Statuary

From grave, Cyclopean Lord Nelson, perched on his column in Trafalgar Square, to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, London is full of statuary. Possibly no statues in the whole murky city are better known or more consistently photographed than the two living statues that guard Britain's War Office--the living mounted sentries of the Horse Guards. Splendid, remote and eternal, they stand in their little sentry boxes: two coal-black horses, currycombed to satin smoothness; two six-foot troopers in jackboots, silver breastplates, plumed helmets. Not even when irreverent trippers tempt the chargers with raw carrots, or drop peanut shells into the troopers' boot tops, do they move.

Last week one of these living statues did move, an event sufficiently startling to be cabled to the U. S. Before the astonished eyes of a busload of Baedekered tourists, a strange expression crept over the face of one of the horses. His knees slowly sagged. He collapsed. With a dreadful clatter of ironmongery, the sentry lost his sabre and plumed helmet, and scratched his gleaming breastplate.

All was over in an instant. The horse had merely fallen asleep, a victim of the balmy April weather.

Some of the tourists observed that in the midst of the uproar the other sentry and horse shifted never so much as an eyeball.