Manse And Mansel

(Mansel and Chandos hold up Punter and Ellis.)

I found a Poul Anderson character in a Dornford Yates' novel - or seemed to have. Mansel's name was at the end of a line with its last letter missing. I am probably the only person ever to read Blind Corner and to think of Time Patrol. Manson ("Manse") Everard and Jonathan ("Jonah") Mansel will never meet, except in the imaginations of their readers, and they inhabit such different conceptual universes that we can only marvel at human diversity. In fact, it is a privilege to be able to enter into the world-views of authors from such different social milieus. Yates' heroes are always accompanied by their man servants so that a band of three men automatically becomes six - and the servants are good with cars and guns. Manse Everard lives in a New York apartment. I live on a terrace street where, a hundred years ago, the occupants would have had domestic servants whereas now the houses are occupied either by Asian families or by University students.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.