of Roqueblanc, who hurls himself in front of the
royal youth's person and himself falls a victim, to be avenged
immediately by a watchful man-at-arms. You can follow, if you will,
the further adventures of that man-at-arms, up to that last chapter when
he marries the still beautiful queen, and henceforward acts in her name,
taking upon himself a power similar to her own. In fact, you can write
the book yourself. But if you do not care to do this, let me beg you at
least to bring a little imagination to the next game which you play.
Then whether you win or (as is more likely) you lose, you will at least
be worthy of the Game of Kings.

Fixtures and Fittings

There was once a young man who decided to be a poodle-clipper. He
felt that he had a natural bent for it, and he had been told that a
fashionable poodle-clipper could charge his own price for his services.
But his father urged him to seek another profession. "It is an uncertain
life, poodle-clipping," he said, "To begin with, very few people keep
poodles at all. Of these few, only a small proportion wants its poodles
clipped. And, of this small proportion, a still smaller proportion is
likely to want its poodles clipped by you." So the young man decided to
be a hair-dresser instead.
I thought of this story the other day when I was bargaining with a
house-agent about "fixtures," and I decided that no son of mine should

become a curtain-pole manufacturer. I suppose that the price of a
curtain-rod (pole or perch) is only a few shillings, and, once made, it
remains in a house for ever. Tenants come and go, new landlords buy
and sell, but the old brass rod stays firm at the top of the window,
supporting curtain after curtain. How many new sets are made in a year?
No more, it would seem, than the number of new houses built. Far
better, then to manufacture an individual possession like a tooth-brush,
which has the additional advantage of wearing out every few months.
But from the consumer's point of view, a curtain-rod is a pleasant thing.
He has the satisfaction of feeling that, having once bought it, he has
bought it for the rest of his life. He may change his house and with it
his Fixtures, but there is no loss on the brass part of the transaction,
however much there may be on the bricks and mortar. What he pays
out with one hand, he takes in with the other. Nor is his property
subject to the ordinary mischances of life. There was an historic
character who "lost the big drum," but he would become even more
historic who had lost a curtain-rod, and neither parlour-maid nor cat is
ever likely to wear a guilty conscience over the breaking of one.
I have not yet discovered, in spite of my recent familiarity with
house-agents, the difference between a fixture and a fitting. It is
possible that neither word has any virtue without the other, as is the
case with "spick" and "span." One has to be both; however dapper, one
would never be described as a span gentleman. In the same way it may
be that a curtain-rod or an electric light is never just a fixture or a fitting,
but always "included in the fixtures and fittings." Then there is a
distinction, apparently, between a "landlord's fixture" and a "tenant's
fixture," which is rather subtle. A fire-dog is a landlord's fixture; so is a
door-plate. If you buy a house you get the fire-dogs and the door-plates
thrown in, which seems unnecessarily generous. I can understand the
landlord deciding to throw in the walls and the roof, because he
couldn't do much with them if you refused to take them, but it is a
mystery why he should include a door-plate, which can easily be
removed and sold to somebody else. And if a door-plate, why not a
curtain-rod? A curtain-rod is a necessity to the incoming tenant; a
door-plate is merely a luxury for the grubby-fingered to help them to

keep the paint clean. One might be expected to bring one's own
door-plate with one, according to the size of one's hand.
For the whole idea of a fixture or fitting can only be that it is something
about which