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diff --git a/11076-h/11076-h.htm b/11076-h/11076-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc076ae --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/11076-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1631 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917, by Various</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + + <!-- + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + p {text-align: justify;} + blockquote {text-align: justify;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center;} + pre {font-size: 0.7em;} + + hr {text-align: center; width: 50%;} + html>body hr {margin-right: 25%; margin-left: 25%; width: 50%;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + html>body hr.full {margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 0%; width: 100%;} + hr.short {text-align: center; width: 20%;} + html>body hr.short {margin-right: 40%; margin-left: 40%; width: 20%;} + + .note, + {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + + span.pagenum + {position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 91%; font-size: 8pt;} + + .poem + {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem p {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem p.i2 {margin-left: 1em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin-left: 2em;} + .poem p.i6 {margin-left: 3em;} + .poem p.i8 {margin-left: 4em;} + .poem p.i10 {margin-left: 5em;} + + .figure, .figcenter, .figright + {padding: 1em; margin: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em;} + .figure img, .figcenter img, .figright img + {border: none;} + .figure p, .figcenter p, .figright p + {margin: 0; text-indent: 1em;} + .figcenter {margin: auto;} + .figright {float: right;} + + .footnote {font-size: 0.9em; margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%;} + + .side { float:right; + font-size: 75%; + width: 25%; + padding-left:10px; + border-left: dashed thin; + margin-left: 10px; + text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; + font-weight: bold; + font-style: italic;} + --> +/*]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11076 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, +Oct. 24, 1917, by Various, Edited by Owen Seamen</h1> +<br /> +<br /> +<center><b>E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</b></center> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<h1>PUNCH,<br /> +OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.</h1> +<h2>Vol. 153.</h2> +<hr class="full" /> +<h2>October 24, 1917.</h2> +<hr class="full" /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id="page279"></a>[pg +279]</span> +<h2>CHARIVARIA.</h2> +<p>Those who think that people in high positions live a life of +ease and comfort received a rude shock last week. It is said that, +while visiting the Royal Enfield Works canteen, the Duke of +CONNAUGHT drank two glasses of Government ale.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Britons have no monopoly of pluck, it seems. Last week a Basuto +soldier attached to a labour battalion offered the LORD MAYOR'S +coachman a cigarette.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Two German bankers, formerly of London, have been arrested in +New York as dangerous aliens. Neither of them is a member of our +Privy Council.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>It is understood that the Spanish Government has addressed a +note to the Allies explaining that all possible precautions will +have been taken against the forthcoming escape of U23.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>The PREMIER has received the magnificent gold casket containing +the freedom of the City of London conferred on him last April. A +momentary excitement was caused by the rumour that the Corporation +had thrown off all restraint and filled it with tea.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>A Brigadier-General has been fined for shooting game on Sunday +in Hampshire. Sir DOUGLAS HAIG, we understand, has generously +arranged to close down the War on the first Wednesday in every +month, in order that the Higher Command may assist in supplying the +hospitals with game.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Seven lunatics have escaped from a South Wales Asylum. It is +assumed that they got away by disguising themselves as German +prisoners.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>It has been decided that Counsel may appear before the High +Court dressed as Special Constables. It seems almost certain that +this news was withheld from Sir JOHN SIMON until he had definitely +consented to join Sir DOUGLAS HAIG'S Staff.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Two million pounds of jam per week, "the greater part +strawberry," are being, it is stated, delivered to the Army. Only +the fact that the Army Service Corps' labels all happen to be "plum +and apple" prevents the stuff being distributed to our brave +troops.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Attempts to destroy livestock destined for the Allies are being +investigated, says a New York paper. Only a few days ago, it will +be remembered, a certain Legation discovered that its seals had +been tampered with.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>It is announced that the War Office has taken over "the greater +part" of the new London County Hall. Our casualties were +insignificant.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>We are sorry to say that Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY'S latest success, +<i>The Saving Grace</i>, is not dedicated to Sir ARTHUR YAPP.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>There is no foundation for the report that the recent +postponement of the production of <i>Cash on Delivery</i> at the +Palace was due to the fact that a new joke was alleged to have been +let loose in Mr. Justice DARLING'S court.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Extravagant funerals have been condemned by Sir JOHN PAGET at +the Law Society Appeal Tribunal, and undertakers are complaining +that in consequence many of their best customers have decided to +postpone their interment till better times.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>"Cats should be brought inside the house during air-raids," says +the Feline Defence League. When left on the roof they are liable to +be mistaken for aerial torpedoes.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>According to the <i>Cologne Gazette</i> German soldiers on the +Western Front have formed "Wilhelm Clubs," the members of which are +compelled on oath to undertake the work of gaining information +about the British lines. We understand that the terms for +life-membership are most moderate.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>A German prisoner named BOLDT has escaped from Leigh internment +camp. It is stated that he would have experienced no additional +difficulty in escaping if he had been called by any other name.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>"We want no patched-up peace," says Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD. But if +the assaults upon pacifist meetings continue we feel sure there +will be some patched-up peacemongers.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Twopenny dinners are the speciality at a Northern munition +works' canteen. We have long been used to twopenny meals, but of +course much more was charged for them.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>There appears to be no truth in the report that a burglar has +been fined for infringing the Defence of the Realm Regulations by +using an unshaded lantern.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>An application is to be made to the LORD CHANCELLOR for a County +Court for the Hendon district, though a contemporary remarks that +it is doubtful whether there is sufficient work to be done there. +But surely this is just the sort of case that could be met by a +little judicious advertising.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Parliament is to be asked to pass a vote of thanks to the Naval +and Military Forces of the Crown. And it is thought that the latter +will reciprocate by thanking Parliament for giving them such a +jolly little war.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Much concern has been caused by the announcement that bees are +entirely without winter stocks. We have pleasure in recording a +gallant but unavailing attempt to remedy the situation on the part +of two dear old ladies, who thought the paper said "socks."</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:60%;"><a href= +"images/279-1.png"><img width="100%" src="images/279-1.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<p><i>Sympathetic Passer-by.</i> "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOUR +LITTLE BROTHER?"</p> +<p><i>The Sister.</i> "PLEASE, MISS, 'E'S WORRYIN' ABOUT +RUSSIA."</p> +</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Punch's Roll of Honour.</h3> +<p>We regret to hear that Captain E.G.V. KNOX, Lincolnshire +Regiment, has been wounded. The many friends of "Evoe" will wish +him a speedy and complete recovery.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<blockquote>"Batches of one of its regiments were in<br /> +such a hurry to get out of the Ypres front<br /> +when relieved by the 92nd Regiment that<br /> +they left without giving the newcomers infor-<br /> +<img alt="" src="images/279-2.png" align="left" />"—<i>Scots +Paper</i>.</blockquote> +<p>The line seems to have been seriously disorganised in +consequence.</p> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>[pg +280]</span> +<h2>PRATT'S TOURS OF THE FRONT.</h2> +<h3>THE LAST WORD IN SENSATION.</h3> +<p>By special arrangement Pratt's are able to offer their patrons +unique opportunities of witnessing the stirring events of the Great +Struggle.</p> +<p>Don't miss it; you may never see another War.</p> +<p>Come and see Tommy at work and play.</p> +<p>Come and be <i>shelled</i>—a genuine thrill! Same as +during London's Air-raids, but less danger.</p> +<p>At the conclusion of the Tour patrons will be presented with a +Handsome Medal as a souvenir of their exploits.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>The following is a list of Tours that Pratt's offer +<i>you</i>:—</p> +<h3>PRATT'S TOURS OF THE BACK.</h3> +<h4>(One week.)</h4> +<p>Very cheap. Very safe. Headquarters at the historic town of +Amiens.</p> +<p>Itinerary includes: Battlefields of the Somme and Ancre, +Bapaume, Arras, Vimy Ridge, Ypres, etc. Guides will take parties +round the old British Front lines. The German Defence System will +be explained by harmless Huns actually taken at those places.</p> +<h4><i>Special Attractions.</i></h4> +<p>Lantern Lecture by Captain Crump at Thiepval Château. +Recherché Suppers at Serre Sucrerie.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<h3>PRATT'S TOURS OF TRENCHES.</h3> +<h4>(Four days.)</h4> +<p>See the real thing. Live it yourself. Dine in a dugout. Drink +rum as the Tommy drinks it. See Staff Officers at work (if it can +be arranged).</p> +<h4><i>Restrictions.</i></h4> +<p>I. Loud laughing and talking is discouraged.</p> +<p>II. Sunshades and umbrellas must not be put up when in the front +line.</p> +<p>III. Don't talk to the man at the periscope.</p> +<h4><i>Gas Warning.</i></h4> +<p>In case of gas put on the respirator; otherwise breathe out +continuously.</p> +<h4><i>Special Attraction.</i></h4> +<p>Official Photographers in attendance during Christmas week.</p> +<p>If possible visitors will be given the opportunity of witnessing +a practice barrage on the Enemy's front line.</p> +<p>Back seats (in ammunition dumps), two guineas. Front seats +(firing line), sixpence.</p> +<p>Terms inclusive for the four days, twenty guineas. Good food. +Sugar <i>ad lib</i>. All reasonable precautions taken. Casualties +amongst visitors up to the present, one sick (sugar +saturation).</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<h3>PRATT'S BRIEF TOURS FOR BUSY PEOPLE.</h3> +<h4>(Saturday to Monday.)</h4> +<p>Very short. Very moderate terms. Five guineas each tour or three +for twelve and a-half. Bring the boy.</p> +<h4><i>Special Attraction.</i></h4> +<p>Magnificent Switchback Railway up and down the Messines Mine +Craters. Spot where Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL lost his little Homburg +hat under fire will be shown.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<h3>THE YPRES CARNIVAL.</h3> +<h4>(Three days.)</h4> +<p>All the fun of the fair. Souvenirs supplied while you wait.</p> +<h4><i>Splendid Side-show Features.</i></h4> +<p>I. How our lads keep fit. Regimental sports. Rivet your sides +and see the Bread and Jam Race.</p> +<p>II. Obstacle Race. Lorry <i>versus</i> Staff Car (with French +carts, traffic control and G.S. wagons as obstacles). Very amusing. +Language real.</p> +<h4><i>For the Youngsters.</i></h4> +<p>Pick-a-back rides on the Highland Light Elephantry.</p> +<h4><i>Accommodation.</i></h4> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Bedrooms (<i>en pension</i>)—</p> +<p>Ground floor............. One guinea.</p> +<p>First floor (below) ..... Three guineas.</p> +<p>Second floor (very safe). Ten guineas.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr class="short" /> +<h3>PRATT'S "BATTLE" TOUR.</h3> +<p>Extraordinary offer. Thrills guaranteed.</p> +<p>By special arrangement Pratt's are enabled to offer their +patrons a first-class view of the <i>British Weekly Push</i> +"Somewhere in France (or Flanders)."</p> +<p>Attention is called to the following specially attractive items +(there may be others):—</p> +<p>1. <i>View of Preliminary Bombardment</i> from an absolutely +proof 12-inch O.P. The surrounding country and the objectives of +the next attack will be explained by a specially trained Staff +Officer.</p> +<p>2. <i>The Battle.</i></p> +<p>Visitors are earnestly requested to be in time, as space in the +Observation Post is limited and late arrivals cause a great deal of +discomfort to all. Ladies are respectfully requested to remove +their hats.</p> +<p>3. <i>The Aftermath.</i></p> +<p>(<i>a</i>) Special Shelters are erected at cross-roads for +visitors to witness the getting-up of guns, ammunition, etc., after +the attack. Please don't feed the men as they go by or ask the +Gunners questions.</p> +<p>(<i>b</i>) Breakfast in Boschland. Lunch in a Listening Post. +Supper in a Saphead.</p> +<p>(<i>c</i>) A Special Narrow-gauge Railway will take Visitors to +the newly-acquired forward area (not obligatory). This part of the +programme is liable to variation.</p> +<p>Terms, fifty guineas. An Insurance Agent is always in +attendance. Casualties up to the present, one Conscientious +Objector missing, believed joined up.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Bombardments arranged at the shortest notice. For five pounds +you can fire a 15-inch. Write for Free Booklet and apply for all +particulars to Pratt's Agency, London, Paris, etc., etc.</p> +<hr /> +<h3>VISITORS.</h3> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>When I was very ill in bed</p> +<p class="i2">The fairies came to visit me;</p> +<p>They danced and played around my head,</p> +<p class="i2">Though other people couldn't see.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Across the end a railing goes</p> +<p class="i2">With bars and balls and twisted rings,</p> +<p>And there they jiggled on their toes</p> +<p class="i2">And did the wonderfullest things.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>They balanced on the golden balls,</p> +<p class="i2">They jumped about from bar to bar,</p> +<p>And then they fluttered to the walls</p> +<p class="i2">Where coloured birds and roses are.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I watched them darting in and out,</p> +<p class="i2">I watched them gaily climb and cling,</p> +<p>While all the roses moved about</p> +<p class="i2">And all the birds began to sing.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>And when it was no longer light</p> +<p class="i2">I felt them up my pillows creep,</p> +<p>And there they sat and sang all night—</p> +<p class="i2">I heard them singing in my sleep.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>R.F.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Another Sex Problem.</h3> +<blockquote> +<p>"From Lord Rosebery's herd at Mentmore, Mr. Ross got a show cow +of the Lady Dorothy family, giving every appearance of being a +great milker and a tip-top bull calf."—<i>Aberdeen Free +Press</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>From a German <i>communiqué</i>:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p>"Our naval forces had encounters with Russian destroyers and +gungoats north of Oesel."—<i>Westminster Gazette</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Russian reply to the ewe-boats, we suppose.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<blockquote> +<p>"Kugelmann, Ludwig, of Canterbury Road, Canterbury, grocer, has +adopted the name of Love Wisdom Power."—<i>Australian +Paper</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Who said the Germans had no sense of humour?</p> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id= +"page281"></a>[pg281]</span> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/281.png"><img width="100%" src="images/281.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>BURGLAR BILL.</h3> +THE POTSDAM PINCHER. "SURELY YOU AIN'T ASKIN' ME TO GIVE UP MY SWAG +ARTER ALL THE TROUBLE I'VE HAD GETTIN' IT, AN' ALL THE VALIBLE +BLOOD I'VE SPILT."</div> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>[pg +282]</span> +<h2>THE MUD LARKS.</h2> +<p>The Babe went to England on leave. Not that this was any new +experience for him; he usually pulled it off about once a +quarter—influence, and that sort of thing, you know. He went +down to the coast in a carriage containing seventeen other men, but +he got a fat sleepy youth to sit on, and was passably comfortable. +He crossed over in a wobbly boat packed from cellar to attic with +Red Tabs invalided with shell shock, Blue Tabs with trench fever, +and Green Tabs with brain-fag; Mechanical Transporters in spurs and +stocks, jam merchants in revolvers and bowie-knives, Military +Police festooned with <i>pickelhaubes</i>, and here and there a +furtive fighting man who had got away by mistake, and would be +recalled as soon as he landed.</p> +<p>The leave train rolled into Victoria late in the afternoon. Cab +touts buzzed about the Babe, but he would have none of them; he +would go afoot the better to see the sights of the village—a +leisurely sentimental pilgrimage. He had not covered one hundred +yards when a ducky little thing pranced up to him, squeaking, +"Where are your gloves, Sir?" "I always put 'em in cold storage +during summer along with my muff and boa, dear," the Babe replied +pleasantly. "Moreover, my mother doesn't like me to talk to +strangers in the streets, so ta-ta." The little creature blushed +like a tea-rose and stamped its little hoof. "Insolence!" it +squeaked. "You—you go back to France by the next boat!" and +the Babe perceived to his horror that he had been witty to an +Assistant Provost-Marshal! He flung himself down on his knees, +licking the A.P.M.'s boots and crying in a loud voice that he would +be good and never do it again.</p> +<p>The A.P.M. pardoned the Babe (he wanted to save the polish on +his boots) on condition that he immediately purchased a pair of +gloves of the official cut and hue. The Babe did so forthwith and +continued on his way. He had not continued ten yards when another +A.P.M. tripped him up. "That cap is a disgrace, Sir!" he barked. "I +know it, Sir," the Babe admitted, "and I'm awfully sorry about it; +but that hole in it only arrived last night—shrapnel, you +know—and I haven't had time to buy another yet. I don't care +for the style they sell in those little French shops—do +you?"</p> +<p>The A.P.M. didn't know anything about France or its little +shops, and didn't intend to investigate; at any rate not while +there was a war on there. "You will return to the Front to-morrow," +said he. The Babe grasped his hand from him and shook it warmly. +"Thank you—thank you, Sir," he gushed; "I didn't want to +come, but they made me. I'm from Fiji; have no friends here, and +London is somehow so different from Suva it makes my head ache. I +am broke and couldn't afford leave, anyway. Thank you, +Sir—thank you."</p> +<p>"Ahem—in that case I will revoke my decision," said the +A.P.M. "Buy yourself an officially-sanctioned cap and carry +on."</p> +<p>The Babe bought one with alacrity; then, having tasted enough of +the dangers of the streets for one afternoon, took a taxi, and, +lying in the bottom well out of sight, sped to his old hotel. When +he reached his old hotel he found it had changed during his +absence, and was now headquarters of the Director of Bones and +Dripping. He abused the taxi-driver, who said he was sorry, but +there was no telling these days; a hotel was a hotel one moment, +and the next it was something entirely different. Motion pictures +weren't in it, he said.</p> +<p>Finally they discovered a hotel which was still behaving as +such, and the Babe got a room. He remained in that room all the +evening, beneath the bed, having his meals pushed in to him under +the door. A prowling A.P.M. sniffed at the keyhole but did not +investigate further, which was fortunate for the Babe, who had no +regulation pyjamas.</p> +<p>Next morning, crouched on the bottom boards of another taxi, he +was taken to his tailor, poured himself into the faithful fellow's +hands, and only departed when guaranteed to be absolutely +A.P.M.-proof. He went to the "Bolero" for lunch, ordered some +oysters for a start, polished them off and bade the waiter trot up +the <i>consommé</i>. The waiter shook his head, "Can't be +done, Sir. Subaltern gents are only allowed three and sixpenceworth +of food and you've already had that, Sir. If we was to serve you +with a crumb more, we'd be persecuted under the Trading with the +Enemy Act, Sir. There's an A.P.M. sitting in the corner this very +moment, Sir, his eyeglass fixed on your every mouthful very +suspicious-like—"</p> +<p>"Good Lord!" said the Babe, and bolted. He bolted as far as the +next restaurant, had a three-and-sixpenny <i>entrée</i> +there, went on to another for sweets, and yet another for coffee +and trimmings. These short bursts between courses kept his appetite +wonderfully alive.</p> +<p>That afternoon he ran across a lady friend in Bond Street, "a +War Toiler enormously interested in the War" (see the current +number of <i>Social Snaps</i>). She had been at Yvonne's trying on +her gauze for the Boccaccio Tableaux in aid of the Armenians and +needed some relaxation. So she engaged the Babe for the play, to be +followed by supper with herself and her civilian husband. The play +(a War-drama) gave the Babe a fine hunger, but the Commissionaire +(apparently a Major-General) who does odd jobs outside the Blitz +took exception to him. "Can't go in, Sir." "Why not?" the Babe +inquired; "my friends have gone in." "Yessir, but no hofficers are +allowed to obtain nourishment after 10 p.m. under Defence of the +Realm Act, footnote (<i>a</i>) to para. 14004." He leaned forward +and whispered behind his glove, "There's a Hay Pee Hem under the +portico watching your movements, Sir." The Babe needed no further +warning; he dived into his friends' Limousine and burrowed under +the rug.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>[pg +283]</span> +<p>Sometime later the door of the car was opened cautiously and the +moon-face of the Major-General inserted itself through the crack. +"Hall clear for the moment, Sir; the Hay Pee Hem 'as gorn orf dahn +the street, chasin' a young hofficer in low shoes. 'Ere, tyke this; +I'm a hold soldier meself." He thrust a damp banana in the Babe's +hand and closed the door softly.</p> +<p>Next morning the Babe dug up an old suit of 1914 "civies" and +put them on. A woman in the Tube called him "Cuthbert" and informed +him gratuitously that her husband, twice the Babe's age, had +volunteered the moment Conscription was declared and had been +fighting bravely in the Army Clothing Department ever since. +Further she supposed the Babe's father was in Parliament and that +he was a Conscientious Objector. In Hyde Park one urchin addressed +him as "Daddy" and asked him what he was doing in the Great War; +another gambolled round and round him making noises like a rabbit. +In Knightsbridge a Military Policeman wanted to arrest him as a +deserter. The Babe hailed a taxi and, cowering on the floor, fled +back to his hotel and changed into uniform again.</p> +<p>That night, strolling homewards in the dark immersed in thought, +he inadvertently took a pipe out of his pocket and lit it. An +A.P.M. who had been sleuthing him for half-a-mile leapt upon him, +snatched the pipe and two or three teeth out of his mouth and +returned him to France by the next boat.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>His groom, beaming welcome, met him at the railhead with the +horses.</p> +<p>"Hello, old thing, cheerio and all the rest of it," Huntsman +whinnied lovingly.</p> +<p>Miss Muffet rubbed her velvet muzzle against his pocket. +"Brought a lump of sugar for a little girl?" she rumbled.</p> +<p>He mounted her and headed across country, Miss Muffet +pig-jumping and capering to show what excellent spirits she +enjoyed.</p> +<p>Two brigades of infantry were under canvas in Mud Gully, their +cook fires winking like red eyes. The guards clicked to attention +and slapped their butts as the Babe went by. A subaltern bobbed out +of a tent and shouted to him to stop to tea. "We've got cake," he +lured, but the Babe went on.</p> +<p>A red-hat cantered across the stubble before him waving a +friendly crop, "Pip" Vibart the A.P.M. homing to H.Q. "Evening, +boy!" he holloaed; "come up and Bridge to-morrow night," and swept +on over the hillside. A flight of aeroplanes, like flies in the +amber of sunset, droned overhead <i>en route</i> for Hunland. The +Babe waved his official cap at them: "Good hunting, old dears."</p> +<p>They had just started feeding up in the regimental lines when he +arrived; the excited neighing of five hundred horses was music to +his ears. His brother subalterns hailed his return with loud and +exuberant noises, made disparaging remarks about the smartness of +his clothes, sat on him all over the floor and rumpled him. On +sighting the Babe, The O'Murphy went mad and careered round the +table wriggling like an Oriental dancer, uttering shrill yelps of +delight; presently he bounced out of the window, to enter some +minutes later by the same route, and lay the offering of a freshly +slain rat at his best beloved's feet.</p> +<p>At this moment the skipper came in plastered thick with the mud +of the line, nodded cheerfully to his junior sub and +instantaneously fell upon the buttered toast.</p> +<p>"Have a good time, Son?" he mumbled. "How's merrie England?"</p> +<p>"Oh, England's all right, Sir," said the Babe, tickling The +O'Murphy's upturned tummy—"quite all right; but it's jolly to +be home again among one's ain folk."</p> +<p>PATLANDER.</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;"><a href= +"images/282.png"><img width="100%" src="images/282.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>OUT OF REACH.</h3> +<p>"Just ask Dr. Jones to run round to my place right away. Our +cook's fallen downstairs, broke her leg; the housemaid's got +chicken-pox; and my two boys have been knocked down by a taxi."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry, sir, but the doctor was blown up in yesterday's +air-raid and he won't be down for a week."</p> +</div> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/283.png"><img width="100%" src="images/283.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>AT BRIGHTON.</h3> +<i>Tommy (to alien Visitor about to run up to Town for the +day).</i> "THIS IS THE VICTORIA PORTION, OLD SPORTSKI. HIGHER UP +FOR LONDON BRIDGEOVITCH."</div> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>[pg +284]</span> +<h2>BEASTS ROYAL.</h2> +<h3>v.</h3> +<h3>KING LOUIS' PEACOCK. A.D. 1678.</h3> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The paven terrace of Versailles</p> +<p class="i2">With tub and orange-tree,</p> +<p>And Dian's fountain tossed awry,</p> +<p class="i2">Were planned and made for me;</p> +<p>Since no one half so well as I</p> +<p class="i2">Could grace their symmetry,</p> +<p class="i4">Nor teach admiring man</p> +<p class="i4">The genuine pavane.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I know that when King Louis wears</p> +<p class="i2">A Roman kilt and casque</p> +<p>His smile hides many secret tears</p> +<p class="i2">In ballet and in masque,</p> +<p>Since to outshine my pomp appears</p> +<p class="i2">So desperate a task,</p> +<p class="i4">And royal robes look pale</p> +<p class="i4">Beside my noble tail.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>With turquoise and with malachite,</p> +<p class="i2">With bronze and purple pied,</p> +<p>I march before him like the night</p> +<p class="i2">In all its starry pride;</p> +<p>LULLI may twang and MOLIÈRE write</p> +<p class="i2">His pastime to provide,</p> +<p class="i4">But seldom laughs the KING</p> +<p class="i4">So much as when I sing.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>His fiddles brown and pipes of brass</p> +<p class="i2">May LULLI now forsake,</p> +<p>While I make music on the grass</p> +<p class="i2">Before the storm-clouds break;</p> +<p>He stops his ears and cries "Alas!"</p> +<p class="i2">Because <i>he</i> cannot make</p> +<p class="i4">With all his fiddlers fine</p> +<p class="i4">A melody like mine.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>LE BRUN is watching me, I know,</p> +<p class="i2">His palette on his thumb,</p> +<p>To catch the glory and the glow</p> +<p class="i2">That dazzle as I come;</p> +<p>So be it—but let MOLIÈRE go,</p> +<p class="i2">And LULLI crack his drum;</p> +<p class="i4">They do but waste their time;</p> +<p class="i4">Minstrel I am, and mime.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Men say the KING is like the sun,</p> +<p class="i2">And from his wig they spin</p> +<p>The golden webs that, one by one,</p> +<p class="i2">Draw Spain and Flanders in;</p> +<p>He will grow proud ere they have done,</p> +<p class="i2">A most egregious sin,</p> +<p class="i4">And one to which my mind</p> +<p class="i4">Has never yet declined.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Queer Cattle.</h3> +<blockquote>"Of the 217 sheep sold at the Sunderland Mart, +yesterday, there was a very large percentage of heifers and +bullocks."—<i>Newcastle Daily Journal</i>.</blockquote> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>News from the Russian Front: Pop goes the Oesel.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<blockquote>"Chauffeur Gardener wanted, titled +gentleman."—<i>Glasgow Herald</i>.</blockquote> +<p>We have often mistaken a taxi-driver for a lord.</p> +<hr /> +<h2>PRESENCE OF MIND.</h2> +<p>The train came to one of those sudden stops in which the hush +caused by the contrast between the rattle of the wheels and their +silence is almost painful. During these pauses one is conscious of +conversation in neighbouring compartments, without however hearing +any distinct words.</p> +<p>There were several of us, strangers to each other, who hitherto +had been minding our own business, but under the stress of this +untoward thing became companionable.</p> +<p>A man at each window craned his body out, but withdrew it +without information.</p> +<p>"I hope," said another, "there's not an accident."</p> +<p>"I have always heard," said a fourth, "that in a railway +accident presence of mind is not so valuable as absence of +body"—getting off this ancient pleasantry as though it were +his own.</p> +<p>The motionlessness of the train was so absolute as to be +disconcerting; also a scandal. The business of trains, between +stations, is to get on. We had paid our money, not for undue +stoppages, but for movement in the direction of our various goals; +and it was infamous.</p> +<p>Somebody said something of the kind.</p> +<p>"Better be held up now," said a sententious man, "than be killed +for want of prudence."</p> +<p>No one was prepared to deny this, but we resented its truth and +availed ourselves of a true-born free Briton's right to doubt the +wisdom of those in authority. We all, in short, looked as though we +knew better than engine-driver, signalman or guard. That is our +<i>métier</i>.</p> +<p>Some moments, which, as in all delays on the line, seemed like +hours, passed and nothing happened. Looking out I saw heads and +shoulders protruding from every window, with curiosity stamped on +all their curves.</p> +<p>"They should tell us what's the matter," said an impatient man. +"That's one of the stupid things in England—no one ever tells +you what's wrong. No tact in this country—no +imagination."</p> +<p>We all agreed. No imagination. It was the national curse.</p> +<p>"And yet," said another man with a smile, "we get there."</p> +<p>"Ah! that's our luck," said the impatient man. "We have luck far +beyond our deserts." He was very cross about it.</p> +<p>Again the first man to speak hoped it was not an accident; and +again the second man, fearing that someone might have missed it, +repeated the old jest about presence of mind and absence of +body.</p> +<p>"Talking of presence of mind," said a man who had not yet +spoken, emerging from his book, "an odd thing happened to me not so +very long ago—since the War—and, as it chances, +happened in a railway carriage too—as it might be in this. It +is a story against a friend of mine, and I hope he's wiser now, but +I'll tell it to you."</p> +<p>We had not asked for his story but we made ourselves up to +listen.</p> +<p>"It was during the early days of the War," he said, "before some +of us had learned better, and my friend and I were travelling to +the North. He is a very good fellow, but a little hasty, and a +little too much disposed to think everyone wrong but himself. +Opposite us was a man hidden behind a newspaper, all that was +visible of him being a huge pair of legs in knickerbockers, between +which was a bag of golf-clubs.</p> +<p>"My friend at that time was not only suspicious of everyone's +patriotism but a deadly foe of golf. He even went so far as to call +it Scotch croquet and other contemptuous names. I saw him watching +the clubs and the paper and speculating on the age of the man, +whose legs were, I admit, noticeably young, and he drew my +attention to him too—by nudges and whispers. Obviously this +was a shirker.</p> +<p>"For a while my friend contented himself with half-suppressed +snorts and other signs of disapproval, but at last he could hold +himself in no longer. Leaning forward he tapped the man smartly on +the knee, with the question, 'Why aren't you in khaki?' It was an +inquiry, you will remember, that was being much put at the +time—before compulsion came in.</p> +<p>"We all—there were two or three other people in the +compartment—felt that this was going too far; and I knew it +only too well when the man lowered his paper to see what was +happening and revealed an elderly face with a grey beard absolutely +out of keeping with those vigorous legs.</p> +<p>"To my intense relief, however, he seemed to have been too much +engrossed by his paper to have heard. At any rate he asked my +friend to repeat his remark.</p> +<p>"Here, you will agree, was, if ever, an opening for what we call +presence of mind.</p> +<p>"My friend, like myself, had been so taken aback by the +apparition of more than middle age which confronted him when the +paper was lowered that for the moment he could say nothing; the +other passengers were in an ecstasy of anticipation; the man +himself, a formidable antagonist if he became nasty, <span class= +"pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>[pg 285]</span> waited +for the reply with a non-committal expression which might conceal +pugnacity and might genuinely have resulted from not hearing and +desiring to hear.</p> +<p>"And then occurred one of the most admirable instances of +resourcefulness in history. With an effort of self-collection and a +readiness for which I shall always honour him, my friend said, +speaking with precise clearness, 'I beg your pardon, Sir, but, +mistaking you for a golfing friend of mine at Babbacombe, I asked +you why you were not in Torquay. I offer my apologies.'</p> +<p>"At these words the golfer bowed and resumed his paper, the +other passengers ceased for the moment to have the faintest +interest in a life which was nothing but Dead Sea fruit, and my +friend uttered a sigh of relief as he registered a vow never to be +a meddlesome idiot again. But he looked years older."</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:70%;"><a href= +"images/285.png"><img width="100%" src="images/285.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>UNCENSORED NEWS FROM FRANCE.</h3> +<p><i>Visitor.</i> "And is your brother still in France?"</p> +<p><i>Little Girl.</i> "Yes."</p> +<p><i>Visitor.</i> "And what part of France is he in?"</p> +<p><i>Little Girl.</i> "He says he's in the Pink."</p> +</div> +<hr /> +<h2>THE NEW MRS. MARKHAM.</h2> +<h3>II.</h3> +<h3>Conversation on Chapter IV.</h3> +<p><i>George.</i> I must ask you, Mamma, before we talk of anything +else, whether Withsak and Alldane were beheaded?</p> +<p><i>Mrs. M.</i> No; you will be relieved to hear that, although +ALFRED was greatly incensed against them and had resolved to +proceed to the enforcement of the extreme penalty, they were +rescued by the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury and +afterwards granted a free pardon on condition of abstaining from +all participation in public life. This magnanimity on the part of +ALFRED is all the more praiseworthy as many people firmly believed +that these two princes had attempted to poison him, and that they +were responsible for all the calamities which had befallen England +from the invasion of JULIUS CÆSAR, and which were destined to +befall her till the end of time. Indeed a writer in an old saga, +known as the Blackblood Saga, went so far as to maintain that the +English climate had been permanently ruined by the incantations of +Prince Alldane. Undoubtedly his name was an unfortunate one at the +time, but, to judge by the old portraits I showed you, neither of +these princes looked capable of such atrocities, and Prince Alldane +was described as being the essence of rotundity.</p> +<p><i>Richard.</i> Did not ALFRED invent the quartern loaf?</p> +<p><i>Mrs. M.</i> Yes; before his time the nobles lived exclusively +on cake and venison, while the peasantry subsisted on herbs and a +substance named woad, which was most injurious to their digestions. +ALFRED, who among his many accomplishments was an expert baker, +himself gave instructions to the wives of the poor, supplied them +with flour, the grinding of which was carried out in mills of his +own devising, and insisted that all loaves should be made of a +certain quality and size, with results most beneficial to the +physique of his subjects. The story of his quarrel with the woman +who would insist on baking cakes illustrates the difficulties he +encountered in effecting his reforms.</p> +<p><i>Mary.</i> Was not ALFRED called "England's Darling"?</p> +<p><i>Mrs. M.</i> Yes, my dear, and no wonder. Before his time +there were no proper newspapers, the few issued being of high price +and written in an elaborate style which only appealed to the highly +educated. ALFRED changed all this, and insisted that they should be +written in a "simple, sensuous and passionate style." This was one +of the causes of his falling out with Withsak, who supported the +old-fashioned methods, while ALFRED was in favour of simplicity and +brevity. You will find all this related in the work of Leo Maximus, +a learned writer, the friend and admirer of ALFRED and author of +his Life.</p> +<p><i>George.</i> How much I should like to read it.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. M.</i> You would find in it some inspiring and +interesting particulars of ALFRED's conversations and private +life.</p> +<p><i>Mary.</i> How many things ALFRED did! I cannot think how he +found time for them all.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. M.</i> He found time by never <span class= +"pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>[pg 286]</span> +wasting it. One-third of his time he devoted to religious exercises +and to study, another third to sleep and necessary refreshment, and +the other to the affairs of his kingdom. The benefits he bestowed +on his country were so great and various that even to this day we +hardly comprehend them fully, and some ungrateful people refuse to +regard them as benefits at all.</p> +<p><i>Richard.</i> How sad! But thanks to you, dear Mamma, we know +better. When Papa comes in to tea I will ask him when he thinks I +shall be old enough to read all the books that have ever been +written about KING ALFRED. I want to know everything about him.</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/286.png"><img width="100%" src="images/286.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<p><i>Mother (to curate).</i> "AND DO YOU REALLY PRAY FOR YOUR +ENEMIES?"</p> +<p><i>Ethel (overhearing).</i> "I DO, MUMMY."</p> +<p><i>Curate.</i> "AND WHAT DO YOU SAY IN YOUR PRAYER, MY +CHILD?"</p> +<p><i>Ethel.</i> "I PRAY THAT THEY MAY BE BEATEN."</p> +</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Il Flauto Magico.</h3> +<blockquote> +<p>"The Lord Mayor formally declared the aerodrome opened, and +turned on the flute diverting the waters of the Cardinal Wolsey +river underground."—<i>Evening News</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>From an interview with Lord ROBERT CECIL, as reported by <i>The +Manchester Guardian</i>:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p>"It is literally true of the British soldier that he is <i>tans +peur et tans rapproche</i>."</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This perhaps explains some recent reflections on the linguistic +accomplishments of our Foreign Office.</p> +<hr /> +<h2>MARIANA IN WAR-TIME.</h2> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>This tedious and important War</p> +<p>Has altered much that went before,</p> +<p>But did you hear about the change</p> +<p>At <i>Mariana's</i> Moated Grange?</p> +<p>You all of you will recollect</p> +<p>The gross condition of neglect</p> +<p>In which the place appeared to be,</p> +<p>And <i>Mariana's</i> apathy,</p> +<p>Her idleness, her want of tone,</p> +<p>Her—well, her absence of backbone.</p> +<p>Her relatives, no doubt, had tried</p> +<p>To single out the brighter side,</p> +<p>Had scolded her about the moss</p> +<p>And only made her extra cross.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>But when the War had really come</p> +<p>At once the place began to hum,</p> +<p>And <i>Mariana's</i>, bless her heart!</p> +<p>She threw herself into the part</p> +<p>Of cooking for the V.A.D.</p> +<p>And wholly lost her lethargy.</p> +<p>She sent her gardeners off pell-mell</p> +<p>(They hadn't kept the gardens well),</p> +<p>And got a lady-gardener in</p> +<p>Who didn't cost her half the tin,</p> +<p>And who, before she'd been a day,</p> +<p>Had scraped the blackest moss away.</p> +<p>She put a jolly little boat</p> +<p>For wounded soldiers on the moat;</p> +<p>Her relatives were bound to own</p> +<p>How practical the girl had grown.</p> +<p>She often said, "I feel more cheery,</p> +<p>I doubt if I can stick this dreary</p> +<p>Old grange again when peace is rife;</p> +<p>You really couldn't call it life."</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>But something infinitely more</p> +<p>Than just a European War</p> +<p>Would have been requisite to part</p> +<p>Romance from <i>Mariana's</i> heart;</p> +<p>Once more she felt within her stir</p> +<p>The dawn of <i>une affaire de coeur</i>;</p> +<p>In other words, I must confess</p> +<p>She found her thoughts were centred less</p> +<p>On that young man who never came</p> +<p>And more on Captain What's-his-name,</p> +<p>Who'd left his other leg in France</p> +<p>And was a model of romance.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<hr class="short" /></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The wedding was a pretty thing;</p> +<p>I sent the "Idylls of the King,"</p> +<p>Well bound. And <i>Mariana</i> wrote</p> +<p>A most appreciative note.</p> +<p>They live in London now, I'm told;</p> +<p>The Moated Grange is let (or sold);</p> +<p>I only hope they'll manage so</p> +<p>That TENNYSON need never know.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Vergiliana.</h3> +<p>For a certain German Admiral on being booted: "<i>Ite, +Capellæ</i>."</p> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>[pg +287]</span> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/287.png"><img width="100%" src="images/287.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>HERE TO-DAY AND GONE TO-MORROW.</h3> +CHORUS OF KAISER WILHELM'S EX-CHANCELLORS (<i>from below</i>). +"COMING DOWN, MICHAELIS?"</div> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>[pg +288]</span> +<h2>ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.</h2> +<p><i>Tuesday, October 16th</i>.—To Mr. Punch's blunt +inquiry, "Why?" in last week's cartoon different answers would, I +suppose, be returned by various Members. The CHANCELLOR OF THE +EXCHEQUER would say that the reassembling of Parliament was +necessary in order that he might obtain a further Vote of Credit +from the representatives of the taxpayers. Brigadier-General PAGE +CROFT, inventor and C.-in-C. of the new "National" party, who has +already attached to himself a following not inferior numerically to +the little band which, under Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL in the +eighties, struck terror into the hearts of the Front Benches, longs +to prove that, under his brilliant leadership, Lord DUNCANNON, Sir +RICHARD COOPER and Major ROWLAND HUNT will emulate the early +prowess of Sir JOHN GORST, Sir HENRY DRUMMOND-WOLFF and Mr. ARTHUR +BALFOUR.</p> +<p>But a word to the gallant General: he will do little until he +has secured a corner-seat. By hook or by crook Mr. HOUSTON, "the +Pirate King," must be induced or compelled to surrender his coign +of vantage to the new generalissimo, who will then be able +alternately to pour a broadside into the Government or to enfilade +the ex-Ministers who aid and abet them.</p> +<p>Then there are those humanized notes of interrogation like Mr. +KING, Mr. HOGGE and Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING. They would like +Parliament to be in permanent session in order that the world might +have the daily benefit of their searching investigations. Mr. KING +has not yet quite run into his best form. He had only six Questions +on the Paper, and actually asked only five of them—a +concession which so paralysed the MINISTER OF RECONSTRUCTION, to +whom the missing Question was addressed, that, when asked where his +department was located, he had to confess that he did not know the +precise number, but it was somewhere in Queen Anne's Gate.</p> +<p>Eclipsed in Ireland by the more spectacular attractions of Sinn +Fein, the Nationalists' only hope of recovering their lost +popularity is to kick up the dust of St. Stephen's. Accordingly Mr. +REDMOND gave notice of yet another Vote of Censure on the Irish +Executive, but whether for its slackness or its brutality the terms +of his motion do not make quite clear. Perhaps he has not yet made +up his own mind on the subject.</p> +<p>I feel sure that Mr. MONTAGU has a sense of humour, and I +admired the way in which he concealed its existence when explaining +the Indian Government's release of Mrs. BESANT. As he read the +VICEROY'S reference to "the tranquillizing effect of Mr. MONTAGU'S +approaching visit" the House rippled with laughter; and when he +proceeded to say that Mrs. BESANT had undertaken to use her +influence to secure "a calm atmosphere for my visit," the ripple +became a wave. But with the stoicism of the unchanging East he read +on unmoved.</p> +<p>Mr. KENNEDY JONES, taking up the <i>rôle</i> of the +newsboy in a recent cartoon, invited the Government to give the +Germans the monosyllabic equivalent for a very warm time. Mr. BONAR +LAW declined to commit himself to the actual term, but announced +the intention to set up a new Air Ministry, and to "employ our +machines over German towns so far as military needs render us free +to take such action."</p> +<p>To return to Mr. Punch's question, "Why?" I think the answer +most Members would make would be, "Because we wanted to see what +the Ladies' Gallery would look like without the grille." It must be +confessed that those who cherished visions of a dull assembly made +glorious by flashing eyes, white arms, and brilliant dresses were +disappointed.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Stone walls do not a prison make,</p> +<p>Nor iron bars a cage,"</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>wrote LOVELACE. Well, the iron bars have gone, but the stone +walls remain, and make, if not a prison, something very like a +<i>purdah</i>; and the "angels alone that soar above" are almost as +much cut off from the inferior beings below them as they were +before Sir ALFRED MOND came to the rescue of Beauty in thrall. He +is rather disappointed at getting so little change out of his +"fiver."</p> +<p><i>Wednesday, October 17th</i>.—The latest recruit to what +JOHN KNOX would have called the "monstrous regiment of Ministers" +is Mr. WARDLE, lately Chairman of the Labour Party. He made a +promising <i>début</i>. Mr. HOGGE professed to be anxious as +to the future of the North-Eastern Railway, which, according to +him, had lent all its "genii" to the Admiralty. Mr. WARDLE, quick +to note the classical accuracy of the plural, assured him that he +need be under no apprehensions—"there are still some genii +left."</p> +<p>Ireland is to have the extended franchise conferred by the +Representation of the People Bill, but not the accompanying +redistribution of seats. The Chairman suggested that Sir JOHN +LONSDALE, who wanted to do away with the anomaly, should move a +supplementary schedule embodying his own ideas of how Ireland +should be redistributed. Unfortunately—for one would have +liked to see how much was left for the other three provinces after +he had designed an Ulster commensurate with his notion of its +relative importance—the hon. Baronet demurred to this +tempting proposal, and thought it was a matter for the +Government.</p> +<p>Some very pleasant badinage between Lord HUGH CECIL and the HOME +SECRETARY as to the relative merits of the words "dwell" and +"reside" for the purpose of defining a voter's qualification was +followed by an exhaustive and exhausting lecture by Major CHAPPLE +on how to tabulate the alternative votes in a three-cornered +election. His object was to demonstrate that under the Government +scheme the man whom the majority of the voters might desire would +infallibly be rejected, while by a plan of his own, which he had +tried successfully on a couple of wounded soldiers, the best man +invariably won.</p> +<p><i>Thursday, October 18th</i>.—The most obliging of men, +Sir ALFRED MOND nevertheless draws the line when he is asked to +look a gift horse in the mouth. His predecessor at the Office of +Works having offered a site for a statue of President LINCOLN, it +is not for him <span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id= +"page289"></a>[pg 289]</span> to challenge the artistic merit of +the sculpture, which has been picturesquely described as "a tramp +with the colic." It is thought that the American donors, after an +exhaustive study of our outdoor monuments, have been anxious to +conform to British standards of taste.</p> +<p>The "Nationals" are beginning to move. Their General elicited +from the Government a promise to introduce a Vote of Thanks to His +Majesty's Forces; though it is possible that this would have been +done without his intervention. His lieutenants were less +successful. Sir RICHARD COOPER could not persuade Mr. BONAR LAW to +publish the official report on the loss of the <i>Hampshire</i>, +and is now more than ever convinced that K. OF K. is languishing in +a German prison-camp; while the HOME SECRETARY intimated that he +required no instruction from Major ROWLAND HUNT in the business of +suppressing seditious literature.</p> +<p>After all, Ireland is to be redistributed. Unless the success of +the Convention renders the task superfluous, the Government will +appoint a Boundary Commission as an act of simple justice. Needless +to say the announcement was received with frenzied abuse by all the +Nationalist factions. Abstract justice, it seems, is the very last +thing that Ireland wants.</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:60%;"><a href= +"images/288.png"><img width="100%" src="images/288.png" alt= +"" /></a>IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE RE-OPENING OF THE CAMPAIGN ON +OCTOBER 16TH A CERTAIN LIVELINESS WAS OBSERVED ON THE HIBERNIAN +FRONT.</div> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/289.png"><img width="100%" src="images/289.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>"TURN AGAIN."</h3> +<i>Instructor (to recruit, who on the command, "Left turn," has +made a mess of it).</i> "NOW THEN, WHITTINGTON, 'AVE ANOTHER +SHOT."</div> +<hr /> +<h2>GADGETS AND STUNTS.</h2> +<p>DEAR MR. PUNCH,—Aware as you must be of a deplorable +confusion now prevailing in the public mind as to the true +inwardness of the expressions "gadget" and "stunt," you will agree, +I am sure, that the moment has come for a clear and authoritative +ruling on this vexed point. At a time when the pundits of the +Oxford Dictionary are coldly aloof, like GALLIO, and the Army +Council, though often approached, studiously reserve their +decision, it rests with you Mr. Punch, as Arbiter of National +Opinion, to give judgment.</p> +<p>What notion, then, of "gadget" and "stunt" is gained by the +young subaltern of today as he joins his regiment and shakes down +to the fundamental facts of life and death? He finds himself +harassed by no end of devilish enemy stunts, to stultify which a +fatherly all-wise War Office has given him an infinity of gadgets. +For every stunt an appropriate countering gadget. Does the foe +strafe him with a gas-bombing stunt? "Ha, ha!" laughs he, and dons +that unlovely but priceless gadget, his box-respirator. But by no +means all gadgets have just one peculiar stunt to counter; such a +definition would exclude, for instance, the height-gauge on a +plane, which is emphatically, wholly and eternally a gadget of +gadgets. Moreover, gadgets are small things. The airman's +"joystick" is a gadget; the tank is not. Now are these views sound, +Sir, or is it permissible, as one authority does, to describe +persons as "gadgets"?</p> +<p>One final word. A nervous subaltern recently appeared before his +Adjutant and called the Wurzel-Flummery Electro-Dynamical +Apparatus, Mark II., "this sky-plotter stunt." "Great Heavens!" +gasped the Adjutant, "what is the Service coming to? Stunt? Gadget, +man, gadget!" Three days later the hapless boy found himself +desired to resign on the grounds of "gross ignorance of military +terminology."</p> +<p>I am, dear Mr. Punch,</p> +<p>Yours solemnly,</p> +<p>ARCHIBALD.</p> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>[pg +290]</span> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/290.png"><img width="100%" src="images/290.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>TRIALS OF A CAMOUFLAGE OFFICER.</h3> +HAVING CAMOUFLAGED SOME COAST DEFENCES HE GOES TO SEA TO OBSERVE +THE EFFECT.</div> +<hr /> +<h2>HEART-TO-HEART TALKS.</h2> +<h4>(<i>The GERMAN KAISER, the Tsar of BULGARIA, and the Sultan of +TURKEY.</i>)</h4> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. You must admit that Sofia is a most agreeable +place. Where else could you find such genuine and overwhelming +enthusiasm for the War and our alliance?</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. I don't know. It didn't seem to me exactly +violent; but then, of course, you know your people better than I +do, and it may be—</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. Umph.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. I know just what you are going to say, MEHMED. +You feel, as we do, that the voice of the People is the true guide +for a ruler. You feel that too, don't you, WILHELM?</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. I have never hesitated to say so. It is on +such sentiments that the greatness of our Imperial House is +based.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. Umph.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. There—I knew you would agree with us. You +heard, WILHELM? MEHMED agrees with us.</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. That is, of course, immensely gratifying.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. We will at once publish an announcement in all +our newspapers. It will declare that the three Sovereigns, after a +perfectly frank interchange of views, found no subject on which +there was even the shadow of a disagreement between them, and are +resolved in the closest alliance to continue the War against the +aggressive designs of the Entente Powers until a satisfactory peace +is secured. How does that suit you, WILHELM?</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. Very well. Only you must put in that bit +about my being actuated by the highest and most disinterested +motives.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. That applies to all of us.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. Umph.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. Again he agrees. Isn't it wonderful? I've never +met a more accommodating ally. It's a real pleasure to work with +him. Now then, we're all quite sure, aren't we, that we really want +to go on with the War, and that we utterly reject all +peace-talk?</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. Utterly—but if they come and <i>sue</i> +to us for peace we might graciously consider their offer.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. That means nothing, of course, so there's no +harm in putting it in. At any rate it will please the POPE. We're +quite sure, then, that we want to go on with the War? Of course I'm +heart and soul for going on with it to the last gasp, but I cannot +help pointing out that at present Bulgaria has got all she wants, +and my people are very fond of peace.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. Umph.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. He knows that is so. He's very fond of peace +himself. You see he hasn't had much luck in the War, have you, +MEHMED?</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. The English—</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. Quite true; the English are an accursed +race.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. The English have a lot of—</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. A lot of vices? I should think they have.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan (persisting)</i>. The English have a lot of men +and guns.</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. Well done, old friend; you've got it off your +chest at last. I hope you're happy now. But, as to this peace of +ours, can't something be done? I always say it's a great thing to +know when to stop. So it might be as well to talk about peace, even +if your talk means nothing. In any case, I tell you frankly, I want +peace.</p> +<p><i>The Kaiser</i>. FERDINAND!</p> +<p><i>The Tsar</i>. Oh, it's no use to glare at me like that. If it +comes to glaring I can do a bit in that line myself.</p> +<p><i>The Sultan</i>. The Americans—</p> +<table summary="Two talking" cellspacing="2" border="0"> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td valign="middle" align="center"><i>The Kaiser<br /> +The Tsar</i></td> +<td valign="middle" align="center"> +<big><big><big>}</big></big></big></td> +<td valign="middle" align="center"><i>(together)</i>. Oh, curse the +Americans!</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>[pg +291]</span> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/291.png"><img width="100%" src="images/291.png" alt= +"" /></a><i>Postlethwaite (keenly appreciative of hum of Gotha +overhead).</i> "LISTEN, AGATHA! EXACTLY B FLAT." [<i>Strikes note +to establish accuracy of his ear.</i>]</div> +<hr /> +<h2>STANZAS ON TEA SHORTAGE.</h2> +<blockquote class="note"> +<p>[Mr. M. GRIEVE, writing from "The Whins," Chalfont St. Peter, in +<i>The Daily Mail</i> of the 12th inst., suggests herb-teas to meet +the shortage, as being far the most healthful substitutes. "They +can also," he says, "be blended and arranged to suit the gastric +idiosyncrasies of the individual consumer. A few of them are +agrimony, comfrey, dandelion, camomile, woodruff, marjoram, hyssop, +sage, horehound, tansy, thyme, rosemary, stinging-nettle and +raspberry."]</p> +</blockquote> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Although, when luxuries must be resigned,</p> +<p class="i2">Such as cigars or even breakfast bacon,</p> +<p>My hitherto "unconquerable mind"</p> +<p class="i2">Its philosophic pose has not forsaken,</p> +<p>By one impending sacrifice I find</p> +<p class="i2">My stock of fortitude severely shaken—</p> +<p>I mean the dismal prospect of our losing</p> +<p>The genial cup that cheers without bemusing.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Blest liquor! dear to literary men,</p> +<p class="i2">Which Georgian writers used to drink like fishes,</p> +<p>When cocoa had not swum into their ken</p> +<p class="i2">And coffee failed to satisfy all wishes;</p> +<p>When tea was served to monarchs of the pen,</p> +<p class="i2">Like JOHNSON and his coterie, in "dishes,"</p> +<p>And came exclusively from far Cathay—</p> +<p>See "China's fragrant herb" in WORDSWORTH'S lay.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Beer prompted CALVERLEY'S immortal rhymes,</p> +<p class="i2">Extolling it as utterly eupeptic;</p> +<p>But on that point, in these exacting times,</p> +<p class="i2">The weight of evidence supports the sceptic;</p> +<p>Beer is not suitable for torrid climes</p> +<p class="i2">Or if your tendency is cataleptic;</p> +<p>But tea in moderation, freshly brewed,</p> +<p>Was never by Sir ANDREW CLARK tabooed.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>We know for certain that the GRAND OLD MAN</p> +<p class="i2">Drank tea at midnight with complete impunity,</p> +<p>At least he long outlived the Psalmist's span</p> +<p class="i2">And from ill-health enjoyed a fine immunity;</p> +<p>Besides, robust Antipodeans can</p> +<p class="i2">And do drink tea at every opportunity;</p> +<p>While only Stoics nowadays contrive</p> +<p>To shun the cup that gilds the hour of five.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>But war is war, and when we have to face</p> +<p class="i2">Shortage in tea as well as bread and boots</p> +<p>'Tis well to teach us how we may replace</p> +<p class="i2">The foreign brew by native substitutes,</p> +<p>Extracted from a vegetable base</p> +<p class="i2">In various wholesome plants and herbs and fruits,</p> +<p>"Arranged and blended," very much like teas,</p> +<p>To suit our "gastric idiosyncrasies."</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>It is a list for future use to file,</p> +<p class="i2">Including woodruff, marjoram and sage,</p> +<p>Thyme, agrimony, hyssop, camomile</p> +<p class="i2">(A name writ painfully on childhood's page),</p> +<p>Tansy, the jaded palate to beguile,</p> +<p class="i2">Horehound, laryngeal troubles to assuage,</p> +<p>And, for a cup ere mounting to the stirrup,</p> +<p>The stinging-nettle's stimulating syrup.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>And yet I cannot, though I gladly would,</p> +<p class="i2">Forget the Babylonian monarch's cry,</p> +<p>"It may be wholesome, but it is not good,"</p> +<p class="i2">When grass became his only food supply;</p> +<p>Such weakness ought, of course, to be withstood,</p> +<p class="i2">But oh, it wrings the teardrop from my eye</p> +<p>To think of Polly putting on the kettle</p> +<p>To brew my daily dose of stinging-nettle!</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page292" id="page292"></a>[pg +292]</span> +<h2>AT THE PLAY.</h2> +<h3>"DEAR BRUTUS."</h3> +<p>There are great ways of borrowing, as EMERSON said, and in his +new Fantasy Sir JAMES BARRIE has given us a very charming variation +on <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> (with echoes of <i>Peter +Pan</i> and <i>The Admirable Crichton</i>). Certainly I got far +more fun out of his deluded lovers in the Magic Wood than I ever +extracted from the comedy of errors which occurred between the +ladies and gentlemen of the Court of <i>Theseus</i>.</p> +<p>In <i>Dear Brutus</i> the contrast between real life and the +life of Magicland is sharply accentuated by the fact that there is +not a separate set of characters for each; the same men and women +figure in both, making abrupt transitions from one to the other and +back again. We have a house party of actual humans (not too +obtrusively actual), most of whom, including the butler, imagine +that if they could have a Second Chance in life they would not make +such a mess of it as they did with the First. One of them thinks he +would never have taken to drink and lost his self-respect and his +wife's love if he had only had a child; one that he would not have +become a pilferer if he had stuck to the City; others that they +would have done better to have married Somebody Else. Well, they +are all whisked off into the Magic Wood, and there they get their +Second Chance. The pilferer becomes a successful tradesman in a +large and questionable way; the tippler finds himself sober and +attended by the daughter of his heart's desire; various married +folk get re-sorted; and so forth.</p> +<p>The moral purpose (if any) of the author, as conveyed to us +through the mouth of the leading humourist of the party, is to show +that a man's nature would remain the same even if he got a Second +Chance. Unfortunately—but what can you expect in the realm of +Magic?—the scheme does not work out with any logical +consistency. It is true that the philanderer and the pilfering +butler show little promise of making anything out of their Second +Chance; but, on the other hand, the childless tippler seems to have +gone reformation and recovered his wife's regard; and if I rightly +interpret certain delicate indications, they propose to have a +pearl of a daughter later on. Also the dainty and supercilious +<i>Lady Caroline</i>, who in the wood becomes enamoured of the +butler-turned-plutocrat (<i>cf. Titania</i> and <i>Bottom</i>) and +subsequently returns to her sniffiness, cannot be said to have lost +much by failing to utilise her Second Chance.</p> +<p>However, one might never have troubled about Sir JAMES'S logic +if he had not declared his moral purpose in set terms. I suppose he +had to explain his title, which was sufficiently obscure. It comes, +as Mr. SOTHERN kindly informed us, from the lines:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,</p> +<p>But in ourselves."</p> +</div> +</div> +<div class="figright" style="width:50%;"><a href= +"images/292.png"><img width="100%" src="images/292.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>IN AND OUT OF THE WOOD.</h3> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Mr. Purdie</i> MR. SAM SOTHERN.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Coade</i> MR. NORMAN FORBES.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Dearth</i> MR. GERALD DU MAURIER.</p> +</div> +</div> +</div> +<p><i>Brutus</i>, in fact, is the famous general to whom certain +things were caviare. He is the typical man in the audience, to whom +Sir JAMES says: "You, too, Brutus; I'm talking at you."</p> +<p>Happily (for my taste, anyhow) the humour of the play dominates +its sentiment. And where the sentiment of the child <i>Margaret</i> +threatens to overstrain itself we had always the healthy antidote +of Mr. DU MAURIER'S practical methods to correct its tendency to +cloy. He was extraordinarily good both as himself and, for a rare +change, as somebody quite different. Miss FAITH CELLI as his +daughter—a sort of <i>Peter Pan</i> girl who does grow up, +far too tall—was delightful in the true BARRIE manner. It was +a pity—but that was not her fault—that she had to end +her long and difficult scene on rather a false note. I am almost +certain that no child (outside a BARRIE play), who is left alone in +a Magic Wood, scared out of her life, would cry aloud, "Daddy, +daddy, I don't want to be a Might-have-been." The sentiment of the +words was, of course, part of the scheme, but it was not for her to +say them.</p> +<p>Mr. NORMAN FORBES, in the Wood, was an elderly piping faun and +performed with astonishing agility a sword-dance over a stick +crossed with his whistle. Elsewhere as <i>Mr. Coade</i> he played +very engagingly the part of the only character who had made such +good use of his First Chance that he really didn't need a Second. +Both in name and nature he brought to mind the late Mr. CHOATE, who +gallantly declared that if he had not been what he was he would +have liked to be his wife's second husband. And no wonder that +<i>Mr. Coade</i> wanted nothing better than to remain attached to +so adorable a creature as his wife, played with a delightful +homeliness by Miss MAUDE MILLETT, who has lost nothing of that +charm to which, with <i>Mr. Coade</i>, we retain the most faithful +devotion.</p> +<p>Mr. WILL WEST was admirable as a <i>Crichton</i> gone wrong; and +Mr. SOTHERN, as the philanderer <i>Purdie</i>, took all his Chances +of humour, and they were many, with the greatest aplomb. They +included some very pleasant satire on stage manners. I have only to +mention the names of Miss HILDA MOORE, Miss JESSIE BATEMAN, Miss +DORIS LYTTON and Miss LYDIA BILBROOKE for you to understand how +excellent a cast it was, both for wit and grace.</p> +<p>Finally, Mr. ARTHUR HATHERTON, as <i>Lob</i>, the host of the +party, a kind of hoary old <i>Puck</i> who had a <i>penchant</i> +for filling his house every Midsummer Eve with people who wanted a +Second Chance, interpreted Sir JAMES'S whimsical fancy to the very +top of freakishness.</p> +<p>I hope, but doubtfully, that there are enough Dear Brutuses in +London (so many aliens have lately fled) to do justice to BARRIE at +his best.</p> +<p>O.S.</p> +<hr /> +<h3>Le Mot Juste</h3> +. +<blockquote> +<p>"Tea is very scarce and that to Irish folks, who like it black +and strong, with always 'one more for the pot,' is a source of +damentation."—<i>Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<hr /> +<blockquote> +<p>"Another Army Order provides that an officer while undergoing +instruction in flying shall receive continuous flying pay at the +rate of 4s. a day in addition from the public-houses of the +town."—<i>Provincial Paper</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Very generous of them; but what will the Board of Liquor Control +say?</p> +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293" id="page293"></a>[pg +293]</span> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;"><a href= +"images/293.png"><img width="100%" src="images/293.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<p><i>Vicar.</i> "AND WHAT WERE YOUR SENSATIONS WHEN YOU WERE +STRUCK?"</p> +<p><i>Wounded Tommy.</i> "WELL, IT WAS LIKE WHEN THE MISSIS COPS +YEH BEHIND THE EAR WITH A FLAT-IRON—<i>YOU KNOW</i>."</p> +</div> +<hr /> +<h2>OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.</h2> +<h4>(<i>By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.</i>)</h4> +<p>I have often pitied the lot of the costume novelist, faced with +the increasing difficulty of providing fresh and unworn trappings +for his characters. Therefore with all the more warmth do I +congratulate those seasoned adventurers, AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE, +on their acumen in discovering such a setting as that of +<i>Wolf-lure</i> (CASSELL). The name alone should be worth many +editions. Nor do the contents in any sort belie it. This remote +country of Guyenne, a hundred years ago, with its forests and caves +and subterranean lakes, with, moreover, its rival wolf-masters, +Royal and Imperial, and its wild band of coiners, is the very stage +for any hazardous and romantic exploit. It should be added at once +that the authors have taken full advantage of these possibilities. +From the moment when the wandering English youth who tells the tale +wakes on the hillside to find himself contemplated by a lovely +maiden and a gigantic wolf-hound, the adventure dashes from thrill +to thrill unpausing. One protest however I must utter. The conduct +of the young and lovely heroine (as above) and her single-minded +devotion to her lover may be true to nature, but somewhat alienated +my own sympathies, already given to the first-person-singular +English lad who also adored her, and whom both she and her chosen +mate treated abominably. To my thinking, unrequited devotion has no +business in a tale of this sort. Realistic pathos may have its +<i>Dobbin</i> or <i>Tom Pinch</i>, but the wild and whirling +episodes of tushery demand the satisfactory finish hallowed by +custom. With this reservation only I can call <i>Wolf-lure</i> +about the best adventure-novel that the present season has +produced.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Since the opening pages of <i>Calvary Alley</i> (HODDER AND +STOUGHTON) are concerned with choir-boys and a cathedral and a +rose-window, things to which one gives, without sufficient reason, +an association exclusively of the Old World, I was a little +startled, as the action proceeded, by the mention of cops and dimes +and trolly-cars. Of course this only meant that I had forgotten, +ungratefully, the country in which any story by ALICE HEGAN RICE +might be expected to be laid. Anyhow, <i>Calvary Alley</i> proves +an admirable entertainment, a tale of a girl's expanding fortunes, +from the grim slum that gives its name to the book, through many +varied experiences of reform schools, a bottling factory and +membership of the ballet, up to the haven of matrimony. Through +them all, <i>Nance</i>, the heroine, carries a very human and +engaging personality, so that one is made to see the young woman +who is clasped to the heroic breast on the last page as the logical +development of the ragged urchin stamping her bare foot into the +soft cement of <i>Calvary Alley</i> on the first. +Moreover—wonder of wonders for transatlantic +fiction!—the author is able to write about children, and the +contrasted lives of rich and poor city dwellers, without lapsing +into sentimentality, <i>O si sic omnes!</i> But either American +bishops are strangely different from the English variety, or Mrs. +RICE, following Mr. WELLS'S example, has permitted herself an +episcopal burlesque. In either case the resulting portrait is +hardly worthy of an otherwise admirably-drawn collection of +original characters.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page294" id="page294"></a>[pg +294]</span> +<p><i>Christine</i> (MACMILLAN) contains a very illuminating +picture of Germany in the months immediately preceding the War; but +I am perplexed—and a little provoked—by the way in +which it is presented. The book opens with a pathetic foreword, +signed by Miss ALICE CHOLMONDELEY, in which we read: "My daughter +Christine, who wrote me these letters, died at a hospital in +Stuttgart on the morning of August 8th, 1914, of acute double +pneumonia.... I am publishing the letters just as they came to me, +leaving out nothing.... The war killed Christine, just as surely as +if she had been a soldier in the trenches.... I never saw her +again. I had a telegram saying she was dead. I tried to go to +Stuttgart, but was turned back at the frontier." Then follows a +Publishers' note to the effect that some personal names have been +altered. After this one is naturally surprised to find the book +advertised as a "new novel." All I can say is that, if Miss +CHOLMONDELEY'S preface is true, her book is not a novel, and that, +if it is untrue, I do not think the foreword is fair or in good +taste. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that Miss CHOLMONDELEY +was herself in Germany during the summer of 1914, and has chosen +this way of telling us what she saw and heard. Anyhow the letters +are undoubtedly the work of someone who knows Germany and the +inhabitants thereof. And for this excellent reason <i>Christine</i> +should not be missed by anyone who wants to know in what a state of +militant anticipation the Germans were living. The strongest +searchlight has been thrown over the Hun, from the habitués +of a middle-class boarding-house to members of the Junker breed. +Whether these letters ought to be classed as fiction or not they +contain facts, and as they are written in a style at once vivid and +engaging my advice to you is to read them and not worry too much +about the foreword.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p><i>The Four Corners of the World</i> (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is +emphatically what I should call a fireside book. On these chill +Autumn evenings, with the rain or the dead leaves or the shrapnel +whirling by outside, you could have few more agreeable companions +than Mr. A.E.W. MASON, when he is, as here, in communicative mood. +He has a baker's dozen of excellent tales to tell, most of them +with a fine thrill, out of which he gets the greatest possible +effect, largely by the use of a crisp and unemotional style that +lets the sensational happenings go their own way to the nerves of +the reader. As an example of how to make the most of a good theme, +I commend to you the story pleasantly, if not very originally, +named "The House of Terror." Before now I have been ensnared to +disappointment by precisely this title. But Mr. MASON'S House holds +no deception; it genuinely does terrify; and when at the climax of +its history the two persons concerned see the door swing slowly +inwards, and "the white fog billowed into the room," while "Glyn +felt the hair stir and move upon his scalp," I doubt not that you +will almost certainly partake of some measure of his emotion. +Naturally, in a mixed bag such as this, one can't complain if the +quality of the contents varies. Not all the tales reach the level +of "The House of Terror"; but in every one there is enough artistry +to occupy any spare half-hour you may have for such purposes, +without letting you feel afterwards that it was wasted. And as a +hospital present the collection could hardly be beaten.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>Miss MARJORIE BOWEN'S historical romances usually have the merit +of swift movement, and that is precisely the quality I miss in +<i>The Third Estate</i> (METHUEN). It does not march—at least +not quick enough. You will not need to be told that Miss BOWEN has +saturated herself conscientiously in her period—an intensely +interesting period too—and has contrived her atmosphere most +competently and plausibly. But for all that I couldn't make myself +greatly interested in the bold bad Marquis DE SARCEY in those +anxious two years before "the Terror," with his insufferable pride, +his incredible elegance, his fantastic ideas of love and his +idiotic marriage, the negotiations for which, with the resulting +complications, take up so large a space in a lengthy book. It gives +one the impression of being written not "according to plan" but out +of a random fancy, with so hurried a pen that not merely have +irrelevant incidents, absurdities of diction, and indubitable +<i>longueurs</i> escaped excision, but such lapses from the King's +fair English as "save you and I" and "I shoot with my own hand he +who refuses." Even a popular author—indeed, especially a +popular author—owes us more consideration than that.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p><i>The Fortunes of Richard Mahony</i> (HEINEMANN) is one of +those pleasant books in which the hero prospers. True, the process +as here shown is very gradual; so much so that the four hundred odd +pages of the present volume only take us as far as "End of Book +One." Clearly, therefore, Mr. H.H. RICHARDSON has more to follow; +and, as one should call no hero fortunate till his author has +ceased writing, it is as yet too early for a final pronouncement +upon <i>Richard Mahony</i>. My own honest impression at this stage +would be that he is in some danger of outgrowing his strength. This +pathological phrase comes the more aptly since <i>Richard's</i> +fortune, though begun in the goldfields, was not derived from +digging, but from the practice of medicine, and from a lucky +speculation in mining stock (I liked especially the description of +the day when the shares sold at fifty-three, and <i>Richard</i> +"went about feeling a little more than human"). The end of the +whole matter, at least the end for the present, is that, with his +wife, and what he can get together from the remains of the mining +<i>coup</i>, and the sale of a somewhat damaged practice, +<i>Richard</i> sets forth for England. Obviously more turns of +fortune are in store there for him and <i>Mary</i> and that queer +character, his one-time inseparable, <i>Purdy</i>. That I +anticipate their future with much interest is a genuine tribute to +the humanity in which Mr. RICHARDSON has clothed his cast. +<i>Richard Mahony</i>, in short, is a real man, whose fortunes take +a genuine hold upon one's attention; though I repeat that I could +wish his author had told them less wordily, and—in one +glaring instance—with a greater respect for the decencies of +medical reticence.</p> +<hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;"><a href= +"images/294.png"><img width="100%" src="images/294.png" alt= +"" /></a> +<h3>USING PETROL FOR PLEASURE.</h3> +JOY-RIDERS CAUGHT RED-HANDED.</div> +<hr /> +<h3>Long-Distance Medical Treatment.</h3> +<blockquote> +<p>"A telephone massage was received last night by the Scotland +Yard authorities."—<i>Bristol Times and Mirror</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11076 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/11076-h/images/279-1.png b/11076-h/images/279-1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0613e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/279-1.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/279-2.png b/11076-h/images/279-2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b68b051 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/279-2.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/281.png b/11076-h/images/281.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..758fe09 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/281.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/282.png b/11076-h/images/282.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8cd5e37 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/282.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/283.png b/11076-h/images/283.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be75a06 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/283.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/285.png b/11076-h/images/285.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb9de98 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/285.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/286.png b/11076-h/images/286.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..af1e5bc --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/286.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/287.png b/11076-h/images/287.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb20253 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/287.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/288.png b/11076-h/images/288.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3f4411 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/288.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/289.png b/11076-h/images/289.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c1b3f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/289.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/290.png b/11076-h/images/290.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0eb2cb --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/290.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/291.png b/11076-h/images/291.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..810a245 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/291.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/292.png b/11076-h/images/292.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..308457d --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/292.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/293.png b/11076-h/images/293.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b9d1d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/293.png diff --git a/11076-h/images/294.png b/11076-h/images/294.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..292302d --- /dev/null +++ b/11076-h/images/294.png |
