CHINA
FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, FEBRUARY 24, 1939
24,
THE MAN WHO GAVE GOOD ADVICE
THEN he was a child his baby
and said that their elder brother, who was "grown up, had got a beautiful small ship in room. Should he ask him for it
it? The child who gave good advice, said, "No; if you ask him for it he will say you are a spoilt child; but go and play in his room with it be fore he gets up in the morning, and he will give it you.”
The baby brother followed this advice, and sure enough two days afterwards he appeared triump- hant in the nursery with the ship in his hands, saying. “He said I might choose, the ship or the picture-book." Now, the pic- ture-book was a coloured edition of Baron Munchausen's adven- tures; the boy who gave good ad- vice had seen it and hankered for it. As his baby brother had re- fused it there could be no harm in asking for it, so the next time his elder brother sent him on în errand (it was to fetch a pin-cus- hion from his room), judging the moment to be propitious, he said to him. "May I have the picture book that baby wouldn't have?? "I don't like little boys who ask," answered the big brother, and there the matter ended.
The child who vice went to school. a rage for stag
gave good ad- There was“ beetles at the school; the boys painted them and made them run races” on a chessboard. They imagined—-
rightly or
tiated the whole of his stamp collection in return for the secret of the alphabet. This offor was accepted. The boy took the stamp collection, but the boy who gave good advice received in return not the true alphabet, but a sham one. especially manufactured for him. This he found out later; but re- criminations were useless; be- sides which the rage for secret alphabets soon, died out, and was replaced by a rage for aquariums, newts and natterjack toads.
•
The boy went to a public school. He was a fag. His fag-master had two fags. One morning the other fag came to the boy who gave good advice and said:
"Clarke (he was the fag-mas- ter) told me three days ago to clean his football boots. been 'staying out' and used them, and I forgot.
Short Story
He's hasn't He'll
want them to-day, and now there isn't time. I shall pretend I did clean them.”
"No, don't do that,” said the boy who gave good advice, cause if you say you have cleaned. them he will lick you twice as much for having cleaned them say you forgot.". The advice was talien, and the fag master merely said, "Don't forget again.”
badly wrongly-that some stag beetles were much faster than others,
Little boy called Bell possessed the stag beetle which was the fav- ourite for the coming racęs. Another boy called Mason was consumed with longing for this stag beetle; and Bell had said he would give it him în exchange for Mason's catapult, which was famous in the school for the uni- que straightness of its two prongs, Mason went to the boy who gave good advice and asked him for this opinion.
“Don't swap it for your catty,' said the boy who gave good ad- vice, "because Bell's stag beetle not win after all; and even may: if it does, stag beetles won't be the rage for very long; but a catty is always a catty, and yours is the best in the school." Mason took the advice. When the races came off the stag beetles were so erratic that no prize was awarded, and they immediately ceased to be the rage.
The rage for stag beetles was succeeded by a rage for secret alphabots. One boy invented a secret alphabet made of simple hieroglyphics, which was impart ed only to a select few, who spent their spare time in corresponding with each other by these cryptic signs,⠀⠀⠀ The boy who gave good advice was not of those initiated into the mystory of the cipher, and he longed to be. He mado se- veral overtures, but they were all rejected, the reason being that boys of the second division could not let a "third division squit" into their secret.
At last the boy who gave good advice offered to one of the ini
A little later the fag-master. had some friends to tea, and told the boy who gave good advice to boil him six egga for not more than three minutes and a half. The boy who gave good advice, while they were on the took
part, in a rag which we on in the passage, the result was that the eggs remained seven minutes in boiling water. They were hard.
When the fag-master- pointed this out and asked his fag what he meant by it, the boy who gave. good advice persisted in his statement that they had been exact ly three minutes and a half in the saucepan, and that he had timed them by his watch. So the fag- master caned him for telling' lies.
The boy who gave good ad- vice grew into a man and went to the university. There he made- friends with pman called Crawley, who went to a neigh- houring race-meeting one day and lost two or three hundred pounds.
“I must raise the money from
moneylender somehow,”
Crawley to the man who said,
gave good advice, and on no account
before you."
Crawley went to the Master of his college and made a clean breast of it, The Master told him he had been foolish very foolish; but he arranged the whole matterin such a manner that it never came to the ears of Crawley's extremely violent-tempered and puritanical
father.
The man who gave good advice got a "First" in Mods., and every one felt confident he would get a "First" in Greats; he did bril liantly in nearly all his papers; but during the Latin. Unseen ma temporary and sudden. lapse of memory came
ing others to risk theirs on events, which seemed to him certain, such
as the election of a President the short-lived nature of a res volution events which he fores saw with intuition amounting to second-sight.
At the same time he lost neatly. all
own money by investing it company which professed to have discovered a manner cheap and rapid of transforming cop- per into platinum.
He made the fortune of a pub- lisher by insisting on the publica- tion of a novel which six intelli- gent men had declared to be un-
forgot the Ever him and he readable. It was called "The Con-
had
for manubice, which the day before he known quite well means prize- money. In fact, the word was written on the first page of his. notebook. The word was in his
By Maurice Baring
brain, but a small shutter had closed on it for the moment and he could not recall it.
He looked over his neighbour's shoulder His neighbour had translated it ""booty." He copied the word mechanically, knowing it was wrong. As he did so he was detected, and accused of cribbing. He denied the charge, the matter was investigated, the papers were compared, and the man who gave good advice was disqualified. In all his other papers he had done incomparably better than anyone else.
When he left Oxford, the man who gave good advice went into a Government office. He had not been in it long before he pers ceived that by certain simple re- forms the work of the office could be done twice as effectually and half as expensively. He embodied these reforms in a memorandum, and they were not long after- wards adopted. He became pri- vate secretary to Snipe, a rising. politician, and persuaded him to change his party and his politics.
Snipe, owing to this advice, be- came a Cabinet Minister, and thể man who gave good advice, having inherited some money, stocd for Parliament himself. He stood as a Conservative at a General Elec- tion and spoke eloquently to en- thusiastic meetings. The wire- pullers prophesied an overwhelm- ing majority when," shortly be« fore the poll, at one of his last meetings, ho suddenly declared himself to be an Independent, and made a speech violently in
must the Master hear of it or how favour of Home Rule and Con-
would send me down; or home, which would be worse.”
Who
the contrary," said the man gave good advice, “you must go straight to the Master and tell him all about it. He will like you twice as much for over after- wards; he never minds people get- ting into scrapes when he happens to like them, and he likes you and believes you have a great career
scription.
The result was that
the Liberal Imperialist got in by a hugo, majority, and the man who gave good advice was pelted with rotten eggs.
After this the man who gave good advice abandoned politics and took to finance. In this branch of human affairs ho made the fortunes of several of hig friends, preventing some from putting their money in alluring South African schonios sand adria.
science of John Digby," and when
Perang dit sold by thousands:
and
lost
thousands. But he
the handsome reward' he received for this service by pub lishing at; his own expense, on magnificent paper, an edition of Rabelais's works in their original tongue.
He frequently spotted winners for his friends and for himself, but any money that he won at a race meeting he invariably lost coming home in the train on the three-card trick.
No did he lose touch with poli- ticians, and this brought about the final catastrophe. A great friend of his, the eminent John Brooke, had the chance
of becoming Prime Minister. Parties were at that time in a state of confusion. The question was, should · his friend ally himself with or sever himself for ever from Mr. Capax Nisay, the leader of the Liberal Aristrocracy Party, who seemed to have a huge following?
His friend; John Brooke, guve a small dinner to his most inti- mate friends in order to talk over the matter The man who gave good advice was so eloquent, so cogent in his reasoning, so acute in his perception, that he per- suaded Brooke to sever himself for ever from Capax Nissy. He persuaded all who were present, with the exception of Mr. Short- Sight, a pig-headed man who rea- soned falsely. So annoyed did the (Continued on Page 7)
PLEASE MOTHER-
WANT POWDER THAT'S ANTISEPTIC
MENNEN
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