"Halt! Who goes there?" "Friend," said Mr. Punch hopefully. "It's Mr. Punch," said a cheerful voice. "Come in."
The Cornet-Major of the B.S.R. glissaded into the trench and found himself shaking hands with a very young subaltern of the ———th ———s. [Censored.]
"Thought I recognised you," he said. "Glad to see you out here, Sir."
"That's really what I came about," said Mr. Punch. "I want your advice."
"My advice! Good Lord!... Sure you're comfortable there? Now what'll you have? Cigar or barley-sugar?" Mr. Punch accepted a cigar.
"We're all for barley-sugar ourselves just now," the subaltern went on. "Seems kiddish, but there it is."
Mr. Punch lit his cigar and proceeded to explain himself.
"I say that I have come to consult you," he began. "It seems strange, you think. I am seventy-three, and you are———"
"Twenty-two," said the subaltern. "Next November."
"And yet Seventy-three comes here to sit at the feet of Twenty-two, and for every encouraging word that Twenty-two offers him Seventy-three will say 'Thank you!'"
"Rats," said Twenty-two for a start.
"Let me explain," said the Venerable One. "There come moments in the life of every man when he says suddenly to himself, 'What am I doing? Is it worth it?'—a moment when the work of which he has for years been proud seems all at once to be of no value whatever." The subaltern murmured something. "No, not necessarily indigestion. There may be other causes. Well, such a moment has just come to me... and I wondered." He hesitated, and then added wistfully, "Perhaps you could say something to help me."
"The pen," said the subaltern, coughing slightly, "is mightier than the sword."
"It is," said the Sage. "I've often said so... in Peace time."
The subaltern blushed as he searched his mind for the Historic Example.
"Didn't Wolfe say that he would rather have written what's-its-name than taken Quebec?" he asked hesitatingly.
"Yes, he did. And for most of his life the poet would have agreed with him. But, if at the moment when he read of the taking of Quebec you had asked Gray, I think he would have changed places with Wolfe very willingly... And in Bouverie Street," added Mr. Punch, "we read of the takings of Quebecs almost every day."
The subaltern was thoughtful for a moment.
"I'll tell you a true story," he said quietly. There was a man in this trench who had his leg shot off. They couldn't get him away till night, and here he had to wait for the whole of the day... He stuck it out... And what do you think he stuck it out on?"
"Morphia?" suggested Mr. Punch.
"Partly on morphia, and partly on something else."
"Yes?" said Mr. Punch breathlessly.
"Yes—you. He read... and he laughed... and by-and-by the night came."
A silence came over them both. Then Mr. Punch got up quietly.
"Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "and thank you. That moment I spoke about seems to have gone." He took a book from under his arm and placed it in the other's hands. "I generally give this away with rather a flourish," he confessed. "This time I'll just say, 'Will you take it?' It's all there; all that I think and hope and dream, and that you out here are doing... Good luck to you—and let me help some more of you to stick it out."
And with that he returned to Bouverie Street, leaving behind in the trench his
One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Volume.
