Domestic Despoilers.

The household “fixer” can't make and break empires, but these are about the only things that are safe from his morbid machinations. We know his works because haven't most of us been household “fixers,” or domestic dabblers, ourselves—before we learnt that it is cheaper to get a plumber to fix the gas than a doctor to fix the result of our fixing the gas?

If there is one quality the household “fixer” has in plenty it is courage. He will tackle anything from the drainage system to a wristlet watch. Nothing that can blow up, fa” down, unwind or come unstuck, is safe from his misplaced ardour.

He can put up swinging bookshelves which are one-tenth bookshelves and nine-tenths swinging. He can assemble a radio receiving set which will do everything except receive and which looks like a cross between a boiler-house in Bedlam and the plan of a jam factory done by Heath Robinson in shorthand. He builds fowl houses which are so tottery on their pins that the hens lay scrambled eggs. His dog kennels are calculated to drive the best dog to the dogs. He can repair the sewing machine so that it goes—in leaps and bounds (one leap, two bounds, and one for his knob). The rooms he papers look like the hanging gardens of Babylon after a midnight garden-party thrown by the Babylonian Borstal boys. He mends taps so that they fail to flow through the faucet but squirt out through the top like Pohutu at play. If the caliphont won't run he “fixes” it so that it can't even walk. Locks and clocks are as putty in his hands. He can take a lock to pieces as prettily as a professional and if, when reassembled, it is no good for locking purposes, it makes a good sinker for deep-sea fishing. He can rejuvenate the grandfather clock so completely that it becomes infantilely inarticulate; but (household hint) old grandfather clocks which have been “mended” make handy meat safes.