A GARDEN DIARY 195 
turned into a simple mockery. Even to-day’s 
news sounds thin and unreal, and the tale of 
Mafeking is as it were the tale of some defence 
read of long since in an ancient, a seldom- 
opened history, the actors and heroes of which 
have long vanished and been forgotten. We 
are but poor, bedimmed mirrors all of us, and 
what we reflect is rarely the real thing, more 
often only some blurred and distorted image 
projected by our own sad selves. 
