The World’s Tragedy

PREFACE I have it on hearsay that I was born on the 12th of October in the year 1875 of Pseudo Christ. I was born dumb ; and the first incident of my career was the cutting of my fraenum linguae, that I might speak plainly. The operation, as this volume shews, was a complete success. Of my early life I remember little ; chiefly a large garden with, at the end of it, a wood which overlooked the road and afforded vantage for archers. There was war in the land ; my cousin Gregor Grant, six years older than myself, and a few other stern exiles, desperately banded against the rest of the neighbourhood. I remember leaping from the top of a sand pit in the character of Sir Garnet Wolseley and nearly transfixing with my father’s alpenstock an asto- nished navvy who had not properly prepared the trying rôle of Arabi Pasha, suddenly and without warning assi- gned to him by our Army Council. I remember too being disarmed and chased by a small Italian boy (the Mc. Callum Mohr) whose bandbox, containing doubtless an exquisite