"الملف 73/7 I (D 19) وضع الكويت، سكة حديد بغداد، والمفاوضات الأنجلو تركية في ١٩١١" [ظ‎أ‎‎١‎٧] (٦٣١/٥٠)

TKU'
198
whether commercial or political, for themselves, there
need be no delay in reaching a settlement. Why the
Baghdad railway has hung fire so long is because French
and English capital have been withheld till the political
situation has been so clarified as to establish confidence
among prospective investors and reassure them in regard
to the international stability of this great enterprise,
which is the outcome of the energy, foresight, and deter
mination of the German people.
HOSPITALITY BY THE GILL.
There was once a father who did not live south of the
Tweed; and when his son was of age, by way of cele
brating his majority, the fond parent handed him an
envelope. The son opened it with a grateful and filial
heart; there was a note inside. Yes, it was a note—a
note of every farthing the son had cost his father, from
the doctor's fees for bringing him into the world, to the
cost of last night's supper to the tenantry. " You are
going into business," said the father who did not live
south of the Tweed, f and you are going to pay me
back every penny of that amount." So, having had the
fatted calf, the son went forth to eat husks among the
swine who do live south of the Tweed. And he didn't
go home for Christmas. The Savoy was cheaper.
Hospitality is defined by the useful Chambers, whose
gentle precision is often illuminating when thrown into
juxtaposition with current affairs, as " friendly welcome
and entertainment of guests." A witty Irishman, who
was being shown the fine suite of torture-chambers in
Salzburg Castle, with their very complete equipment for
encouraging confidential statements, remarked, " H'm,
every convenience for the reception of guests." That
was a generous view of hospitality; Chambers is matter-
of-fact; the father who did not, etc., was expedient;
but it has been left to Mr. Gill, K.C., to be romantic.
Hospitality, according to his remarks last week, has
nothing to do with welcome, and only so much concern
with entertainment as rests in that word's applicability
to food and drink. There is the heart of the matter at
once, the simple, romantic, engaging truth. But, like
all revelations, it carries heart-break in its train. To
think that anyone should have paid Melba a couple of
hundred pounds to sing a song at an evening party!
To think of the money wasted on flowers, and bands,
and polished floors; on marquees and awnings and new
frocks, and all the paraphernalia of dances, including
cotillon presents; to think that all these things are not
hospitality at all, and that a person with a bad appetite
may come to the most lavish entertainment, and be only
sixpennyworth the better, because he or she has only
had an ice or a cup of coffee 1
But the real misery lies in the wretched and criminal
waste of time we have for so long been expending on
the exercise of hospitality. We have frequently been
kept from a pleasant engagement by the fact that
guests were coming to the house. What folly! All
that was necessary was to leave the table laid for them,
with instructions to the servants to look after their
bodily comfort, and to hand them at the end a receipted
bill for the dinner, in order that they might understand
the exact amount of honour done them. To extend a
cordial welcome is merely a matter of expensive dishes;
while a three-and-sixpenny meal would do for mere
# acquaintances.
Hospitality has been thought an art; Mr. Gill has
shown us that it is a science, entirely worked, out by, the
aid of weights and measures and the current prices at
ix we aitj oo avoid tne suspicion of
monetary gain 1 Is hospitality really chop for chop
and tooth for tooth, with never eye for eye ? Is it all
entertainment for Little Mary?
Oh, Mr. Gill, give us a little larger measure!
NOTES FKOM PAEIS.
"/QUELLE vanite que la peinture?" cried Pascal.
His words sometimes came home me as I
went through Salons containing each a few thousand
pictures. The picture exhibitions at the great clubs
that go in for art patronage are not large enough to
weary, and yet contain enough of paintings and are
sufficiently extensive to afford scope for an interesting
hunt for good things. At the one now on at the Rue
Volney the general tone is one of well-bred correctness,
free from all stiffness and affectation of " respect
ability." A very unexpected novelty is a "Venice"
in nearly every tone of grey, here and there showing
the opaline tints of a fine pearl. I know that there
are grey days in that city, and very beautiful they
can be. But no artist has been nonconformist enough
to find in them his advantage before Pierre Waydmann.
It needs, perhaps, a public of more cultivated taste to
find exquisite pleasure in seeing a spectral city rising
from the water which they are accustomed to view in
the hues of a fulgurant sunset. Not that Venice clothed
in red, yellow, bistrous brown, orange, and umbe'*
with a blue sky above, is not a feast to the jsx ,
cultured eye.
The portraits are, I dare say, faithful likenesses,
and, when they will be no longer valuable as souvenirs,
The Luxury of a Bath is incomplete without the addition
of scbubb's Ammonia , which refreshes and invigorates. Sold
everywhere, price one shilling per bottle.