Welsh Journals

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LEAVES FROM A DIARY (The Diarist has disappeared, and from one of the last entries in his note-book we may infer that he will not return. The following are a few of the lighter and less intimate passages translated from the original Welsh). March 2.-So the war costs the country six millions a day. If I devoted every penny of my stipend ( £ 80 per annum) to defray the war expenses for a single day, I should have to go on living for 75,000 years. Supposing I made two new sermons a Sunday for 40 Sundays a year during that period I should have written six million sermons. And if new deacons were appointed at the rate of four in every ten years (deacon mortality being always low), I find that 30,000 deacons would have sat (and some- times slept) under my ministry. I don't think I should like to live for 75,000 years. March 4.-1 have made up my mind as to the first sentence of my coming great book We have at last arrived at the period of transition from the period when everyone said that we were in a period of transition to a period when we can justly say that the period of transition is past." It sounds like a fugue in an M.P's. maiden speech. By the way, is my reverence for M.P's. on the wane? Has the old M.P.-olatry died out of Wales altogether ? The two great events in Welsh village life in my boyhood were the circus and the opening of local bazaars by the current M.P. In one of my weightier dis- courses I say that an organ decays when its function ceases. Now we know that Bazaars (the function) are practically extinct, ergo M.P's. (the organs that opened the functions) are sinking into desuetude. Must write a sociological paper-" The decay of Bazaars as a factor in the decline of M.P.-worship." April 4. — Bob told his mother to-day that he found it hard to distinguish dinner from tea and tea from breakfast unless they were labelled he felt as though he were getting up when dining and going to bed when breakfasting. Are my children be- coming humourists? Sad thought. No career for humour in this country. There is not a smile in Dr. Smiles' book on the men that have helped themselves to the best bits of the bacon. There is humour of course on the English Bench, but none in the dock where the accused stands on the Docks where the shipowners stand, the fun is fast and furious. Cannot I make ship-owners of my child- ren ? I must write a companion volume to Smiles' "Self-help"; I shall call it "Helping Others;; with the sub-title The self-denial of Ship-owners." April 7. — Trying to compose a competitive piece for the National Eisteddfod had to give it up, unable to get into the skin of the adjudicators. I know their hobby-horses but cannot ride them. Bright idea for next National For the best novel or drama bringing in all the adjudicators named in this list of subjects all the characters must have heroic parts." April 9.-Present at a Cwrdd Mawr two sermons. Bob asked on way home, "Why does the last preacher in his prayer at the end refer to the first preacher's sermon ? Is it because the first ends his sermon with the hope that the second may preach well ? I drew Bob's attention to a distant view. "I suppose" he went on unmoved "it's good manners." Then after a while: "if you were preaching one of two in the same service, would you be willing to see the other preacher preaching better than you?" Bob is getting beyond my depth, I must make a ship-owner of him. May 3.-The head of the commissariat called me down from the study; how was she to give the children the impression that there was a dinner that day ? I fetched a thick volume of Domestic Econo- my and two small cookery books and bade her stew the lot with the only two carrots that ever grew in my garden. Why cannot I grow carrots ? A little question of that kind bothers me more sometimes than all the ultimate questions of Philosophy. May I O.-The third circular came to-day gravely warning our home to economise. With more than my usual severity I ordered my wife not to throw away any more chunks of beef and half-eaten roast chickens. On the back of the circular (to save my note-paper) I wrote an ode on the transitoriness of life; but no cash value in Welsh poetry, only mere immortality of fame. Dwy geiniog i'm digoni 0 les hon, ni welais i. Chip potatoes sell better. The best fairy tale in Welsh begins in this way; Once upon a time a Welsh poet lived in a fine mansion built from the proceeds of the sale of his poetical works." John Milton sold the copy-right of his Paradise Lost for a hundred thousand pounds, while a ship-owner the other day sold a ship of 1,600 tons for five pounds. It is an odd world, or as Emerson puts it, "the world is mundane." Bob says he could go on like Emerson for a long time the sun is solar, life is vital, death is mortal. May 12. — Shabby-looking man at the back door he was just threepence short of his heaven. He casually observed that he was Oxford first-class honours in Moral Philosophy. He is the sixth honours man in Philosophy that has been at the back door for financial aid. A month back a man in rags came to the front door he was second class