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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159,
+August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2005 [EBook #16727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Keith Edkins and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
+
+VOL. 159.
+
+
+
+August 25th, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+CHARIVARIA.
+
+"What we have got to do," says Lord ROTHERMERE, "is to keep calm and mind
+our own business, instead of worrying about the affairs of every other
+nation." It seems only fair to point out that _The Daily News_ thought of
+this as long ago as August, 1914.
+
+* * *
+
+Gooseberries the size of bantams' eggs, says a news item, won a prize at
+the Deeside Horticultural Show. When we remember the giant gooseberries of
+a decade ago it rather looks as if the nation were losing its nerve.
+
+* * *
+
+With reference to the messenger seen running in Whitehall the other day a
+satisfactory explanation has now been given. He was doing it for the
+cinema.
+
+* * *
+
+The average Scot, says an Anti-Prohibition writer, cannot stand many
+drinks. Our experience supports this view; but he can be stood a good many.
+
+* * *
+
+A picture-paper gossip states that Mr. CHURCHILL enjoys very good health.
+Just a touch of writer's cramp now and then, of course.
+
+* * *
+
+In a recent riot in Londonderry, it is stated, a number of inoffensive
+neutrals were set upon and beaten by rowdies of both factions. We have
+constantly maintained that Irish unity can always be secured when there is
+something really worth uniting over.
+
+* * *
+
+A lighthouse is advertised for sale in _The Times_. It is said to be just
+the kind of residence for a tall man with sloping shoulders.
+
+* * *
+
+A correspondent asks in the weekly press for a new name for charabancs. We
+wish we could think there was any use in calling them names.
+
+* * *
+
+Seaside bathers are advised not to enter the water after a heavy meal. The
+seaside visitor who could pay for such a meal would naturally not have
+enough left to pay for a bathing-machine.
+
+* * *
+
+A Thames bargee was knocked down by a taxi-cab at Kingston-on-Thames last
+week. A well-known firm has offered to publish his remarks in fortnightly
+parts.
+
+* * *
+
+The West Dulwich man who struck a rate-collector on the head with a
+telephone claims credit for finding some use for these instruments.
+
+* * *
+
+Sir ERIC DRUMMOND has purchased the largest hotel in Geneva on behalf of
+the League of Nations. It is said that he has been taking lessons from Sir
+ALFRED MOND.
+
+* * *
+
+Following closely upon the announcement of the noiseless gun invented in
+New York comes the news that they have now invented some sound-proof bacon
+for export to this country.
+
+* * *
+
+It is stated that the man who last week said he understood the Rent Act was
+eventually pinned down by some friends and handed over to the care of his
+relatives.
+
+* * *
+
+According to a morning paper another Antarctic expedition is to be
+organised very shortly. We understand that only those who can stand a
+northern wind on all four sides need apply.
+
+* * *
+
+It is reported that a poultry-farmer in the West of England is making a
+fortune by giving his hens whisky to drink and then exporting their eggs to
+the United States.
+
+* * *
+
+A golf-ball was recently driven through the window of an express train near
+Knebworth. We are informed however that the player who struck the ball
+still maintains that the engine-driver deliberately ignored his shout of
+"Fore."
+
+* * *
+
+An amazing report reaches us from Yorkshire. It appears that a centenarian
+has been discovered who is unable to read without glasses or even to walk
+to market once a week.
+
+* * *
+
+The unveiling of one of the largest Peace memorials in the country is to
+take place on Armistice day this year. We hear that both the PREMIER and
+Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL have expressed a desire to attend unless prevented by
+the War.
+
+* * *
+
+Smart furriers, declares a fashion-paper, are pushing Beveren blue rabbit
+as one of the chic furs for the coming winter. The rabbit, our contemporary
+goes on to explain (superfluously, as it seems to us), is naturally blue.
+
+* * *
+
+On a recent occasion a meeting of the Dolgelly Rural Council had to be
+postponed, the members being absent hay-making. Parliament, on the other
+hand, has had to stop making hay owing to the Members being away in the
+country.
+
+* * *
+
+The Ministry of Food states that the period of normal supplies seems to
+come round in cycles of four years. Meanwhile the period of abnormal prices
+continues to come round in cycles of once a week. A movement in favour of
+postponing the cycle of payment till we get the cycle of plenty is not
+receiving adequate support from the provision trade.
+
+* * *
+
+Agricultural labourers near Peterborough have refused to work with Irishmen
+on the ground that the latter are troublesome. We always said that sooner
+or later someone would come round to Mr. LLOYD GEORGE'S view on this point.
+
+* * *
+
+A newspaper reports the case of a waiter who refused a tip. It is said that
+the gentleman who offered it is making a slow recovery and may be able to
+take a little fish this week.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Caller._ "EXCHANGE? GET ME DOUBLE-SIX DOUBLE-FIVE NINE
+CENTRAL--AND GET IT QUICK, LIKE THEY DO IT ON THE PICTURES."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE GROWTH OF THE SIDE-CAR.
+
+    "MOTOR CARS, CYCLES, _&c._
+
+    ARGYLL.--2 Bedrooms and sitting-room, with attendance."--_Scotch
+    Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "BRIGHTON ELECTRIC RAILWAY.
+
+    PALACE PIER AND KEMP TOWN CARS EVERY FIVE YEARS."--_Local Paper._
+
+It is inferred that the Ministry of Transport has assumed control.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN APOLOGY TO THE BENCH.
+
+_Humbly addressed to T.E.S._
+
+  If ever, where you hold the Seat of Doom,
+    I stand, my Lord, before you at the Bar,
+  And my forensic fame, a virgin bloom,
+    Lies in your awful hands to make or mar,
+  Let it not prejudice my case, I pray,
+    If you should call to mind a previous meeting
+  When on a champion course the other day
+    I gave your Lordship four strokes and a beating.
+
+  I own it savoured of contempt of court,
+    Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench,
+  That I should chuckle when your pitch was short
+    Or smile to see you in the sanded trench;
+  But Golf (so I extenuate my sin)
+    Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on;
+  One common bunker makes the whole world kin,
+    And Bar may scrap with Beak, and I with SCR-TT-N.
+
+  Nor did I give myself superior airs;
+    I made allowance for defective sight;
+  "The bandage which impartial Justice wears
+    Leaves you," I said, "a stranger to the light;
+  Habituated to the sword and scales,
+    If you commit some pardonable blunder,
+  If" (I remarked) "your nerve at moments fails
+    With grosser ironmongery, where's the wonder?"
+
+  So may the Law's High Majesty o'erlook
+    My rash presumption; may the memory die
+  Of how I won the match (and further took
+    The liberty of mopping up the bye);
+  Remember just a happy morning's round,
+    Also the fact that this alleged old fogey
+  Played at the last hole like a book and downed
+    The barely human feat of Colonel Bogey.
+
+  O.S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IF WE ALL TOOK TO MARGOTRY.
+
+[Mrs. ASQUITH'S feuilleton, which for so many people has transformed Sunday
+into a day of unrest, sets up a new method of autobiography, in which the
+protagonist is, so to speak, both JOHNSON and BOSWELL too. Successful
+models being always imitated we may expect to see a general use of her
+lively methods; and as a matter of fact I have been able already, through
+the use of a patent futurist reading-glass (invented by Signer Margoni), to
+get glimpses of two forthcoming reminiscent works of the future which, but
+for the _chronique égoïstique_ of the moment might never have been written,
+and certainly not in their present interlocutory shape.]
+
+I.
+
+FROM "FIRST AID TO LITERATURE."
+
+By _Edmund Gosse_.
+
+... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential
+adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir
+in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was
+thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid
+exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I
+accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to
+oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such
+particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my
+own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue,
+typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an
+initial. _Quis custodiet?_ It would be grotesque indeed if one whose
+special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself
+fail in good taste.
+
+_Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang)._ I see nothing but blue pencil
+marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should
+be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.
+
+_EDMUND (earnestly)._ It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt
+my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book
+of reminiscences in English.
+
+_Mrs. A. (with fervour)._ I don't want to go down to history. I want to
+stay here and make it. And you (_with emotion_)--you have cramped my style.
+I can't think why I asked you to help.
+
+_EDMUND._ Everyone asks me to help. It is my destiny. I am the Muses'
+_amicus curiæ_.
+
+_Mrs. A._ Oh, blow Latin! (_Lighting two cigarettes at once_) What's the
+good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without anything about L.G.?
+
+_EDMUND._ Dear lady, it would never have done. Be reasonable. There are
+occasions when reticence is imperative.
+
+_Mrs. A._ Reticence! What words you use!
+
+(_Cætera desunt._)
+
+II.
+
+FROM "A WEEK IN LOVELY LUCERNE."
+
+By _D. Lloyd George_.
+
+... I do not say that the mountains hereabout are not more considerable
+than those of our own beloved Wales, but as material to be employed in
+perorations they are far inferior. There is not the requisite mist (which
+may symbolise ignorance or obstinacy or any temporary disturbance or
+opposition), later to be dispelled by the strong beams of the sun
+(representing either progress generally or prime-ministerial genius or pure
+Coalitionism). Other local features I felt, however, I might find
+rhetorically useful, such as THORWALDSEN'S Lion, so noble, so--so leonine,
+but doomed ever to adhere to the rock, how symbolic of a strong idealist
+unable to translate his ameliorative plans into action! The old bridge too,
+uniting the two sides of the city, as one can attempt to link Radicalism
+and Coalitionism--how long could it endure? And so on. One's brain was
+never idle.
+
+It was while we were at Lucerne that LORD RIDDELL and I had some of our
+most significant conversations. I set them down just as they occurred,
+extenuating nothing and concealing nothing.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL (with emotion)._ You are in excellent form to-day. Lucerne
+now has two lions--one of them free.
+
+_DAVID (surprised)._ I free? (_Sadly_) You forget that GIOLITTI is coming.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL._ But that is nothing to you. Try him with your Italian and
+he will soon go.
+
+_DAVID._ You are a true friend. You always hearten me.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL (with more emotion)._ But you are so wonderful, so wonderful!
+And now for to-day's amusements. Where shall we go? Up Mount Pilatus or to
+WILLIAM TELL'S Chapel?
+
+_DAVID._ There is something irresistible to a Welshman in the word chapel.
+Let us go there. And WILLIAM TELL, was he not a patriot? Did he not defy
+the tyrant? I am sure that in his modest conventicle I can think of a
+thousand eloquent things. Let us go there.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL._ My hero! my dauntless hero!
+
+E.V.L.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Even with a round of 73 in the morning Ray fell behind Vardon, who
+    accomplished a remarkable round of 17 to lead the field."--_Provincial
+    Paper._
+
+This is believed to be the first occasion on which any golfer has
+accomplished two holes in one shot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "THE LION OF LUCERNE."
+
+MR. LLOYD GEORGE (_having jodelled heavily_). "NOT A SINGLE DISSENTIENT
+ECHO! THIS IS THE SORT OF PEACE CONFERENCE I LIKE." (_Continues to
+jodel_.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mabel (in barefaced attempt to detain Mother when saying
+"Good-night")._ "OH, MUMMY, I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT THREE
+LITTLE BOYS."
+
+_Mother._ "NO, NO; GO TO SLEEP. THERE'S NO TIME TO TELL A STORY ABOUT THREE
+LITTLE BOYS."
+
+_Mabel._ "WELL, THEN, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT _TWO_ LITTLE BOYS."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE RABBITS GAME.
+
+"Don't forget to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow," said Angela. Angela is aged nine
+and my younger sister; I am thirteen and my name is Anne.
+
+We both looked inquiringly at Father, and, as he didn't seem to remember,
+Angela in pained surprise began to explain. "If you say 'Rabbits' before
+you say anything else on the first day of a month you get a present during
+the month, but you mustn't say anything else first, or you won't."
+
+It all came out in one breath and, though it looks clear enough now, Father
+was very stupid.
+
+"I dislike rabbits," he said, "and I am very busy; your Mother will
+probably be glad of them for the servants."
+
+The rebuke in Angela's eyes was severe. "We haven't got any rabbits," she
+said; "we are only going to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow morning when we wake up
+and we thought you might like to do the same."
+
+"Oh, I should," said Father; "thank you very much, I won't forget." And he
+wrote "Rabbits" down on his blotting-paper. "Now go and tell your Mother;
+she would like to say 'Rabbits' too, I know."
+
+That seemed to terminate the interview, so we left him; but altogether it
+was not very satisfactory. You see, when we had "Bon-jour-Philippines,"
+Father used to provide the presents; at least that was some time ago; we
+haven't had any "Bon-jour-Philippines" lately. The last time we did, Jack,
+that is my brother at Oxford, found one and split it with Father, and the
+next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine" first and then asked for a
+present. Father asked him what he wanted, and he gave Father a letter that
+he had had that morning. Father got very angry and said that it was a
+disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to young wasters nowadays. He
+didn't say it quite like that, it was rather worse, and Mother said, "Hush,
+dear; remember the children," and Father said that they were all as bad and
+in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he went out of the room and banged the
+door.
+
+Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack owned
+he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in before
+Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of LLOYD GEORGE. I
+don't quite know what he meant, but Father often talks about LLOYD GEORGE,
+and he must be a beast.
+
+I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had, but--and
+here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to laugh--"It is the very
+last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I used to consider my Father, and I
+would have worked in the fields and earned money sooner than have given him
+bills to pay." Jack said that he knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew
+Father, and from what he said he thought that Father must have spent as
+long in the fields as NEBUCHADNEZZAR did.
+
+I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I
+wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it, so
+I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say
+'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us
+something in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks
+quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful sometimes.
+
+We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we thought
+what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we gave him a
+pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost ninepence and
+was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a hole in his hat.
+
+Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes the
+gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I went
+to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a man was
+in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to try to
+make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully pleased when he gave him
+the pipe.
+
+You see that made it very difficult, as we had to get something that Father
+would like and Jakes too, as he still had thirteen children; and then I
+remembered that Mrs. Jakes had once looked at a woollen jumper that I had
+on, and said that it would be just the thing for her Mary Ann, who had a
+delicate chest, and Jakes would be sure to like what Mrs. Jakes liked, or
+else he wouldn't have married her. Of course a jumper wasn't really the
+sort of thing that Father could wear, but I thought he might wrap his foot
+up in it when he next had gout, and besides I shouldn't be wanting it much
+more myself, as the summer was coming on.
+
+Angela said that she thought that would do well, and she wouldn't mind
+giving Father her jumper next month if he said "Rabbits," and it would do
+for Mrs. Jakes' next little girl.
+
+So that was decided, and then we had to arrange the plan. The most
+important thing was for us to wake before Father, so that we could wake him
+and remind him before he had time to say anything else, and Angela
+remembered that Ellen, that's the housemaid, had an alarm clock, which she
+used to set at a quarter to six each morning. We waited until Ellen had
+gone downstairs and then took it and hid it in Angela's bed.
+
+Next morning the clock went off. We were both rather frightened, and it was
+very cold and the room looked funny, as the blinds hadn't been pulled up,
+but we put our dressing-gowns on. Then Angela said that she had heard that
+if you woke a person who was walking in their sleep they sometimes called
+out, so I took a pair of stockings from the basket that had just come back
+from the wash to hold over Father's mouth while we woke him. They were
+waiting to be mended and had a hole in them, but that didn't matter much,
+as I screwed them up tight, and then we went into Father's room. They were
+both asleep, and Father had his mouth open all ready for the stockings,
+which was very lucky, as I was wondering how I could get them in.
+
+We crept up to the bed, and I know I shivered, and I think Angela did too,
+as I was holding her hand. Then she called out "Boo" as loud as she could,
+and I stuffed the stockings into Father's mouth, and then they both woke
+up, and everything went wrong.
+
+Mother thought the house was on fire and screamed, and it made Angela begin
+to cry. I quite forgot to tell Father to say "Rabbits," and just pressed
+the stockings further into his mouth.
+
+Father struggled and made awful noises, and when he did get the stockings
+out the things he said weren't a bit like "Rabbits," and the only thing
+that he did say that I could write down here was that he thought he was
+going to be sick. The rest was dreadful.
+
+We were both sent back to bed, and that morning as a punishment we were not
+allowed into the dining-room until Father and Mother had finished their
+breakfast; and Angela, who often thinks quite clever things, said that we
+had better not do "Rabbits" again for a good long time. But after all it
+didn't matter much as the weather got a great deal colder, and I wore my
+jumper a lot, and so did Angela.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "LOOK 'ERE--THIS ARF-CROWN WON'T DO. IT AIN'T GOT NO MILLING
+ON ITS HEDGE."
+
+"BLIMY! NOR IT 'AS! I _KNEW_ I'D FORGOTTEN SOMEFINK."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FLOWERS' NAMES.
+
+          DAME'S DELIGHT.
+
+  There was a Lady walked a wood;
+  She never smiled, nor never could.
+  One day a sunbeam from the South
+  Kissed full her petulant proud mouth;
+  She laughed, and there, beneath the trees,
+  Fluttering in the April breeze,
+  Spread tracts of blossom, green and white,
+  Curtseying to the golden light--
+  The broken laugh of Dame's Delight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FIRST LOVE AND LAST.
+
+    [It is pointed out by a contemporary that the dressmaker's waxen model
+    has quite lost her old insipid air. The latest examples of the
+    modeller's art show the "glad eye" and features with which "any man
+    might fall in love."]
+
+  In the days when I started to toddle
+    I loved with a frenzy sublime
+  A dressmaker's beauteous model--
+    I think I was three at the time;
+  She was fair in the foolish old fashion,
+    And they found me again and again
+  With my nose in an access of passion
+          Glued tight to the pane.
+
+  But I thought they were gone past returning
+    Till Time should go back on his tracks,
+  Those days of a child's undiscerning
+    But fervent devotion to wax;
+  Could a heart, though admittedly restive,
+    Recapture that innocent mood
+  At sixty next birthday? I'm blest if
+          I thought that it could.
+
+  But Art, ever bent on progression,
+    Has taken the model in hand,
+  And brought in the line of succession
+    A figure more pleasingly planned;
+  Her eyes with the gladdest of glances,
+    Her lips and her hair and her cheek
+  Can puncture like so many lances
+          A bosom of teak.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HARD TIMES FOR HEROINES.
+
+"Oh, Bertram," breathed Eunice as she glided into his arms, "if Ernest
+knew, what would he think?"
+
+At this point of my story I admit that I was held up. I myself couldn't
+help wondering how Ernest would regard the situation. He was a perfectly
+good husband and, personally, I preferred him to Bertram the lover. I might
+get unpopular with my readers, however, if they suspected this, so I
+continued:--
+
+"Ernest can never appreciate you as I do, dearest," Bertram whispered
+hoarsely; "he is cold, hard, indifferent--"
+
+Again I paused. If Eunice had been the really nice girl I meant her to be
+she would have asked Bertram what on earth he meant by saying such things
+about her husband, and would have told him the shortest cut to the
+front-door. In which case she might never have got into print.
+
+The fact is the poor heroine of fiction has a hard time of it nowadays.
+Someone ought to write a treatise on "How to be Happy though a Heroine," or
+uphold her cause in some way. Twenty-five years ago she lived in a halo of
+romance. Her wooers were tender, respectful and adoring; she was never
+without a chaperon. Her love-story was conventional and ended in wedding
+bells. To-day--just see how her position has altered. Generally she begins
+by being married already. Then her lover comes along to place her in
+awkward predicaments and put her to no end of inconvenience, very often
+only to make her realise that she prefers her husband after all. Or, on the
+other hand, the modern writer does not mind killing off, on the barest
+pretext, a husband who is perfectly sound in wind and limb and had never
+suffered from anything in his life until the lover appeared. The poor girl
+will tell you herself that it isn't natural.
+
+Then there is the compromising situation. Magazine editors clamour for
+it--in fiction, I mean. We find the heroine flung on a desert island, with
+the one man above all others in the world that she detests as her sole
+companion. It is rather rough on her, but often still more rough on other
+people, as it may necessitate drowning the entire crew and passengers of a
+large liner just in order to leave the couple alone for a while to get to
+know each other better. And not until they find that they care for one
+another after all does the rescue party arrive. It will cruise about, or be
+at anchor round the corner, for weeks and weeks, so that it can appear on
+the horizon at the moment of the first embrace. This situation is so
+popular at present that it is surprising that there are enough desert
+islands to go round.
+
+Again, the lonely bungalow episode is pretty cheerless for the heroine. She
+accepts an apparently harmless invitation to spend a week-end with friends
+in the country. When she arrives at the station there is no one to meet
+her. After a course of desert islands this ought to arouse her suspicions,
+but she never seems to benefit by experience. At the bungalow, reached in a
+hired fly and a blinding snowstorm, she finds the whole household away. The
+four other week-end guests, her host and hostess and their five children,
+the invalid aunt who resides with the family, the three female servants and
+the boot-boy who lives in--all have completely vanished. The only sign of
+life for miles is the hero standing on the doorstep looking bewildered and
+troubled, as well he might, for he knows that he must spend the night in a
+snowstorm to avoid compromising the heroine.
+
+And when the family return next morning and explain that they went out to
+look at the sunset, but were held up at a neighbour's by the weather,
+nobody seems to think the excuse a little thin.
+
+The heroine can never hope for a tranquil existence like other people. I
+read of one only recently who, just because she strongly objected to the
+man her parents wanted her to marry, was flung with him on an iceberg that
+had only seating capacity for two. And when the iceberg began to melt--
+writers must at times manipulate the elements--it meant that she must
+either watch the man drown or share the same seat with him. The rescue
+party held off, of course, until the harassed girl was sitting on his
+knees, and then received the pair as they slid down, announcing their
+engagement.
+
+What do I intend to do with Bertram and Eunice? I am undecided whether to
+place them in the vicinity of a volcano, which, unknown to Bertram, has
+eruptive tendencies, or to send them up in an aeroplane and break the
+propeller in mid-Atlantic just as the rescue party (including the
+husband)--What? Do I understand anything about aeroplanes? Certainly not;
+but I know everything about heroines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EVIDENCE.
+
+"What's all this I hear about the Abbey?" said my friend Truscott when I
+met him yesterday.
+
+Truscott has just returned from New Zealand and is for the moment a little
+behind the times. But he can pick up the threads as quickly as most men.
+
+"It's in a bad way," I told him. "All kinds of defects in the fabric, and
+there's a public fund to make it sound again. You ought to subscribe."
+
+"It may be in disrepair," he replied, "but it isn't going to fall down just
+yet. I know; I went to see it this morning."
+
+"But how do you know?" I asked. "You may guess; you can't know."
+
+"I know," he said, "because I was told. A little bird told me, and there's
+no authority half so good. Do you remember a few years ago a terrific storm
+that blew down half the elms in Kensington Gardens?"
+
+I remembered. I had reason; for the trunks and branches were all over the
+road and my omnibus from Church Street to Piccadilly Circus had to make
+wide detours.
+
+"Well," Truscott continued, "someone wrote to the papers to say that two or
+three days before the storm all the rooks left the trees and did not
+return. They knew what was coming. Birds do know, you know, and that's why
+I feel no immediate anxiety about the Abbey."
+
+"Explain," I said.
+
+"Well," he continued, "when I was there this morning I watched a sparrow
+popping in and out of a nest built in a niche in the stonework over the
+north door."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES.
+
+THEN AND NOW.
+
+_From an Early-Victorian "Etiquette for Gentlemen_."--"A GENTLEMAN CANNOT
+BE TOO CAREFUL TO AVOID STEPPING ON A LADY'S DRESS WHEN ABOUT TO GET IN OR
+OUT OF A CARRIAGE."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THOUGHTS ON "THE TIMES."
+
+(FROM A TRAIN.)
+
+Really the news is very bad this morning. On the front page there are two
+Foreign crises and a Home one. On the next page there is one Grave Warning
+and two probable strikes. On every other page there is either a political
+murder or a new war. It is awful ...
+
+Yet somehow I don't feel depressed. I rather feel like giggling. An empty
+smoker in the Cornish express--_empty_ except for me! Extraordinary! And
+all my luggage in the right van, labelled for Helston, and not for Hull or
+Harwich or Hastings. That porter was a splendid fellow, so respectful, so
+keen on his work--no Bolshevism about _him_. I gave him a shilling. I gave
+the taxi-man a shilling too. That guard is a pleasant fellow also; I shall
+give him two shillings, perhaps half-a-crown. Yet I see that the railways
+are seething with unrest.
+
+I have just read _The Times'_ leader. Everything seems to be coming undone
+... Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India. This Bolshevist business ...
+dreadful. The guard has got me a ticket for the Second Luncheon. A capital
+fellow. I gave him three shillings. Absurd. I have no more shillings now. I
+am overdrawn. There is a financial crisis. But that, of course, is general.
+I see that Mr. Iselbaum anticipates a general smash this winter. A terrible
+winter it is going to be ... no coal, no food ... We ought to be in by
+five, in time for a fat late tea ... Cornish cream ... jam. Gwen will be at
+the station, with the children, all in blue ... or pink perhaps. How jolly
+the country looks! Superficial, of course; the harvest's ruined; no wheat,
+no fruit. And unemployment will be very bad. And the more people there are
+unemployed the more people will strike ... Sounds funny, that; but true ...
+Hope they've given us the usual table in the coffee-room, that jolly
+window-table in the corner, where one can look across the bay to the cliffs
+and the corn-fields and the hills ... Only there's no corn, I suppose, this
+year ... And one has a good view of the rest of the room there ... can
+study the new arrivals at dinner, instead of having to wait till
+afterwards. Dinner is much the best time to study them; you can see at once
+how they eat. And it is so much easier to decide which is the sister and
+which the _fiancée_ of the young man when they are all stationary at a
+table. When you only see them rushing about passages in ones it takes days.
+
+All the usual families will be there, I suppose--the Bradleys and the
+Clinks, old Mrs. Puntage and the kids--if they can afford it this year ...
+Very likely they can't. I can't, certainly. But I'm going.
+
+"Not since the fateful week-end of August, 1914, when the destinies of
+Europe were decided in a few hours, have issues of such gravity engaged the
+attention of the British race...." Dreadful. I shall get some tennis
+tomorrow. I shan't be called. I shall get up when the sun is on my face and
+not before. I shall dress very, very slowly, looking at the sea and the
+sands and the sun, not rushing, not shaving properly, not thinking, not
+washing a great deal, just sort of falling into an old coat and some grey
+flannels.... Then I shall just sort of fall downstairs--about half-past
+nine, and give the old barometer a bang. Then breakfast, very deliberate,
+but cheerful, because the glass went up when I banged it--it always goes up
+at that hotel ... like the cost of living. Up another five points to-day, I
+see. Bread's going to be one-and-threepence. But of course there won't _be_
+any bread this winter, so the price doesn't much matter. But what about
+coal? and milk? and meat? "Several new sets of wage claims are due for
+decision within the next few weeks, and it is possible that two of them at
+least may not be determined without a cessation of work." More strikes ...
+But not for a week or two. To-morrow there won't be any papers at
+breakfast; there won't be any letters. I shan't catch the 9.5. After
+breakfast I shall smoke on the cliff--then some tennis. Most of the balls
+will go over the cliff, but when they have all gone one just slips down and
+bathes, and picks them up on the way. Undress on the rocks--no machines, no
+tents. Jolly bathing. Mixed, of course. This Tonbridge councillor is on
+about that again, I see. He ought to come to Mullion. Mixed bathing depends
+entirely on the mixture. He doesn't realise that. Of course, if he _will_
+bathe at Tonbridge ...
+
+"In diplomatic circles no one is attempting to conceal that the situation
+is extremely grave." Now which situation is that? That must be one of these
+world-plots. Don't really see how civilisation can carry on more than a
+week or two now. Lucky I only took a single, perhaps. It was only two
+pounds, but I hadn't enough for a return. Never shall have enough,
+probably--but no matter. If the world is coming to an end, might as well be
+in a good part of it at the time. And it would be sickening to be snuffed
+out with an unused return-ticket in one's pocket.
+
+On the sands after lunch--build a few castles and dams and things for the
+children--at least, not altogether for the children, not so much as they
+think, anyhow. Tea at the farm, with plenty of cream, possibly an egg ...
+No eggs this winter, I see; some question of non-unionists. Then a little
+golf before dinner--and perhaps a little dancing afterwards. Coffee, anyhow
+...
+
+Then _The Times_ arrives, all wrapped up, just as one is explaining about
+the seventh hole. It is all stiff and crinkly, and one spends a long time
+rearranging it, flattening out the folds ...
+
+And one never reads it. That's the best of all.
+
+A.P.H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: NATIONAL RESEARCH.
+
+_THE DAILY QUEST_, EVER WITH ITS FINGER ON THE PUBLIC PULSE, SENDS A
+SPECIAL COMMISSIONER TO OUR HOLIDAY RESORTS TO DISCOVER WHICH HAS THE
+NICEST NECKS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _The Cheerful One._ "CONGRATULATIONS, OLD CHAP, ON FINDING
+YOUR GAME AGAIN."
+
+_Club Grouser._ "FINDING MY GAME! WHY, I'VE JUST OFFERED TO SELL EVERY
+DAMNED CLUB IN MY BAG."
+
+_The Cheerful One._ "YES, I KNOW. BUT YESTERDAY YOU WERE _GIVING_ THEM
+AWAY."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRONE.
+
+_To the Editor of "Punch."_
+
+SIR,--I am an architect (of forty-three years' standing) and I like to keep
+_au courant_ with everything in the world of building (or of being about to
+build). Consequently anything new in constructional material interests me,
+and in this connection I would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I
+have only seen it (or them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather
+that the word "prone" stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the
+plural of "grouse," and as "house" might well stand for the plural of
+"house" nowadays, considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or
+they) is (or are) used either as a floor covering or otherwise in
+connection with working on the floor or ground.
+
+My reason for so thinking is contained in the following interesting item,
+culled from a well-known daily newspaper:--
+
+    "There is in London one man at least who works hard every day and has
+    to lay prone to do it.
+
+    He may be seen daily in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey re-cutting
+    the names on the flagged gravestones which have been worn by countless
+    pilgrims' feet. He has picked out many illustrious names, and others
+    are to follow."
+
+The sex and species of this hard-worker preclude the notion of any
+oviparous act, and I take it that one "lays prone" as one lays a mat or
+strip of carpet, for the purpose of facilitating labour that is done on the
+knees or stomach. If I am right I should like to get my builder to order
+some for his workmen absolutely at once.
+
+Anything which would help to defeat the Trade Unions in their fight against
+speeding-up would be a blessing, especially to the architectural world, so
+perhaps you will be good enough to enlighten me on the nature of Prone, and
+where obtainable.
+
+Believe me, Yours very gravely,
+ONESIMUS STONE (F.R.I.B.A.).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From an American book on "How and What to Read":--
+
+    "Other great American short story writers include Bret Harte, Edward
+    Everett Hale, Frank Stockton, and Mary E. Wilkins. With these may be
+    included Thomas Hardy's 'Life's Little Ironies,' which are full of
+    fun."
+
+Mr. HARDY will be glad, no doubt, to add this little irony to his
+collection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KELPIE.
+
+  The scoffer rails at ancient tales
+    Of lake and stream and river;
+  The wise man owns that in his bones
+    The kelpie makes him shiver.
+
+  Big salmon-flies the scoffer buys,
+    Long rods and wading stockings;
+  Unpicturesque he walks in Esk
+    With unbelief and mockings.
+
+  "A river-horse! O-ho, of course!"
+    And shouts with ribald laughter;
+  He does not see in his cheap glee
+    The kelpie trotting after.
+
+  The storm comes chill from off the hill;
+    An eerie wind doth holloa;
+  And near and near by surges drear
+    The water-horse doth follow.
+
+  A snort, a snuff; enough, enough;
+    Past prayer or human help he
+  Comes never more to mortal door
+    Who meets the water-kelpie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "THE KING ARRIVES IN SCOTLAND
+
+    ASKED TO LEAVE."
+
+    _Consecutive Headlines in "The Daily Mirror."_
+
+The habit of reading the headlines in our pictorial newspapers without
+glancing at the pictures beneath them is liable to create false
+impressions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mrs. Symons (wishing to draw attention, in the time-
+honoured manner, to the amount of dust on the drawing-room furniture)._
+"LOOK AT THAT, MARTHA; I CAN WRITE MY NAME ON THE PIANO."
+
+_Martha._ "FANCY, NOW, YOU SPELLING IT WITH A 'Y.'"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO A MAKER OF PILLS.
+
+    "The Pill Trade has fallen on evil days; no ex-service men seem to
+    require pills."--_A pill manufacturer summoned for rates at Willesden._
+
+  O Benefactor of the British Tommy,
+    So often sick in far unfriendly climes,
+  What tears of sympathy are flowing from me
+    To learn that you have fallen on evil times!
+  Yea, to my mind 'tis little short of tragic
+  That men no longer buy your potent spheres of magic!
+
+  Scarce less detested than the Bulgar bullet
+    Your bitter pellets of Quin. Sulph. gr. 5
+  Have often stuck in my long-suffering gullet,
+    Leaving me barely more than half alive,
+  Whilst the accursed drug, whose taste I dread,
+  Hummed like an aeroplane within my throbbing head.
+
+  And what about Acetyl-Salicylic,
+    And what of Calomels and Soda Sals?
+  Existence had been even less idyllic
+    Without those powerful and faithful pals!
+  Why, midst the fevers of the Struma plain you
+  Furnished the greater part of Tommy's daily menu.
+
+  Or what of that infallible specific,
+    Your Pil. Cathartic Comp., or No. 9,
+  Whose world-wide influence must have been terrific
+    Since first it found its footing in the Line?
+  The British Tommy took it by the million--
+  Why should it fail to sell now he has turned civilian?
+
+  It is not base ingratitude that blinds him
+    To recognition of an ancient debt,
+  But rather that the sight of these reminds him
+    Of painful days which he would fain forget.
+  When life was one long round of guards and drills,
+  Marches, patrols, fatigues and sick parades--and pills.
+
+  Yet hear me, maker of the potent pilule:
+    Although my days of soldiering are o'er,
+  I'm fondly trusting that, when next I'm ill, you
+    Come to my rescue as you came of yore;
+  Meanwhile you'll understand that I, for one,
+  Refuse to buy your wares and eat them just for fun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A DEAD HEAT.
+
+    "In the high jump final, Landen (U.S.A.) was first with a jump of 6ft.
+    4-1/2in.; Muller (U.S.A.) and E. Keleend (Sweeden) died for second
+    place."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "I heard Lord Rosebery say: 'Your little girl has got beautiful eyes.'
+    I repeated this upstairs with joy and excitement to the family, who ...
+    said they thought it was true enough if my eyes had not been so close
+    together."--_Extract from Autobiography of Margot Asquith._
+
+Her "I's" are generally rather close together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The policy which should be adopted is first to take steps to prevent
+    prices continuing to rise, and then to endeavour to reduce them until
+    the purchasing power of the pound sterling is equal to the purchasing
+    power of the dollar."--_Financial Paper_.
+
+Judging by the New York exchange good progress has been made in this
+direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE "HOUSE"-BREAKER.
+
+OVERTHROW OF THE PARLIAMENT OF DEMOCRACY; A DREAM OF THE "COUNCIL OF
+ACTION."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mother._ "YOUR COUSIN JIM HAS OFFERED TO TAKE YOU TO DINNER
+AND A THEATRE TO-NIGHT. AREN'T YOU PLEASED?"
+
+_Daughter._ "OH, IT'S ALL RIGHT, BUT HE LOOKS SO ROTTENLY RESPECTABLE."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEORGE, JANE AND LENIN.
+
+Now that Soviet rule in England is apparently so imminent it seems to me
+that we ought to consider a little more closely the application of its
+practical machinery. The morning papers reach this village at three o'clock
+in the afternoon, so that nobody is in to read them, and when one comes
+back in the evening one is generally too lazy, but a couple of rather
+startling sentences about the coming Communist _régime_ have recently
+caught my eye.
+
+"The people of England, like the people of Russia," runs the first, "will
+soon be working under the lash." And the second, so far as I remember,
+says, "Our rations will no doubt be reduced to half a herring and some
+boiled bird-seed, which is all the unhappy Russians are getting to eat."
+
+Before these changes fall suddenly upon us I think we should ponder a
+little on the way in which they will affect our urban and agricultural
+life.
+
+Take the House of Commons. A very large and symbolic knout might occupy the
+position of the present mace, and from time to time the SPEAKER could take
+it up and crack it. As this needs a certain amount of practice it will be
+necessary to select a fairly horsey man as Speaker, and the Whips, who will
+follow the same procedure, should also be skilled practitioners. I see no
+difficulty in applying the same method to commercial and factory life in
+general, still less to the packing of the Underground Railway and the
+loading of motor-omnibuses and trams.
+
+It is rather when we come to scattered rural communities that the system
+seems likely to break down. Take the case of George Harrison in this
+village. When I first met George Harrison, and he said that he thought the
+weather was lifting, he was carrying a basket of red plums which he offered
+to sell me for an old song. On subsequent occasions I met him--
+
+1. Driving cows. (At least I suppose he was driving them; he was sitting
+sideways on a large horse doing nothing in particular, and some of the cows
+were going into one field and some into another, and a dog was biting their
+tails indiscriminately.)
+
+2. Clearing muck and weeds out of the stream.
+
+3. Setting a springe for rabbits.
+
+4. Delivering letters, because the postman doesn't like walking up the
+hill.
+
+Now I maintain that there would be insuperable difficulties in making
+George carry out all these various activities under the lash. Anyone, I
+suppose, under a properly constituted Soviet _régime_ might be detailed as
+George Harrison's lasher, Mr. SMILLIE, Mr. G.K. CHESTERTON, Lord CURZON,
+Mr. CLYNES or the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND. Can you imagine Mr. CHESTERTON
+walking about on guard duty in a rabbit warren while George Harrison set
+springes in accordance with the principles laid down by the Third
+Internationale for rabbit-snaring? or the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND standing
+in gum-boots in the middle of a stream and flicking George Harrison about
+the trousers if he didn't rake out old tin cans at forty to the minute as
+laid down by the Moscow Code? Now I ask you.
+
+And then there is this half a herring and boiled bird-seed arrangement.
+George Harrison has a sister of eighteen who kindly comes in to do cooking
+and housework for us every day. She thinks us frightfully queer, and if we
+bought some herrings and bird-seed and asked her to cook them for us I have
+no doubt she would oblige, but, though she doesn't much care what we eat,
+there are a lot of things she doesn't eat herself, and fish is one of them.
+Porridge, which, I suppose, is a kind of bird-seed, is another.
+
+Not that Jane calls it eating, by the way. She calls it "touching," and
+there are any number of things that she doesn't fancy touching. She will
+touch enormous platefuls of bacon or sausages or almost any derivative of
+the domestic pig, and the same applies to puddings and cake. But beef and
+mutton she does not touch, nor margarine, and we have to be almost as
+careful that Jane Harrison has plenty of the right things to touch as about
+the whole of the rest of the family.
+
+Now here again I think it would be quite possible to induce the people of
+England in our large industrial centres to ration themselves on boiled
+herring and bird-seed. We should not use those names, of course. The
+advertisements on the hoardings would say:--
+
+  THE BOUNTIFUL HARVEST OF THE SEA BROUGHT TO THE BREAKFAST TABLE
+
+or
+
+  WHAT MAKES THE SKYLARK SO HAPPY?
+  TRY HARRABY'S HEMP. A SONG IN EVERY SPOONFUL.
+
+But propaganda of that sort would have no effect on Jane. She would simply
+say that she never cared to touch herrings and that she did not fancy
+hemp-seed.
+
+When I consider the cases of George and Jane I am bound to believe either
+that the Russian moujiks (if this is still the right word) are more docile
+and tractable than ours, or else that the Soviet _régime_ will need a great
+deal of adaptation before it can be extended to our English villages. Or,
+of course, it may be possible that some of the minuter details of M.
+LENIN'S administration have not been fully revealed to me. I shall find out
+about this no doubt when I return to London. In the meantime I am banking
+on George and Jane, whatever the COUNCIL OF ACTION may do.
+
+EVOE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE OLD ORDER CHANGES.
+
+    "'He brightened up a lot when his mother-in-law arrived,' said an
+    onlooker.--"_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Wee Donald Angus._ "PLEASE, SIRR, WHAT TIME WULL IT BE?"
+
+_Literal Gentleman._ "WHEN?"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUCERNE.
+
+  O, every dog must have its day
+    And ev'ry town its turn;
+  For fair is fair ... and, anyway,
+    Let's talk about Lucerne.
+
+Lucerne is in Switzerland, and I am in Lucerne. The moment I heard that Mr.
+LLOYD GEORGE was coming to Lucerne I felt that a new importance was added
+to Switzerland, to Lucerne, to me and, if I may say so, to Mr. LLOYD
+GEORGE. But I felt that, if I didn't do something about it, Lucerne and Mr.
+LLOYD GEORGE would get away with all the credit and my part in the affair
+would be overlooked.
+
+The question arose as to what to call that "something"? After a great deal
+of thought I decided to try you with a short and simple "Lucerne," one of
+my reasons being that, if you get down to the hard facts, there is no such
+place.
+
+Try (as the G.P.O. suggests to disappointed envelopes)--try
+
+  LUZERN.
+
+Now don't let us have any argument about it, please. It makes no difference
+how long you have called the place "Lucerne" or how many of you there are.
+It is no good saying that English people and French people call it
+"Lucerne" and as victors the Entente have the right to impose their wishes;
+and it is no good quoting authorities at me. Luzern calls itself Luzern,
+and, to satisfy myself that it is not mistaken on the point, I have
+obtained complete corroboration from the _Amtliches Schweizerisches
+Kursbuch_, an authority whose very name is enough to make your _Bradshaw_
+look silly and shut up.
+
+The avowed object of the PREMIER is to get away from people and politics
+and to have at last a little uninterrupted holiday. Probably he counts on
+the difficulty of getting at him there, having regard to that terrible bit
+of the journey Bern--Luzern, which covers sixty miles, takes three hours
+and involves twenty-four stops, even if you take the mid-day express. There
+is a train in the afternoon (its number is 5666, and I warn you against it)
+which takes four hours, though it only stops twenty-four times also. The
+sinister fact is that all the trains on this route stop as often as they
+can, which I attribute to that general wave of idleness which is to-day
+spreading over Europe. But number 5666 is worse than others; or else it is
+getting old and tired. I notice that among the trains doing the return
+journey there is no number 5666; I suppose it has just as much as it can do
+to get there and that it never does return.
+
+The PREMIER was not far out to count on this protective element, and it is
+still the fact that, if you approach Luzern carelessly, it is ninety-nine
+to one that you will spend the best years of your young life on that
+particular stretch of railway. But nowadays there is a back way round, by
+Basel. Be quite firm in asking for your ticket. If the ticket man says,
+"You mean Bâle?" or, "You mean Basle?" say, "No, I don't. I mean Basel."
+You have me and my friend, _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_, behind
+you. Stick firmly to your point, and by approaching Luzern from the North
+you will approach it by a real express which only takes two hours to do its
+sixty miles and hardly stops at all to take breath. So that finishes with
+Bern, as to the spelling of which, though you would personally like to see
+some more "e's," you now repose confidence in me. Would you like me to
+quote my authority?... All right; I won't say it again if it frightens the
+children.
+
+In the old days of Peace, Luzern was full of honeymoon couples, and, when
+Peace and honeymoons and all that sort of nonsense were put a stop to, it
+became full of German interned prisoners of war. It boasts many first-class
+hotels. One of them is patronised by the Greek ex-Royal Family. A little
+unfortunate; but still you cannot expect to come and enjoy yourself in
+Switzerland without the risk of running into an ex-Royal Family every
+corner you go round, and, what is more, a Royal Family that wouldn't be ex-
+if it wasn't for you. It is a very good hotel, and I recommend it for
+anyone who proposes just to pop over here.
+
+Get hold of L.G. while he is not busy and explain to him how thoroughly
+misguided all his policies are, especially as to the Near East. My idea is
+to group, according to subject and side, all those who intend to get hold
+of the PREMIER, while he is alone, and to have a quiet chat with him. I
+have my eye on a large hangar on the other side of the Lake, which was
+built to house a dirigible and ought to hold the bulk of those who want a
+word about Ireland, a place they could put right in five minutes if it was
+left to them. Deputations which have some idea of declaring strikes,
+general strikes and international strikes, if matters are not arranged to
+their liking, will be received between the hours of ten and twelve, and two
+and four, at the Kursaal. Saturday afternoons and Sundays will be reserved
+for quiet walks. I am mapping out some interesting routes, marking with a
+red dot the spots where the PREMIER is likely to stop and admire the view,
+and where you can approach him quietly from behind and involve him in an
+argument about Russia before he has time to get away.
+
+Image a PREMIER arrived at the end of all the beautiful sights to be seen
+locally, inured to all the magnificent scenery around him, and no longer
+attracted by the novelty of life abroad, longing, it may be, for just one
+touch of home. Then is the moment for the little surprise I am keeping for
+him up my sleeve. "Come along to a place close by," I shall say to him, for
+I see myself with the whole business well in my hands now; "come along to a
+village I know, whose very name will make you feel at home."
+
+Just outside Luzern we stop at Meggen, but it's not that. Kussnacht gets us
+well abroad again, and there is nothing particularly homely about Immensee,
+Arth-Goldau, Steinen, Schwyz or Brunnen. In fact I can see my PREMIER
+getting suspicious and wondering what new political move this may be, when
+suddenly there will burst upon his astonished gaze--
+
+  FLUELLEN.
+
+Let us leave him there, alone with his emotions, into which it would be
+impertinent to probe. I may tell you quietly apart that there is a
+difference of opinion between me and _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_
+about this name. He wants to ration the l's, but, having been there and
+heard the name pronounced, I have refused to be taught how to spell a good
+Welsh name by a darned foreigner. If we are going to have any nonsense
+about it I have said that I shall stand out for the proper, full and
+uncorrupt spelling: FLLEWELLYN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "'ERE--CHUCK IT, MISSUS. WHY CAN'T YER LET US FIGHT IN
+PEACE?"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'That,' declared Mr. Lloyd George amid loud cheers, 'is one of the
+    most formidable challenges ever given to democracy. Without hesitation
+    every Government must accept that challenge.' 'Certainly we will,'
+    retorted the Prime Minister."--_Evening Paper._
+
+No wonder Mr. LLOYD GEORGE wants a holiday if he has begun to talk to
+himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "A telegram from Paris says: It is announced here that an agreement has
+    been concluded between France, Great Britain and Italy regarding the
+    delimitation of the open golf championship."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+It will be noticed that America seems once more to have held aloof from the
+councils of the Allies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"TO HIM THAT HATH ..."
+
+It was Butterington who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple
+question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways
+I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he
+himself was not in the fur line.
+
+"Whenever," he went on, "I require information on any subject I apply to my
+bank. Why don't you do the same?"
+
+This opened up an entirely new prospect. To me my bank was an institution
+which kept my accounts, issued money and, on occasion, lent it. It never
+entered my head that it was also ready to perform the functions of an
+inquiry office and information bureau.
+
+Previous communications from me had always begun, "Sir, with reference to
+my overdraft"--you know the sort of thing one generally writes to banks;
+expostulating, tactful, temporising letters.
+
+This time however I addressed them in different vein. Rejecting all mention
+of overdrafts as being in doubtful taste, I wrote:--
+
+SIR,--I shall be greatly obliged if you will kindly inform me, at your
+early convenience:
+
+(1) Whether it is a fact that the African rhinoceros has no hair on the
+hind legs?
+
+(2) Whether, in the case of my backing Pegasus in the first race, 'any to
+come' on Short Time in the fourth, and Short Time not starting, I am
+entitled to my winnings over Pegasus?
+
+(3) Whether, after perusing seventeen favourable reports from mining
+engineers and eighty-seven enthusiastic directors' speeches, I am justified
+in assuming that gold actually does exist in the Bonanzadorado mine?
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+THESIGER CHOLMONDELEY BEAUCHAMP.
+
+After some delay they answered as follows:--
+
+SIR,--We have much pleasure in replying to the queries contained in your
+favour, of the 27th ult.:--
+
+    (1) Yes; (2) Yes; (3) No.
+
+Assuring you always of our best endeavours in your service,
+
+We remain, Yours faithfully,
+_per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.
+
+C.O. SHINE.
+
+So far so good. The Bank's manner left nothing to be desired, and its
+replies were certainly to the point. I began to think of Mr. C.O. Shine as
+my personal friend and speculated as to whether his first name were Claude
+or Clarence.
+
+During the following week, whenever I became curious on any subject, I made
+notes of fresh queries to propound. After accumulating a sufficient number
+I again wrote to the Bank. I forget the exact points upon which I required
+information; one of them, I fancy, was the conjectured geologic age of the
+Reichardtite strata. Anyhow I got no answer to any of them.
+
+Instead, three days later, I received the following letter:--
+
+SIR,--We regret to announce that, owing to a clerical error in this office,
+your account was last month wrongly credited with a cheque for £13,097 5s.
+10d. which was made payable to another client of the same name.
+
+Adjustments have now been made which reveal a balance on your account of
+£110 11s. 3d. _in our favour_. We trust that you will find it convenient to
+cover this overdraft at an early date.
+
+With reference to your letter of the 19th inst. containing assorted
+inquiries, we beg to intimate that we can in no circumstances undertake to
+advise clients on general matters which lie outside the scope of our
+interests.
+
+Yours faithfully,
+_per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.
+
+CHARLES O. SHINE.
+
+And this time C.O.S. did not even "remain" in the plural.
+
+I at once showed Butterington this offensive communication.
+
+"Well," said he, "of course they won't answer communications unless you
+have a balance."
+
+That is the way rich men talk.
+
+"I am never without one," I replied with dignity, "on one side or the
+other."
+
+"There you differ from your namesake, whose balance is clearly always on
+the right side. Hence that first kindly letter, addressed to you in error."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ROMANCE OF ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+The following items, culled from recent issues of _The Daily Lure_, show
+where you should go to find really interesting, stimulating and flat-
+catching notices:--
+
+Partner, with not less than five thousand pounds, wanted for a wild-duck
+farm in the island of Mull. Must be a man of iron constitution; Gaelic
+speaker and teetotaler preferred.
+
+* * *
+
+Wanted, a cheap Desert Island, with a good water-supply and home comforts,
+by a Georgian poet weary of the racket of Hammersmith.
+
+* * *
+
+Complete suits of armour, guaranteed bottle-proof, ten guineas each,
+suitable for elderly pedestrians in charabanc areas.
+
+* * *
+
+Madame Bogolubov, Crystal-gazer in ordinary to the ex-King CONSTANTINE, is
+prepared for a small fee to advise intending explorers, prospectors or
+treasure-seekers as to suitable spots for excavation, oil-boring, etc.
+
+* * *
+
+Disused Martello Tower on the Irish coast, fifty miles from a police
+barrack, offered cheap as an appropriate basis of observation to psychic
+enthusiasts anxious to study the ways of leprechauns, banshees, etc.
+
+* * *
+
+Genuine portraits by VAN DYCK, VELASQUEZ and REMBRANDT must be sold
+immediately to pay a debt of honour. Price thirty shillings each, or would
+take part payment in pre-war whisky.
+
+* * *
+
+Semi-paralysed Yugo-Slav professor, speaking seventeen languages, will give
+lessons to neo-plutocrats in the correct pronunciation of the names of all
+the foreign singers, dancers and artists performing or exhibiting in
+London.
+
+* * *
+
+Persons interested in edible fungi may be glad to take shares in a fungus
+plantation about to be started in the neighbourhood of Toller Porcorum,
+Dorchester.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE RETURN OF THE COLONEL.
+
+  House, the enigmatic Colonel, WILSON'S right-hand man in France
+  When the PRESIDENT was leading Peace's great Parisian dance,
+  Once again returns to Europe as a journalist free-lance.
+
+  He's a most sagacious person, indisposed to carp or grouse,
+  So we hope he'll be successful, aided by his tact and _nous_,
+  In upholding Mr. WILSON, _not_ in bringing down the House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE UBIQUITOUS SCOT.
+
+From _The Times'_ summary of news:--
+
+    "Our Constantinople correspondent, in a message reviewing the situation
+    in Armenia, states that the Armenians have captured the ancient town of
+    Nakhitchevan, where a Tartan Government had been set up."
+
+Small wonder that, people complain that no place is safe from Scotland's
+activities. Meanwhile there seems a likelihood of a Tarzan Government being
+set up in the film world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Mrs. ASQUITH'S reminiscences:
+
+    "One day after this conversation he [the late Lord Salisbury] came to
+    see me in Cavendish Square, bringing with him a signed photograph of
+    himself. This was in the year 1904, at the height of the controversy
+    over Protection."--_Sunday Times._
+
+As Lord SALISBURY is generally supposed to have died in 1903, Sir ARTHUR
+CONAN DOYLE has been requested to investigate the incident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST MAN WAS IN AND WITH ONLY ONE RUN WANTED--]
+
+[Illustration: SMITH, OF ALL PEOPLE, DROPPED A CATCH.]
+
+[Illustration: HE STOLE AWAY--]
+
+[Illustration: BUT HIS SIN FOLLOWED HIM.]
+
+[Illustration: HE DECIDED--]
+
+[Illustration: TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.]
+
+[Illustration: AFTER MANY YEARS HE RETURNED.]
+
+[Illustration: "GOOD HEAVENS, SMITH, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU SINCE YOU DROPPED
+THAT CATCH AT THE CIRCLE."]
+
+[Illustration: "YES, I ONCE SAW HIM PLAY WHEN I WAS QUITE A LAD. ON THAT
+OCCASION HE HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO DROP A CATCH."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AT THE PLAY.
+
+"HIS LADY FRIENDS."
+
+The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its
+setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical
+considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify
+its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to
+national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or
+you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage
+purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But
+to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs.
+NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American
+setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two
+actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent,
+is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence.
+
+However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really
+matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory
+facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous
+as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his
+guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition,
+who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of
+knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary
+distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine."
+
+[Illustration: "I want to spread a little sunshine."
+
+_James Smith_ ... Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY.
+
+_Eva Johns_ ... Miss JOAN BARRY.]
+
+This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult one for
+a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in the
+neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco, Washington,
+Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of his superfluous
+wealth. The natural affection, however, which his generosity inspired was
+not utilised by him, and you must try to believe that, in spite of the most
+sinister appearances, he remained a faithful husband.
+
+With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not
+trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the
+obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends
+well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will
+herself do all the necessary squandering.
+
+Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY as _James Smith_ was irresistible in most of the old
+ways and a few new ones. The play would have gone poorly without him, in
+spite of the piquancy of Miss JOAN BARRY as a flapper, the fourth and final
+recipient of his chaste bounty. Miss JESSIE BATEMAN as _Mrs. James Smith_
+had no chance till just at the end with the turning of the worm. To the
+part of _Lucille Early_--the _Earlys_, as a couple, were designed to
+contrast with the _Smiths_, the wife in this case spending the money which
+the husband hadn't got--Miss ATHENE SEYLER, who was meant for better
+things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps "pressed" a little too
+much. Mr. JAMES CAREW, who played _Edward Early_, was conspicuous as the
+sole male representative of the American language in this American play.
+The fleeting visions that we had of Miss MONA HARRISON as a refractory and
+venal cook excited general approval. The three _protegées_ of _James Smith_
+were only faintly distinguishable in their rather crude banality.
+
+The fun of the farce differed from that of most farces in depending less
+upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the situations
+still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune to read Miss
+EDGINGTON'S novel, but one might be permitted to assume, from the
+excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other
+respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of
+hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, but
+the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of
+motive, with the last two in which he figured, _The Naughty Wife_ and _Home
+and Beauty._ He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was rather noticeable
+that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he confined himself to
+a personal acknowledgment of the public's sympathy with him in his illness
+and their loyalty throughout his career, and made no reference to the play
+or its authors.
+
+O.S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A SUPER-SURPRISE.
+
+  I have not seen the stalking
+    By a rabbit of a bear,
+  Nor yet an oyster walking
+    Sedately up the stair;
+  But a marvel as amazing
+    Inspires these doggerel rhymes,
+  For I've read a leader praising
+    The PREMIER in _The Times_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A HOUSE-WARMING.
+
+    "Considerable damage was done by fire at ---- Cottage on Wednesday
+    evening. The stairs, part of the floor, doors, furniture, etc., were
+    destroyed.
+
+    ---- presided at the piano, and Mrs. ---- presided over the
+    refreshments. 'God save the King' was sung at the close of the
+    enjoyable day."--_Local Paper_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Labour "Council of Action" have kindly stated that they are "content to
+leave the French Government to the French people." They are however
+reserving the right to leave the British Government to the Bolshevists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "We must repeat the Scots proverb that--'Delays are dangerous.'"--
+    _Sunday Paper._
+
+Or, as DRYDEN says in his Address to a Haggis, "De'il tak' the hindmost."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The proportion of sane to insane persons in civilized countries is
+    about one to 300."--_Canadian Paper_.
+
+Surely Carlyle said something very like this years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.
+
+    "RAINCOATS AT LESS THAN COST PRICE LAST 3 DAYS."--_Advert. in
+    Provincial Paper_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Lady has Left-off Clothing; privately."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+Of course. That goes without saying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Trainer_ (_to Irish apprentice who has finished among the
+"also ran"_). "WHY DIDN'T YOU HANG ON TO THE FAVOURITE? DIDN'T I TELL YOU
+YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE HE WAS AFRAID OF."
+
+_Apprentice._ "THAT'S JUST IT, SORR. 'TWAS THE WAY HE WAS SO AFRAID OF ME,
+WHIN WE CAME INTO THE STRAIGHT, HE JUST FLED AWAY FROM ME."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
+
+(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
+
+Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly stirred
+by the announcement of _Island Tales_ (MILLS AND BOON), a posthumous volume
+containing what is probably the last writing of the late JACK LONDON. I can
+say at once that these seven stories show his art in one aspect of its
+best. Not here the LONDON, whom some of us might prefer, of the strenuous
+adventure-tale, with whom there was no respite till, at the end of anything
+up to a hundred sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end.
+That South Sea atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary
+temperament (from STEVENSON to STACPOOLE you can see it at work) has
+steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of perpetual afternoon, so that
+the action of them tends to become overlaid by slow reflective talk, old
+memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the
+first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so
+much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour.
+Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last--"The Kanaka Surf,"
+a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be
+understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise
+what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled loveliness on to
+the printed page--and what another loss in not seeing the original for
+ourselves. I suppose no tribute to the power of genius could be more
+eloquent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the German Revolution of 1918, KARL KAUTSKY, a prominent Socialist,
+was appointed by the new Government to examine and edit the documents in
+the Berlin Foreign Office relating to the outbreak of the War. His work was
+completed in time for the Peace Conference and would, he believes, if
+published at that time, have convinced the Allies that the new German
+Government ought not to be made responsible for the sins of the old one.
+But it would also have shown that the old Government was the main
+instigator of the War, and that the German people, having danced to the
+tune, even if they did not call for it, deserved to pay the piper. For that
+reason, perhaps, the German Government withheld Herr KAUTSKY'S revelations.
+Now he has published them on his own account, under the title, _The Guilt
+of William Hohenzollern_ (SKEFFINGTON). A more damning indictment has never
+been drawn. From the moment of the ARCHDUKE'S assassination the KAISER and
+his advisers determined to make it the pretext for destroying Serbia, and
+crushing Russia and France if they dared to interfere. BISMARCK once said
+that "never are so many lies told as before a war, during an election and
+after a shoot." His own manipulation of the Ems telegram was venial
+compared to the manner in which the German diplomatists, egged on by their
+ruler--whose _marginalia_ on the despatches furnish the most amusing
+reading in the volume--used all the arts of chicanery to deceive Europe as
+to their real intentions and to defeat the efforts of England--on whose
+neutrality they confidently counted--to secure a peaceful settlement.
+Though primarily addressed to the German proletariat, Herr KAUTSKY'S book
+has its value for all of us--"lest we forget."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On page 103 of _The White Hen_ (MILLS AND BOON) we read that the _Duke_
+laughed softly. "'It is just like a romance,' he sighed happily;" which was
+precisely where, without intending it, the _Duke_ placed his ducal finger
+upon the weak spot in the whole business. Because if ever a story was "like
+a romance," and like nothing else on earth, and filled with characters each
+and all pledged to preserve its unreality at all costs, here is that tale.
+The plot, of which there is a generous allowance, turns chiefly upon the
+problem, when is a white hen less a hen than a jewel casket? Answer, when
+she has swallowed, and is erroneously thought to have retained, a famous
+diamond, upon which an impoverished but noble (see above) French family had
+depended for the _dot_ that should enable their daughter to wed a
+plutocratic but otherwise detestable suitor. I take it you will hardly need
+telling that this is the moment chosen by Romance, under the expert
+guidance of Miss PHYLLIS CAMPBELL, to bring along an even more wealthy
+young American, mistaken (of course) for his own chauffeur and working such
+havoc upon the heart of the heroine that, when the latter accidentally
+recovered the diamond from its feathered _cache_, she very sensibly decided
+to say nothing about it. Whereupon, because the other characters,
+especially an unpleasant Duchess, were unaware that, as the shop
+announcements say, "Poultry was Down Again," much profitable confusion
+resulted, though nothing to impugn the justice of the ducal verdict quoted
+above. So that, if your taste jumps with that of his Grace, you also can
+"sigh happily;" otherwise you will perhaps omit the adverb--and select a
+story less exclusively romantic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a spirit of Yorkshire and a spirit, I suppose, characteristic of
+Suburbia, and on the outskirts of certain large manufacturing towns there
+must exist a formidable blending of these two. To express the double
+flavour of this essence requires, I should say, a subtler and more
+elaborate method than Mr. W. RILEY has attempted to use in _A Yorkshire
+Suburb_ (JENKINS). He has imagined for the purpose of these sketches an
+architect, _Murgatroyd_, who in planning most of the houses in the locality
+has attempted to express in brick and stone the characters of their several
+occupants. This is a device which becomes rather monotonous as the book
+proceeds, besides imposing a series of strains which neither architecture
+nor credulity can easily bear. Since these are rather superior
+suburbanites, dialect is for the most part absent, and it is hard to feel
+that they are very different people from those who live about the borders
+of Manchester or London; a character like _Mrs. Flitch_, for instance, who
+is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is, alas! to be found
+anywhere. And where the dialect does crop out it does not seem to be
+dependent on suburban soil for its raciness. I don't doubt the accuracy of
+Mr. RILEY'S Yorkshiremanship, but I do think he has under-estimated the
+difficulty of localising the peculiar genius of villadom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. MORDAUNT is
+really (if you want to fling this kind of title about) an eclectic
+synthetist or synthetic symbolist. Her wicked people are prodigiously
+wicked, wickedness personified, in fact; her good folk are noble-hearted
+without stint or measure. I don't personally think that anybody could be
+quite so completely and gratuitously evil as good-looking _Charles Hoyland_
+in _The Little Soul_ (HUTCHINSON); or, being so, could possibly be
+recommended, still less engaged, as tutor to a sensitive youth; or, being
+so engaged, tolerated for two days. He certainly could not hold down his
+job long enough to corrupt his pupil, _Anthony Clayton_, by exchanging
+souls with him under the nose of mad but perceptive _Mrs. Clayton_ and sane
+sister _Diana_. This conspicuously chaste _Diana_ is an attractive person,
+and so is the recklessly charitable _Dr. McCabe_, her appropriate mate, who
+first had to fly the country through helping a chorus-girl out of a
+difficulty and then (more or less) won the War by revolutionising
+bacteriology or something like that. However, Mrs. MORDAUNT interests
+because she is so palpably interested herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scenes of _Lure of Contraband_ (JARROLDS) are laid in the Devonshire of
+some hundred years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling,
+and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the
+villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read.
+They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time
+they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days. Mr. J. WEARE
+GIFFARD is a master of atmosphere, and I, at any rate, lived happily in his
+Appledore, and imagined myself drinking prime (and cheap) French brandy in
+the Beaver Inn; while _Lieutenant Perkins_, who commanded the "preventive
+men," sat in his tall-backed chair by the fireplace and kept his eyes and
+ears open to detect anything that was suspicious. But he was not foolish
+enough to ask many questions about the French brandy. An excellent yarn,
+simply and straight-forwardly told.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Customer._ "AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF LLOYD GEORGE?"
+
+_Barber._ "THINK OF 'IM, SIR? WITH A MOP OF 'AIR LIKE 'E'S GOT--A NICE
+EXAMPLE TO THE NATION!"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "A photograph of the Olympic games at Antwerp was transmitted yesterday
+    to Paris, a distance of 200 miles, over a telephone wire. It is in the
+    nature of an experiment, and if it succeeds Messrs. Cook hold out
+    promises of further day trips to the Continent."--_Daily Paper._
+
+Intending trippers must, of course, be proficient in the tight-rope wire.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol.
+159, August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
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+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+
+  <title>Punch, August 25th, 1920.</title>
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159,
+August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2005 [EBook #16727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Keith Edkins and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+ <h1>PUNCH,<br />
+  OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.</h1>
+
+  <h2>Vol. 159.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2>August 25th, 1920.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>[pg 141]</span>
+
+<h2>CHARIVARIA.</h2>
+
+  <p>"What we have got to do," says Lord <font
+  class="sc">Rothermere</font>, "is to keep calm and mind our own business,
+  instead of worrying about the affairs of every other nation." It seems
+  only fair to point out that <i>The Daily News</i> thought of this as long
+  ago as August, 1914.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Gooseberries the size of bantams' eggs, says a news item, won a prize
+  at the Deeside Horticultural Show. When we remember the giant
+  gooseberries of a decade ago it rather looks as if the nation were losing
+  its nerve.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>With reference to the messenger seen running in Whitehall the other
+  day a satisfactory explanation has now been given. He was doing it for
+  the cinema.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The average Scot, says an Anti-Prohibition writer, cannot stand many
+  drinks. Our experience supports this view; but he can be stood a good
+  many.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A picture-paper gossip states that Mr. <font
+  class="sc">Churchill</font> enjoys very good health. Just a touch of
+  writer's cramp now and then, of course.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>In a recent riot in Londonderry, it is stated, a number of inoffensive
+  neutrals were set upon and beaten by rowdies of both factions. We have
+  constantly maintained that Irish unity can always be secured when there
+  is something really worth uniting over.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A lighthouse is advertised for sale in <i>The Times</i>. It is said to
+  be just the kind of residence for a tall man with sloping shoulders.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A correspondent asks in the weekly press for a new name for
+  charabancs. We wish we could think there was any use in calling them
+  names.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Seaside bathers are advised not to enter the water after a heavy meal.
+  The seaside visitor who could pay for such a meal would naturally not
+  have enough left to pay for a bathing-machine.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A Thames bargee was knocked down by a taxi-cab at Kingston-on-Thames
+  last week. A well-known firm has offered to publish his remarks in
+  fortnightly parts.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The West Dulwich man who struck a rate-collector on the head with a
+  telephone claims credit for finding some use for these instruments.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Sir <font class="sc">Eric Drummond</font> has purchased the largest
+  hotel in Geneva on behalf of the League of Nations. It is said that he
+  has been taking lessons from Sir <font class="sc">Alfred Mond</font>.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Following closely upon the announcement of the noiseless gun invented
+  in New York comes the news that they have now invented some sound-proof
+  bacon for export to this country.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>It is stated that the man who last week said he understood the Rent
+  Act was eventually pinned down by some friends and handed over to the
+  care of his relatives.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>According to a morning paper another Antarctic expedition is to be
+  organised very shortly. We understand that only those who can stand a
+  northern wind on all four sides need apply.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>It is reported that a poultry-farmer in the West of England is making
+  a fortune by giving his hens whisky to drink and then exporting their
+  eggs to the United States.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A golf-ball was recently driven through the window of an express train
+  near Knebworth. We are informed however that the player who struck the
+  ball still maintains that the engine-driver deliberately ignored his
+  shout of "Fore."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>An amazing report reaches us from Yorkshire. It appears that a
+  centenarian has been discovered who is unable to read without glasses or
+  even to walk to market once a week.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The unveiling of one of the largest Peace memorials in the country is
+  to take place on Armistice day this year. We hear that both the <font
+  class="sc">Premier</font> and Mr. <font class="sc">Winston
+  Churchill</font> have expressed a desire to attend unless prevented by
+  the War.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Smart furriers, declares a fashion-paper, are pushing Beveren blue
+  rabbit as one of the chic furs for the coming winter. The rabbit, our
+  contemporary goes on to explain (superfluously, as it seems to us), is
+  naturally blue.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>On a recent occasion a meeting of the Dolgelly Rural Council had to be
+  postponed, the members being absent hay-making. Parliament, on the other
+  hand, has had to stop making hay owing to the Members being away in the
+  country.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The Ministry of Food states that the period of normal supplies seems
+  to come round in cycles of four years. Meanwhile the period of abnormal
+  prices continues to come round in cycles of once a week. A movement in
+  favour of postponing the cycle of payment till we get the cycle of plenty
+  is not receiving adequate support from the provision trade.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Agricultural labourers near Peterborough have refused to work with
+  Irishmen on the ground that the latter are troublesome. We always said
+  that sooner or later someone would come round to Mr. <font
+  class="sc">Lloyd George's</font> view on this point.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>A newspaper reports the case of a waiter who refused a tip. It is said
+  that the gentleman who offered it is making a slow recovery and may be
+  able to take a little fish this week.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:33%;">
+      <a href="images/136.png"><img width="100%" src="images/136.png"
+      alt="Get me double-six double-five nine Central" /></a>
+    <p><i>Caller.</i> "<font class="sc">Exchange? Get me double-six
+    double-five nine Central&mdash;and get it quick, like they do it on the
+    pictures.</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h4>The Growth of the Side-Car.</h4>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"<font class="sc">Motor Cars, Cycles</font>, <i>&amp;c.</i></p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Argyll.</font>&mdash;2 Bedrooms and sitting-room,
+  with attendance."&mdash;<i>Scotch Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"BRIGHTON ELECTRIC RAILWAY.</p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Palace Pier and Kemp Town Cars every Five
+  Years.</font>"&mdash;<i>Local Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>It is inferred that the Ministry of Transport has assumed control.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>[pg 142]</span>
+
+<h2>AN APOLOGY TO THE BENCH.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Humbly addressed to T.E.S.</i></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>If ever, where you hold the Seat of Doom,</p>
+      <p class="i2">I stand, my Lord, before you at the Bar,</p>
+      <p>And my forensic fame, a virgin bloom,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Lies in your awful hands to make or mar,</p>
+      <p>Let it not prejudice my case, I pray,</p>
+      <p class="i2">If you should call to mind a previous meeting</p>
+      <p>When on a champion course the other day</p>
+      <p class="i2">I gave your Lordship four strokes and a beating.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I own it savoured of contempt of court,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench,</p>
+      <p>That I should chuckle when your pitch was short</p>
+      <p class="i2">Or smile to see you in the sanded trench;</p>
+      <p>But Golf (so I extenuate my sin)</p>
+      <p class="i2">Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on;</p>
+      <p>One common bunker makes the whole world kin,</p>
+      <p class="i2">And Bar may scrap with Beak, and I with <font class="sc">Scr-tt-n</font>.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Nor did I give myself superior airs;</p>
+      <p class="i2">I made allowance for defective sight;</p>
+      <p>"The bandage which impartial Justice wears</p>
+      <p class="i2">Leaves you," I said, "a stranger to the light;</p>
+      <p>Habituated to the sword and scales,</p>
+      <p class="i2">If you commit some pardonable blunder,</p>
+      <p>If" (I remarked) "your nerve at moments fails</p>
+      <p class="i2">With grosser ironmongery, where's the wonder?"</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>So may the Law's High Majesty o'erlook</p>
+      <p class="i2">My rash presumption; may the memory die</p>
+      <p>Of how I won the match (and further took</p>
+      <p class="i2">The liberty of mopping up the bye);</p>
+      <p>Remember just a happy morning's round,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Also the fact that this alleged old fogey</p>
+      <p>Played at the last hole like a book and downed</p>
+      <p class="i2">The barely human feat of Colonel Bogey.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i16">O.S.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>IF WE ALL TOOK TO MARGOTRY.</h2>
+
+  <p>[Mrs. <font class="sc">Asquith's</font> feuilleton, which for so many
+  people has transformed Sunday into a day of unrest, sets up a new method
+  of autobiography, in which the protagonist is, so to speak, both <font
+  class="sc">Johnson</font> and <font class="sc">Boswell</font> too.
+  Successful models being always imitated we may expect to see a general
+  use of her lively methods; and as a matter of fact I have been able
+  already, through the use of a patent futurist reading-glass (invented by
+  Signer Margoni), to get glimpses of two forthcoming reminiscent works of
+  the future which, but for the <i>chronique égoïstique</i> of the moment
+  might never have been written, and certainly not in their present
+  interlocutory shape.]</p>
+
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><font class="sc">From "First Aid to Literature."</font></p>
+
+<p class="center">By <i>Edmund Gosse</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a
+  confidential adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which
+  created some stir in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot
+  recollect, but it was thought that my poor assistance as a friendly
+  censor of a too florid exuberance in candour might not be of disservice
+  to the book, and I accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means
+  yet relegated to oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to
+  refer to it with such particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader
+  to identify it and my own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the
+  following dialogue, typical of many between the author and myself, I
+  disguise her name under an initial. <i>Quis custodiet?</i> It would be
+  grotesque indeed if one whose special mission was to correct the high
+  spirits of others should himself fail in good taste.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang).</i> I see nothing but
+  blue pencil marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious
+  that I should be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of
+  authorship.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Edmund</font> (earnestly).</i> It is your fame of
+  which I am thinking. If you adopt my emendations you will go down to
+  history as the writer of the best book of reminiscences in English.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Mrs. A. (with fervour).</i> I don't want to go down to history. I
+  want to stay here and make it. And you (<i>with emotion</i>)&mdash;you
+  have cramped my style. I can't think why I asked you to help.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Edmund</font>.</i> Everyone asks me to help. It is
+  my destiny. I am the Muses' <i>amicus curiæ</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Mrs. A.</i> Oh, blow Latin! (<i>Lighting two cigarettes at
+  once</i>) What's the good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without
+  anything about L.G.?</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Edmund</font>.</i> Dear lady, it would never have
+  done. Be reasonable. There are occasions when reticence is
+  imperative.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Mrs. A.</i> Reticence! What words you use!</p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>Cætera desunt.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><font class="sc">From "A Week in Lovely Lucerne."</font></p>
+
+<p class="center">By <i>D. Lloyd George</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>... I do not say that the mountains hereabout are not more
+  considerable than those of our own beloved Wales, but as material to be
+  employed in perorations they are far inferior. There is not the requisite
+  mist (which may symbolise ignorance or obstinacy or any temporary
+  disturbance or opposition), later to be dispelled by the strong beams of
+  the sun (representing either progress generally or prime-ministerial
+  genius or pure Coalitionism). Other local features I felt, however, I
+  might find rhetorically useful, such as <font
+  class="sc">Thorwaldsen's</font> Lion, so noble, so&mdash;so leonine, but
+  doomed ever to adhere to the rock, how symbolic of a strong idealist
+  unable to translate his ameliorative plans into action! The old bridge
+  too, uniting the two sides of the city, as one can attempt to link
+  Radicalism and Coalitionism&mdash;how long could it endure? And so on.
+  One's brain was never idle.</p>
+
+  <p>It was while we were at Lucerne that <font class="sc">Lord
+  Riddell</font> and I had some of our most significant conversations. I
+  set them down just as they occurred, extenuating nothing and concealing
+  nothing.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Lord Riddell</font> (with emotion).</i> You are in
+  excellent form to-day. Lucerne now has two lions&mdash;one of them
+  free.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">David</font> (surprised).</i> I free?
+  (<i>Sadly</i>) You forget that <font class="sc">Giolitti</font> is
+  coming.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Lord Riddell</font>.</i> But that is nothing to
+  you. Try him with your Italian and he will soon go.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">David</font>.</i> You are a true friend. You
+  always hearten me.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Lord Riddell</font> (with more emotion).</i> But
+  you are so wonderful, so wonderful! And now for to-day's amusements.
+  Where shall we go? Up Mount Pilatus or to <font class="sc">William
+  Tell's</font> Chapel?</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">David</font>.</i> There is something irresistible
+  to a Welshman in the word chapel. Let us go there. And <font
+  class="sc">William Tell</font>, was he not a patriot? Did he not defy the
+  tyrant? I am sure that in his modest conventicle I can think of a
+  thousand eloquent things. Let us go there.</p>
+
+  <p><i><font class="sc">Lord Riddell</font>.</i> My hero! my dauntless
+  hero!</p>
+
+<p class="author">E.V.L.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"Even with a round of 73 in the morning Ray fell behind Vardon, who
+  accomplished a remarkable round of 17 to lead the
+  field."&mdash;<i>Provincial Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>This is believed to be the first occasion on which any golfer has
+  accomplished two holes in one shot.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>[pg 143]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/138.png"><img width="100%" src="images/138.png"
+      alt="THE LION OF LUCERNE." /></a>
+    <h3>"THE LION OF LUCERNE."</h3>
+
+    <p><font class="sc">Mr. Lloyd George</font> (<i>having jodelled
+    heavily</i>). "NOT A SINGLE DISSENTIENT ECHO! THIS IS THE SORT OF PEACE
+    CONFERENCE I LIKE." (<i>Continues to jodel</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>[pg 144]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/139.png"><img width="100%" src="images/139.png"
+      alt="Mummy, I would like to tell you a story" /></a>
+    <p><i>Mabel (in barefaced attempt to detain Mother when saying
+    "Good-night").</i> <font class="sc">"Oh, Mummy, I would like to tell
+    you a story about three little boys."</font></p>
+
+    <p><i>Mother.</i> <font class="sc">"No, no; go to sleep. There's no
+    time to tell a story about three little boys."</font></p>
+
+    <p><i>Mabel.</i> <font class="sc">"Well, then, let me tell you a story
+    about <i>two</i> little boys."</font></p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>THE RABBITS GAME.</h2>
+
+  <p>"Don't forget to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow," said Angela. Angela is aged
+  nine and my younger sister; I am thirteen and my name is Anne.</p>
+
+  <p>We both looked inquiringly at Father, and, as he didn't seem to
+  remember, Angela in pained surprise began to explain. "If you say
+  'Rabbits' before you say anything else on the first day of a month you
+  get a present during the month, but you mustn't say anything else first,
+  or you won't."</p>
+
+  <p>It all came out in one breath and, though it looks clear enough now,
+  Father was very stupid.</p>
+
+  <p>"I dislike rabbits," he said, "and I am very busy; your Mother will
+  probably be glad of them for the servants."</p>
+
+  <p>The rebuke in Angela's eyes was severe. "We haven't got any rabbits,"
+  she said; "we are only going to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow morning when we
+  wake up and we thought you might like to do the same."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, I should," said Father; "thank you very much, I won't forget."
+  And he wrote "Rabbits" down on his blotting-paper. "Now go and tell your
+  Mother; she would like to say 'Rabbits' too, I know."</p>
+
+  <p>That seemed to terminate the interview, so we left him; but altogether
+  it was not very satisfactory. You see, when we had
+  "Bon-jour-Philippines," Father used to provide the presents; at least
+  that was some time ago; we haven't had any "Bon-jour-Philippines" lately.
+  The last time we did, Jack, that is my brother at Oxford, found one and
+  split it with Father, and the next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine"
+  first and then asked for a present. Father asked him what he wanted, and
+  he gave Father a letter that he had had that morning. Father got very
+  angry and said that it was a disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to
+  young wasters nowadays. He didn't say it quite like that, it was rather
+  worse, and Mother said, "Hush, dear; remember the children," and Father
+  said that they were all as bad and in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he
+  went out of the room and banged the door.</p>
+
+  <p>Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack
+  owned he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in
+  before Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of <font
+  class="sc">Lloyd George</font>. I don't quite know what he meant, but
+  Father often talks about <font class="sc">Lloyd George</font>, and he
+  must be a beast.</p>
+
+  <p>I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had,
+  but&mdash;and here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to
+  laugh&mdash;"It is the very last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I
+  used to consider my Father, and I would have worked in the fields and
+  earned money sooner than have given him bills to pay." Jack said that he
+  knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew Father, and from what he said he
+  thought that Father must have spent as long in the fields as <font
+  class="sc">Nebuchadnezzar</font> did.</p>
+
+  <p>I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I
+  wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it,
+  so I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say
+  'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us
+  something <span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>[pg
+  145]</span> in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks
+  quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful
+  sometimes.</p>
+
+  <p>We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we
+  thought what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we
+  gave him a pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost
+  ninepence and was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a
+  hole in his hat.</p>
+
+  <p>Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes
+  the gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I
+  went to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a
+  man was in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to
+  try to make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully pleased when he
+  gave him the pipe.</p>
+
+  <p>You see that made it very difficult, as we had to get something that
+  Father would like and Jakes too, as he still had thirteen children; and
+  then I remembered that Mrs. Jakes had once looked at a woollen jumper
+  that I had on, and said that it would be just the thing for her Mary Ann,
+  who had a delicate chest, and Jakes would be sure to like what Mrs. Jakes
+  liked, or else he wouldn't have married her. Of course a jumper wasn't
+  really the sort of thing that Father could wear, but I thought he might
+  wrap his foot up in it when he next had gout, and besides I shouldn't be
+  wanting it much more myself, as the summer was coming on.</p>
+
+  <p>Angela said that she thought that would do well, and she wouldn't mind
+  giving Father her jumper next month if he said "Rabbits," and it would do
+  for Mrs. Jakes' next little girl.</p>
+
+  <p>So that was decided, and then we had to arrange the plan. The most
+  important thing was for us to wake before Father, so that we could wake
+  him and remind him before he had time to say anything else, and Angela
+  remembered that Ellen, that's the housemaid, had an alarm clock, which
+  she used to set at a quarter to six each morning. We waited until Ellen
+  had gone downstairs and then took it and hid it in Angela's bed.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning the clock went off. We were both rather frightened, and
+  it was very cold and the room looked funny, as the blinds hadn't been
+  pulled up, but we put our dressing-gowns on. Then Angela said that she
+  had heard that if you woke a person who was walking in their sleep they
+  sometimes called out, so I took a pair of stockings from the basket that
+  had just come back from the wash to hold over Father's mouth while we
+  woke him. They were waiting to be mended and had a hole in them, but that
+  didn't matter much, as I screwed them up tight, and then we went into
+  Father's room. They were both asleep, and Father had his mouth open all
+  ready for the stockings, which was very lucky, as I was wondering how I
+  could get them in.</p>
+
+  <p>We crept up to the bed, and I know I shivered, and I think Angela did
+  too, as I was holding her hand. Then she called out "Boo" as loud as she
+  could, and I stuffed the stockings into Father's mouth, and then they
+  both woke up, and everything went wrong.</p>
+
+  <p>Mother thought the house was on fire and screamed, and it made Angela
+  begin to cry. I quite forgot to tell Father to say "Rabbits," and just
+  pressed the stockings further into his mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>Father struggled and made awful noises, and when he did get the
+  stockings out the things he said weren't a bit like "Rabbits," and the
+  only thing that he did say that I could write down here was that he
+  thought he was going to be sick. The rest was dreadful.</p>
+
+  <p>We were both sent back to bed, and that morning as a punishment we
+  were not allowed into the dining-room until Father and Mother had
+  finished their breakfast; and Angela, who often thinks quite clever
+  things, said that we had better not do "Rabbits" again for a good long
+  time. But after all it didn't matter much as the weather got a great deal
+  colder, and I wore my jumper a lot, and so did Angela.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:66%;">
+      <a href="images/140.png"><img width="100%" src="images/140.png"
+      alt="This arf-crown won't do" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">"Look 'ere&mdash;this arf-crown won't do. It ain't
+    got no milling on its hedge."</font></p>
+
+    <p><font class="sc">"Blimy! Nor it 'as! I <i>knew</i> I'd forgotten
+    somefink."</font></p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h3>FLOWERS' NAMES.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i8"><font class="sc">Dame's Delight.</font></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>There was a Lady walked a wood;</p>
+      <p>She never smiled, nor never could.</p>
+      <p>One day a sunbeam from the South</p>
+      <p>Kissed full her petulant proud mouth;</p>
+      <p>She laughed, and there, beneath the trees,</p>
+      <p>Fluttering in the April breeze,</p>
+      <p>Spread tracts of blossom, green and white,</p>
+      <p>Curtseying to the golden light&mdash;</p>
+      <p>The broken laugh of Dame's Delight.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>[pg 146]</span>
+
+<h3>FIRST LOVE AND LAST.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>[It is pointed out by a contemporary that the dressmaker's waxen model
+  has quite lost her old insipid air. The latest examples of the modeller's
+  art show the "glad eye" and features with which "any man might fall in
+  love."]</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>In the days when I started to toddle</p>
+      <p class="i2">I loved with a frenzy sublime</p>
+      <p>A dressmaker's beauteous model&mdash;</p>
+      <p class="i2">I think I was three at the time;</p>
+      <p>She was fair in the foolish old fashion,</p>
+      <p class="i2">And they found me again and again</p>
+      <p>With my nose in an access of passion</p>
+      <p class="i8">Glued tight to the pane.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>But I thought they were gone past returning</p>
+      <p class="i2">Till Time should go back on his tracks,</p>
+      <p>Those days of a child's undiscerning</p>
+      <p class="i2">But fervent devotion to wax;</p>
+      <p>Could a heart, though admittedly restive,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Recapture that innocent mood</p>
+      <p>At sixty next birthday? I'm blest if</p>
+      <p class="i8">I thought that it could.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>But Art, ever bent on progression,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Has taken the model in hand,</p>
+      <p>And brought in the line of succession</p>
+      <p class="i2">A figure more pleasingly planned;</p>
+      <p>Her eyes with the gladdest of glances,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Her lips and her hair and her cheek</p>
+      <p>Can puncture like so many lances</p>
+      <p class="i8">A bosom of teak.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>HARD TIMES FOR HEROINES.</h3>
+
+  <p>"Oh, Bertram," breathed Eunice as she glided into his arms, "if Ernest
+  knew, what would he think?"</p>
+
+  <p>At this point of my story I admit that I was held up. I myself
+  couldn't help wondering how Ernest would regard the situation. He was a
+  perfectly good husband and, personally, I preferred him to Bertram the
+  lover. I might get unpopular with my readers, however, if they suspected
+  this, so I continued:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Ernest can never appreciate you as I do, dearest," Bertram whispered
+  hoarsely; "he is cold, hard, indifferent&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>Again I paused. If Eunice had been the really nice girl I meant her to
+  be she would have asked Bertram what on earth he meant by saying such
+  things about her husband, and would have told him the shortest cut to the
+  front-door. In which case she might never have got into print.</p>
+
+  <p>The fact is the poor heroine of fiction has a hard time of it
+  nowadays. Someone ought to write a treatise on "How to be Happy though a
+  Heroine," or uphold her cause in some way. Twenty-five years ago she
+  lived in a halo of romance. Her wooers were tender, respectful and
+  adoring; she was never without a chaperon. Her love-story was
+  conventional and ended in wedding bells. To-day&mdash;just see how her
+  position has altered. Generally she begins by being married already. Then
+  her lover comes along to place her in awkward predicaments and put her to
+  no end of inconvenience, very often only to make her realise that she
+  prefers her husband after all. Or, on the other hand, the modern writer
+  does not mind killing off, on the barest pretext, a husband who is
+  perfectly sound in wind and limb and had never suffered from anything in
+  his life until the lover appeared. The poor girl will tell you herself
+  that it isn't natural.</p>
+
+  <p>Then there is the compromising situation. Magazine editors clamour for
+  it&mdash;in fiction, I mean. We find the heroine flung on a desert
+  island, with the one man above all others in the world that she detests
+  as her sole companion. It is rather rough on her, but often still more
+  rough on other people, as it may necessitate drowning the entire crew and
+  passengers of a large liner just in order to leave the couple alone for a
+  while to get to know each other better. And not until they find that they
+  care for one another after all does the rescue party arrive. It will
+  cruise about, or be at anchor round the corner, for weeks and weeks, so
+  that it can appear on the horizon at the moment of the first embrace.
+  This situation is so popular at present that it is surprising that there
+  are enough desert islands to go round.</p>
+
+  <p>Again, the lonely bungalow episode is pretty cheerless for the
+  heroine. She accepts an apparently harmless invitation to spend a
+  week-end with friends in the country. When she arrives at the station
+  there is no one to meet her. After a course of desert islands this ought
+  to arouse her suspicions, but she never seems to benefit by experience.
+  At the bungalow, reached in a hired fly and a blinding snowstorm, she
+  finds the whole household away. The four other week-end guests, her host
+  and hostess and their five children, the invalid aunt who resides with
+  the family, the three female servants and the boot-boy who lives
+  in&mdash;all have completely vanished. The only sign of life for miles is
+  the hero standing on the doorstep looking bewildered and troubled, as
+  well he might, for he knows that he must spend the night in a snowstorm
+  to avoid compromising the heroine.</p>
+
+  <p>And when the family return next morning and explain that they went out
+  to look at the sunset, but were held up at a neighbour's by the weather,
+  nobody seems to think the excuse a little thin.</p>
+
+  <p>The heroine can never hope for a tranquil existence like other people.
+  I read of one only recently who, just because she strongly objected to
+  the man her parents wanted her to marry, was flung with him on an iceberg
+  that had only seating capacity for two. And when the iceberg began to
+  melt&mdash;writers must at times manipulate the elements&mdash;it meant
+  that she must either watch the man drown or share the same seat with him.
+  The rescue party held off, of course, until the harassed girl was sitting
+  on his knees, and then received the pair as they slid down, announcing
+  their engagement.</p>
+
+  <p>What do I intend to do with Bertram and Eunice? I am undecided whether
+  to place them in the vicinity of a volcano, which, unknown to Bertram,
+  has eruptive tendencies, or to send them up in an aeroplane and break the
+  propeller in mid-Atlantic just as the rescue party (including the
+  husband)&mdash;What? Do I understand anything about aeroplanes? Certainly
+  not; but I know everything about heroines.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>EVIDENCE.</h3>
+
+  <p>"What's all this I hear about the Abbey?" said my friend Truscott when
+  I met him yesterday.</p>
+
+  <p>Truscott has just returned from New Zealand and is for the moment a
+  little behind the times. But he can pick up the threads as quickly as
+  most men.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's in a bad way," I told him. "All kinds of defects in the fabric,
+  and there's a public fund to make it sound again. You ought to
+  subscribe."</p>
+
+  <p>"It may be in disrepair," he replied, "but it isn't going to fall down
+  just yet. I know; I went to see it this morning."</p>
+
+  <p>"But how do you know?" I asked. "You may guess; you can't know."</p>
+
+  <p>"I know," he said, "because I was told. A little bird told me, and
+  there's no authority half so good. Do you remember a few years ago a
+  terrific storm that blew down half the elms in Kensington Gardens?"</p>
+
+  <p>I remembered. I had reason; for the trunks and branches were all over
+  the road and my omnibus from Church Street to Piccadilly Circus had to
+  make wide detours.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," Truscott continued, "someone wrote to the papers to say that
+  two or three days before the storm all the rooks left the trees and did
+  not return. They knew what was coming. Birds do know, you know, and
+  that's why I feel no immediate anxiety about the Abbey."</p>
+
+  <p>"Explain," I said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," he continued, "when I was there this morning I watched a
+  sparrow popping in and out of a nest built in a niche in the stonework
+  over the north door."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>[pg 147]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/142.png"><img width="100%" src="images/142.png"
+      alt="MANNERS AND MODES." /></a>
+    <h3>MANNERS AND MODES.</h3>
+
+    <p class="center">THEN AND NOW.</p>
+
+    <p><i>From an Early-Victorian "Etiquette for Gentlemen</i>."&mdash;
+    "<font class="sc">A gentleman cannot be too careful to avoid stepping
+    on a lady's dress when about to get in or out of a
+    carriage.</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>[pg 148]</span>
+
+<h2>THOUGHTS ON "THE TIMES."</h2>
+
+<p class="center">(<font class="sc">From a Train.</font>)</p>
+
+  <p>Really the news is very bad this morning. On the front page there are
+  two Foreign crises and a Home one. On the next page there is one Grave
+  Warning and two probable strikes. On every other page there is either a
+  political murder or a new war. It is awful ...</p>
+
+  <p>Yet somehow I don't feel depressed. I rather feel like giggling. An
+  empty smoker in the Cornish express&mdash;<i>empty</i> except for me!
+  Extraordinary! And all my luggage in the right van, labelled for Helston,
+  and not for Hull or Harwich or Hastings. That porter was a splendid
+  fellow, so respectful, so keen on his work&mdash;no Bolshevism about
+  <i>him</i>. I gave him a shilling. I gave the taxi-man a shilling too.
+  That guard is a pleasant fellow also; I shall give him two shillings,
+  perhaps half-a-crown. Yet I see that the railways are seething with
+  unrest.</p>
+
+  <p>I have just read <i>The Times'</i> leader. Everything seems to be
+  coming undone ... Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India. This Bolshevist
+  business ... dreadful. The guard has got me a ticket for the Second
+  Luncheon. A capital fellow. I gave him three shillings. Absurd. I have no
+  more shillings now. I am overdrawn. There is a financial crisis. But
+  that, of course, is general. I see that Mr. Iselbaum anticipates a
+  general smash this winter. A terrible winter it is going to be ... no
+  coal, no food ... We ought to be in by five, in time for a fat late tea
+  ... Cornish cream ... jam. Gwen will be at the station, with the
+  children, all in blue ... or pink perhaps. How jolly the country looks!
+  Superficial, of course; the harvest's ruined; no wheat, no fruit. And
+  unemployment will be very bad. And the more people there are unemployed
+  the more people will strike ... Sounds funny, that; but true ... Hope
+  they've given us the usual table in the coffee-room, that jolly
+  window-table in the corner, where one can look across the bay to the
+  cliffs and the corn-fields and the hills ... Only there's no corn, I
+  suppose, this year ... And one has a good view of the rest of the room
+  there ... can study the new arrivals at dinner, instead of having to wait
+  till afterwards. Dinner is much the best time to study them; you can see
+  at once how they eat. And it is so much easier to decide which is the
+  sister and which the <i>fiancée</i> of the young man when they are all
+  stationary at a table. When you only see them rushing about passages in
+  ones it takes days.</p>
+
+  <p>All the usual families will be there, I suppose&mdash;the Bradleys and
+  the Clinks, old Mrs. Puntage and the kids&mdash;if they can afford it
+  this year ... Very likely they can't. I can't, certainly. But I'm
+  going.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not since the fateful week-end of August, 1914, when the destinies of
+  Europe were decided in a few hours, have issues of such gravity engaged
+  the attention of the British race...." Dreadful. I shall get some tennis
+  tomorrow. I shan't be called. I shall get up when the sun is on my face
+  and not before. I shall dress very, very slowly, looking at the sea and
+  the sands and the sun, not rushing, not shaving properly, not thinking,
+  not washing a great deal, just sort of falling into an old coat and some
+  grey flannels.... Then I shall just sort of fall downstairs&mdash;about
+  half-past nine, and give the old barometer a bang. Then breakfast, very
+  deliberate, but cheerful, because the glass went up when I banged
+  it&mdash;it always goes up at that hotel ... like the cost of living. Up
+  another five points to-day, I see. Bread's going to be
+  one-and-threepence. But of course there won't <i>be</i> any bread this
+  winter, so the price doesn't much matter. But what about coal? and milk?
+  and meat? "Several new sets of wage claims are due for decision within
+  the next few weeks, and it is possible that two of them at least may not
+  be determined without a cessation of work." More strikes ... But not for
+  a week or two. To-morrow there won't be any papers at breakfast; there
+  won't be any letters. I shan't catch the 9.5. After breakfast I shall
+  smoke on the cliff&mdash;then some tennis. Most of the balls will go over
+  the cliff, but when they have all gone one just slips down and bathes,
+  and picks them up on the way. Undress on the rocks&mdash;no machines, no
+  tents. Jolly bathing. Mixed, of course. This Tonbridge councillor is on
+  about that again, I see. He ought to come to Mullion. Mixed bathing
+  depends entirely on the mixture. He doesn't realise that. Of course, if
+  he <i>will</i> bathe at Tonbridge ...</p>
+
+  <p>"In diplomatic circles no one is attempting to conceal that the
+  situation is extremely grave." Now which situation is that? That must be
+  one of these world-plots. Don't really see how civilisation can carry on
+  more than a week or two now. Lucky I only took a single, perhaps. It was
+  only two pounds, but I hadn't enough for a return. Never shall have
+  enough, probably&mdash;but no matter. If the world is coming to an end,
+  might as well be in a good part of it at the time. And it would be
+  sickening to be snuffed out with an unused return-ticket in one's
+  pocket.</p>
+
+  <p>On the sands after lunch&mdash;build a few castles and dams and things
+  for the children&mdash;at least, not altogether for the children, not so
+  much as they think, anyhow. Tea at the farm, with plenty of cream,
+  possibly an egg ... No eggs this winter, I see; some question of
+  non-unionists. Then a little golf before dinner&mdash;and perhaps a
+  little dancing afterwards. Coffee, anyhow ...</p>
+
+  <p>Then <i>The Times</i> arrives, all wrapped up, just as one is
+  explaining about the seventh hole. It is all stiff and crinkly, and one
+  spends a long time rearranging it, flattening out the folds ...</p>
+
+  <p>And one never reads it. That's the best of all.</p>
+
+<p class="author">A.P.H.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:60%;">
+      <a href="images/143.png"><img width="100%" src="images/143.png"
+      alt="NATIONAL RESEARCH." /></a>
+    <p class="center">NATIONAL RESEARCH.</p>
+
+    <p><font class="sc"><i>The Daily Quest</i>, ever with its finger on the
+    public pulse, sends a Special Commissioner to our holiday resorts to
+    discover which has the nicest necks.</font></p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>[pg 149]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/144.png"><img width="100%" src="images/144.png"
+      alt="Congratulations on finding your game again." /></a>
+    <div class="i16">
+    <p><i>The Cheerful One.</i> "<font class="sc">Congratulations, old
+    chap, on finding your game again.</font>"</p>
+
+    <p><i>Club Grouser.</i> "<font class="sc">Finding my game! Why, I've
+    just offered to sell every damned club in my bag.</font>"</p>
+
+    <p><i>The Cheerful One.</i> "<font class="sc">Yes, I know. But
+    yesterday you were <i>giving</i> them away.</font>"</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PRONE.</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><i>To the Editor of "Punch."</i></p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Sir</font>,&mdash;I am an architect (of forty-three
+  years' standing) and I like to keep <i>au courant</i> with everything in
+  the world of building (or of being about to build). Consequently anything
+  new in constructional material interests me, and in this connection I
+  would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I have only seen it (or
+  them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather that the word "prone"
+  stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the plural of "grouse,"
+  and as "house" might well stand for the plural of "house" nowadays,
+  considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or they) is (or are)
+  used either as a floor covering or otherwise in connection with working
+  on the floor or ground.</p>
+
+  <p>My reason for so thinking is contained in the following interesting
+  item, culled from a well-known daily newspaper:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"There is in London one man at least who works hard every day and has
+  to lay prone to do it.</p>
+
+  <p>He may be seen daily in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey re-cutting
+  the names on the flagged gravestones which have been worn by countless
+  pilgrims' feet. He has picked out many illustrious names, and others are
+  to follow."</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>The sex and species of this hard-worker preclude the notion of any
+  oviparous act, and I take it that one "lays prone" as one lays a mat or
+  strip of carpet, for the purpose of facilitating labour that is done on
+  the knees or stomach. If I am right I should like to get my builder to
+  order some for his workmen absolutely at once.</p>
+
+  <p>Anything which would help to defeat the Trade Unions in their fight
+  against speeding-up would be a blessing, especially to the architectural
+  world, so perhaps you will be good enough to enlighten me on the nature
+  of Prone, and where obtainable.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Believe me, Yours very gravely,<br />
+<font class="sc">Onesimus Stone</font> (F.R.I.B.A.).</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <p>From an American book on "How and What to Read":&mdash;</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"Other great American short story writers include Bret Harte, Edward
+  Everett Hale, Frank Stockton, and Mary E. Wilkins. With these may be
+  included Thomas Hardy's 'Life's Little Ironies,' which are full of
+  fun."</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Mr. <font class="sc">Hardy</font> will be glad, no doubt, to add this
+  little irony to his collection.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>THE KELPIE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The scoffer rails at ancient tales</p>
+      <p class="i2">Of lake and stream and river;</p>
+      <p>The wise man owns that in his bones</p>
+      <p class="i2">The kelpie makes him shiver.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Big salmon-flies the scoffer buys,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Long rods and wading stockings;</p>
+      <p>Unpicturesque he walks in Esk</p>
+      <p class="i2">With unbelief and mockings.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"A river-horse! O-ho, of course!"</p>
+      <p class="i2">And shouts with ribald laughter;</p>
+      <p>He does not see in his cheap glee</p>
+      <p class="i2">The kelpie trotting after.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The storm comes chill from off the hill;</p>
+      <p class="i2">An eerie wind doth holloa;</p>
+      <p>And near and near by surges drear</p>
+      <p class="i2">The water-horse doth follow.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>A snort, a snuff; enough, enough;</p>
+      <p class="i2">Past prayer or human help he</p>
+      <p>Comes never more to mortal door</p>
+      <p class="i2">Who meets the water-kelpie.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"THE KING ARRIVES IN SCOTLAND</p>
+
+  <p>ASKED TO LEAVE."</p>
+
+  <p><i>Consecutive Headlines in "The Daily Mirror."</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>The habit of reading the headlines in our pictorial newspapers without
+  glancing at the pictures beneath them is liable to create false
+  impressions.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>[pg 150]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/145.png"><img width="100%" src="images/145.png"
+      alt="I can write my name on the piano." /></a>
+    <p><i>Mrs. Symons (wishing to draw attention, in the time-honoured
+    manner, to the amount of dust on the drawing-room furniture).</i>
+    "<font class="sc">Look at that, Martha; I can write my name on the
+    piano.</font>"</p>
+
+    <p><i>Martha.</i> "<font class="sc">Fancy, now, you spelling it with a
+    'y.'</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h3>TO A MAKER OF PILLS.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"The Pill Trade has fallen on evil days; no ex-service men seem to
+  require pills."&mdash;<i>A pill manufacturer summoned for rates at
+  Willesden.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O Benefactor of the British Tommy,</p>
+      <p class="i2">So often sick in far unfriendly climes,</p>
+      <p>What tears of sympathy are flowing from me</p>
+      <p class="i2">To learn that you have fallen on evil times!</p>
+      <p>Yea, to my mind 'tis little short of tragic</p>
+      <p>That men no longer buy your potent spheres of magic!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Scarce less detested than the Bulgar bullet</p>
+      <p class="i2">Your bitter pellets of Quin. Sulph. gr. 5</p>
+      <p>Have often stuck in my long-suffering gullet,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Leaving me barely more than half alive,</p>
+      <p>Whilst the accursed drug, whose taste I dread,</p>
+      <p>Hummed like an aeroplane within my throbbing head.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>And what about Acetyl-Salicylic,</p>
+      <p class="i2">And what of Calomels and Soda Sals?</p>
+      <p>Existence had been even less idyllic</p>
+      <p class="i2">Without those powerful and faithful pals!</p>
+      <p>Why, midst the fevers of the Struma plain you</p>
+      <p>Furnished the greater part of Tommy's daily menu.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Or what of that infallible specific,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Your Pil. Cathartic Comp., or No. 9,</p>
+      <p>Whose world-wide influence must have been terrific</p>
+      <p class="i2">Since first it found its footing in the Line?</p>
+      <p>The British Tommy took it by the million&mdash;</p>
+      <p>Why should it fail to sell now he has turned civilian?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>It is not base ingratitude that blinds him</p>
+      <p class="i2">To recognition of an ancient debt,</p>
+      <p>But rather that the sight of these reminds him</p>
+      <p class="i2">Of painful days which he would fain forget.</p>
+      <p>When life was one long round of guards and drills,</p>
+      <p>Marches, patrols, fatigues and sick parades&mdash;and pills.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Yet hear me, maker of the potent pilule:</p>
+      <p class="i2">Although my days of soldiering are o'er,</p>
+      <p>I'm fondly trusting that, when next I'm ill, you</p>
+      <p class="i2">Come to my rescue as you came of yore;</p>
+      <p>Meanwhile you'll understand that I, for one,</p>
+      <p>Refuse to buy your wares and eat them just for fun.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>A Dead Heat.</h4>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"In the high jump final, Landen (U.S.A.) was first with a jump of 6ft.
+  4½in.; Muller (U.S.A.) and E. Keleend (Sweeden) died for second
+  place."&mdash;<i>Provincial Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"I heard Lord Rosebery say: 'Your little girl has got beautiful eyes.'
+  I repeated this upstairs with joy and excitement to the family, who ...
+  said they thought it was true enough if my eyes had not been so close
+  together."&mdash;<i>Extract from Autobiography of Margot Asquith.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Her "I's" are generally rather close together.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"The policy which should be adopted is first to take steps to prevent
+  prices continuing to rise, and then to endeavour to reduce them until the
+  purchasing power of the pound sterling is equal to the purchasing power
+  of the dollar."&mdash;<i>Financial Paper</i>.</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Judging by the New York exchange good progress has been made in this
+  direction.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>[pg 151]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/146.png"><img width="100%" src="images/146.png"
+      alt="THE HOUSE-BREAKER." /></a>
+    <h3>THE "HOUSE"-BREAKER.</h3>
+
+    <p class="center">OVERTHROW OF THE PARLIAMENT OF DEMOCRACY; A DREAM OF
+    THE "COUNCIL OF ACTION."</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>[pg 153]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/147.png"><img width="100%" src="images/147.png"
+      alt="He looks so rottenly respectable." /></a>
+    <p><i>Mother.</i> <font class="sc">"Your cousin Jim has offered to take
+    you to dinner and a theatre to-night. Aren't you pleased?"</font></p>
+
+    <p><i>Daughter.</i> <font class="sc">"Oh, it's all right, but he looks
+    so rottenly respectable."</font></p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>GEORGE, JANE AND LENIN.</h2>
+
+  <p>Now that Soviet rule in England is apparently so imminent it seems to
+  me that we ought to consider a little more closely the application of its
+  practical machinery. The morning papers reach this village at three
+  o'clock in the afternoon, so that nobody is in to read them, and when one
+  comes back in the evening one is generally too lazy, but a couple of
+  rather startling sentences about the coming Communist <i>régime</i> have
+  recently caught my eye.</p>
+
+  <p>"The people of England, like the people of Russia," runs the first,
+  "will soon be working under the lash." And the second, so far as I
+  remember, says, "Our rations will no doubt be reduced to half a herring
+  and some boiled bird-seed, which is all the unhappy Russians are getting
+  to eat."</p>
+
+  <p>Before these changes fall suddenly upon us I think we should ponder a
+  little on the way in which they will affect our urban and agricultural
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>Take the House of Commons. A very large and symbolic knout might
+  occupy the position of the present mace, and from time to time the <font
+  class="sc">Speaker</font> could take it up and crack it. As this needs a
+  certain amount of practice it will be necessary to select a fairly horsey
+  man as Speaker, and the Whips, who will follow the same procedure, should
+  also be skilled practitioners. I see no difficulty in applying the same
+  method to commercial and factory life in general, still less to the
+  packing of the Underground Railway and the loading of motor-omnibuses and
+  trams.</p>
+
+  <p>It is rather when we come to scattered rural communities that the
+  system seems likely to break down. Take the case of George Harrison in
+  this village. When I first met George Harrison, and he said that he
+  thought the weather was lifting, he was carrying a basket of red plums
+  which he offered to sell me for an old song. On subsequent occasions I
+  met him&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>1. Driving cows. (At least I suppose he was driving them; he was
+  sitting sideways on a large horse doing nothing in particular, and some
+  of the cows were going into one field and some into another, and a dog
+  was biting their tails indiscriminately.)</p>
+
+  <p>2. Clearing muck and weeds out of the stream.</p>
+
+  <p>3. Setting a springe for rabbits.</p>
+
+  <p>4. Delivering letters, because the postman doesn't like walking up the
+  hill.</p>
+
+  <p>Now I maintain that there would be insuperable difficulties in making
+  George carry out all these various activities under the lash. Anyone, I
+  suppose, under a properly constituted Soviet <i>régime</i> might be
+  detailed as George Harrison's lasher, Mr. <font
+  class="sc">Smillie</font>, Mr. <font class="sc">G.K. Chesterton</font>,
+  Lord <font class="sc">Curzon</font>, Mr. <font class="sc">Clynes</font>
+  or the Duke of <font class="sc">Northumberland</font>. Can you imagine
+  Mr. <font class="sc">Chesterton</font> walking about on guard duty in a
+  rabbit warren while George Harrison set springes in accordance with the
+  principles laid down by the Third Internationale for rabbit-snaring? or
+  the Duke of <font class="sc">Northumberland</font> standing in gum-boots
+  in the middle of a stream and flicking George Harrison about the trousers
+  if he didn't rake out old tin cans at forty to the minute as laid down by
+  the Moscow Code? Now I ask you.</p>
+
+  <p>And then there is this half a herring and boiled bird-seed
+  arrangement. George Harrison has a sister of eighteen who kindly comes in
+  to do cooking and housework for us every day. She thinks <span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>[pg 154]</span> us
+  frightfully queer, and if we bought some herrings and bird-seed and asked
+  her to cook them for us I have no doubt she would oblige, but, though she
+  doesn't much care what we eat, there are a lot of things she doesn't eat
+  herself, and fish is one of them. Porridge, which, I suppose, is a kind
+  of bird-seed, is another.</p>
+
+  <p>Not that Jane calls it eating, by the way. She calls it "touching,"
+  and there are any number of things that she doesn't fancy touching. She
+  will touch enormous platefuls of bacon or sausages or almost any
+  derivative of the domestic pig, and the same applies to puddings and
+  cake. But beef and mutton she does not touch, nor margarine, and we have
+  to be almost as careful that Jane Harrison has plenty of the right things
+  to touch as about the whole of the rest of the family.</p>
+
+  <p>Now here again I think it would be quite possible to induce the people
+  of England in our large industrial centres to ration themselves on boiled
+  herring and bird-seed. We should not use those names, of course. The
+  advertisements on the hoardings would say:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><font class="sc">The Bountiful Harvest of the Sea brought to the Breakfast Table</font></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>or</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><font class="sc">What Makes The Skylark so Happy?</font></p>
+      <p><font class="sc">Try Harraby's Hemp. A Song in Every Spoonful.</font></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But propaganda of that sort would have no effect on Jane. She would
+  simply say that she never cared to touch herrings and that she did not
+  fancy hemp-seed.</p>
+
+  <p>When I consider the cases of George and Jane I am bound to believe
+  either that the Russian moujiks (if this is still the right word) are
+  more docile and tractable than ours, or else that the Soviet
+  <i>régime</i> will need a great deal of adaptation before it can be
+  extended to our English villages. Or, of course, it may be possible that
+  some of the minuter details of <font class="sc">M. Lenin's</font>
+  administration have not been fully revealed to me. I shall find out about
+  this no doubt when I return to London. In the meantime I am banking on
+  George and Jane, whatever the <font class="sc">Council of Action</font>
+  may do.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><font class="sc">Evoe</font>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>The Old Order Changes.</h4>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"'He brightened up a lot when his mother-in-law arrived,' said an
+  onlooker.&mdash;"<i>Provincial Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:60%;">
+      <a href="images/148.png"><img width="100%" src="images/148.png"
+      alt="Please, Sirr, what time wull it be?" /></a>
+    <p><i>Wee Donald Angus.</i> "<font class="sc">Please, Sirr, what time
+    wull it be?</font>"</p>
+
+    <p><i>Literal Gentleman.</i> "<font class="sc">When?</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>LUCERNE.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O, every dog must have its day</p>
+      <p class="i2">And ev'ry town its turn;</p>
+      <p>For fair is fair ... and, anyway,</p>
+      <p class="i2">Let's talk about Lucerne.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Lucerne is in Switzerland, and I am in Lucerne. The moment I heard
+  that Mr. <font class="sc">Lloyd George</font> was coming to Lucerne I
+  felt that a new importance was added to Switzerland, to Lucerne, to me
+  and, if I may say so, to Mr. <font class="sc">Lloyd George</font>. But I
+  felt that, if I didn't do something about it, Lucerne and Mr. <font
+  class="sc">Lloyd George</font> would get away with all the credit and my
+  part in the affair would be overlooked.</p>
+
+  <p>The question arose as to what to call that "something"? After a great
+  deal of thought I decided to try you with a short and simple "Lucerne,"
+  one of my reasons being that, if you get down to the hard facts, there is
+  no such place.</p>
+
+  <p>Try (as the G.P.O. suggests to disappointed envelopes)&mdash;try</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><font class="sc">Luzern</font>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now don't let us have any argument about it, please. It makes no
+  difference how long you have called the place "Lucerne" or how many of
+  you there are. It is no good saying that English people and French people
+  call it "Lucerne" and as victors the Entente have the right to impose
+  their wishes; and it is no good quoting authorities at me. Luzern calls
+  itself Luzern, and, to satisfy myself that it is not mistaken on the
+  point, I have obtained complete corroboration from the <i>Amtliches
+  Schweizerisches Kursbuch</i>, an authority whose very name is enough to
+  make your <i>Bradshaw</i> look silly and shut up.</p>
+
+  <p>The avowed object of the <font class="sc">Premier</font> is to get
+  away from people and politics and to have at last a little uninterrupted
+  holiday. Probably he counts on the difficulty of getting at him there,
+  having regard to that terrible bit of the journey Bern&mdash;Luzern,
+  which covers sixty miles, takes three hours and involves twenty-four
+  stops, even if you take the mid-day express. There is a train in the
+  afternoon (its number is 5666, and I warn you against it) which takes
+  four hours, though it only stops twenty-four times also. The sinister
+  fact is that all the trains on this route stop as often as they can,
+  which I attribute to that general wave of idleness which is to-day
+  spreading over Europe. But number 5666 is worse than others; or else it
+  is getting old and tired. I notice that among the trains doing the return
+  journey there is no number 5666; I suppose it has just as much as it can
+  do to get there and that it never does return.</p>
+
+  <p>The <font class="sc">Premier</font> was not far out to count on this
+  protective element, and it is still the fact that, if you approach Luzern
+  carelessly, it is ninety-nine to one that you will spend the best years
+  of your young life on that particular stretch of railway. But nowadays
+  there is a back way round, by Basel. Be quite firm in asking for your
+  ticket. If the ticket man says, "You mean Bâle?" or, "You mean Basle?"
+  say, "No, I don't. I mean Basel." You have me and my friend, <i>Amtliches
+  Schweizerisches Kursbuch</i>, behind you. Stick firmly to your point, and
+  by approaching Luzern from the North you will approach it by a real
+  express which only takes two hours to do its sixty miles and hardly stops
+  at all to take breath. So that finishes with Bern, as to the spelling of
+  which, though you would personally like to see some more "e's," you now
+  repose confidence in me. Would you like me to quote my authority?... All
+  right; I won't say it again if it frightens the children.</p>
+
+  <p>In the old days of Peace, Luzern was full of honeymoon couples, and,
+  when Peace and honeymoons and all that sort of nonsense were put a stop
+  to, it became full of German interned prisoners of war. It boasts many
+  first-class hotels. One of them is patronised by the Greek ex-Royal
+  Family. A little unfortunate; but still you cannot expect to come and
+  enjoy yourself in Switzerland without the risk of running <span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>[pg 155]</span> into
+  an ex-Royal Family every corner you go round, and, what is more, a Royal
+  Family that wouldn't be ex- if it wasn't for you. It is a very good
+  hotel, and I recommend it for anyone who proposes just to pop over
+  here.</p>
+
+  <p>Get hold of L.G. while he is not busy and explain to him how
+  thoroughly misguided all his policies are, especially as to the Near
+  East. My idea is to group, according to subject and side, all those who
+  intend to get hold of the <font class="sc">Premier</font>, while he is
+  alone, and to have a quiet chat with him. I have my eye on a large hangar
+  on the other side of the Lake, which was built to house a dirigible and
+  ought to hold the bulk of those who want a word about Ireland, a place
+  they could put right in five minutes if it was left to them. Deputations
+  which have some idea of declaring strikes, general strikes and
+  international strikes, if matters are not arranged to their liking, will
+  be received between the hours of ten and twelve, and two and four, at the
+  Kursaal. Saturday afternoons and Sundays will be reserved for quiet
+  walks. I am mapping out some interesting routes, marking with a red dot
+  the spots where the <font class="sc">Premier</font> is likely to stop and
+  admire the view, and where you can approach him quietly from behind and
+  involve him in an argument about Russia before he has time to get
+  away.</p>
+
+  <p>Image a <font class="sc">Premier</font> arrived at the end of all the
+  beautiful sights to be seen locally, inured to all the magnificent
+  scenery around him, and no longer attracted by the novelty of life
+  abroad, longing, it may be, for just one touch of home. Then is the
+  moment for the little surprise I am keeping for him up my sleeve. "Come
+  along to a place close by," I shall say to him, for I see myself with the
+  whole business well in my hands now; "come along to a village I know,
+  whose very name will make you feel at home."</p>
+
+  <p>Just outside Luzern we stop at Meggen, but it's not that. Kussnacht
+  gets us well abroad again, and there is nothing particularly homely about
+  Immensee, Arth-Goldau, Steinen, Schwyz or Brunnen. In fact I can see my
+  <font class="sc">Premier</font> getting suspicious and wondering what new
+  political move this may be, when suddenly there will burst upon his
+  astonished gaze&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><font class="sc">Fluellen.</font></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Let us leave him there, alone with his emotions, into which it would
+  be impertinent to probe. I may tell you quietly apart that there is a
+  difference of opinion between me and <i>Amtliches Schweizerisches
+  Kursbuch</i> about this name. He wants to ration the l's, but, having
+  been there and heard the name pronounced, I have refused to be taught how
+  to spell a good Welsh name by a darned foreigner. If we are going to have
+  any nonsense about it I have said that I shall stand out for the proper,
+  full and uncorrupt spelling: <font class="sc">Fllewellyn</font>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/149.png"><img width="100%" src="images/149.png"
+      alt="Chuck it, Missus." /></a>
+    <p class="center">"'<font class="sc">Ere&mdash;chuck it, Missus. Why
+    can't yer let us fight in peace?</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"'That,' declared Mr. Lloyd George amid loud cheers, 'is one of the
+  most formidable challenges ever given to democracy. Without hesitation
+  every Government must accept that challenge.' 'Certainly we will,'
+  retorted the Prime Minister."&mdash;<i>Evening Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>No wonder Mr. <font class="sc">Lloyd George</font> wants a holiday if
+  he has begun to talk to himself.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"A telegram from Paris says: It is announced here that an agreement
+  has been concluded between France, Great Britain and Italy regarding the
+  delimitation of the open golf championship."&mdash;<i>Provincial
+  Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>It will be noticed that America seems once more to have held aloof
+  from the councils of the Allies.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>[pg 156]</span>
+
+<h2>"TO HIM THAT HATH ..."</h2>
+
+  <p>It was Butterington who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a
+  simple question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in
+  whose ways I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied
+  that he himself was not in the fur line.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whenever," he went on, "I require information on any subject I apply
+  to my bank. Why don't you do the same?"</p>
+
+  <p>This opened up an entirely new prospect. To me my bank was an
+  institution which kept my accounts, issued money and, on occasion, lent
+  it. It never entered my head that it was also ready to perform the
+  functions of an inquiry office and information bureau.</p>
+
+  <p>Previous communications from me had always begun, "Sir, with reference
+  to my overdraft"&mdash;you know the sort of thing one generally writes to
+  banks; expostulating, tactful, temporising letters.</p>
+
+  <p>This time however I addressed them in different vein. Rejecting all
+  mention of overdrafts as being in doubtful taste, I wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Sir</font>,&mdash;I shall be greatly obliged if you
+  will kindly inform me, at your early convenience:</p>
+
+  <p>(1) Whether it is a fact that the African rhinoceros has no hair on
+  the hind legs?</p>
+
+  <p>(2) Whether, in the case of my backing Pegasus in the first race, 'any
+  to come' on Short Time in the fourth, and Short Time not starting, I am
+  entitled to my winnings over Pegasus?</p>
+
+  <p>(3) Whether, after perusing seventeen favourable reports from mining
+  engineers and eighty-seven enthusiastic directors' speeches, I am
+  justified in assuming that gold actually does exist in the Bonanzadorado
+  mine?</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours faithfully,<br />
+<font class="sc">Thesiger Cholmondeley Beauchamp.</font></p>
+
+  <p>After some delay they answered as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Sir</font>,&mdash;We have much pleasure in replying
+  to the queries contained in your favour, of the 27th ult.:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>(1) Yes; (2) Yes; (3) No.</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Assuring you always of our best endeavours in your service,</p>
+
+<p class="center">We remain, Yours faithfully,<br />
+<i>per pro</i> The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.<br />
+<font class="sc">C.O. Shine.</font></p>
+
+  <p>So far so good. The Bank's manner left nothing to be desired, and its
+  replies were certainly to the point. I began to think of Mr. C.O. Shine
+  as my personal friend and speculated as to whether his first name were
+  Claude or Clarence.</p>
+
+  <p>During the following week, whenever I became curious on any subject, I
+  made notes of fresh queries to propound. After accumulating a sufficient
+  number I again wrote to the Bank. I forget the exact points upon which I
+  required information; one of them, I fancy, was the conjectured geologic
+  age of the Reichardtite strata. Anyhow I got no answer to any of
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>Instead, three days later, I received the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p><font class="sc">Sir</font>,&mdash;We regret to announce that, owing
+  to a clerical error in this office, your account was last month wrongly
+  credited with a cheque for £13,097 5<i>s.</i> 10<i>d.</i> which was made
+  payable to another client of the same name.</p>
+
+  <p>Adjustments have now been made which reveal a balance on your account
+  of £110 11<i>s.</i> 3<i>d.</i> <i>in our favour</i>. We trust that you
+  will find it convenient to cover this overdraft at an early date.</p>
+
+  <p>With reference to your letter of the 19th inst. containing assorted
+  inquiries, we beg to intimate that we can in no circumstances undertake
+  to advise clients on general matters which lie outside the scope of our
+  interests.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours faithfully,<br />
+<i>per pro</i> The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.<br />
+<font class="sc">Charles O. Shine.</font></p>
+
+  <p>And this time C.O.S. did not even "remain" in the plural.</p>
+
+  <p>I at once showed Butterington this offensive communication.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," said he, "of course they won't answer communications unless
+  you have a balance."</p>
+
+  <p>That is the way rich men talk.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am never without one," I replied with dignity, "on one side or the
+  other."</p>
+
+  <p>"There you differ from your namesake, whose balance is clearly always
+  on the right side. Hence that first kindly letter, addressed to you in
+  error."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>THE ROMANCE OF ADVERTISEMENT.</h2>
+
+  <p>The following items, culled from recent issues of <i>The Daily
+  Lure</i>, show where you should go to find really interesting,
+  stimulating and flat-catching notices:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>Partner, with not less than five thousand pounds, wanted for a
+  wild-duck farm in the island of Mull. Must be a man of iron constitution;
+  Gaelic speaker and teetotaler preferred.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Wanted, a cheap Desert Island, with a good water-supply and home
+  comforts, by a Georgian poet weary of the racket of Hammersmith.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Complete suits of armour, guaranteed bottle-proof, ten guineas each,
+  suitable for elderly pedestrians in charabanc areas.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Madame Bogolubov, Crystal-gazer in ordinary to the ex-King <font
+  class="sc">Constantine</font>, is prepared for a small fee to advise
+  intending explorers, prospectors or treasure-seekers as to suitable spots
+  for excavation, oil-boring, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Disused Martello Tower on the Irish coast, fifty miles from a police
+  barrack, offered cheap as an appropriate basis of observation to psychic
+  enthusiasts anxious to study the ways of leprechauns, banshees, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Genuine portraits by <font class="sc">Van Dyck</font>, <font
+  class="sc">Velasquez</font> and <font class="sc">Rembrandt</font> must be
+  sold immediately to pay a debt of honour. Price thirty shillings each, or
+  would take part payment in pre-war whisky.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Semi-paralysed Yugo-Slav professor, speaking seventeen languages, will
+  give lessons to neo-plutocrats in the correct pronunciation of the names
+  of all the foreign singers, dancers and artists performing or exhibiting
+  in London.</p>
+
+<p class="center">* * *</p>
+
+  <p>Persons interested in edible fungi may be glad to take shares in a
+  fungus plantation about to be started in the neighbourhood of Toller
+  Porcorum, Dorchester.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>THE RETURN OF THE COLONEL.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>House, the enigmatic Colonel, <font class="sc">Wilson's</font> right-hand man in France</p>
+      <p>When the <font class="sc">President</font> was leading Peace's great Parisian dance,</p>
+      <p>Once again returns to Europe as a journalist free-lance.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>He's a most sagacious person, indisposed to carp or grouse,</p>
+      <p>So we hope he'll be successful, aided by his tact and <i>nous</i>,</p>
+      <p>In upholding Mr. <font class="sc">Wilson</font>, <i>not</i> in bringing down the House.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>The Ubiquitous Scot.</h4>
+
+  <p>From <i>The Times'</i> summary of news:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"Our Constantinople correspondent, in a message reviewing the
+  situation in Armenia, states that the Armenians have captured the ancient
+  town of Nakhitchevan, where a Tartan Government had been set up."</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Small wonder that, people complain that no place is safe from
+  Scotland's activities. Meanwhile there seems a likelihood of a Tarzan
+  Government being set up in the film world.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>From Mrs. <font class="sc">Asquith's</font> reminiscences:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"One day after this conversation he [the late Lord Salisbury] came to
+  see me in Cavendish Square, bringing with him a signed photograph of
+  himself. This was in the year 1904, at the height of the controversy over
+  Protection."&mdash;<i>Sunday Times.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>As Lord <font class="sc">Salisbury</font> is generally supposed to
+  have died in 1903, Sir <font class="sc">Arthur Conan Doyle</font> has
+  been requested to investigate the incident.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>[pg 157]</span>
+
+<h2>THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.</h2>
+
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-3.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-3.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (3)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">He stole away&mdash;</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-2.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-2.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (2)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">Smith, of all people, dropped a catch.</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-1.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-1.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (1)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">The last man was in and with only one run
+    wanted&mdash;</font></p>
+  </div>
+<br clear="all" />
+
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-6.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-6.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (6)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">to leave the country.</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-5.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-5.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (5)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">He decided&mdash;</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-4.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-4.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (4)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">but his sin followed him.</font></p>
+  </div>
+<br clear="all" />
+
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-9.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-9.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (9)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">"Yes, I once saw him play when I was quite a lad.
+    On that occasion he had the misfortune to drop a catch."</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-8.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-8.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (8)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">"Good heavens, Smith, I haven't seen you since you
+    dropped that catch at the Circle."</font></p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+      <a href="images/151-7.png"><img width="100%" src="images/151-7.png"
+      alt="THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. (7)" /></a>
+    <p><font class="sc">After many years he returned.</font></p>
+  </div>
+<br clear="all" />
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>[pg 158]</span>
+
+<h2>AT THE PLAY.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">"<font class="sc">His Lady Friends.</font>"</p>
+
+  <p>The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter
+  of its setting there is small need to worry about geographical or
+  ethnical considerations. Of course, if its <i>locale</i> is French you
+  may have to modify its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very
+  little accommodation to national proprieties you can either transplant
+  the setting of your play or you can leave it where it was and make use of
+  the convention that for stage purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect
+  command of our tongue and idiom. But to take a frankly English novel by
+  an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs. <font class="sc">Nyitray</font>
+  and <font class="sc">Mandel</font> have done, for the American stage with
+  an American setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only
+  one or two actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the
+  American accent, is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous
+  lack of intelligence.</p>
+
+  <p>However we have got Mr. <font class="sc">Charles Hawtrey</font> back
+  again and that is what really matters. As a philanderer protesting
+  innocence in the face of damnatory facts we know him well enough; but
+  here we have him innocent and ingenuous as an angel, yet hard put to it
+  to convince anyone but himself of his guilelessness. A millionaire
+  (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition, who declines to spend his
+  money for him, he feels drawn to a course of knight-errantry and rides
+  abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary distress, with the avowed object
+  of "spreading a little sunshine."</p>
+
+  <div class="figright" style="width:50%;">
+      <a href="images/152.png"><img width="100%" src="images/152.png"
+      alt="I want to spread a little sunshine." /></a>
+    <p class="center">"I want to spread a little sunshine."</p>
+
+    <div class="i16">
+    <p><i>James Smith</i> ... Mr. <font class="sc">Charles
+    Hawtrey.</font></p>
+
+    <p><i>Eva Johns</i> ... Miss <font class="sc">Joan Barry.</font></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult
+  one for a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in
+  the neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco,
+  Washington, Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of
+  his superfluous wealth. The natural affection, however, which his
+  generosity inspired was not utilised by him, and you must try to believe
+  that, in spite of the most sinister appearances, he remained a faithful
+  husband.</p>
+
+  <p>With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not
+  trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the
+  obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends
+  well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will
+  herself do all the necessary squandering.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. <font class="sc">Charles Hawtrey</font> as <i>James Smith</i> was
+  irresistible in most of the old ways and a few new ones. The play would
+  have gone poorly without him, in spite of the piquancy of Miss <font
+  class="sc">Joan Barry</font> as a flapper, the fourth and final recipient
+  of his chaste bounty. Miss <font class="sc">Jessie Bateman</font> as
+  <i>Mrs. James Smith</i> had no chance till just at the end with the
+  turning of the worm. To the part of <i>Lucille Early</i>&mdash;the
+  <i>Earlys</i>, as a couple, were designed to contrast with the
+  <i>Smiths</i>, the wife in this case spending the money which the husband
+  hadn't got&mdash;Miss <font class="sc">Athene Seyler</font>, who was
+  meant for better things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps
+  "pressed" a little too much. Mr. <font class="sc">James Carew</font>, who
+  played <i>Edward Early</i>, was conspicuous as the sole male
+  representative of the American language in this American play. The
+  fleeting visions that we had of Miss <font class="sc">Mona
+  Harrison</font> as a refractory and venal cook excited general approval.
+  The three <i>protegées</i> of <i>James Smith</i> were only faintly
+  distinguishable in their rather crude banality.</p>
+
+  <p>The fun of the farce differed from that of most farces in depending
+  less upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the
+  situations still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune
+  to read Miss <font class="sc">Edgington's</font> novel, but one might be
+  permitted to assume, from the excellence of much of the wit, that,
+  whatever the play may in other respects have lacked of subtlety or
+  refinement, such defect was no fault of hers. What Mr. <font
+  class="sc">Charles Hawtrey</font> himself thought of it all I cannot say,
+  but the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of
+  motive, with the last two in which he figured, <i>The Naughty Wife</i>
+  and <i>Home and Beauty.</i> He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was
+  rather noticeable that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he
+  confined himself to a personal acknowledgment of the public's sympathy
+  with him in his illness and their loyalty throughout his career, and made
+  no reference to the play or its authors.</p>
+
+<p class="author">O.S.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>A SUPER-SURPRISE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I have not seen the stalking</p>
+      <p class="i2">By a rabbit of a bear,</p>
+      <p>Nor yet an oyster walking</p>
+      <p class="i2">Sedately up the stair;</p>
+      <p>But a marvel as amazing</p>
+      <p class="i2">Inspires these doggerel rhymes,</p>
+      <p>For I've read a leader praising</p>
+      <p class="i2">The <font class="sc">Premier</font> in <i>The Times</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>A House-Warming.</h4>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"Considerable damage was done by fire at &mdash;&mdash; Cottage on
+  Wednesday evening. The stairs, part of the floor, doors, furniture, etc.,
+  were destroyed.</p>
+
+  <p>&mdash;&mdash; presided at the piano, and Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; presided
+  over the refreshments. 'God save the King' was sung at the close of the
+  enjoyable day."&mdash;<i>Local Paper</i>.</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The Labour "Council of Action" have kindly stated that they are
+  "content to leave the French Government to the French people." They are
+  however reserving the right to leave the British Government to the
+  Bolshevists.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"We must repeat the Scots proverb that&mdash;'Delays are
+  dangerous.'"&mdash;<i>Sunday Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Or, as <font class="sc">Dryden</font> says in his Address to a Haggis,
+  "De'il tak' the hindmost."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"The proportion of sane to insane persons in civilized countries is
+  about one to 300."&mdash;<i>Canadian Paper</i>.</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Surely Carlyle said something very like this years ago.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h4>Commercial Candour.</h4>
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p><font class="sc">"Raincoats at less than cost price last 3
+  days.</font>"&mdash;<i>Advert. in Provincial Paper</i>.</p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+<hr />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"Lady has Left-off Clothing; privately."&mdash;<i>Provincial
+  Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Of course. That goes without saying.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>[pg 159]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+      <a href="images/153.png"><img width="100%" src="images/153.png"
+      alt="Why didn't you hang on to the favourite?" /></a>
+    <p><i>Trainer</i> (<i>to Irish apprentice who has finished among the
+    "also ran"</i>). <font class="sc">"Why didn't you hang on to the
+    favourite? Didn't I tell you you were the only one he was afraid
+    of."</font></p>
+
+    <p><i>Apprentice.</i> <font class="sc">"That's just it, sorr. 'Twas the
+    way he was so afraid of me, whin we came into the straight, he just
+    fled away from me."</font></p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.</i>)</p>
+
+  <p>Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly
+  stirred by the announcement of <i>Island Tales</i> (<font
+  class="sc">Mills and Boon</font>), a posthumous volume containing what is
+  probably the last writing of the late <font class="sc">Jack
+  London</font>. I can say at once that these seven stories show his art in
+  one aspect of its best. Not here the <font class="sc">London</font>, whom
+  some of us might prefer, of the strenuous adventure-tale, with whom there
+  was no respite till, at the end of anything up to a hundred
+  sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end. That South Sea
+  atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary temperament (from
+  <font class="sc">Stevenson</font> to <font class="sc">Stacpoole</font>
+  you can see it at work) has steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of
+  perpetual afternoon, so that the action of them tends to become overlaid
+  by slow reflective talk, old memories and the sense of ancient things.
+  Most notable is this in the first, where the actual romance, quick, human
+  and haunting, does not so much as show its face till after forty pages of
+  old-time local colour. Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the
+  last&mdash;"The Kanaka Surf," a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of
+  such bathing as, I suppose, can be understood nowhere but on these
+  enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise what a loss we suffer in one
+  who could put such jewelled loveliness on to the printed page&mdash;and
+  what another loss in not seeing the original for ourselves. I suppose no
+  tribute to the power of genius could be more eloquent.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>After the German Revolution of 1918, <font class="sc">Karl
+  Kautsky</font>, a prominent Socialist, was appointed by the new
+  Government to examine and edit the documents in the Berlin Foreign Office
+  relating to the outbreak of the War. His work was completed in time for
+  the Peace Conference and would, he believes, if published at that time,
+  have convinced the Allies that the new German Government ought not to be
+  made responsible for the sins of the old one. But it would also have
+  shown that the old Government was the main instigator of the War, and
+  that the German people, having danced to the tune, even if they did not
+  call for it, deserved to pay the piper. For that reason, perhaps, the
+  German Government withheld Herr <font class="sc">Kautsky's</font>
+  revelations. Now he has published them on his own account, under the
+  title, <i>The Guilt of William Hohenzollern</i> (<font
+  class="sc">Skeffington</font>). A more damning indictment has never been
+  drawn. From the moment of the <font class="sc">Archduke's</font>
+  assassination the <font class="sc">Kaiser</font> and his advisers
+  determined to make it the pretext for destroying Serbia, and crushing
+  Russia and France if they dared to interfere. <font
+  class="sc">Bismarck</font> once said that "never are so many lies told as
+  before a war, during an election and after a shoot." His own manipulation
+  of the Ems telegram was venial compared to the manner in which the German
+  diplomatists, egged on by their ruler&mdash;whose <i>marginalia</i> on
+  the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>[pg
+  160]</span> despatches furnish the most amusing reading in the
+  volume&mdash;used all the arts of chicanery to deceive Europe as to their
+  real intentions and to defeat the efforts of England&mdash;on whose
+  neutrality they confidently counted&mdash;to secure a peaceful
+  settlement. Though primarily addressed to the German proletariat, Herr
+  <font class="sc">Kautsky's</font> book has its value for all of
+  us&mdash;"lest we forget."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>On page 103 of <i>The White Hen</i> (<font class="sc">Mills and
+  Boon</font>) we read that the <i>Duke</i> laughed softly. "'It is just
+  like a romance,' he sighed happily;" which was precisely where, without
+  intending it, the <i>Duke</i> placed his ducal finger upon the weak spot
+  in the whole business. Because if ever a story was "like a romance," and
+  like nothing else on earth, and filled with characters each and all
+  pledged to preserve its unreality at all costs, here is that tale. The
+  plot, of which there is a generous allowance, turns chiefly upon the
+  problem, when is a white hen less a hen than a jewel casket? Answer, when
+  she has swallowed, and is erroneously thought to have retained, a famous
+  diamond, upon which an impoverished but noble (see above) French family
+  had depended for the <i>dot</i> that should enable their daughter to wed
+  a plutocratic but otherwise detestable suitor. I take it you will hardly
+  need telling that this is the moment chosen by Romance, under the expert
+  guidance of Miss <font class="sc">Phyllis Campbell</font>, to bring along
+  an even more wealthy young American, mistaken (of course) for his own
+  chauffeur and working such havoc upon the heart of the heroine that, when
+  the latter accidentally recovered the diamond from its feathered
+  <i>cache</i>, she very sensibly decided to say nothing about it.
+  Whereupon, because the other characters, especially an unpleasant
+  Duchess, were unaware that, as the shop announcements say, "Poultry was
+  Down Again," much profitable confusion resulted, though nothing to impugn
+  the justice of the ducal verdict quoted above. So that, if your taste
+  jumps with that of his Grace, you also can "sigh happily;" otherwise you
+  will perhaps omit the adverb&mdash;and select a story less exclusively
+  romantic.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>There is a spirit of Yorkshire and a spirit, I suppose, characteristic
+  of Suburbia, and on the outskirts of certain large manufacturing towns
+  there must exist a formidable blending of these two. To express the
+  double flavour of this essence requires, I should say, a subtler and more
+  elaborate method than Mr. <font class="sc">W. Riley</font> has attempted
+  to use in <i>A Yorkshire Suburb</i> (<font class="sc">Jenkins</font>). He
+  has imagined for the purpose of these sketches an architect,
+  <i>Murgatroyd</i>, who in planning most of the houses in the locality has
+  attempted to express in brick and stone the characters of their several
+  occupants. This is a device which becomes rather monotonous as the book
+  proceeds, besides imposing a series of strains which neither architecture
+  nor credulity can easily bear. Since these are rather superior
+  suburbanites, dialect is for the most part absent, and it is hard to feel
+  that they are very different people from those who live about the borders
+  of Manchester or London; a character like <i>Mrs. Flitch</i>, for
+  instance, who is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is,
+  alas! to be found anywhere. And where the dialect does crop out it does
+  not seem to be dependent on suburban soil for its raciness. I don't doubt
+  the accuracy of Mr. <font class="sc">Riley's</font> Yorkshiremanship, but
+  I do think he has under-estimated the difficulty of localising the
+  peculiar genius of villadom.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. <font
+  class="sc">Mordaunt</font> is really (if you want to fling this kind of
+  title about) an eclectic synthetist or synthetic symbolist. Her wicked
+  people are prodigiously wicked, wickedness personified, in fact; her good
+  folk are noble-hearted without stint or measure. I don't personally think
+  that anybody could be quite so completely and gratuitously evil as
+  good-looking <i>Charles Hoyland</i> in <i>The Little Soul</i> (<font
+  class="sc">Hutchinson</font>); or, being so, could possibly be
+  recommended, still less engaged, as tutor to a sensitive youth; or, being
+  so engaged, tolerated for two days. He certainly could not hold down his
+  job long enough to corrupt his pupil, <i>Anthony Clayton</i>, by
+  exchanging souls with him under the nose of mad but perceptive <i>Mrs.
+  Clayton</i> and sane sister <i>Diana</i>. This conspicuously chaste
+  <i>Diana</i> is an attractive person, and so is the recklessly charitable
+  <i>Dr. McCabe</i>, her appropriate mate, who first had to fly the country
+  through helping a chorus-girl out of a difficulty and then (more or less)
+  won the War by revolutionising bacteriology or something like that.
+  However, Mrs. <font class="sc">Mordaunt</font> interests because she is
+  so palpably interested herself.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+  <p>The scenes of <i>Lure of Contraband</i> (<font
+  class="sc">Jarrolds</font>) are laid in the Devonshire of some hundred
+  years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling, and it
+  contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the
+  villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read.
+  They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time
+  they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days. Mr. <font
+  class="sc">J. Weare Giffard</font> is a master of atmosphere, and I, at
+  any rate, lived happily in his Appledore, and imagined myself drinking
+  prime (and cheap) French brandy in the Beaver Inn; while <i>Lieutenant
+  Perkins</i>, who commanded the "preventive men," sat in his tall-backed
+  chair by the fireplace and kept his eyes and ears open to detect anything
+  that was suspicious. But he was not foolish enough to ask many questions
+  about the French brandy. An excellent yarn, simply and straight-forwardly
+  told.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;">
+      <a href="images/154.png"><img width="100%" src="images/154.png"
+      alt="And what do you think of Lloyd George?" /></a>
+    <p><i>Customer.</i> "<font class="sc">And what do you think of Lloyd
+    George?</font>"</p>
+
+    <p><i>Barber.</i> "<font class="sc">Think of 'im, Sir? With a mop of
+    'air like 'e's got&mdash;a nice example to the nation!</font>"</p>
+  </div>
+<hr />
+
+  <blockquote>
+  <p>"A photograph of the Olympic games at Antwerp was transmitted
+  yesterday to Paris, a distance of 200 miles, over a telephone wire. It is
+  in the nature of an experiment, and if it succeeds Messrs. Cook hold out
+  promises of further day trips to the Continent."&mdash;<i>Daily
+  Paper.</i></p>
+
+  </blockquote>
+  <p>Intending trippers must, of course, be proficient in the tight-rope
+  wire.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol.
+159, August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,2154 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159,
+August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2005 [EBook #16727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Keith Edkins and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
+
+VOL. 159.
+
+
+
+August 25th, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+CHARIVARIA.
+
+"What we have got to do," says Lord ROTHERMERE, "is to keep calm and mind
+our own business, instead of worrying about the affairs of every other
+nation." It seems only fair to point out that _The Daily News_ thought of
+this as long ago as August, 1914.
+
+* * *
+
+Gooseberries the size of bantams' eggs, says a news item, won a prize at
+the Deeside Horticultural Show. When we remember the giant gooseberries of
+a decade ago it rather looks as if the nation were losing its nerve.
+
+* * *
+
+With reference to the messenger seen running in Whitehall the other day a
+satisfactory explanation has now been given. He was doing it for the
+cinema.
+
+* * *
+
+The average Scot, says an Anti-Prohibition writer, cannot stand many
+drinks. Our experience supports this view; but he can be stood a good many.
+
+* * *
+
+A picture-paper gossip states that Mr. CHURCHILL enjoys very good health.
+Just a touch of writer's cramp now and then, of course.
+
+* * *
+
+In a recent riot in Londonderry, it is stated, a number of inoffensive
+neutrals were set upon and beaten by rowdies of both factions. We have
+constantly maintained that Irish unity can always be secured when there is
+something really worth uniting over.
+
+* * *
+
+A lighthouse is advertised for sale in _The Times_. It is said to be just
+the kind of residence for a tall man with sloping shoulders.
+
+* * *
+
+A correspondent asks in the weekly press for a new name for charabancs. We
+wish we could think there was any use in calling them names.
+
+* * *
+
+Seaside bathers are advised not to enter the water after a heavy meal. The
+seaside visitor who could pay for such a meal would naturally not have
+enough left to pay for a bathing-machine.
+
+* * *
+
+A Thames bargee was knocked down by a taxi-cab at Kingston-on-Thames last
+week. A well-known firm has offered to publish his remarks in fortnightly
+parts.
+
+* * *
+
+The West Dulwich man who struck a rate-collector on the head with a
+telephone claims credit for finding some use for these instruments.
+
+* * *
+
+Sir ERIC DRUMMOND has purchased the largest hotel in Geneva on behalf of
+the League of Nations. It is said that he has been taking lessons from Sir
+ALFRED MOND.
+
+* * *
+
+Following closely upon the announcement of the noiseless gun invented in
+New York comes the news that they have now invented some sound-proof bacon
+for export to this country.
+
+* * *
+
+It is stated that the man who last week said he understood the Rent Act was
+eventually pinned down by some friends and handed over to the care of his
+relatives.
+
+* * *
+
+According to a morning paper another Antarctic expedition is to be
+organised very shortly. We understand that only those who can stand a
+northern wind on all four sides need apply.
+
+* * *
+
+It is reported that a poultry-farmer in the West of England is making a
+fortune by giving his hens whisky to drink and then exporting their eggs to
+the United States.
+
+* * *
+
+A golf-ball was recently driven through the window of an express train near
+Knebworth. We are informed however that the player who struck the ball
+still maintains that the engine-driver deliberately ignored his shout of
+"Fore."
+
+* * *
+
+An amazing report reaches us from Yorkshire. It appears that a centenarian
+has been discovered who is unable to read without glasses or even to walk
+to market once a week.
+
+* * *
+
+The unveiling of one of the largest Peace memorials in the country is to
+take place on Armistice day this year. We hear that both the PREMIER and
+Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL have expressed a desire to attend unless prevented by
+the War.
+
+* * *
+
+Smart furriers, declares a fashion-paper, are pushing Beveren blue rabbit
+as one of the chic furs for the coming winter. The rabbit, our contemporary
+goes on to explain (superfluously, as it seems to us), is naturally blue.
+
+* * *
+
+On a recent occasion a meeting of the Dolgelly Rural Council had to be
+postponed, the members being absent hay-making. Parliament, on the other
+hand, has had to stop making hay owing to the Members being away in the
+country.
+
+* * *
+
+The Ministry of Food states that the period of normal supplies seems to
+come round in cycles of four years. Meanwhile the period of abnormal prices
+continues to come round in cycles of once a week. A movement in favour of
+postponing the cycle of payment till we get the cycle of plenty is not
+receiving adequate support from the provision trade.
+
+* * *
+
+Agricultural labourers near Peterborough have refused to work with Irishmen
+on the ground that the latter are troublesome. We always said that sooner
+or later someone would come round to Mr. LLOYD GEORGE'S view on this point.
+
+* * *
+
+A newspaper reports the case of a waiter who refused a tip. It is said that
+the gentleman who offered it is making a slow recovery and may be able to
+take a little fish this week.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Caller._ "EXCHANGE? GET ME DOUBLE-SIX DOUBLE-FIVE NINE
+CENTRAL--AND GET IT QUICK, LIKE THEY DO IT ON THE PICTURES."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE GROWTH OF THE SIDE-CAR.
+
+    "MOTOR CARS, CYCLES, _&c._
+
+    ARGYLL.--2 Bedrooms and sitting-room, with attendance."--_Scotch
+    Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "BRIGHTON ELECTRIC RAILWAY.
+
+    PALACE PIER AND KEMP TOWN CARS EVERY FIVE YEARS."--_Local Paper._
+
+It is inferred that the Ministry of Transport has assumed control.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN APOLOGY TO THE BENCH.
+
+_Humbly addressed to T.E.S._
+
+  If ever, where you hold the Seat of Doom,
+    I stand, my Lord, before you at the Bar,
+  And my forensic fame, a virgin bloom,
+    Lies in your awful hands to make or mar,
+  Let it not prejudice my case, I pray,
+    If you should call to mind a previous meeting
+  When on a champion course the other day
+    I gave your Lordship four strokes and a beating.
+
+  I own it savoured of contempt of court,
+    Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench,
+  That I should chuckle when your pitch was short
+    Or smile to see you in the sanded trench;
+  But Golf (so I extenuate my sin)
+    Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on;
+  One common bunker makes the whole world kin,
+    And Bar may scrap with Beak, and I with SCR-TT-N.
+
+  Nor did I give myself superior airs;
+    I made allowance for defective sight;
+  "The bandage which impartial Justice wears
+    Leaves you," I said, "a stranger to the light;
+  Habituated to the sword and scales,
+    If you commit some pardonable blunder,
+  If" (I remarked) "your nerve at moments fails
+    With grosser ironmongery, where's the wonder?"
+
+  So may the Law's High Majesty o'erlook
+    My rash presumption; may the memory die
+  Of how I won the match (and further took
+    The liberty of mopping up the bye);
+  Remember just a happy morning's round,
+    Also the fact that this alleged old fogey
+  Played at the last hole like a book and downed
+    The barely human feat of Colonel Bogey.
+
+  O.S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IF WE ALL TOOK TO MARGOTRY.
+
+[Mrs. ASQUITH'S feuilleton, which for so many people has transformed Sunday
+into a day of unrest, sets up a new method of autobiography, in which the
+protagonist is, so to speak, both JOHNSON and BOSWELL too. Successful
+models being always imitated we may expect to see a general use of her
+lively methods; and as a matter of fact I have been able already, through
+the use of a patent futurist reading-glass (invented by Signer Margoni), to
+get glimpses of two forthcoming reminiscent works of the future which, but
+for the _chronique egoistique_ of the moment might never have been written,
+and certainly not in their present interlocutory shape.]
+
+I.
+
+FROM "FIRST AID TO LITERATURE."
+
+By _Edmund Gosse_.
+
+... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential
+adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir
+in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was
+thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid
+exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I
+accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to
+oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such
+particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my
+own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue,
+typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an
+initial. _Quis custodiet?_ It would be grotesque indeed if one whose
+special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself
+fail in good taste.
+
+_Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang)._ I see nothing but blue pencil
+marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should
+be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.
+
+_EDMUND (earnestly)._ It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt
+my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book
+of reminiscences in English.
+
+_Mrs. A. (with fervour)._ I don't want to go down to history. I want to
+stay here and make it. And you (_with emotion_)--you have cramped my style.
+I can't think why I asked you to help.
+
+_EDMUND._ Everyone asks me to help. It is my destiny. I am the Muses'
+_amicus curiae_.
+
+_Mrs. A._ Oh, blow Latin! (_Lighting two cigarettes at once_) What's the
+good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without anything about L.G.?
+
+_EDMUND._ Dear lady, it would never have done. Be reasonable. There are
+occasions when reticence is imperative.
+
+_Mrs. A._ Reticence! What words you use!
+
+(_Caetera desunt._)
+
+II.
+
+FROM "A WEEK IN LOVELY LUCERNE."
+
+By _D. Lloyd George_.
+
+... I do not say that the mountains hereabout are not more considerable
+than those of our own beloved Wales, but as material to be employed in
+perorations they are far inferior. There is not the requisite mist (which
+may symbolise ignorance or obstinacy or any temporary disturbance or
+opposition), later to be dispelled by the strong beams of the sun
+(representing either progress generally or prime-ministerial genius or pure
+Coalitionism). Other local features I felt, however, I might find
+rhetorically useful, such as THORWALDSEN'S Lion, so noble, so--so leonine,
+but doomed ever to adhere to the rock, how symbolic of a strong idealist
+unable to translate his ameliorative plans into action! The old bridge too,
+uniting the two sides of the city, as one can attempt to link Radicalism
+and Coalitionism--how long could it endure? And so on. One's brain was
+never idle.
+
+It was while we were at Lucerne that LORD RIDDELL and I had some of our
+most significant conversations. I set them down just as they occurred,
+extenuating nothing and concealing nothing.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL (with emotion)._ You are in excellent form to-day. Lucerne
+now has two lions--one of them free.
+
+_DAVID (surprised)._ I free? (_Sadly_) You forget that GIOLITTI is coming.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL._ But that is nothing to you. Try him with your Italian and
+he will soon go.
+
+_DAVID._ You are a true friend. You always hearten me.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL (with more emotion)._ But you are so wonderful, so wonderful!
+And now for to-day's amusements. Where shall we go? Up Mount Pilatus or to
+WILLIAM TELL'S Chapel?
+
+_DAVID._ There is something irresistible to a Welshman in the word chapel.
+Let us go there. And WILLIAM TELL, was he not a patriot? Did he not defy
+the tyrant? I am sure that in his modest conventicle I can think of a
+thousand eloquent things. Let us go there.
+
+_LORD RIDDELL._ My hero! my dauntless hero!
+
+E.V.L.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Even with a round of 73 in the morning Ray fell behind Vardon, who
+    accomplished a remarkable round of 17 to lead the field."--_Provincial
+    Paper._
+
+This is believed to be the first occasion on which any golfer has
+accomplished two holes in one shot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "THE LION OF LUCERNE."
+
+MR. LLOYD GEORGE (_having jodelled heavily_). "NOT A SINGLE DISSENTIENT
+ECHO! THIS IS THE SORT OF PEACE CONFERENCE I LIKE." (_Continues to
+jodel_.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mabel (in barefaced attempt to detain Mother when saying
+"Good-night")._ "OH, MUMMY, I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT THREE
+LITTLE BOYS."
+
+_Mother._ "NO, NO; GO TO SLEEP. THERE'S NO TIME TO TELL A STORY ABOUT THREE
+LITTLE BOYS."
+
+_Mabel._ "WELL, THEN, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT _TWO_ LITTLE BOYS."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE RABBITS GAME.
+
+"Don't forget to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow," said Angela. Angela is aged nine
+and my younger sister; I am thirteen and my name is Anne.
+
+We both looked inquiringly at Father, and, as he didn't seem to remember,
+Angela in pained surprise began to explain. "If you say 'Rabbits' before
+you say anything else on the first day of a month you get a present during
+the month, but you mustn't say anything else first, or you won't."
+
+It all came out in one breath and, though it looks clear enough now, Father
+was very stupid.
+
+"I dislike rabbits," he said, "and I am very busy; your Mother will
+probably be glad of them for the servants."
+
+The rebuke in Angela's eyes was severe. "We haven't got any rabbits," she
+said; "we are only going to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow morning when we wake up
+and we thought you might like to do the same."
+
+"Oh, I should," said Father; "thank you very much, I won't forget." And he
+wrote "Rabbits" down on his blotting-paper. "Now go and tell your Mother;
+she would like to say 'Rabbits' too, I know."
+
+That seemed to terminate the interview, so we left him; but altogether it
+was not very satisfactory. You see, when we had "Bon-jour-Philippines,"
+Father used to provide the presents; at least that was some time ago; we
+haven't had any "Bon-jour-Philippines" lately. The last time we did, Jack,
+that is my brother at Oxford, found one and split it with Father, and the
+next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine" first and then asked for a
+present. Father asked him what he wanted, and he gave Father a letter that
+he had had that morning. Father got very angry and said that it was a
+disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to young wasters nowadays. He
+didn't say it quite like that, it was rather worse, and Mother said, "Hush,
+dear; remember the children," and Father said that they were all as bad and
+in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he went out of the room and banged the
+door.
+
+Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack owned
+he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in before
+Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of LLOYD GEORGE. I
+don't quite know what he meant, but Father often talks about LLOYD GEORGE,
+and he must be a beast.
+
+I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had, but--and
+here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to laugh--"It is the very
+last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I used to consider my Father, and I
+would have worked in the fields and earned money sooner than have given him
+bills to pay." Jack said that he knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew
+Father, and from what he said he thought that Father must have spent as
+long in the fields as NEBUCHADNEZZAR did.
+
+I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I
+wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it, so
+I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say
+'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us
+something in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks
+quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful sometimes.
+
+We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we thought
+what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we gave him a
+pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost ninepence and
+was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a hole in his hat.
+
+Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes the
+gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I went
+to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a man was
+in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to try to
+make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully pleased when he gave him
+the pipe.
+
+You see that made it very difficult, as we had to get something that Father
+would like and Jakes too, as he still had thirteen children; and then I
+remembered that Mrs. Jakes had once looked at a woollen jumper that I had
+on, and said that it would be just the thing for her Mary Ann, who had a
+delicate chest, and Jakes would be sure to like what Mrs. Jakes liked, or
+else he wouldn't have married her. Of course a jumper wasn't really the
+sort of thing that Father could wear, but I thought he might wrap his foot
+up in it when he next had gout, and besides I shouldn't be wanting it much
+more myself, as the summer was coming on.
+
+Angela said that she thought that would do well, and she wouldn't mind
+giving Father her jumper next month if he said "Rabbits," and it would do
+for Mrs. Jakes' next little girl.
+
+So that was decided, and then we had to arrange the plan. The most
+important thing was for us to wake before Father, so that we could wake him
+and remind him before he had time to say anything else, and Angela
+remembered that Ellen, that's the housemaid, had an alarm clock, which she
+used to set at a quarter to six each morning. We waited until Ellen had
+gone downstairs and then took it and hid it in Angela's bed.
+
+Next morning the clock went off. We were both rather frightened, and it was
+very cold and the room looked funny, as the blinds hadn't been pulled up,
+but we put our dressing-gowns on. Then Angela said that she had heard that
+if you woke a person who was walking in their sleep they sometimes called
+out, so I took a pair of stockings from the basket that had just come back
+from the wash to hold over Father's mouth while we woke him. They were
+waiting to be mended and had a hole in them, but that didn't matter much,
+as I screwed them up tight, and then we went into Father's room. They were
+both asleep, and Father had his mouth open all ready for the stockings,
+which was very lucky, as I was wondering how I could get them in.
+
+We crept up to the bed, and I know I shivered, and I think Angela did too,
+as I was holding her hand. Then she called out "Boo" as loud as she could,
+and I stuffed the stockings into Father's mouth, and then they both woke
+up, and everything went wrong.
+
+Mother thought the house was on fire and screamed, and it made Angela begin
+to cry. I quite forgot to tell Father to say "Rabbits," and just pressed
+the stockings further into his mouth.
+
+Father struggled and made awful noises, and when he did get the stockings
+out the things he said weren't a bit like "Rabbits," and the only thing
+that he did say that I could write down here was that he thought he was
+going to be sick. The rest was dreadful.
+
+We were both sent back to bed, and that morning as a punishment we were not
+allowed into the dining-room until Father and Mother had finished their
+breakfast; and Angela, who often thinks quite clever things, said that we
+had better not do "Rabbits" again for a good long time. But after all it
+didn't matter much as the weather got a great deal colder, and I wore my
+jumper a lot, and so did Angela.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "LOOK 'ERE--THIS ARF-CROWN WON'T DO. IT AIN'T GOT NO MILLING
+ON ITS HEDGE."
+
+"BLIMY! NOR IT 'AS! I _KNEW_ I'D FORGOTTEN SOMEFINK."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FLOWERS' NAMES.
+
+          DAME'S DELIGHT.
+
+  There was a Lady walked a wood;
+  She never smiled, nor never could.
+  One day a sunbeam from the South
+  Kissed full her petulant proud mouth;
+  She laughed, and there, beneath the trees,
+  Fluttering in the April breeze,
+  Spread tracts of blossom, green and white,
+  Curtseying to the golden light--
+  The broken laugh of Dame's Delight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FIRST LOVE AND LAST.
+
+    [It is pointed out by a contemporary that the dressmaker's waxen model
+    has quite lost her old insipid air. The latest examples of the
+    modeller's art show the "glad eye" and features with which "any man
+    might fall in love."]
+
+  In the days when I started to toddle
+    I loved with a frenzy sublime
+  A dressmaker's beauteous model--
+    I think I was three at the time;
+  She was fair in the foolish old fashion,
+    And they found me again and again
+  With my nose in an access of passion
+          Glued tight to the pane.
+
+  But I thought they were gone past returning
+    Till Time should go back on his tracks,
+  Those days of a child's undiscerning
+    But fervent devotion to wax;
+  Could a heart, though admittedly restive,
+    Recapture that innocent mood
+  At sixty next birthday? I'm blest if
+          I thought that it could.
+
+  But Art, ever bent on progression,
+    Has taken the model in hand,
+  And brought in the line of succession
+    A figure more pleasingly planned;
+  Her eyes with the gladdest of glances,
+    Her lips and her hair and her cheek
+  Can puncture like so many lances
+          A bosom of teak.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HARD TIMES FOR HEROINES.
+
+"Oh, Bertram," breathed Eunice as she glided into his arms, "if Ernest
+knew, what would he think?"
+
+At this point of my story I admit that I was held up. I myself couldn't
+help wondering how Ernest would regard the situation. He was a perfectly
+good husband and, personally, I preferred him to Bertram the lover. I might
+get unpopular with my readers, however, if they suspected this, so I
+continued:--
+
+"Ernest can never appreciate you as I do, dearest," Bertram whispered
+hoarsely; "he is cold, hard, indifferent--"
+
+Again I paused. If Eunice had been the really nice girl I meant her to be
+she would have asked Bertram what on earth he meant by saying such things
+about her husband, and would have told him the shortest cut to the
+front-door. In which case she might never have got into print.
+
+The fact is the poor heroine of fiction has a hard time of it nowadays.
+Someone ought to write a treatise on "How to be Happy though a Heroine," or
+uphold her cause in some way. Twenty-five years ago she lived in a halo of
+romance. Her wooers were tender, respectful and adoring; she was never
+without a chaperon. Her love-story was conventional and ended in wedding
+bells. To-day--just see how her position has altered. Generally she begins
+by being married already. Then her lover comes along to place her in
+awkward predicaments and put her to no end of inconvenience, very often
+only to make her realise that she prefers her husband after all. Or, on the
+other hand, the modern writer does not mind killing off, on the barest
+pretext, a husband who is perfectly sound in wind and limb and had never
+suffered from anything in his life until the lover appeared. The poor girl
+will tell you herself that it isn't natural.
+
+Then there is the compromising situation. Magazine editors clamour for
+it--in fiction, I mean. We find the heroine flung on a desert island, with
+the one man above all others in the world that she detests as her sole
+companion. It is rather rough on her, but often still more rough on other
+people, as it may necessitate drowning the entire crew and passengers of a
+large liner just in order to leave the couple alone for a while to get to
+know each other better. And not until they find that they care for one
+another after all does the rescue party arrive. It will cruise about, or be
+at anchor round the corner, for weeks and weeks, so that it can appear on
+the horizon at the moment of the first embrace. This situation is so
+popular at present that it is surprising that there are enough desert
+islands to go round.
+
+Again, the lonely bungalow episode is pretty cheerless for the heroine. She
+accepts an apparently harmless invitation to spend a week-end with friends
+in the country. When she arrives at the station there is no one to meet
+her. After a course of desert islands this ought to arouse her suspicions,
+but she never seems to benefit by experience. At the bungalow, reached in a
+hired fly and a blinding snowstorm, she finds the whole household away. The
+four other week-end guests, her host and hostess and their five children,
+the invalid aunt who resides with the family, the three female servants and
+the boot-boy who lives in--all have completely vanished. The only sign of
+life for miles is the hero standing on the doorstep looking bewildered and
+troubled, as well he might, for he knows that he must spend the night in a
+snowstorm to avoid compromising the heroine.
+
+And when the family return next morning and explain that they went out to
+look at the sunset, but were held up at a neighbour's by the weather,
+nobody seems to think the excuse a little thin.
+
+The heroine can never hope for a tranquil existence like other people. I
+read of one only recently who, just because she strongly objected to the
+man her parents wanted her to marry, was flung with him on an iceberg that
+had only seating capacity for two. And when the iceberg began to melt--
+writers must at times manipulate the elements--it meant that she must
+either watch the man drown or share the same seat with him. The rescue
+party held off, of course, until the harassed girl was sitting on his
+knees, and then received the pair as they slid down, announcing their
+engagement.
+
+What do I intend to do with Bertram and Eunice? I am undecided whether to
+place them in the vicinity of a volcano, which, unknown to Bertram, has
+eruptive tendencies, or to send them up in an aeroplane and break the
+propeller in mid-Atlantic just as the rescue party (including the
+husband)--What? Do I understand anything about aeroplanes? Certainly not;
+but I know everything about heroines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EVIDENCE.
+
+"What's all this I hear about the Abbey?" said my friend Truscott when I
+met him yesterday.
+
+Truscott has just returned from New Zealand and is for the moment a little
+behind the times. But he can pick up the threads as quickly as most men.
+
+"It's in a bad way," I told him. "All kinds of defects in the fabric, and
+there's a public fund to make it sound again. You ought to subscribe."
+
+"It may be in disrepair," he replied, "but it isn't going to fall down just
+yet. I know; I went to see it this morning."
+
+"But how do you know?" I asked. "You may guess; you can't know."
+
+"I know," he said, "because I was told. A little bird told me, and there's
+no authority half so good. Do you remember a few years ago a terrific storm
+that blew down half the elms in Kensington Gardens?"
+
+I remembered. I had reason; for the trunks and branches were all over the
+road and my omnibus from Church Street to Piccadilly Circus had to make
+wide detours.
+
+"Well," Truscott continued, "someone wrote to the papers to say that two or
+three days before the storm all the rooks left the trees and did not
+return. They knew what was coming. Birds do know, you know, and that's why
+I feel no immediate anxiety about the Abbey."
+
+"Explain," I said.
+
+"Well," he continued, "when I was there this morning I watched a sparrow
+popping in and out of a nest built in a niche in the stonework over the
+north door."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES.
+
+THEN AND NOW.
+
+_From an Early-Victorian "Etiquette for Gentlemen_."--"A GENTLEMAN CANNOT
+BE TOO CAREFUL TO AVOID STEPPING ON A LADY'S DRESS WHEN ABOUT TO GET IN OR
+OUT OF A CARRIAGE."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THOUGHTS ON "THE TIMES."
+
+(FROM A TRAIN.)
+
+Really the news is very bad this morning. On the front page there are two
+Foreign crises and a Home one. On the next page there is one Grave Warning
+and two probable strikes. On every other page there is either a political
+murder or a new war. It is awful ...
+
+Yet somehow I don't feel depressed. I rather feel like giggling. An empty
+smoker in the Cornish express--_empty_ except for me! Extraordinary! And
+all my luggage in the right van, labelled for Helston, and not for Hull or
+Harwich or Hastings. That porter was a splendid fellow, so respectful, so
+keen on his work--no Bolshevism about _him_. I gave him a shilling. I gave
+the taxi-man a shilling too. That guard is a pleasant fellow also; I shall
+give him two shillings, perhaps half-a-crown. Yet I see that the railways
+are seething with unrest.
+
+I have just read _The Times'_ leader. Everything seems to be coming undone
+... Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India. This Bolshevist business ...
+dreadful. The guard has got me a ticket for the Second Luncheon. A capital
+fellow. I gave him three shillings. Absurd. I have no more shillings now. I
+am overdrawn. There is a financial crisis. But that, of course, is general.
+I see that Mr. Iselbaum anticipates a general smash this winter. A terrible
+winter it is going to be ... no coal, no food ... We ought to be in by
+five, in time for a fat late tea ... Cornish cream ... jam. Gwen will be at
+the station, with the children, all in blue ... or pink perhaps. How jolly
+the country looks! Superficial, of course; the harvest's ruined; no wheat,
+no fruit. And unemployment will be very bad. And the more people there are
+unemployed the more people will strike ... Sounds funny, that; but true ...
+Hope they've given us the usual table in the coffee-room, that jolly
+window-table in the corner, where one can look across the bay to the cliffs
+and the corn-fields and the hills ... Only there's no corn, I suppose, this
+year ... And one has a good view of the rest of the room there ... can
+study the new arrivals at dinner, instead of having to wait till
+afterwards. Dinner is much the best time to study them; you can see at once
+how they eat. And it is so much easier to decide which is the sister and
+which the _fiancee_ of the young man when they are all stationary at a
+table. When you only see them rushing about passages in ones it takes days.
+
+All the usual families will be there, I suppose--the Bradleys and the
+Clinks, old Mrs. Puntage and the kids--if they can afford it this year ...
+Very likely they can't. I can't, certainly. But I'm going.
+
+"Not since the fateful week-end of August, 1914, when the destinies of
+Europe were decided in a few hours, have issues of such gravity engaged the
+attention of the British race...." Dreadful. I shall get some tennis
+tomorrow. I shan't be called. I shall get up when the sun is on my face and
+not before. I shall dress very, very slowly, looking at the sea and the
+sands and the sun, not rushing, not shaving properly, not thinking, not
+washing a great deal, just sort of falling into an old coat and some grey
+flannels.... Then I shall just sort of fall downstairs--about half-past
+nine, and give the old barometer a bang. Then breakfast, very deliberate,
+but cheerful, because the glass went up when I banged it--it always goes up
+at that hotel ... like the cost of living. Up another five points to-day, I
+see. Bread's going to be one-and-threepence. But of course there won't _be_
+any bread this winter, so the price doesn't much matter. But what about
+coal? and milk? and meat? "Several new sets of wage claims are due for
+decision within the next few weeks, and it is possible that two of them at
+least may not be determined without a cessation of work." More strikes ...
+But not for a week or two. To-morrow there won't be any papers at
+breakfast; there won't be any letters. I shan't catch the 9.5. After
+breakfast I shall smoke on the cliff--then some tennis. Most of the balls
+will go over the cliff, but when they have all gone one just slips down and
+bathes, and picks them up on the way. Undress on the rocks--no machines, no
+tents. Jolly bathing. Mixed, of course. This Tonbridge councillor is on
+about that again, I see. He ought to come to Mullion. Mixed bathing depends
+entirely on the mixture. He doesn't realise that. Of course, if he _will_
+bathe at Tonbridge ...
+
+"In diplomatic circles no one is attempting to conceal that the situation
+is extremely grave." Now which situation is that? That must be one of these
+world-plots. Don't really see how civilisation can carry on more than a
+week or two now. Lucky I only took a single, perhaps. It was only two
+pounds, but I hadn't enough for a return. Never shall have enough,
+probably--but no matter. If the world is coming to an end, might as well be
+in a good part of it at the time. And it would be sickening to be snuffed
+out with an unused return-ticket in one's pocket.
+
+On the sands after lunch--build a few castles and dams and things for the
+children--at least, not altogether for the children, not so much as they
+think, anyhow. Tea at the farm, with plenty of cream, possibly an egg ...
+No eggs this winter, I see; some question of non-unionists. Then a little
+golf before dinner--and perhaps a little dancing afterwards. Coffee, anyhow
+...
+
+Then _The Times_ arrives, all wrapped up, just as one is explaining about
+the seventh hole. It is all stiff and crinkly, and one spends a long time
+rearranging it, flattening out the folds ...
+
+And one never reads it. That's the best of all.
+
+A.P.H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: NATIONAL RESEARCH.
+
+_THE DAILY QUEST_, EVER WITH ITS FINGER ON THE PUBLIC PULSE, SENDS A
+SPECIAL COMMISSIONER TO OUR HOLIDAY RESORTS TO DISCOVER WHICH HAS THE
+NICEST NECKS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _The Cheerful One._ "CONGRATULATIONS, OLD CHAP, ON FINDING
+YOUR GAME AGAIN."
+
+_Club Grouser._ "FINDING MY GAME! WHY, I'VE JUST OFFERED TO SELL EVERY
+DAMNED CLUB IN MY BAG."
+
+_The Cheerful One._ "YES, I KNOW. BUT YESTERDAY YOU WERE _GIVING_ THEM
+AWAY."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRONE.
+
+_To the Editor of "Punch."_
+
+SIR,--I am an architect (of forty-three years' standing) and I like to keep
+_au courant_ with everything in the world of building (or of being about to
+build). Consequently anything new in constructional material interests me,
+and in this connection I would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I
+have only seen it (or them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather
+that the word "prone" stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the
+plural of "grouse," and as "house" might well stand for the plural of
+"house" nowadays, considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or
+they) is (or are) used either as a floor covering or otherwise in
+connection with working on the floor or ground.
+
+My reason for so thinking is contained in the following interesting item,
+culled from a well-known daily newspaper:--
+
+    "There is in London one man at least who works hard every day and has
+    to lay prone to do it.
+
+    He may be seen daily in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey re-cutting
+    the names on the flagged gravestones which have been worn by countless
+    pilgrims' feet. He has picked out many illustrious names, and others
+    are to follow."
+
+The sex and species of this hard-worker preclude the notion of any
+oviparous act, and I take it that one "lays prone" as one lays a mat or
+strip of carpet, for the purpose of facilitating labour that is done on the
+knees or stomach. If I am right I should like to get my builder to order
+some for his workmen absolutely at once.
+
+Anything which would help to defeat the Trade Unions in their fight against
+speeding-up would be a blessing, especially to the architectural world, so
+perhaps you will be good enough to enlighten me on the nature of Prone, and
+where obtainable.
+
+Believe me, Yours very gravely,
+ONESIMUS STONE (F.R.I.B.A.).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From an American book on "How and What to Read":--
+
+    "Other great American short story writers include Bret Harte, Edward
+    Everett Hale, Frank Stockton, and Mary E. Wilkins. With these may be
+    included Thomas Hardy's 'Life's Little Ironies,' which are full of
+    fun."
+
+Mr. HARDY will be glad, no doubt, to add this little irony to his
+collection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KELPIE.
+
+  The scoffer rails at ancient tales
+    Of lake and stream and river;
+  The wise man owns that in his bones
+    The kelpie makes him shiver.
+
+  Big salmon-flies the scoffer buys,
+    Long rods and wading stockings;
+  Unpicturesque he walks in Esk
+    With unbelief and mockings.
+
+  "A river-horse! O-ho, of course!"
+    And shouts with ribald laughter;
+  He does not see in his cheap glee
+    The kelpie trotting after.
+
+  The storm comes chill from off the hill;
+    An eerie wind doth holloa;
+  And near and near by surges drear
+    The water-horse doth follow.
+
+  A snort, a snuff; enough, enough;
+    Past prayer or human help he
+  Comes never more to mortal door
+    Who meets the water-kelpie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "THE KING ARRIVES IN SCOTLAND
+
+    ASKED TO LEAVE."
+
+    _Consecutive Headlines in "The Daily Mirror."_
+
+The habit of reading the headlines in our pictorial newspapers without
+glancing at the pictures beneath them is liable to create false
+impressions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mrs. Symons (wishing to draw attention, in the time-
+honoured manner, to the amount of dust on the drawing-room furniture)._
+"LOOK AT THAT, MARTHA; I CAN WRITE MY NAME ON THE PIANO."
+
+_Martha._ "FANCY, NOW, YOU SPELLING IT WITH A 'Y.'"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO A MAKER OF PILLS.
+
+    "The Pill Trade has fallen on evil days; no ex-service men seem to
+    require pills."--_A pill manufacturer summoned for rates at Willesden._
+
+  O Benefactor of the British Tommy,
+    So often sick in far unfriendly climes,
+  What tears of sympathy are flowing from me
+    To learn that you have fallen on evil times!
+  Yea, to my mind 'tis little short of tragic
+  That men no longer buy your potent spheres of magic!
+
+  Scarce less detested than the Bulgar bullet
+    Your bitter pellets of Quin. Sulph. gr. 5
+  Have often stuck in my long-suffering gullet,
+    Leaving me barely more than half alive,
+  Whilst the accursed drug, whose taste I dread,
+  Hummed like an aeroplane within my throbbing head.
+
+  And what about Acetyl-Salicylic,
+    And what of Calomels and Soda Sals?
+  Existence had been even less idyllic
+    Without those powerful and faithful pals!
+  Why, midst the fevers of the Struma plain you
+  Furnished the greater part of Tommy's daily menu.
+
+  Or what of that infallible specific,
+    Your Pil. Cathartic Comp., or No. 9,
+  Whose world-wide influence must have been terrific
+    Since first it found its footing in the Line?
+  The British Tommy took it by the million--
+  Why should it fail to sell now he has turned civilian?
+
+  It is not base ingratitude that blinds him
+    To recognition of an ancient debt,
+  But rather that the sight of these reminds him
+    Of painful days which he would fain forget.
+  When life was one long round of guards and drills,
+  Marches, patrols, fatigues and sick parades--and pills.
+
+  Yet hear me, maker of the potent pilule:
+    Although my days of soldiering are o'er,
+  I'm fondly trusting that, when next I'm ill, you
+    Come to my rescue as you came of yore;
+  Meanwhile you'll understand that I, for one,
+  Refuse to buy your wares and eat them just for fun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A DEAD HEAT.
+
+    "In the high jump final, Landen (U.S.A.) was first with a jump of 6ft.
+    4-1/2in.; Muller (U.S.A.) and E. Keleend (Sweeden) died for second
+    place."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "I heard Lord Rosebery say: 'Your little girl has got beautiful eyes.'
+    I repeated this upstairs with joy and excitement to the family, who ...
+    said they thought it was true enough if my eyes had not been so close
+    together."--_Extract from Autobiography of Margot Asquith._
+
+Her "I's" are generally rather close together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The policy which should be adopted is first to take steps to prevent
+    prices continuing to rise, and then to endeavour to reduce them until
+    the purchasing power of the pound sterling is equal to the purchasing
+    power of the dollar."--_Financial Paper_.
+
+Judging by the New York exchange good progress has been made in this
+direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE "HOUSE"-BREAKER.
+
+OVERTHROW OF THE PARLIAMENT OF DEMOCRACY; A DREAM OF THE "COUNCIL OF
+ACTION."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Mother._ "YOUR COUSIN JIM HAS OFFERED TO TAKE YOU TO DINNER
+AND A THEATRE TO-NIGHT. AREN'T YOU PLEASED?"
+
+_Daughter._ "OH, IT'S ALL RIGHT, BUT HE LOOKS SO ROTTENLY RESPECTABLE."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEORGE, JANE AND LENIN.
+
+Now that Soviet rule in England is apparently so imminent it seems to me
+that we ought to consider a little more closely the application of its
+practical machinery. The morning papers reach this village at three o'clock
+in the afternoon, so that nobody is in to read them, and when one comes
+back in the evening one is generally too lazy, but a couple of rather
+startling sentences about the coming Communist _regime_ have recently
+caught my eye.
+
+"The people of England, like the people of Russia," runs the first, "will
+soon be working under the lash." And the second, so far as I remember,
+says, "Our rations will no doubt be reduced to half a herring and some
+boiled bird-seed, which is all the unhappy Russians are getting to eat."
+
+Before these changes fall suddenly upon us I think we should ponder a
+little on the way in which they will affect our urban and agricultural
+life.
+
+Take the House of Commons. A very large and symbolic knout might occupy the
+position of the present mace, and from time to time the SPEAKER could take
+it up and crack it. As this needs a certain amount of practice it will be
+necessary to select a fairly horsey man as Speaker, and the Whips, who will
+follow the same procedure, should also be skilled practitioners. I see no
+difficulty in applying the same method to commercial and factory life in
+general, still less to the packing of the Underground Railway and the
+loading of motor-omnibuses and trams.
+
+It is rather when we come to scattered rural communities that the system
+seems likely to break down. Take the case of George Harrison in this
+village. When I first met George Harrison, and he said that he thought the
+weather was lifting, he was carrying a basket of red plums which he offered
+to sell me for an old song. On subsequent occasions I met him--
+
+1. Driving cows. (At least I suppose he was driving them; he was sitting
+sideways on a large horse doing nothing in particular, and some of the cows
+were going into one field and some into another, and a dog was biting their
+tails indiscriminately.)
+
+2. Clearing muck and weeds out of the stream.
+
+3. Setting a springe for rabbits.
+
+4. Delivering letters, because the postman doesn't like walking up the
+hill.
+
+Now I maintain that there would be insuperable difficulties in making
+George carry out all these various activities under the lash. Anyone, I
+suppose, under a properly constituted Soviet _regime_ might be detailed as
+George Harrison's lasher, Mr. SMILLIE, Mr. G.K. CHESTERTON, Lord CURZON,
+Mr. CLYNES or the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND. Can you imagine Mr. CHESTERTON
+walking about on guard duty in a rabbit warren while George Harrison set
+springes in accordance with the principles laid down by the Third
+Internationale for rabbit-snaring? or the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND standing
+in gum-boots in the middle of a stream and flicking George Harrison about
+the trousers if he didn't rake out old tin cans at forty to the minute as
+laid down by the Moscow Code? Now I ask you.
+
+And then there is this half a herring and boiled bird-seed arrangement.
+George Harrison has a sister of eighteen who kindly comes in to do cooking
+and housework for us every day. She thinks us frightfully queer, and if we
+bought some herrings and bird-seed and asked her to cook them for us I have
+no doubt she would oblige, but, though she doesn't much care what we eat,
+there are a lot of things she doesn't eat herself, and fish is one of them.
+Porridge, which, I suppose, is a kind of bird-seed, is another.
+
+Not that Jane calls it eating, by the way. She calls it "touching," and
+there are any number of things that she doesn't fancy touching. She will
+touch enormous platefuls of bacon or sausages or almost any derivative of
+the domestic pig, and the same applies to puddings and cake. But beef and
+mutton she does not touch, nor margarine, and we have to be almost as
+careful that Jane Harrison has plenty of the right things to touch as about
+the whole of the rest of the family.
+
+Now here again I think it would be quite possible to induce the people of
+England in our large industrial centres to ration themselves on boiled
+herring and bird-seed. We should not use those names, of course. The
+advertisements on the hoardings would say:--
+
+  THE BOUNTIFUL HARVEST OF THE SEA BROUGHT TO THE BREAKFAST TABLE
+
+or
+
+  WHAT MAKES THE SKYLARK SO HAPPY?
+  TRY HARRABY'S HEMP. A SONG IN EVERY SPOONFUL.
+
+But propaganda of that sort would have no effect on Jane. She would simply
+say that she never cared to touch herrings and that she did not fancy
+hemp-seed.
+
+When I consider the cases of George and Jane I am bound to believe either
+that the Russian moujiks (if this is still the right word) are more docile
+and tractable than ours, or else that the Soviet _regime_ will need a great
+deal of adaptation before it can be extended to our English villages. Or,
+of course, it may be possible that some of the minuter details of M.
+LENIN'S administration have not been fully revealed to me. I shall find out
+about this no doubt when I return to London. In the meantime I am banking
+on George and Jane, whatever the COUNCIL OF ACTION may do.
+
+EVOE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE OLD ORDER CHANGES.
+
+    "'He brightened up a lot when his mother-in-law arrived,' said an
+    onlooker.--"_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Wee Donald Angus._ "PLEASE, SIRR, WHAT TIME WULL IT BE?"
+
+_Literal Gentleman._ "WHEN?"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUCERNE.
+
+  O, every dog must have its day
+    And ev'ry town its turn;
+  For fair is fair ... and, anyway,
+    Let's talk about Lucerne.
+
+Lucerne is in Switzerland, and I am in Lucerne. The moment I heard that Mr.
+LLOYD GEORGE was coming to Lucerne I felt that a new importance was added
+to Switzerland, to Lucerne, to me and, if I may say so, to Mr. LLOYD
+GEORGE. But I felt that, if I didn't do something about it, Lucerne and Mr.
+LLOYD GEORGE would get away with all the credit and my part in the affair
+would be overlooked.
+
+The question arose as to what to call that "something"? After a great deal
+of thought I decided to try you with a short and simple "Lucerne," one of
+my reasons being that, if you get down to the hard facts, there is no such
+place.
+
+Try (as the G.P.O. suggests to disappointed envelopes)--try
+
+  LUZERN.
+
+Now don't let us have any argument about it, please. It makes no difference
+how long you have called the place "Lucerne" or how many of you there are.
+It is no good saying that English people and French people call it
+"Lucerne" and as victors the Entente have the right to impose their wishes;
+and it is no good quoting authorities at me. Luzern calls itself Luzern,
+and, to satisfy myself that it is not mistaken on the point, I have
+obtained complete corroboration from the _Amtliches Schweizerisches
+Kursbuch_, an authority whose very name is enough to make your _Bradshaw_
+look silly and shut up.
+
+The avowed object of the PREMIER is to get away from people and politics
+and to have at last a little uninterrupted holiday. Probably he counts on
+the difficulty of getting at him there, having regard to that terrible bit
+of the journey Bern--Luzern, which covers sixty miles, takes three hours
+and involves twenty-four stops, even if you take the mid-day express. There
+is a train in the afternoon (its number is 5666, and I warn you against it)
+which takes four hours, though it only stops twenty-four times also. The
+sinister fact is that all the trains on this route stop as often as they
+can, which I attribute to that general wave of idleness which is to-day
+spreading over Europe. But number 5666 is worse than others; or else it is
+getting old and tired. I notice that among the trains doing the return
+journey there is no number 5666; I suppose it has just as much as it can do
+to get there and that it never does return.
+
+The PREMIER was not far out to count on this protective element, and it is
+still the fact that, if you approach Luzern carelessly, it is ninety-nine
+to one that you will spend the best years of your young life on that
+particular stretch of railway. But nowadays there is a back way round, by
+Basel. Be quite firm in asking for your ticket. If the ticket man says,
+"You mean Bale?" or, "You mean Basle?" say, "No, I don't. I mean Basel."
+You have me and my friend, _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_, behind
+you. Stick firmly to your point, and by approaching Luzern from the North
+you will approach it by a real express which only takes two hours to do its
+sixty miles and hardly stops at all to take breath. So that finishes with
+Bern, as to the spelling of which, though you would personally like to see
+some more "e's," you now repose confidence in me. Would you like me to
+quote my authority?... All right; I won't say it again if it frightens the
+children.
+
+In the old days of Peace, Luzern was full of honeymoon couples, and, when
+Peace and honeymoons and all that sort of nonsense were put a stop to, it
+became full of German interned prisoners of war. It boasts many first-class
+hotels. One of them is patronised by the Greek ex-Royal Family. A little
+unfortunate; but still you cannot expect to come and enjoy yourself in
+Switzerland without the risk of running into an ex-Royal Family every
+corner you go round, and, what is more, a Royal Family that wouldn't be ex-
+if it wasn't for you. It is a very good hotel, and I recommend it for
+anyone who proposes just to pop over here.
+
+Get hold of L.G. while he is not busy and explain to him how thoroughly
+misguided all his policies are, especially as to the Near East. My idea is
+to group, according to subject and side, all those who intend to get hold
+of the PREMIER, while he is alone, and to have a quiet chat with him. I
+have my eye on a large hangar on the other side of the Lake, which was
+built to house a dirigible and ought to hold the bulk of those who want a
+word about Ireland, a place they could put right in five minutes if it was
+left to them. Deputations which have some idea of declaring strikes,
+general strikes and international strikes, if matters are not arranged to
+their liking, will be received between the hours of ten and twelve, and two
+and four, at the Kursaal. Saturday afternoons and Sundays will be reserved
+for quiet walks. I am mapping out some interesting routes, marking with a
+red dot the spots where the PREMIER is likely to stop and admire the view,
+and where you can approach him quietly from behind and involve him in an
+argument about Russia before he has time to get away.
+
+Image a PREMIER arrived at the end of all the beautiful sights to be seen
+locally, inured to all the magnificent scenery around him, and no longer
+attracted by the novelty of life abroad, longing, it may be, for just one
+touch of home. Then is the moment for the little surprise I am keeping for
+him up my sleeve. "Come along to a place close by," I shall say to him, for
+I see myself with the whole business well in my hands now; "come along to a
+village I know, whose very name will make you feel at home."
+
+Just outside Luzern we stop at Meggen, but it's not that. Kussnacht gets us
+well abroad again, and there is nothing particularly homely about Immensee,
+Arth-Goldau, Steinen, Schwyz or Brunnen. In fact I can see my PREMIER
+getting suspicious and wondering what new political move this may be, when
+suddenly there will burst upon his astonished gaze--
+
+  FLUELLEN.
+
+Let us leave him there, alone with his emotions, into which it would be
+impertinent to probe. I may tell you quietly apart that there is a
+difference of opinion between me and _Amtliches Schweizerisches Kursbuch_
+about this name. He wants to ration the l's, but, having been there and
+heard the name pronounced, I have refused to be taught how to spell a good
+Welsh name by a darned foreigner. If we are going to have any nonsense
+about it I have said that I shall stand out for the proper, full and
+uncorrupt spelling: FLLEWELLYN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "'ERE--CHUCK IT, MISSUS. WHY CAN'T YER LET US FIGHT IN
+PEACE?"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'That,' declared Mr. Lloyd George amid loud cheers, 'is one of the
+    most formidable challenges ever given to democracy. Without hesitation
+    every Government must accept that challenge.' 'Certainly we will,'
+    retorted the Prime Minister."--_Evening Paper._
+
+No wonder Mr. LLOYD GEORGE wants a holiday if he has begun to talk to
+himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "A telegram from Paris says: It is announced here that an agreement has
+    been concluded between France, Great Britain and Italy regarding the
+    delimitation of the open golf championship."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+It will be noticed that America seems once more to have held aloof from the
+councils of the Allies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"TO HIM THAT HATH ..."
+
+It was Butterington who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple
+question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways
+I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he
+himself was not in the fur line.
+
+"Whenever," he went on, "I require information on any subject I apply to my
+bank. Why don't you do the same?"
+
+This opened up an entirely new prospect. To me my bank was an institution
+which kept my accounts, issued money and, on occasion, lent it. It never
+entered my head that it was also ready to perform the functions of an
+inquiry office and information bureau.
+
+Previous communications from me had always begun, "Sir, with reference to
+my overdraft"--you know the sort of thing one generally writes to banks;
+expostulating, tactful, temporising letters.
+
+This time however I addressed them in different vein. Rejecting all mention
+of overdrafts as being in doubtful taste, I wrote:--
+
+SIR,--I shall be greatly obliged if you will kindly inform me, at your
+early convenience:
+
+(1) Whether it is a fact that the African rhinoceros has no hair on the
+hind legs?
+
+(2) Whether, in the case of my backing Pegasus in the first race, 'any to
+come' on Short Time in the fourth, and Short Time not starting, I am
+entitled to my winnings over Pegasus?
+
+(3) Whether, after perusing seventeen favourable reports from mining
+engineers and eighty-seven enthusiastic directors' speeches, I am justified
+in assuming that gold actually does exist in the Bonanzadorado mine?
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+THESIGER CHOLMONDELEY BEAUCHAMP.
+
+After some delay they answered as follows:--
+
+SIR,--We have much pleasure in replying to the queries contained in your
+favour, of the 27th ult.:--
+
+    (1) Yes; (2) Yes; (3) No.
+
+Assuring you always of our best endeavours in your service,
+
+We remain, Yours faithfully,
+_per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.
+
+C.O. SHINE.
+
+So far so good. The Bank's manner left nothing to be desired, and its
+replies were certainly to the point. I began to think of Mr. C.O. Shine as
+my personal friend and speculated as to whether his first name were Claude
+or Clarence.
+
+During the following week, whenever I became curious on any subject, I made
+notes of fresh queries to propound. After accumulating a sufficient number
+I again wrote to the Bank. I forget the exact points upon which I required
+information; one of them, I fancy, was the conjectured geologic age of the
+Reichardtite strata. Anyhow I got no answer to any of them.
+
+Instead, three days later, I received the following letter:--
+
+SIR,--We regret to announce that, owing to a clerical error in this office,
+your account was last month wrongly credited with a cheque for L13,097 5s.
+10d. which was made payable to another client of the same name.
+
+Adjustments have now been made which reveal a balance on your account of
+L110 11s. 3d. _in our favour_. We trust that you will find it convenient to
+cover this overdraft at an early date.
+
+With reference to your letter of the 19th inst. containing assorted
+inquiries, we beg to intimate that we can in no circumstances undertake to
+advise clients on general matters which lie outside the scope of our
+interests.
+
+Yours faithfully,
+_per pro_ The Cosmopolitan Bkg. Corpn.
+
+CHARLES O. SHINE.
+
+And this time C.O.S. did not even "remain" in the plural.
+
+I at once showed Butterington this offensive communication.
+
+"Well," said he, "of course they won't answer communications unless you
+have a balance."
+
+That is the way rich men talk.
+
+"I am never without one," I replied with dignity, "on one side or the
+other."
+
+"There you differ from your namesake, whose balance is clearly always on
+the right side. Hence that first kindly letter, addressed to you in error."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ROMANCE OF ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+The following items, culled from recent issues of _The Daily Lure_, show
+where you should go to find really interesting, stimulating and flat-
+catching notices:--
+
+Partner, with not less than five thousand pounds, wanted for a wild-duck
+farm in the island of Mull. Must be a man of iron constitution; Gaelic
+speaker and teetotaler preferred.
+
+* * *
+
+Wanted, a cheap Desert Island, with a good water-supply and home comforts,
+by a Georgian poet weary of the racket of Hammersmith.
+
+* * *
+
+Complete suits of armour, guaranteed bottle-proof, ten guineas each,
+suitable for elderly pedestrians in charabanc areas.
+
+* * *
+
+Madame Bogolubov, Crystal-gazer in ordinary to the ex-King CONSTANTINE, is
+prepared for a small fee to advise intending explorers, prospectors or
+treasure-seekers as to suitable spots for excavation, oil-boring, etc.
+
+* * *
+
+Disused Martello Tower on the Irish coast, fifty miles from a police
+barrack, offered cheap as an appropriate basis of observation to psychic
+enthusiasts anxious to study the ways of leprechauns, banshees, etc.
+
+* * *
+
+Genuine portraits by VAN DYCK, VELASQUEZ and REMBRANDT must be sold
+immediately to pay a debt of honour. Price thirty shillings each, or would
+take part payment in pre-war whisky.
+
+* * *
+
+Semi-paralysed Yugo-Slav professor, speaking seventeen languages, will give
+lessons to neo-plutocrats in the correct pronunciation of the names of all
+the foreign singers, dancers and artists performing or exhibiting in
+London.
+
+* * *
+
+Persons interested in edible fungi may be glad to take shares in a fungus
+plantation about to be started in the neighbourhood of Toller Porcorum,
+Dorchester.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE RETURN OF THE COLONEL.
+
+  House, the enigmatic Colonel, WILSON'S right-hand man in France
+  When the PRESIDENT was leading Peace's great Parisian dance,
+  Once again returns to Europe as a journalist free-lance.
+
+  He's a most sagacious person, indisposed to carp or grouse,
+  So we hope he'll be successful, aided by his tact and _nous_,
+  In upholding Mr. WILSON, _not_ in bringing down the House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE UBIQUITOUS SCOT.
+
+From _The Times'_ summary of news:--
+
+    "Our Constantinople correspondent, in a message reviewing the situation
+    in Armenia, states that the Armenians have captured the ancient town of
+    Nakhitchevan, where a Tartan Government had been set up."
+
+Small wonder that, people complain that no place is safe from Scotland's
+activities. Meanwhile there seems a likelihood of a Tarzan Government being
+set up in the film world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Mrs. ASQUITH'S reminiscences:
+
+    "One day after this conversation he [the late Lord Salisbury] came to
+    see me in Cavendish Square, bringing with him a signed photograph of
+    himself. This was in the year 1904, at the height of the controversy
+    over Protection."--_Sunday Times._
+
+As Lord SALISBURY is generally supposed to have died in 1903, Sir ARTHUR
+CONAN DOYLE has been requested to investigate the incident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST MAN WAS IN AND WITH ONLY ONE RUN WANTED--]
+
+[Illustration: SMITH, OF ALL PEOPLE, DROPPED A CATCH.]
+
+[Illustration: HE STOLE AWAY--]
+
+[Illustration: BUT HIS SIN FOLLOWED HIM.]
+
+[Illustration: HE DECIDED--]
+
+[Illustration: TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.]
+
+[Illustration: AFTER MANY YEARS HE RETURNED.]
+
+[Illustration: "GOOD HEAVENS, SMITH, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU SINCE YOU DROPPED
+THAT CATCH AT THE CIRCLE."]
+
+[Illustration: "YES, I ONCE SAW HIM PLAY WHEN I WAS QUITE A LAD. ON THAT
+OCCASION HE HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO DROP A CATCH."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AT THE PLAY.
+
+"HIS LADY FRIENDS."
+
+The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its
+setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical
+considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify
+its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to
+national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or
+you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage
+purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But
+to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs.
+NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American
+setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two
+actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent,
+is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence.
+
+However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really
+matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory
+facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous
+as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his
+guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition,
+who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of
+knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary
+distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine."
+
+[Illustration: "I want to spread a little sunshine."
+
+_James Smith_ ... Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY.
+
+_Eva Johns_ ... Miss JOAN BARRY.]
+
+This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult one for
+a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in the
+neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco, Washington,
+Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of his superfluous
+wealth. The natural affection, however, which his generosity inspired was
+not utilised by him, and you must try to believe that, in spite of the most
+sinister appearances, he remained a faithful husband.
+
+With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not
+trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the
+obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends
+well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will
+herself do all the necessary squandering.
+
+Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY as _James Smith_ was irresistible in most of the old
+ways and a few new ones. The play would have gone poorly without him, in
+spite of the piquancy of Miss JOAN BARRY as a flapper, the fourth and final
+recipient of his chaste bounty. Miss JESSIE BATEMAN as _Mrs. James Smith_
+had no chance till just at the end with the turning of the worm. To the
+part of _Lucille Early_--the _Earlys_, as a couple, were designed to
+contrast with the _Smiths_, the wife in this case spending the money which
+the husband hadn't got--Miss ATHENE SEYLER, who was meant for better
+things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps "pressed" a little too
+much. Mr. JAMES CAREW, who played _Edward Early_, was conspicuous as the
+sole male representative of the American language in this American play.
+The fleeting visions that we had of Miss MONA HARRISON as a refractory and
+venal cook excited general approval. The three _protegees_ of _James Smith_
+were only faintly distinguishable in their rather crude banality.
+
+The fun of the farce differed from that of most farces in depending less
+upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the situations
+still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune to read Miss
+EDGINGTON'S novel, but one might be permitted to assume, from the
+excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other
+respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of
+hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, but
+the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of
+motive, with the last two in which he figured, _The Naughty Wife_ and _Home
+and Beauty._ He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was rather noticeable
+that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he confined himself to
+a personal acknowledgment of the public's sympathy with him in his illness
+and their loyalty throughout his career, and made no reference to the play
+or its authors.
+
+O.S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A SUPER-SURPRISE.
+
+  I have not seen the stalking
+    By a rabbit of a bear,
+  Nor yet an oyster walking
+    Sedately up the stair;
+  But a marvel as amazing
+    Inspires these doggerel rhymes,
+  For I've read a leader praising
+    The PREMIER in _The Times_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A HOUSE-WARMING.
+
+    "Considerable damage was done by fire at ---- Cottage on Wednesday
+    evening. The stairs, part of the floor, doors, furniture, etc., were
+    destroyed.
+
+    ---- presided at the piano, and Mrs. ---- presided over the
+    refreshments. 'God save the King' was sung at the close of the
+    enjoyable day."--_Local Paper_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Labour "Council of Action" have kindly stated that they are "content to
+leave the French Government to the French people." They are however
+reserving the right to leave the British Government to the Bolshevists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "We must repeat the Scots proverb that--'Delays are dangerous.'"--
+    _Sunday Paper._
+
+Or, as DRYDEN says in his Address to a Haggis, "De'il tak' the hindmost."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The proportion of sane to insane persons in civilized countries is
+    about one to 300."--_Canadian Paper_.
+
+Surely Carlyle said something very like this years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.
+
+    "RAINCOATS AT LESS THAN COST PRICE LAST 3 DAYS."--_Advert. in
+    Provincial Paper_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Lady has Left-off Clothing; privately."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+Of course. That goes without saying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Trainer_ (_to Irish apprentice who has finished among the
+"also ran"_). "WHY DIDN'T YOU HANG ON TO THE FAVOURITE? DIDN'T I TELL YOU
+YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE HE WAS AFRAID OF."
+
+_Apprentice._ "THAT'S JUST IT, SORR. 'TWAS THE WAY HE WAS SO AFRAID OF ME,
+WHIN WE CAME INTO THE STRAIGHT, HE JUST FLED AWAY FROM ME."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
+
+(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
+
+Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly stirred
+by the announcement of _Island Tales_ (MILLS AND BOON), a posthumous volume
+containing what is probably the last writing of the late JACK LONDON. I can
+say at once that these seven stories show his art in one aspect of its
+best. Not here the LONDON, whom some of us might prefer, of the strenuous
+adventure-tale, with whom there was no respite till, at the end of anything
+up to a hundred sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end.
+That South Sea atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary
+temperament (from STEVENSON to STACPOOLE you can see it at work) has
+steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of perpetual afternoon, so that
+the action of them tends to become overlaid by slow reflective talk, old
+memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the
+first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so
+much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour.
+Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last--"The Kanaka Surf,"
+a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be
+understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise
+what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled loveliness on to
+the printed page--and what another loss in not seeing the original for
+ourselves. I suppose no tribute to the power of genius could be more
+eloquent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the German Revolution of 1918, KARL KAUTSKY, a prominent Socialist,
+was appointed by the new Government to examine and edit the documents in
+the Berlin Foreign Office relating to the outbreak of the War. His work was
+completed in time for the Peace Conference and would, he believes, if
+published at that time, have convinced the Allies that the new German
+Government ought not to be made responsible for the sins of the old one.
+But it would also have shown that the old Government was the main
+instigator of the War, and that the German people, having danced to the
+tune, even if they did not call for it, deserved to pay the piper. For that
+reason, perhaps, the German Government withheld Herr KAUTSKY'S revelations.
+Now he has published them on his own account, under the title, _The Guilt
+of William Hohenzollern_ (SKEFFINGTON). A more damning indictment has never
+been drawn. From the moment of the ARCHDUKE'S assassination the KAISER and
+his advisers determined to make it the pretext for destroying Serbia, and
+crushing Russia and France if they dared to interfere. BISMARCK once said
+that "never are so many lies told as before a war, during an election and
+after a shoot." His own manipulation of the Ems telegram was venial
+compared to the manner in which the German diplomatists, egged on by their
+ruler--whose _marginalia_ on the despatches furnish the most amusing
+reading in the volume--used all the arts of chicanery to deceive Europe as
+to their real intentions and to defeat the efforts of England--on whose
+neutrality they confidently counted--to secure a peaceful settlement.
+Though primarily addressed to the German proletariat, Herr KAUTSKY'S book
+has its value for all of us--"lest we forget."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On page 103 of _The White Hen_ (MILLS AND BOON) we read that the _Duke_
+laughed softly. "'It is just like a romance,' he sighed happily;" which was
+precisely where, without intending it, the _Duke_ placed his ducal finger
+upon the weak spot in the whole business. Because if ever a story was "like
+a romance," and like nothing else on earth, and filled with characters each
+and all pledged to preserve its unreality at all costs, here is that tale.
+The plot, of which there is a generous allowance, turns chiefly upon the
+problem, when is a white hen less a hen than a jewel casket? Answer, when
+she has swallowed, and is erroneously thought to have retained, a famous
+diamond, upon which an impoverished but noble (see above) French family had
+depended for the _dot_ that should enable their daughter to wed a
+plutocratic but otherwise detestable suitor. I take it you will hardly need
+telling that this is the moment chosen by Romance, under the expert
+guidance of Miss PHYLLIS CAMPBELL, to bring along an even more wealthy
+young American, mistaken (of course) for his own chauffeur and working such
+havoc upon the heart of the heroine that, when the latter accidentally
+recovered the diamond from its feathered _cache_, she very sensibly decided
+to say nothing about it. Whereupon, because the other characters,
+especially an unpleasant Duchess, were unaware that, as the shop
+announcements say, "Poultry was Down Again," much profitable confusion
+resulted, though nothing to impugn the justice of the ducal verdict quoted
+above. So that, if your taste jumps with that of his Grace, you also can
+"sigh happily;" otherwise you will perhaps omit the adverb--and select a
+story less exclusively romantic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a spirit of Yorkshire and a spirit, I suppose, characteristic of
+Suburbia, and on the outskirts of certain large manufacturing towns there
+must exist a formidable blending of these two. To express the double
+flavour of this essence requires, I should say, a subtler and more
+elaborate method than Mr. W. RILEY has attempted to use in _A Yorkshire
+Suburb_ (JENKINS). He has imagined for the purpose of these sketches an
+architect, _Murgatroyd_, who in planning most of the houses in the locality
+has attempted to express in brick and stone the characters of their several
+occupants. This is a device which becomes rather monotonous as the book
+proceeds, besides imposing a series of strains which neither architecture
+nor credulity can easily bear. Since these are rather superior
+suburbanites, dialect is for the most part absent, and it is hard to feel
+that they are very different people from those who live about the borders
+of Manchester or London; a character like _Mrs. Flitch_, for instance, who
+is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is, alas! to be found
+anywhere. And where the dialect does crop out it does not seem to be
+dependent on suburban soil for its raciness. I don't doubt the accuracy of
+Mr. RILEY'S Yorkshiremanship, but I do think he has under-estimated the
+difficulty of localising the peculiar genius of villadom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. MORDAUNT is
+really (if you want to fling this kind of title about) an eclectic
+synthetist or synthetic symbolist. Her wicked people are prodigiously
+wicked, wickedness personified, in fact; her good folk are noble-hearted
+without stint or measure. I don't personally think that anybody could be
+quite so completely and gratuitously evil as good-looking _Charles Hoyland_
+in _The Little Soul_ (HUTCHINSON); or, being so, could possibly be
+recommended, still less engaged, as tutor to a sensitive youth; or, being
+so engaged, tolerated for two days. He certainly could not hold down his
+job long enough to corrupt his pupil, _Anthony Clayton_, by exchanging
+souls with him under the nose of mad but perceptive _Mrs. Clayton_ and sane
+sister _Diana_. This conspicuously chaste _Diana_ is an attractive person,
+and so is the recklessly charitable _Dr. McCabe_, her appropriate mate, who
+first had to fly the country through helping a chorus-girl out of a
+difficulty and then (more or less) won the War by revolutionising
+bacteriology or something like that. However, Mrs. MORDAUNT interests
+because she is so palpably interested herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scenes of _Lure of Contraband_ (JARROLDS) are laid in the Devonshire of
+some hundred years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling,
+and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the
+villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read.
+They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time
+they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days. Mr. J. WEARE
+GIFFARD is a master of atmosphere, and I, at any rate, lived happily in his
+Appledore, and imagined myself drinking prime (and cheap) French brandy in
+the Beaver Inn; while _Lieutenant Perkins_, who commanded the "preventive
+men," sat in his tall-backed chair by the fireplace and kept his eyes and
+ears open to detect anything that was suspicious. But he was not foolish
+enough to ask many questions about the French brandy. An excellent yarn,
+simply and straight-forwardly told.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: _Customer._ "AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF LLOYD GEORGE?"
+
+_Barber._ "THINK OF 'IM, SIR? WITH A MOP OF 'AIR LIKE 'E'S GOT--A NICE
+EXAMPLE TO THE NATION!"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "A photograph of the Olympic games at Antwerp was transmitted yesterday
+    to Paris, a distance of 200 miles, over a telephone wire. It is in the
+    nature of an experiment, and if it succeeds Messrs. Cook hold out
+    promises of further day trips to the Continent."--_Daily Paper._
+
+Intending trippers must, of course, be proficient in the tight-rope wire.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol.
+159, August 25th, 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
+
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