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The Falling of a Star
By Miss Lily Elsie
'I will not, dear Pelican, start my story in this year's issue of your always interesting and amusing Annual, to which I have been a more or less regular contributor for some years, by saying that ''It has the merit of being true.''
'As a matter of fact it has, but everyone says that about almost every story, and so I won't.
'What; I have already done so? All right, it can't be helped.
'Anyway, here is my little story.
'It was during the long run of The Merry Widow, and a couple of my friends one day went into a shop to buy some picture postcards. They wanted some of me and said so. Unfortunately, there were none to be had n the shop, and so one of them said, ''Well, it doesn't matter, for anyhow, I saw a number of her portraits only the other day in a shop a little further down the street.''
'''Ah,'' retorted the haughty damsel who presided over the emporium, ''down the street? Yes, no doubt, you can get them there, but here we only keep stars!''
'And then my friends, feeling very small, came out.'
(The Pelican, Christmas Annual, London, Wednesday, 1 December 1915, pp. 21b/22a)
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