For a space I became an adherent of the experimentalists
who moistened their Soldier's Friend with methylated spirit, alleging
that the ensuing polish was more permanent. I lapsed. My small bottle of
methylated spirit came to an end, and on reflection I was not sure that
its superiority over spittle had been proved. Nothing, in the English
climate, can make the sheen of metal buttons endure, at the
outside, more than one day. "Bluebell," "Silvo," and the other
chemico-frictional preparations in favour of which I ultimately
abandoned Soldier's Friend, are alike in this--that their virtue lies in
frequent application, diligence and elbow-grease. They are, every one,
excellent. Their inventors deserve our gratitude. But our gratitude to
their inventors must be nothing compared with their inventors' gratitude
to the person who decreed that the hard-pressed T. Atkins of the Great
War should wear (at least in part) the same needless finery as the
relatively otiose T. Atkins of Peace. May that despot, whoever he be,
depart to a realm of bliss--I suppose it would be bliss to him--where he
has to do hospital orderlies' chores in an attire completely composed of
tarnishing buttons, every separate one of which must hourly be brought
up to the parade standard of specklessness.
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