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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17653-8.txt b/17653-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f2c86e --- /dev/null +++ b/17653-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2339 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, +September 22, 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, September 22, 1920 + +Author: Various + +Editor: Owen Seaman + +Release Date: January 31, 2006 [EBook #17653] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. + +VOL. 159. + + + +September 22nd, 1920. + + + + +CHARIVARIA. + + +"'Strike while the iron is hot' must be the motto," says a business +man. Mr. SMILLIE, on the other hand, says that it doesn't so much +matter about the iron being hot. + + * * * + +A curious story reaches us from the Midlands. It appears that it had +been decided to call out the workmen in a certain factory, but the +strike-leader had unfortunately mislaid his notes and could not +remember their grievance. + + * * * + +Mr. C.B. COCHRAN has decided to have nothing further to do with the +promotion of boxing-matches owing to the way in which contracts are +continually being broken. It has since been reported that several of +our leading professional boxers are endeavouring to arrange a farewell +disappointment. + + * * * + +Mr. EVANS, the American golf champion, has invented a new putter. We +appreciate America's effort, but all the same we cannot forget her +apathy toward the League of Nations. + + * * * + +Last week the largest number of Alpinists ever assembled met on the +top of the Matterhorn. If this sort of thing goes on it is quite +likely that the summit will have to be strengthened. + + * * * + +Colder weather is promised and the close season for Councillor CLARK +should commence about October 1st. + + * * * + +"The ex-Kaiser," says _The Western Morning News_, "goes in daily +fear of being kidnapped." This is said to be due to the presence at +Amerongen of an enterprising party of American curio-hunters. + + * * * + +A headline in a weekly paper asks, "What will Charlie Chaplin Turn out +this Year?" "His feet," is the answer. + + * * * + +The language at Billingsgate, according to Sir E.E. COOPER, is much +better than it used to be. Fish porters invariably say "Excuse me" +before throwing a length of obsolete eel at a colleague. + + * * * + +In the event of a miners' strike arrangements have been made for the +staff of the Ministry of Transport to sleep at the office. It would be +more wise, we think, if they remained wide awake. + + * * * + +A feature of the new motor charabanc will be the space for passengers' +luggage. This is just what is wanted, as it so easily gets broken even +if the corks don't come out. + + * * * + +A message from Allahabad states that the appointment of Mr. WINSTON +CHURCHILL as Viceroy of India would be very popular. Unfortunately +they omit to say where it would be popular. + + * * * + +"Drink is Scotland's greatest sin," said a Prohibitionist speaker at +Glasgow. The gentleman does not seem to have heard of haggis. + + * * * + +Asked what he would have, a Scotsman, taking advantage of its high +price, replied, "A small petrol, please." + + * * * + +The National Gallery with its three thousand pictures is practically +priceless, we are informed. This probably accounts for the fact that +the hall-porter invariably takes visitors' umbrellas as security. + + * * * + +What is now wanted, says a contemporary, is a good spell of fine +weather. We feel that no good can be done by rubbing it in like this. +_The Daily Mail_ is doing its best. + + * * * + +We understand, by the way, that _The Daily Mail_ has definitely +decided not to offer a prize of a hundred pounds for a new world, but +to leave the matter entirely in the hands of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE. + + * * * + +The Astronomical Correspondent of _The Times_ suggests that the new +star may have been produced through a sun being struck by a comet. +This raises the question as to whether suns ought not to carry rear +lights. + + * * * + +There is some talk of a series of week-end summers being arranged for +next year. + + * * * + +"If necessary I will walk from John-o'-Groats to Land's End, +distributing propaganda literature all the way," announced a +well-known strike agitator at a recent conference. Personally we do +not mind if he does, provided that when he reaches Land's End he +continues to walk in the same direction. + + * * * + +According to a weekly journal the art of camouflage played a most +important part in recent naval warfare. It is, of course, quite an +open secret that the Naval authorities are aware that one of our +largest Dreadnoughts is somewhere in a certain English harbour, but, +owing to the excellence of its camouflage, they have not yet been able +to locate it. + + * * * + +We now learn that it was merely through an oversight that the pit +ponies did not record their votes at the strike ballot. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "WHO'S BILL 'IGGINS PLAYIN' FOR THIS SEASON?" + +"OH, 'E AIN'T SIGNED ON YET, BUT WE'VE OFFERED HIM FIRST SUCK AT THE +LEMON."] + + * * * * * + +=The Journalistic Touch.= + + "Shamming death, he moaned loudly." + +_Irish Paper._ + + * * * * * + +=Our Critics.= + + "'The Seven Deadly Sins.' Frederick Rogers. + + This is a subject that Mr. Rogers is eminently fitted to + explore."--_Review of Reviews._ + + * * * * * + + "Tenor wanted, to join bass; must have voice."--_Scotch Paper._ + +Some people are so exacting. + + * * * * * + + "Bride in apricot."--_Daily Paper._ + +A new significance is added to the calculation of one's fruit +stones--"This year, next year, some time, never." + + * * * * * + + +THE ASHES. + + [A final salutation to the M.C.C. team, from one who is destined + to perish in the event of a coal strike.] + + O ship that farest forth, a greater _Argo_, + Unto the homeland of the woolly fleece, + Soft gales attend thee! may thy precious cargo + Slide over oceans smoothed of every crease, + So as the very flower, or pick, + Of England's flanneled chivalry may not be sick! + + And thou, O gentle goddess Hygieia, + Hover propitious o'er the vessel's poop; + Keep them from chicken-pox and pyorrhoea, + Measles and nettle-rash and mumps and croup; + See they digest their food and drink, + And land them, even as they leave us, in the pink! + + Thou, too, whose favour they depend so much on + (Fortune, I mean) in this precarious game, + Oh let there be no blob on their escutcheon, + Or, if a few occur, accept the blame; + Do not, of course, abuse thy powers; + We'd have the best side win, but let that side be ours. + + Summer awaits them there while we are wheezing + By empty hearths through bitter days and black; + Yet we rejoice that, though we die of freezing + And cannot get cremated, all for lack + Of coal to feed our funeral pyres, + Still "in our ashes [yonder] live their wonted fires." + +O.S. + + * * * * * + + +THE MINISTRY OF ANCESTRY. + +"As you are aware," said a prominent official of the Ministry of +Ancestry, "although our department has only been in existence for a +few months the profits have enabled the Government to take twopence +off the income-tax and to provide employment for thousands of +deserving clerks dismissed, in deference to public opinion, from other +Government offices." + +"Yes. Could you tell me how this brilliant scheme came into being?" + +"The Chinese knew and practised it for centuries. Here the credit for +its re-discovery must be assigned to Sir Cuthbert Shover, who, owing +to handsome contributions to necessary funds, combined, of course, +with meritorious public service during the War, was offered a +baronetcy. He refused it for himself, but accepted it for his aged +father, thereby becoming second baronet in three months. He deplored +the fact that his grandfather was no longer eligible for the honour. +Then we saw light. Why should the mere accident of death prevent us +from honouring a man if his family were prepared to contribute towards +the country's exchequer? But these letters will give you a clearer +insight into the working of the department." + +The first letter was addressed to Miss Cannon, at Maidstone:-- + + "DEAR MADAM,--We have no hesitation in advising you to have a + bishop in your family. Few purchases give greater satisfaction. + If, as you say, your late maternal grandfather was curate of + Slowden, and was, as far as you are aware, a man of exemplary + character, we could make him a bishop without delay. Your home + being in Kent, it occurs to us that the see of Carlisle would suit + the Right Reverend Prelate best. The cost of the proceedings, + including a pre-dated _Congé d'Élire_, would be eight hundred + guineas. An archbishopric would be slightly more expensive and, in + our opinion, less suitable." + +"Amazing," I said. + +"But so simple. Here is a letter from a man who wants to have had +forbears in the Navy. We say:-- + + "'Naturally it would have been an advantage for your son, whom you + destine for the Navy, to have had relations in that service. But + it is not too late to remedy this defect. + + "'By virtue of the powers conferred upon us by Act of Parliament + (Ancestry Act, 1922), we are prepared to give your sometime + great-great-uncle William, who, according to family tradition, + always wanted to go to sea, a commission in the Navy, and the + rank of lieutenant, together with appointment to any ship of the + line--with the exception of the _Victory_--which fought under Lord + NELSON. The making out the commission will be put in hand on the + receipt of your cheque for three hundred guineas.'" + +"Do you always give satisfaction?" + +"Occasionally we have to disappoint people. For instance, this letter +to a lady at Plymouth:-- + + "'We fear we cannot grant your request to reserve a berth on the + _Mayflower_ for your delightful ancestress, Mrs. Patience Loveday. + The _Mayflower_ is already overcrowded, and, owing to some + ill-feeling raised in America, we decided to resign all interest + in the vessel. Should you desire some other form of Puritan + distinction how would you like to provide yourself with a + non-juring clergyman as an ancestor? We could present any suitable + departed member of your family to a Crown living, and supply + you with an order of ejectment, dated the anniversary of St. + Bartholomew's Day, 1662.'" + +"Judging from the address on this letter, 'X. O'Finny, Esq.,' your +jurisdiction extends to Ireland?" + +"Yes, Mr. O'Finny wants some persecuted ancestors. We offer to supply +him with a member of his family condemned to be beheaded by order of +QUEEN ELIZABETH, price one thousand, which includes a replica of the +Great Seal of England; or, to have another member shot by order of +CROMWELL, at half the price; or a sentence of hanging in '98. This +would be three hundred only. We advise him to take the complete set at +a reduction, and have no doubt we shall come to terms." + +"Have you anything more expensive?" I asked timidly. + +"Rather. Here is our answer to Lord--better not give the name, +perhaps; the creation is recent. He wished for a Crusader, but we +explained that the Crusades were not under Government. We offer to +introduce his family name into our authorised supplement to the +Domesday Book for five thousand pounds. I call it cheap at the money. +Now what can we do for you?" + +"I must think it over," I stammered. + +"Do. You will come back. Pair of Colours, now, for a +great-great-grandfather. How would that suit you? Only five hundred. +Or a place at Court in the Regency? Or, if you wish good business +connection, a directorship of the East India Company? The whole of the +past lies before you. Give your children a fair start in life, that +is what we say. Money is good, education is better, but distinguished +ancestry is best of all." + + * * * * * + +=Stitches in Time.= + + "The breeches on the line between Sini and Jhursagudha have now + been repaired."--_Civil and Military Gazette._ + + * * * * * + + "The King has given Mr. William Armstrong, Director of Criminal + Intelligence of the Shanghai Municipal Police, authority to wear + the Insignia of the Fourth Class of the Order of the Excellent + Crop, conferred on him by the President of the Republic of China, + in recognition of valuable services."--_Times._ + +We understand that extreme shortness of hair is not the hall-mark of +the Chinese criminal world. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: UNDER A CLOUD (WITH A GOLDEN LINING). + +COMRADE LANSBURY. "THANKS TO MY FAITHFUL BROLSKI NOT A DROP HAS +TOUCHED ME." + +[_Loud crows from "Daily Herald" bird._]] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Horrified Sister_ (_to small artist_). "MABEL, YOU'RE +SURELY NOT SUCKING YOUR BRUSH WHEN YOU'RE PAINTING TOADSTOOLS?"] + + * * * * * + + +KINGS AND QUEENS. + +There are thirty-six of them in all, ranging from WILLIAM I., who +is "severe," to VICTORIA, who is just "good." I first made their +acquaintance in childhood, when my grandmother gave them me with the +laudable object of teaching me history. Each is a little wooden block +signifying a monarch. On one side there is a portrait showing the +face, collar and upper portion of torso of the monarch in question; +on the other side there is written a single word summing up his whole +character. + +By means of these royal blocks I was brought up to a sound historical +sense based on religion and morality. At the age of seven I could +and did boast that I knew the innermost souls of all the monarchs +of England. I could say their dates by heart, often doing so during +sermon time on Sundays, with a grace and ease that only lifelong +acquaintance with royalty could have bred. I was even able to triumph +through that tricky period between the death of EDWARD III. and the +accession of ELIZABETH. I wonder if the late Lord ACTON was as learned +at that age: I am sure he could not say his dates backwards. I could. + +It has always surprised those who have endeavoured to teach me +history that my youthful brain should be so strongly grounded in +the historical tradition of over half a century ago. Yet all the +historians of modern England could not shake me in my faith. To me +QUEEN VICTORIA was no "panting little German widow," as our latest +searcher after truth has affirmed, but the august lady who listened +entranced to the beautiful poems of Lord TENNYSON and invented +electricity and the tricycle. In consequence I was considered a +counter-revolutionary, if not bourgeois. My essays were deemed +dangerously reactionary. At Oxford I once found my tutor burning one. +This shows the value the authorities attach to my work. It is too +dangerous to live; it is burnt. + +I venture to think, however, that my work, based as it is on the +most respectable principles, will survive long after my tutors have +subsided into a permanent state of death in life. Like SHAKSPEARE and +the present Government I am for all time. + +It is easy to see how I came to acquire this stability of thought, +owing as I do my early training to the kings and queens of England, +who are nothing if not stable. They are my acknowledged guardians and +to them I turn in all difficulties. Only a year ago they came to my +aid in a most awkward predicament. It was my lot to fill up army +forms; of what variety I cannot remember save that they were of a +jaundicy colour and connected with the men's demobilisation. On these +documents I was expected to enter, besides the usual details as to +religion and connubial felicity, the character of each man in a +single word. I at once marshalled my wooden royalties before me +in chronological order and proceeded to deal with the squadron in +rotation. + +The first name on my list was that of the disciplinary sergeant-major. +It was with a glow of pride that I registered him with WILLIAM I. +as "severe." The designation of Tonks, the Mess waiter (whom we had +discovered on the night the bomb fell on the aerodrome making a home +and a house of defence in the cookhouse stove), as "heroic" +was distinctly happy. It was perhaps unfortunate that the +quartermaster-sergeant, an austere man from Renfrew, should have +found, on perusing his demobilisation card, that he was to be handed +down to posterity as "avaricious." I was also sorry to find the padre, +usually so broad-minded, in a nasty temper about the character given +to his batman, who was, he assured me, the only pious man in the +squadron and in private life a dissenting minister. "Dissolute" +certainly was on the face of things inappropriate, but then it was +no fault of mine that the merriest of English monarchs should have +appeared at the moment when I was filling up the papers of a minister +of religion. + +The light that my wooden monarchs throw on history is both interesting +and, to a modern, precious. For instance, the designation of the first +Angevin king as "patriotic" will surprise many readers of the late +Bishop STUBBS. "Patriotic" is a wide term and may be applied to almost +anything from after-dinner flag-wagging to successful juggling with +Colonial stocks and shares; yet there are few who would have described +it as the besetting virtue of HENRY I. But it was; his little block +says so. + +JOHN, again, was "mean." I am sorry, for, though in some respects +blameworthy, he had many agreeable traits. His views on the honesty of +his baronage are most entertaining. He was something of a wit, a good +judge of food and wine, and would have made an excellent Fellow of an +Oxford college. It is much to be regretted that he was mean. + +Poor HENRY VI. is "silly." This is a hard judgment on the pioneer of +the movement against low backs in evening frocks, but doubtless he was +silly in other things. + +Some of my monarchs had the most excellent characters. EDWARD I. was +"just," GEORGE IV. "courteous," OLIVER CROMWELL "noble"--a sad blow +for the White Rose Club. Our younger monarchs were particularly +attractive persons, and it is a pity that they did not live long +enough to display their qualities. EDWARD VI. was "amiable," while +EDWARD V., like all with expectations from their uncle, was "hopeful." +Poor child! he had need to be. + +I am pained however that CHARLES II. was "dissolute." It was what +HENRY VIII. dissolved the monasteries for being--the impertinent old +polygamist! For my part I love CHARLES for the affection that he bore +little dogs, for the chance saying on Sussex hills that this England +was a country well worth fighting for. Alas! that he should have been +dissolute. + +Best of all my friends is GEORGE III. He is portrayed with a jolly red +nose and a mouth that positively yawns for pudding. His character, +which is his chief glory, is "benevolent." Who would not rejoice to +have been the object of his regal philanthropy? SAMUEL JOHNSON himself +did not hesitate to accept the bounty of this kindly monarch, though, +while his predecessor reigned, the great lexicographer had defined a +pensioner as "a state hireling" paid "for treason to his country." + +Such are my friends the kings and queens of England. Happy the child +who has such majesty to be his guardian spirit. To him life will be +a pomp, where vulgar democracy can have no part, and death a +trysting-place with old comrades--the child for whom + + "The kings of England, lifting up their swords, + Shall gather at the gates of Paradise." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _The Super-Tramp._ "MADAM, IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE OF THAT +PIE YOU GAVE ME THIS MORNING I SHOULD BE PLEASED TO PAY FOR IT."] + + * * * * * + + +A HOME FROM HOME. + +(_An actual incident_.) + + + My fancy sought no English field, + What time my holiday drew near; + I felt no fond desire to wield + The shrimping net of yesteryear; + I found it easy to eschew + All wish to hear a pierrot stating + His lust to learn the rendezvous + Of flies engaged in hibernating. + + Beyond the Channel I would range + (I called it "cross the rolling main") + And there achieve the thorough change + Demanded by my jaded brain; + It might be that an alien clime + Would jog a failing inspiration, + Buck up a bard and render rhyme + Less difficult of excavation. + + A thorough change? Ah, barren quest, + Foredoomed to fail ere half begun! + Though left behind, my England pressed + In hot pursuit of me, her son; + London was brought again to view + By hordes of maidens out for pillage, + When from the train I stepped into + A flag day in an Alpine village. + + * * * * * + +WIRE AND BARBED WIRE. + +This was the telegram that, after much hesitation, I had written out +at the side desk in the post-office and carried to the main desk to +despatch:-- + + Pactolus, London. + + St. Vitus carburetter stammer tyre scream Sanguine. + +You will observe that it is unintelligible. Decoded, it meant that I, +whose betting pseudonym is Sanguine, wished to invest with Messrs. +Lure, commission agents (not bookmakers, no, not for a moment), +whose telegraphic address is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten pounds +(carburetter) on a horse called St. Vitus to win (stammer), and twenty +pounds (tyre) for a place (scream). I had done this for various +reasons, none really good, but chiefly because every paper that I had +opened had urged me to do so, some even going so far as to dangle a +double before me with St. Vitus as one of the horses. Nearly all had +described St. Vitus as a nap, setting up the name not only in capitals +but with a faithful asterisk beside it. + +Having an account with Messrs. Lure and a liking now and then to +indulge in a little flutter over a gee (I am choosing my words very +carefully) I had decided, after weighing the claims of all the other +runners, to take the advice of the majority and back the favourite, +although favourites acclaimed with stridency by the racing experts +of the Press in unison have, I knew, a way of failing. In betting on +races, however, there are two elements that are never lacking: hope +against hope and an incomplete recollection of the past. + +Having written out the telegram I took it to the main counter, to the +section labelled "Telegrams," and slipped it under the grating towards +the young woman, who, however, instead of dealing with it, continued +to tell an adjacent young woman about the arrangements that she and a +friend had made for their forthcoming holidays at Herne Bay. + +The nature of those who have little flutters on gees is complex. The +ordinary man, having written out his telegram, on whatever subject +it may be--whether it announces that he will arrive before lunch and +bring his clubs with him, or that, having important business to detain +him at the office, he will not be home to dinner--gets it through +as soon as possible. He may be delayed by the telegraph girl's +detachment, but he would not be deterred. He would still send the +telegram. But those who bet are different. They are minutely sensitive +to outside occurrences; always seeking signs and interpreting them as +favourable or unfavourable as the case may be; and refraining from +doing anything so decisive as to call the girl to order. Their game +is to be plastic under the fingers of chance; the faintest breath of +dubiety can sway them. I had been in so many minds about this thirty +pound bet, which I could not really afford, that there was therefore +nothing for it, after waiting the two minutes that seemed to be ten, +but to tear up the message, in the belief that the friendly gods again +had intervened. For luck is as much an affair of refraining as of +rushing in. + +I therefore withdrew quietly from the conversation and scattered the +little bits on the floor as I did so. But I did not leave the office. +Instead, I went to the side desk again and wrote another telegram, +which, with the necessary money (an awful lot), I pushed through the +grating, where the girls were still talking. My second telegram had +no reference to horses--I had done with gambling for the day--but ran +thus:-- + + Postmaster-General, London. + + Suggest you remind telegraph clerk on duty at this hour at this + post-office that she perhaps talks a shade too much about Herne + Bay and gives public too little consideration. + +The girl, having ceased her chatter, took the telegram and began +feverishly to count the words. Then her tapping pencil slowed down and +her brows contracted; she was assimilating their meaning. Then, with a +blush, and a very becoming one, she looked at me with an expression of +distress and said, "Do you really want this to go?" + +"No," I said, withdrawing the money. + +"I'm sorry I was not more attentive," she said. + +"That's all right," I replied. "Tear it up." + +And I came away, feeling, with a certain glow of satisfaction not +unmixed with self-righteousness, that I had done something to raise +the post-office standard and to ensure better attention. But the joke +is that, if I had myself received better attention, I should have lost +thirty pounds, for St. Vitus was unplaced. This story must therefore +remain without a moral. + +E.V.L. + + * * * * * + +=Notice in a Shop Window.= + + "Hats made to order, or revenerated." + + +Ah! that's what's wanted so badly to-day for the headgear of the +Higher Clergy. + + * * * * * + + "V.C.W. Jupp, the Sussex amateur, has been invited to become a + member of the M.C.C. team, which leaves for Australia on Saturday. + A fine all-round cricketer, Jupp is a useful man to any team, + but as he usually fields cover-point his inclusion would not + necessarily improve the side in its weakest point--_viz._, the + lack of oilfields."--_Daily Paper._ + +Surely the fewer the better, if that's where the butter-fingers come +from. + + * * * * * + + +BETWEEN TWO STOOLS. + +[Dedicated to those high-minded and dispassionate leader-writers who, +after prefacing their remarks with the declaration that "we hold no +brief for--" extreme views of all sorts, proceed to show that the +conduct of the extremist is invariably explained, if not justified, by +the iniquities of the Coalition Government.] + + I hold no brief for LENIN + Or TROTSKY or their breed; + Their way of doing men in + Is foreign to my creed; + But, since to me LLOYD GEORGE is + A source of deeper dread, + For Bolshevistic orgies + A great deal may be said. + + I hold a brief for no land + That tramples on its kin; + My heart once bled for Poland + And groaned for Russia's sin; + But, if to clear the tangle + WINSTON is given his head, + I feel that General WRANGEL + Were better downed and dead. + + I hold no brief--I swear it-- + For militant Sinn Fein; + I really cannot bear it + When constables are slain; + But if you mention CARSON + I feel that for the spread + Of murder and of arson + A good deal can be said. + + I hold no brief for SMILLIE + Or for the miners' claims; + I disapprove most highly + Of many of their aims; + But when I see the Wizard + Enthroned in ASQUITH'S stead, + It cuts me to the gizzard + And dyes my vision Red. + + I hold no brief for madmen + On revolution bent, + For bitter or for bad men + On anarchy intent; + But sooner far than "stop" them + With Coalition lead, + To foster and to prop them + I'd leave no word unsaid. + + * * * * * + +=Our Decadent Poets.= + +Extract from an Indian's petition:-- + + "... to look after my old father, who leads sickly life, and is + going from bad to verse every day." + + * * * * * + + "So far from Mr. Kameneff having had nothing to do with any + realisation of jewels, he ... took plains to report it to his + Government."--_Daily Paper._ + +In fact, he took the necessary steppes. + + * * * * * + + "A privately owned aeroplane, flying from London to the Isle of + Wight, descended in a field near Carnforth, seven miles north of + Morecambe Bay. The propeller was broken, but the occupants, a lady + and a gentleman, escaped with a shaking."--_Daily Paper._ + +The real shock came when they found out where they were. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPH.= + +WHEN A FELLOW GETS HIS-- + +PHOTO TAKEN FOR THE PAPERS-- + +I THINK IT'S ROTTEN BAD FORM-- + +ON THE PART OF ANOTHER FELLOW-- + +TO SPOIL THE PICTURE BY INTRUDING A BALL-- + +AT THE CRUCIAL MOMENT.] + + * * * * * + + +THE HANDY MAN. + +The men I most admire at the present time, though I take care not to +tell them so to their faces, are the men who can do everything. By +this I don't mean people of huge intellectual attainments, like +Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like _Tarzan_ of the +Apes. It must be very nice to be able to have a heart-to-heart talk +with KRASSIN or to write articles for the Sunday picture-papers, and +very nice also to swing rapidly through the tree-tops, say, in Eaton +Square; but none of these gifts is much help when the door-handle +comes off. I hate that sort of thing to happen in a house. + +In the Victorian age, of course, which was one of specialisation based +upon peace and plenty, one simply sent for a door-handle replacer and +he put it right. But nowadays the Door-handle Replacers' Union is +probably affiliated to an amalgamation which is discussing sympathetic +action with somebody who is striking, so nothing is done. This means +that for weeks and weeks, whenever one tries to go out of the room, +there is a loud crash like a 9.2 on the further side and a large blunt +dagger clutched melodramatically in the right hand, and nobody to +murder with it. + +The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing +like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which +of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it +go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room +clock. + +Such a man came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but +it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and +out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into +the bathroom about 8.30 A.M. when I am trying to get off to sleep. +They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the +garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places, +though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and +feel that one is safe from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is my house or +theirs, the fact remains that the electric-bells were wrong. The man +of whom I am speaking lives next-door, and he came in and pointed this +out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," he said, "that don't +ring." + +I might have argued this point. I might have said that to press the +button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on +whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on +the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and +self-discipline. It is quite possible that an Eastern _yogi_ might +spend many years of beneficial calm pressing the buttons of bells that +do not ring. But I replied rather weakly, "No, I suppose not." + +"I'll soon put that right for you," he said cheerily, and about five +minutes later he asked me to press one of the buttons, and there was a +loud tinkling noise. It seemed a pity that at the moment when the bell +did happen to ring there should be nobody to come and answer it. + +"Whatever did you do to them?" I asked. + +"It only needed a little water," he said, and I had hard work to +suppress my admiration. The very morning before, feeling that I ought +to take a hand in all this practical work that was going on about the +place, I had filled a large watering-can that I found lying about and +wetted some things which someone had stuck into the garden. I have +a kind of idea that they were carrots, but they may have been +maiden-hair ferns. Somehow it had never occurred to me for a moment to +go and water the electric bells. + +Almost immediately afterwards this man discovered that all the knives +in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private +grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees +ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did +to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put +together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as _The Outline +of History_ was put on to it (I should like to know whether Canon +BARNES can explain _that_), I was obliged to ask him to stop, in case +the tramping men should see him and strike immediately for fear of the +dilution of labour. + +But what impressed me most was the part he took next day in the +Railway Carriage Conference, which curiously enough was on the subject +of strikes. There were several people in the carriage, and they were +talking about what they had done during the railway strike last year, +and what they would do if such a thing happened again. I said I should +like to be a station-master if possible, because they had top-hats and +grew such beautiful flowers. Only four or five trains seem to stop at +our station during the day, and if there was a strike I suppose the +number would be reduced to one or two. And I thought it would be +rather nice to spend the day wearing a top-hat and watering the +nasturtiums in the little rock-gardens behind the platform. Watering, +I said, was quite easy when once one got into the swing of it. + +But the man who could do everything seemed to know everything too, and +he told me that station-masters were much too noble to strike. There +were two kinds of station-masters, he said, both wearing top-hats, +but one kind with full morning-dress underneath it and the other with +uniform. But neither kind struck. + +Slightly nettled at his superior knowledge, I asked him, "What did +_you_ do during the Great Strike?" + +"Oh, I had rather fun," he said; "I controlled the signals at London +Bridge." + +If all the truth were known I expect that he is quite ready for Mr. +SMILLIE'S strike; that he has a handy little pick in his bedroom and +knows of rather a jolly little coal-mine close by. + +EVOE. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Mother_ (_firmly, to little daughter about to have +a tooth drawn_). "NOW, BETTY, IF YOU CRY, I'LL NEVER TAKE YOU TO A +DENTIST'S AGAIN."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _The Woman_. "I DO WISH YOU TWO WOULD WALK PROPERLY."] + + * * * * * + + +FLOWERS' NAMES. + +FOOL'S PARSLEY. + + In the village of Picking's Pool + Lived Theobald, the village fool; + He had been simple from his birth + But kindly as the simple earth, + And in his heart he sang a song + Of "Ave, Mary" all day long. + + On Good Friday the people came + To honour the rood of Christ His shame; + They scattered flowers and leaves and moss + About the foot of the humble cross + And, when they knelt and prayed and wailed, + Theobald saw the Mother, veiled + And bowed in a mother's agony. + "She suffers more than the Christ," said he. + + Theobald searched the fields and lanes + To find a solace for MARY'S pains; + All the flowers were plucked and gone + Save a little dull Parsley, sere and wan; + And Theobald wreathed it in simple guise; + "It mourns like her," said the Fool made wise. + + When Holy Saturday morning broke + Back to the shrine went the village folk; + And lo! on the weeping Mother's brow + A chaplet of flowers was gleaming now; + And Theobald smiled secretly + To think he had soothed her agony. + And ever since Theobald crowned his Queen + Fool's Parsley has flowered amongst its green. + + * * * * * + + +HEADGEAR FOR HEROES. + + [A contemporary, having heard of the hat specially designed for M. + CLEMENCEAU, has decided that the bowler, the topper, the Homburg, + the straw, the cloth cap and all other styles at present more + or less in vogue leave much to be desired, and has therefore + inaugurated a search for the ideal male headdress.] + +THE SMILLIE.--A Phrygian model, executed in red Russia leather. +Special features are the asbestos lining, the steam vents and the +water-jacket, which combine to minimise the natural heat of the head. +Embellished with an heraldic cock's-comb _gules_, it is a striking +conception. + +THE PREMIER.--A semi-Tyrolean type in resilient chamois, which can +be readily converted to any desired shape, with or without extra +stiffening. Its adaptability and the patent sound-proof ear-flaps make +it particularly suitable for travellers. Detachable edelweiss and leek +trimming. + +THE ERIC.--An adaptation of the _cap of maintenance_ in a special +elastic material, warranted not to burst under pressure of abnormal +expansion of the head of the wearer. Practically fool-proof. + +THE WINNIE.--A fore-and-aft derived from a French model of the First +Empire period, the severity of which is mitigated by the addition of +little bells. A novelty is the mouthpiece in the crown, which enables +the hat to be used as a megaphone at need. An elastic loop holds a +fountain-pen in position. The whole to be worn on a head several sizes +too big for it. + +THE CONAN.--A straw bonnet of bee-hive shape. Medium weight. In a +diversity of shades. The special puggaree of goblin blue material is +designed to protect the wearer from moonstroke without obscuring the +vision. + +THE WARNER.--An easy-fitting crown carried out in harlequin flannel +surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with +intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail +feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished +headdress for a middle-aged gentleman. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Teacher._ "AND RUTH WALKED BEHIND THE REAPERS, PICKING +UP THE CORN THAT THEY LEFT. JOHN, WHAT DO WE CALL THAT?" + +_John_ (_very virtuously_). "PINCHING."] + + * * * * * + + +A SHIP IN A BOTTLE. + + In a sailormen's restaurant Rotherhithe way, + Where the din of the docksides is loud all the day, + And the breezes come bringing off basin and pond + And all the piled acres of lumber beyond + From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine + And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, + In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, + Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, + A ship in a bottle some sailor had made + In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, + When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, + Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots, + Or whittling a model or painting a chest, + Or yarning and smoking and watching the rest. + + In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned, + Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around; + A pipe in the teeth that seemed little the worse + For Liverpool pantiles and stringy salt-horse; + The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo + Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue; + The fingers all roughened and toughened and scarred, + With hauling and hoisting so calloused and hard, + So crooked and stiff you would wonder that still + They could handle with cunning and fashion with skill + The tiny full-rigger predestined to ride + To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide + In its wine-bottle world, while the old world went on + And the sailor who made it was long ago gone. + + And still as he worked at the toy on his knee + He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea, + _Thermopylć_, _Lightning_, _Lothair_ and _Red Jacket_, + With many another such famous old packet, + And many a bucko and dare-devil skipper + In Liverpool blood-boat or Colonies' clipper; + The sail that they carried aboard the _Black Ball_, + Their skysails and stunsails and ringtail and all, + And storms that they weathered and races they won + And records they broke in the days that are done. + + Or sometimes he'd sing you some droning old song, + Some old sailors' ditty both mournful and long, + With queer little curlycues, twiddles and quavers, + Of smugglers and privateers, pirates and slavers, + "The brave female smuggler," the "packet of fame + That sails from New York and the _Dreadnought_'s her name," + And "all on the coast of the High Barbaree," + And "the flash girls of London was the downfall of he." + + In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear + The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear, + The patter of reef-points on topsails a-shiver, + The song of the jibs when they tauten and quiver, + The cry of the frigate-bird following after, + The bow-wave that broke with a gurgle like laughter. + And I looked on my youth with its pleasure and pain, + And the shipmate I loved was beside me again. + In a ship in a bottle a-sailing away + In the flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray, + Over oceans of wonder by headlands of gleam, + To the harbours of Youth on the wind of a dream. + +C.F.S. + + * * * * * + +"HIGH COMMISSIONER PAYS CALLS. + + Jerusalem, August 27.--The High Commissioner visited yesterday + afternoon the tomb of Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Isaac, Jacob and + Leah in the Cave of Makpéla at Hebron."--_Egyptian Mail_. + +No flowers, by request. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE GREAT REPUDIATION. + +MR. SMILLIE. "HERE, HOP IT, OR YOU'LL SPOIL THE WHOLE SHOW. YOU DON'T +COME ON TILL MY NEXT TRICK."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _M.F.H_. "WHY THE DEUCE AREN'T YOU WITH HOUNDS? THEY'RE +IN THE NEXT PARISH BY THIS." + +_New Whip_ (_rib-roasting very bad cub-hunter_). "'TAIN'T SAFE TO GO +NEAR 'EM WITH THIS 'ORSE; THEY MIGHT THINK 'E WAS FOR EATIN'."] + + * * * * * + + +THE BEN AND THE BOOT. + + +Whither in these littered and overcrowded islands should one flee to +escape the spectacle of outworn and discarded boots? I should go to a +mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops I should choose the highest. I +should scale the summit of Ben Nevis. + +Yet it is but a few days since I saw on that proud eminence the +unmistakable remains of an ordinary walking boot. + +It reposed on the perilous edge of a snowdrift that even in summer +curves giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf over which the +eastern precipice beetles. There is ever a certain pathos about +discarded articles of apparel: a baby's outgrown shoe, a girl's +forgotten glove, an abandoned bowler; but the situation of this boot, +thus high uplifted towards the eternal stars, gave to it a mystery, a +grandeur, a sublimity that held me long in contemplation. + +How came it there? + +The path that winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones +and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a +sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but +would postpone till after his descent the discarding of his damaged +footgear? + +Could it be, I asked myself, the relic and evidence of an inhuman +crime? Was it possible that some party of climbers, arriving at the +top lunchless and desperately hungry, had sacrificed their plumpest, +disposing of his clothes over the cliff, but failing to hole out with +this tell-tale boot? + +But no, I bethought me of the price of leather. They would have +reserved the boots, even at the risk of suspicion. Moreover, no one +would ever reach that exacting altitude in a state of succulence. + +A glow of sympathy, a thrill of appreciation swept through me as I +realised what was at once the worthiest and the likeliest explanation. + +Who shall plumb the depths of the affection of a true pedestrian for +his boots, the companions and comfort of so many a pilgrimage? Who but +the climber, the hill-tramp, knows the pang of regret with which he +faces at last the truth that his favourite boots are past repair, the +sorrow and self-reproach with which he permits them to be consigned to +Erebus? + +I saw it all. As the Roman veteran hung upon the temple wall of Mars +the arms he might no longer wield, so hither came some lofty-minded +climber, bearing in devoted hands his outworn and faithful boot, to +leave it sadly and with reverence in this most worthy resting-place, +here to repose at the end of all the roads it had trod, on the highest +of all the native hills it had climbed. + +W.K.H. + + * * * * * + +=Another Impending Apology.= + + "Mr. Roberts, Member of Parliament, has arrived. Mr. Roberts is a + tall and well-built gentleman with a posing appearance." + +_Mysore Patriot_. + + * * * * * + + "Families supplied in 18, 12 or 6 gallon casks."--_Hertford + brewer's notice_. + +Where's your DIOGENES now? + + * * * * * + + "The dinner was in the House of Commons, and I sat next to Henry. + I was tremendously impressed by his conversation and his clean + Cromwellian face." + +_From a famous autobiography._ + +It was, we trust, the CROMWELL touch rather than the cleanness that +was so impressive. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Ancient Gardener_ (_who has just been paid_). "OI SAY, +MAISTER, THERE'S SUMMAT WRONG WI' MA BRASS." + +_Employer._ "WHAT'S THAT, JOHN?" + +_A.G._ "WHA, SITHEE, THA'S GI'EN MA ONE TA MONY." + +_Employer._ "YOU'RE VERY HONEST, JOHN." + +_A.G._ "WEEL, THA SEES I THOAT IT MID 'A' BIN A TRAP."] + + * * * * * + + +NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN. + +THE EARWIG. + + How odd it is that our Papas + Keep taking us to cinemas, + But still expect the same old scares, + The tiger-cats, the woolly bears, + The lions on the nursery stairs + To frighten as of old! + Considering everybody knows + A girl can throttle one of those + While choking with the other hand + The captain of a robber band, + They leave one pretty cold. + The lion has no status now; + One has one's terrors, I'll allow, + The centipede, perhaps the cow, + But nothing in the Zoo; + The things that wriggle, jump or crawl, + The things that climb about the wall, + And I know what is worst of all-- + It is the earwig--_ugh_! + + The earwig's face is far from kind; + He must have got a spiteful mind; + The pincers which he wears behind + Are poisonous, of course; + And Nanny knew a dreadful one + Which bit a gentleman for fun + And terrified a horse. + + He is extremely swift and slim, + And if you try to tread on him + He scuttles up the path; + He goes and burrows in your sponge + And takes one wild terrific plunge + When you are in the bath; + Or else--and this is simply foul-- + He gets into a nice hot towel + And waits till you are dried, + And then, when Nanny does your ears, + He _wrrriggles_ in and disappears: + He stays in there for years and years + And _crrrawls_ about inside. + At last, if you are still alive, + A lot of baby ones arrive; + But probably you've died. + + How inconvenient it must be! + There isn't any way, you see, + To get him out again; + So, when you want to frighten me + Or really give me pain, + Please don't go on about that bear + And all those burglars on the stair; + I shouldn't turn a tiny hair + At such Victorian stuff; + You only have to say instead, + "THERE IS AN EARWIG IN YOUR BED" + And that will be enough. + +A.P.H. + + * * * * * + + +MY RIGHT-HAND MAN. + +On glancing the other day through the only human column of my +newspaper--that headed "Personal"--I was much intrigued by the +advertisement of a gentleman who styled himself a "busy commercial +magnate," and who announced his urgent need of a "right-hand man." The +duties of the post were not particularised, but their importance was +made clear by the statement that "any salary within reason" would be +paid to a really suitable person. + +No, I did not think of applying for the post myself; a twelve months' +adjutancy to a dyspeptic Colonel had long cured me of the desire to +bottle-wash for anyone again, however lavish the remuneration. But, I +thought to myself, it must evidently be a profitable notion to employ +a right-hand man, or why should this magnate person be so airy on the +subject of salary? Would it not then pay me to engage somebody in +a similar capacity? Increased production, in spite of Trade Union +economics, is emphatically a need of the moment. With a right-hand man +at my right hand (when he wasn't at my left) I could, I felt sure, +increase my own output enormously; and I began to plan out my daily +work under the reconstruction scheme. + +I will call him "Snaggs"; that will save me the trouble of having to +write "my right-hand man" every time I want to refer to him; but when +he enters my service such economy of labour will not, of course, +be necessary. Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at nine every +morning--no, on second thoughts he will sleep in, in case an +inspiration that needs recording arrives after I have gone to bed. (I +shrink from estimating how much wealth I have lost through going to +sleep on my nocturnal inspirations, which the most thorough search +next morning never avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, with +alarm attachment, running into Snaggs's room will alter all that.) + +His first duty of the day will be to wade through all the newspapers +and cut out any paragraphs that may serve as pegs for an article or a +set of verses. My own difficulty in this respect has always been that +I can never manage to get through more than one paper in a working +morning, and not all of that; invariably my attention gets caught +by some long and instructive but (for my purposes) hopelessly +unsuggestive dissertation on Pedigree Pigs or The Co-operative +Movement in Lower Papua, and I consequently overlook many of those +inspiring little "stories" that inform us, for example, that a +distinguished physician advocates the use of tomato-sauce as a +hair-restorer. + +By the time I have finished breakfast, I reckon, Snaggs will have +found me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, neatly arranged with +a few skeleton suggestions for the treatment of each. I shall first +decide which are to be handled in prose and which in verse, and in the +case of the latter shall jot down a few words and phrases that will +obviously have to be dragged in as line-endings. Then I shall put +Snaggs on to the purely mechanical drudgery of finding all the +possible rhymes to these words (_e.g._, fascinate, assassinate, +pro-Krassinate--you know the sort of thing that's called for), and by +the time he has catalogued them all I shall have dashed off most of +the prose articles, which Snaggs will then proceed to type while I am +engaged in the comparatively simple task of piecing together the verse +jigsaws. In this way I should easily be able to earn an ordinary +week's takings in a morning. + +The next task will be the placing of this material, and that is how +Snaggs's afternoons will be spent. I have always had an unnecessarily +tender feeling for editors, and often, after laboriously giving birth +to an article, have concealed it in a drawer rather than run the risk +of boring anyone with its perusal. Snaggs, however, will be fashioned +of more pachydermatous material and will daily make himself such a +nuisance that they'll give him an order, and possibly a long contract, +to get rid of him. By a proper system of book-keeping he will also +save me from the occasional blunder of sending the same article to the +same paper twice. + +My wife, to whom I have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first +job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange +about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to +moot. But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as +to the stability of his princely salary. Perhaps it will be best if, +before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited +company, "for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business +and goodwill of the private enterprise known as Percival +Trumpington-Jones, Esq." A sufficient number of shares will be issued +to guarantee Snaggs at least his first year's screw; that done, the +proposition should be practically gilt-edged. So who's coming in on +the bargain-basement floor? + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =THE PHILANTHROPIST.= + +_Customer._ "WHY, YOU'VE PUT YOUR PRICES UP AGAIN!" + +_Fishmonger._ "WELL, MUM, I ASK YER, 'OW ELSE ARE WE TO FIGHT THE +PROFITEER AT 'IS OWN GAME?"] + + * * * * * + + +AT THE PLAY. + +"THE DAISY." + +I imagine that the authors who founded this play on a Hungarian +original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work. If so, they were +right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond +their powers. In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the +fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it +offered magnificent opportunities (I think "magnificent" was the word) +for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors. Certainly it covered a +good bit of ground, what with this world and the next; for it started +with roundabouts on the Heath, and got as far away as the Judgment Day +(Hungarian style?)--and fourteen years after. + +I may have a contemptibly weak stomach for this kind of thing, but I +confess that I don't care much for a representation of the Judgment +Day in a melodrama of low life. Of course low life has just as much +right as any other sort of life to be represented in a Judgment +Day scene; but it ought to behave itself there and not introduce +back-chat. + +I should explain that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the +object of _The Magister_, as the Presiding Judge was named in the +programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if +his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of +his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might +have made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately the leading case +was a bad example of suicide. It had not been deliberate; he had +simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for +intended murder. + +Worse still, when he returned to earth after a lapse of fourteen +years' purgatory (between the sixth and seventh scenes), for his +record was a rotten one and he had shown no signs of penitence, the +_revenant_ made very poor use of his hour. Returning to his wife whom +he had brutalised, he found that she had taught their girl-child to +regard him as a paragon of virtue, and most of his limited time was +spent in correcting this beautiful legend. You see, at the time of his +death he had had no chance of making the child realise how bad he was, +for the excellent reason that she had not yet been born, so he seized +this opportunity of making good that omission. + +As a practical illustration of the kind of man he really had been, he +struck the child violently on the arm. We all saw him do it and we +all heard the smack, but the child assured us that she had not felt +anything. This I suppose was the author's way, ingenuous enough, of +reminding us that it was a case of spirit and not of flesh, whatever +our eyes and ears might persuade us to think of it. + +Already in a previous scene there had been the same old difficulty. +While the man lay dead on his bed his spirit had been summoned by +a Higher Power (indicated in a peep-show), and his corpse sat up, +displacing the prostrate form of the widow, who had to take up a new +position, without however appearing to notice anything. It was still +sitting up when the curtain fell, and incidentally was caught in the +act of resuming its recumbent position when the curtain rose again for +the purpose of allowing the actors to receive our respectful plaudits. + +Behind me I heard an American lady suggest that if they could somehow +distinguish the spirit from the body it would be better for our +illusions. To which her neighbour expressed the opinion that they +would eventually manage to do that feat. I await, less hopefully, this +development in stage mechanism. Meanwhile _Mary Rose_ has much to +answer for. + +The play began promisingly enough with a scene full of colour and +humanity, of humour and pathos. We were among the roundabouts, whose +florid and buxom manageress, _Mrs. Muscat_ (admirably played by Miss +SUZANNE SHELDON), was having a quarrel of jealousy with her assistant +and late lover, "_The Daisy_," who had been seen taking notice of +Another. The dumb devotion of this child, _Julia_ (Miss MARY MERRALL), +who could never find words for her love--she said little beyond "Yuss" +and "I dunno"--was a very moving thing; and the patient stillness with +which she bore his subsequent brutality held us always under a strange +fascination. + +[Illustration: "_The Daisy_" (_Mr. CAINE_). "WHAT MADE YOU TAKE A +FANCY TO ME?" + +_Julia_ (_Miss MERRALL_). "I DUNNO." + +(_Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance on part of audience._)] + +For the rest it was an ugly and sordid business, relieved only by the +coy confidences of the amorous _Maria_ (played by Miss GLADYS GORDON +with a nice sense of fun). Mr. HENRY CAINE, as "_The Daisy_," +presented very effectively the rough-and-ready humour and the frank +brutality of his type; but he perhaps failed to convey the devastating +attractions which he was alleged to have for the frail sex; and his +sudden spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little out of the picture. + +Apart from the painful crudity of the scene that was loosely described +as "The Other Side," the play abounded in amateurisms. For one thing +there was too much sermonising. It began with an obtrusive homily +on the part of an inspector of police, who went out of his way to +admonish _Julia_ about the danger of associating with "_The Daisy_." +Another instance was that of the bank-messenger, a person of such +self-possession and detachment that he contrived to deliver a moral +address while holding one foiled villain at the point of his revolver +and gripping the other's wrist as in a vice. + +Nothing again could have been more naďve than the innocent home-coming +of the domestic carving-knive, freshly sharpened, from the grinder's +just in time to be diverted to the objects of a murderous enterprise. + +Altogether, it was rather poor stuff, unworthy of the talent of many +of its interpreters and of the trouble that Miss EDITH CRAIG had spent +over its scenic effects. Perhaps the audience had been led to expect +too much, for "_The Daisy_," far from being the "wee, modest" flower +of ROBERT BURNS, had been at some pains to draw preliminary attention +to its merits. + +O.S. + + * * * * * + +=The Bedroom Shortage.= + + "That a woman ought to dress quietly and practically in the street + is unquestionable." + +"_Times" Fashion article_. + + * * * * * + + "As the harvest season this year is late, sport will not be + general for at least two weeks hence, when grain crops may be + expected to be in stook. For some time to come sheep will be + confined to the low hill-sides and pasture lands and turnip + fields, and a few good bags were had there yesterday."--_Scotch + Paper._ + +We still prefer the old-fashioned sport of partridge-shooting. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =WAR AND SCIENCE.= + +_Greek Officer._ "CAN'T YOU THINK OF SOMETHING QUICK? THE ARMY IS +WAITING AND THE ENEMY APPROACHES." + +_Archimedes._ "SCIENCE IS NOT TO BE HUSTLED, GENERAL. JUST GET YOUR +ARMY TO DO A LITTLE PLAIN FIGHTING WHILE I THINK OUT A FANCY SCHEME."] + + * * * * * + + +SPANISH LEDGES. + +SCILLY. + + The bells of Cadiz clashed for them + When they sailed away; + The Citadel guns, saluting, crashed for them + Over the Bay; + With banners of saints aloft unfolding, + Their poops a glitter of golden moulding, + Tambours throbbing and trumpets neighing, + Into the sunset they went swaying. + But the port they sought they wandered wide of, + And they won't see Spain again this side of + Judgment Day. + + For they're down, deep down, in Dead Man's Town, + Twenty fathoms under the clean green waters. + No more hauling sheets in the rolling treasure fleets, + No more stinking rations and dread red slaughters; + No galley oars shall bow them nor shrill whips cow them, + Frost shall not shrivel them nor the hot sun smite, + No more watch to keep, nothing now but sleep-- + Sleep and take it easy in the long twilight. + + The bells of Cadiz tolled for them + Mournful and glum; + Up in the Citadel requiems rolled for them + On the black drum; + Priests had many a mass to handle, + Nuestra Seńora many a candle, + And many a lass grew old in praying + For a sight of those topsails homeward swaying-- + But it's late to wait till a girl is bride of + A Jack who won't be back this side of + Kingdom Come. + + But little they care down there, down there, + Hid from time and tempest by the jade-green waters; + They have loves a-plenty down at fathom twenty, + Pearly-skinned silver-finned mer-kings' daughters. + At the gilt quarter-ports sit the Dons at their sports, + A-dicing and drinking the red wine and white, + While the crews forget their wrongs in the sea-maids' songs + And dance upon the foc'sles in the grey ghost light. + +PATLANDER. + + * * * * * + + "REMARKABLE OVAL SCORING." _Evening Paper Contents Bill._ + +We have made some remarkable scores of that shape ourselves in the +past, but we never boast about them. + + * * * * * + + "He believed that the English pronounced in the streets of + London in, say, 200 years' time, will be much different, if not + unintelligible, to the man of to-day."--_Daily Paper._ + +Just like the English in some of our newspapers. + + * * * * * + + "The Secretary of State for India is not _persona grata_ either to + the British House of Commons or to the British public. That is the + old-fashioned English of it."--_Bangalore Daily Post._ + +It would be interesting to see the old-fashioned Latin of it. + + * * * * * + +"Will any Lady Recommend Country Home of the best where 2 precious +Poms can be happy and would be looked after for 6 weeks? Surrey +preferred."--_Morning Paper._ + +Think of their disgust at finding themselves boarded out in Sussex or +Kent. + + * * * * * + + "Young Hungarian Lady with English and German knolidgement wants + sob with English or American Organization."--_Pester Lloyd._ + + Laugh and the world laughs with you; + Sob and you sob alone. + + * * * * * + + +A WAY OUT OF THE PRESENT UNREST. + +"A penny for your thoughts," I said to Kathleen. + +"I like that," said Kathleen indignantly. "A penny was the market +value of my thoughts in 1914. Why should butter and cheese and reels +of cotton go up more than double and my thoughts stay the same?" + +"Twopence," I offered. + +"I said _more_ than double," she remarked coldly. + +I plunged. "Sixpence," I said. + +"Done!" + +"I'll put it in the collection bag for you next Sunday," I added +hastily. + +"Well, I was thinking of Veronica's future. I was wondering what she +was going to be." + +"When we went to the Crystal Palace," I said gently, "I rather +gathered that she wanted to be the proprietor of a merry-go-round. +They were dragons with red-plush seats." + +"She might go into Parliament," said Kathleen dreamily; "I expect +women will be able to do everything by the time she's grown up. She +might be a Cabinet Minister. I don't see why she shouldn't be Prime +Minister." + +"Her hair's just about the right length now," I said. "And perhaps she +could give me congenial employment. I wouldn't mind being Minister of +Transport. There's quite a good salary attached. But of course she may +have ideas of her own on the subject." + +Feeling curious, I went in search of Veronica. I found her at a +private dance given by the butterflies and hollyhocks at the other end +of the lawn. When she saw me she came to meet me and made her excuses +very politely. + +"We've just been wondering what you're going to be when you've stopped +being a little girl," I said. + +"Me?" said Veronica calmly. "Oh, I'm going to be a fairy. You don't +want me to be anything else, do you?" she added anxiously. + +Even the Prime Minister's post seemed suddenly quite flat. + +"Oh, no," I said. "I think you've made a very good choice." But she +was not quite satisfied. + +"I shall hate going away from you," she said. "Couldn't you come too?" + +"Where?" + +"To Fairyland." + +"Ah!" I said, "that takes some thinking about. Could we come back if +we didn't like it?" + +"N-no, I don't fink so. I've never heard of anyone doing that. But +you'll love it," she went on earnestly. "You'll be ever so tiny and +you can draw funny frost pictures wiv rainbows and fold up flowers +into buds and splash dew-water over everyfing at night and ride on +butterflies and help the birds to make nests. Fink what _fun_ to help +a bird to make a nest! You'll _love_ it!" + +"Is that all?" I said sternly. "Are you keeping nothing from me? What +about witches and spells and being turned into frogs? I'm sure I +remember that in my fairy tales." + +"Oh, nothing that _matters_," she said quickly. "You can always _tell_ +a witch, you know, and we'll keep out of their way. An' if a nasty +fairy turns you into a frog a nice one will always turn you back quite +soon. It's all right. You mustn't worry about _that_. There won't be +any fun if you don't come too, darlin'," she ended shamelessly. + +I considered. + +"Veronica," I said at last, "is there such a thing as Ireland in +Fairyland? Is there an exchange that won't keep steady? Is there any +labour trouble?" + +She shook her head. + +"I've never heard of anyfing that sounded like those," she said; "I'm +sure there isn't." + +"That decides it," I said. "We'll all come. As soon as you can +possibly arrange it." + +She heaved a sigh of relief and ran off to tell the glad news to the +butterflies and hollyhocks. + +So that's settled. + +I think we've made a wise decision. + +After all, what's a witch or two, or even a temporary existence as a +frog, compared with a coal strike? + + * * * * * + + +THE WAIL OF THE WASP. + + When that I was a tiny grub, + And peevish and inclined to blub, + Mother, my Queen, + My infant grief you would assuage + With promise of the ripe greengage + And purple sheen + Of luscious plums, + "When Autumn comes." + + The Autumn days are flying fast; + Across the bleak skies overcast + Scurries the wind; + Where are those plums of purple hue, + Mother? I only wish that you + Had disciplined + My pampered youth + To face the truth. + + The time for wasps is nearly done, + And what is life without the sun, + Mother, my Queen? + Dull stupor numbs your royal head; + Torpid my sisters lie--or dead; + Come, let me lean + Back on my sting + And end the thing. + + * * * * * + + +SUGGESTIONS FOR A GENERAL PAPER. + +(_For the benefit of the Examiners in the Oxford School of English +Literature._) + + (1) Compare, in respect of pulpit oratory, (_a_) Dr. SOUTH with +"WOODBINE WILLIE," and (_b_) Dr. MICHAEL FURSE (Bishop of St. Albans) +with the JUDICIOUS HOOKER. + + (2) Give reasons in support of Mr. BEVERLEY NICHOLLS' emendation of +the lines in _The Ancient Mariner_-- + + The wedding guest he beat his breast, + For he heard the proud SASSOON. + + (3) Re-write "Tears, idle tears" in the style of (_a_) Dr. JOHNSON, +(_b_) CALISTHENES, (_c_) the SITWELLS. + + (4) What do you know of CASANOVA, KARSAVINA, CAGLIOSTRO, KENNEDY +JONES, Captain PETER WRIGHT, EPSTEIN, ECKSTEIN and EINSTEIN? When did +Sir OLIVER LODGE say that he would not leave _ein Stein_ unturned +until he had upset the theory of Relativity? + + (5) Give a complete list of all the poets, major and minor, at present +residing on Boar's Hill, and trace their influence on the Baconian +controversy. + + (6) Distinguish by psycho-analysis between (_a_) SYDNEY SMITH +and SIDNEY LEE, (_b_) GEORGE MEREDITH and GEORGE ROBEY, noting +convergences as well as divergences of mentality, physique and +sub-conscious uplift. + + (7) Would Jason, who sailed in the _Argo_, have laid an embargo on +MARGOT as passenger or supercargo? Estimate the probable results +of her introduction to Medea, and its effect on the views and +translations of Professor GILBERT MURRAY. + + (8) What eminent Georgian critic said that TENNYSON's greatest work +was his _Idols of the Queen_? + + (9) Estimate the effect on Reconstruction if Mr. BOTTOMLEY were to +devote himself exclusively to theological studies, and Mr. WELLS were +to take up his abode permanently in Russia. + + * * * * * + +=Another Impending Apology.= + + "FIRE AT CHILDREN'S HOME. + LADY HENRY SOMERSET'S WORK." + +_Daily Paper._ + + * * * * * + +From a Pimlico shop window:-- + + "GENTLEMEN'S WAR ROBES BOUGHT." + +Apparently not worth a "d." + + * * * * * + "Professor ----, the pianist, who is trying to complete 110 hours' + continuous playing, completed fifty-five hours on the first day." + + _Cologne Post._ + +That makes it too easy. + + * * * * * + + "Mme. Karsavina is taller than Pavlova, but has an equally perfect + figure. The Greeks would have bracketted her with Venus and + Aphrodite."--_Provincial Paper._ + +The two last have, of course, been constantly bracketed. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: Golfer (very much off his game). "ONE ROUND NEARER THE +GRAVE."] + + * * * * * + + +OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. + +(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) + + +Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from any collection +of short sketches as now from Miss ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK'S _Autumn +Crocuses_ (SECKER). Not only has the whole book a pleasant title, but +each of these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a +part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of +such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss SEDGWICK. +You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost +passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is, +I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have +reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little +bogie-tale, _The Third Window_; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 +might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to +give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite +unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of +literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss +Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy; +or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty +is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and +take steps to share it. + + * * * * * + +Chief among the _Secrets of Crewe House_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), +now divulged to the mere public, are the marvellous efficiency and +superhuman success achieved by the British Enemy Propaganda Committee, +which operated in Lord CREWE'S London house under the directorate of +Lord NORTHCLIFFE. "What is propaganda?" the author asks himself on an +early page, and the right answer could have been made in four letters: +ADVT. It is endorsed by the eulogistic manner in which the Committee's +work is written up by one of them, Sir CAMPBELL STUART, K.B.E., and +illustrated by photographs of Lord NORTHCLIFFE (looking positively +Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all great achievements, the +main principle was a simple one. A good article is best advertised by +truth; and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the +truth which the Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little +ingenuity, so promulgated that it could no longer escape notice even +in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties +and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so +defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster, +leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir CAMPBELL STUART perhaps tends +to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose +work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing +colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his +little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the +breakdown of the German _moral_ in 1918 and so to win the war. + + * * * * * + +I feel that Miss MARGARET SYMONDS had a purpose in writing _A Child of +the Alps_ (FISHER UNWIN), but, unless it was to show how mistaken +it is, as _Basil_, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou +shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a +romantic marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss +peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until +she is about to marry _Basil_, her original sweetheart. I cannot be +more definite or tell you how her first marriage--with an English +cousin--turned out, because _Linda's_ own account of this is all +we get, and that is somewhat vague. A great many descriptions of +beautiful scenery, Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great +many people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the +author's concentration on _Linda_ gives them, people and scenery +alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been called into +being solely to influence her heroine, and that lessens their +fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a distinct impression, and +once read will not easily be forgotten. It seems a strange comment to +make on a new volume of a "First Novel Library," but _A Child of +the Alps_, as you will realise if you have been reading novels long +enough, is almost exactly the sort of book its title would have +suggested had it appeared thirty years ago. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Prospective Employer._ "HOW OLD ARE YOU?" _Applicant +for Post._ "FOURTEEN--AND UNMARRIED."] + + * * * * * + +These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. +To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten +thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of +wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the +contents. Fortunately, _Uncle Simon_ (HUTCHINSON) is a story quite +cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A +middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted +youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all +those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years +before--here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every +kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, MARGARET and H. DE VERE +STACPOOLE have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the +humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious +delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the +wild oats that _Uncle Simon_ tries to retrieve are not of to-day but +from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course +such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I +gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the +authors simply wake _Uncle Simon_ up and go home. As a small literary +coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book +in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under +a transparent disguise, is the scene of _Uncle Simon's_ restoration. +Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy, +which I can most cordially commend. + + * * * * * + +Mr. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that +unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of +versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in _The +Foolish Lovers_ (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom +either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude +virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in +themselves virtues--such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow +provincialism--that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and +frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types +are interesting, and Mr. ERVINE'S skill lies in his ability not merely +to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his +unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan +conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for +circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery +business in which the family have achieved some success and a full +measure of local esteem. The _MacDermotts_ never failed to accomplish +their purpose; he, as a _MacDermott_, proposed to achieve fame as a +novelist. It was quite simple. But it turned out to be not at all +simple. The quite provincial young _MacDermott_ cannot make London +accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His +wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the _MacDermott_ clan into +which she has married and which now includes a little _MacDermott_, is +the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the +family grocery business. Then the _MacDermott_ himself, with that +shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails +him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished. + + * * * * * + +The main object of the characters in _The Courts of Idleness_ (WARD, +LOCK) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations +were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To +give Mr. DORNFORD YATES his due he is expert in light banter; but some +three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of +surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out +of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are +given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. YATES +desires to show that, although certain people could frivol with the +worst, they could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How +others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set of people +but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. YATES can be strongly +recommended to anyone who thinks that the British take themselves too +seriously. + + * * * * * + +=A Burning Question.= + + "The Germans have singed the Protocol."--_China Advertiser_. + + * * * * * + +=A Master of Deduction.= + + "At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found + by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was + found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is + suspected."--_Evening Paper_. + + * * * * * + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. +159, September 22, 1920, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + +***** This file should be named 17653-8.txt or 17653-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/5/17653/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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, September 22, 1920 + +Author: Various + +Editor: Owen Seaman + +Release Date: January 31, 2006 [EBook #17653] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>PUNCH,<br />OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.</h1> +<h2>Vol. 159.</h2> +<hr class="full" /> + +<h2>September 22nd, 1920.</h2> +<hr class="full" /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>[pg 221]</span> +<h2>CHARIVARIA.</h2> +<p> +"'Strike while the iron is hot' must +be the motto," says a business man. +Mr. <span class="sc">Smillie</span>, on the other hand, says +that it doesn't so much matter about +the iron being hot.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +A curious story reaches us from the +Midlands. It appears that it had been +decided to call out the workmen in a +certain factory, but the strike-leader +had unfortunately mislaid his notes and +could not remember their grievance.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +Mr. C.B. <span class="sc">Cochran</span> has decided +to have nothing further +to do with the promotion of +boxing-matches owing to the +way in which contracts are +continually being broken. It +has since been reported that +several of our leading professional +boxers are endeavouring +to arrange a farewell disappointment.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +Mr. <span class="sc">Evans</span>, the American +golf champion, has invented a +new putter. We appreciate +America's effort, but all the +same we cannot forget her +apathy toward the League of +Nations.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +Last week the largest number +of Alpinists ever assembled +met on the top of the Matterhorn. +If this sort of thing +goes on it is quite likely that +the summit will have to be +strengthened.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +Colder weather is promised +and the close season for Councillor +<span class="sc">Clark</span> should commence +about October 1st.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +"The ex-Kaiser," says <i>The +Western Morning News</i>, "goes +in daily fear of being kidnapped." +This is said to be due to the presence +at Amerongen of an enterprising party +of American curio-hunters.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +A headline in a weekly paper asks, +"What will Charlie Chaplin Turn out +this Year?" "His feet," is the answer.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +The language at Billingsgate, according +to Sir E.E. <span class="sc">Cooper</span>, is much +better than it used to be. Fish porters +invariably say "Excuse me" before +throwing a length of obsolete eel at +a colleague. +</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +In the event of a miners' strike +arrangements have been made for the +staff of the Ministry of Transport to sleep +at the office. It would be more wise, +we think, if they remained wide awake.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +A feature of the new motor charabanc +will be the space for passengers' luggage. +This is just what is wanted, as +it so easily gets broken even if the +corks don't come out.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +A message from Allahabad states +that the appointment of Mr. <span class="sc">Winston +Churchill</span> as Viceroy of India would +be very popular. Unfortunately they +omit to say where it would be popular.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +"Drink is Scotland's greatest sin," +said a Prohibitionist speaker at Glasgow. +The gentleman does not seem +to have heard of haggis.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +Asked what he would have, a Scotsman, +taking advantage of its high price, +replied, "A small petrol, please."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +The National Gallery with its three +thousand pictures is practically priceless, +we are informed. This probably +accounts for the fact that the hall-porter +invariably takes visitors' umbrellas as +security.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +What is now wanted, says a contemporary, +is a good spell of fine weather. +We feel that no good can be done by +rubbing it in like this. <i>The Daily Mail</i> +is doing its best.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +We understand, by the way, that <i>The +Daily Mail</i> has definitely decided not +to offer a prize of a hundred pounds for +a new world, but to leave the matter +entirely in the hands of Mr. <span class="sc">Lloyd +George</span>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +The Astronomical Correspondent of +<i>The Times</i> suggests that the new star +may have been produced through a sun +being struck by a comet. This raises +the question as to whether +suns ought not to carry rear +lights.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +There is some talk of a series +of week-end summers being +arranged for next year.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +"If necessary I will walk +from John-o'-Groats to Land's +End, distributing propaganda +literature all the way," announced +a well-known strike +agitator at a recent conference. +Personally we do not mind if +he does, provided that when +he reaches Land's End he continues +to walk in the same +direction.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +According to a weekly journal +the art of camouflage +played a most important part +in recent naval warfare. It is, +of course, quite an open secret +that the Naval authorities are +aware that one of our largest +Dreadnoughts is somewhere in +a certain English harbour, but, +owing to the excellence of its +camouflage, they have not yet +been able to locate it.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p> +We now learn that it was +merely through an oversight +that the pit ponies did not +record their votes at the strike ballot.</p> + + <hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 340px;"> +<a href="images/221.png"><img src="images/221-237.png" width="337" height="450" alt="Oh, 'e ain't signed on yet, but we've offered him first suck at the lemon." /></a> + +<p> +"<span class="sc">Who's Bill 'Iggins playin' for this season?</span>"</p> +<p> +"<span class="sc">Oh, 'e ain't signed on yet, but we've offered him +first suck at the lemon.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<h4>The Journalistic Touch.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"Shamming death, he moaned loudly."—<i>Irish Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<h4>Our Critics.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' Frederick +Rogers.</p> +<p> +This is a subject that Mr. Rogers is eminently +fitted to explore."—<i>Review of Reviews.</i> +</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"Tenor wanted, to join bass; must have +voice."—<i>Scotch Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +Some people are so exacting.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"Bride in apricot."—<i>Daily Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +A new significance is added to the calculation +of one's fruit stones—"This +year, next year, some time, never."</p> + + <hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>[pg 222]</span> + + +<h3>THE ASHES.</h3> + +<blockquote class="note"><p> +[A final salutation to the M.C.C. team, from one who is destined to +perish in the event of a coal strike.] +</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>O ship that farest forth, a greater <i>Argo</i>,</p> + <p class="i2">Unto the homeland of the woolly fleece,</p> +<p>Soft gales attend thee! may thy precious cargo</p> + <p class="i2">Slide over oceans smoothed of every crease,</p> + <p class="i6">So as the very flower, or pick,</p> +<p>Of England's flanneled chivalry may not be sick!</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>And thou, O gentle goddess Hygieia,</p> + <p class="i2">Hover propitious o'er the vessel's poop;</p> +<p>Keep them from chicken-pox and pyorrhœa,</p> + <p class="i2">Measles and nettle-rash and mumps and croup;</p> + <p class="i6">See they digest their food and drink,</p> +<p>And land them, even as they leave us, in the pink!</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou, too, whose favour they depend so much on</p> + <p class="i2">(Fortune, I mean) in this precarious game,</p> +<p>Oh let there be no blob on their escutcheon,</p> + <p class="i2">Or, if a few occur, accept the blame;</p> + <p class="i6">Do not, of course, abuse thy powers;</p> +<p>We'd have the best side win, but let that side be ours.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Summer awaits them there while we are wheezing</p> + <p class="i2">By empty hearths through bitter days and black;</p> +<p>Yet we rejoice that, though we die of freezing</p> + <p class="i2">And cannot get cremated, all for lack</p> + <p class="i6">Of coal to feed our funeral pyres,</p> +<p>Still "in our ashes [yonder] live their wonted fires."</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i32">O.S.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + +<h3>THE MINISTRY OF ANCESTRY.</h3> +<p> +"As you are aware," said a prominent official of the +Ministry of Ancestry, "although our department has only +been in existence for a few months the profits have enabled +the Government to take twopence off the income-tax and +to provide employment for thousands of deserving clerks +dismissed, in deference to public opinion, from other Government +offices."</p> +<p> +"Yes. Could you tell me how this brilliant scheme came +into being?"</p> +<p> +"The Chinese knew and practised it for centuries. Here +the credit for its re-discovery must be assigned to Sir +Cuthbert Shover, who, owing to handsome contributions +to necessary funds, combined, of course, with meritorious +public service during the War, was offered a baronetcy. +He refused it for himself, but accepted it for his aged +father, thereby becoming second baronet in three months. +He deplored the fact that his grandfather was no longer +eligible for the honour. Then we saw light. Why should +the mere accident of death prevent us from honouring a +man if his family were prepared to contribute towards the +country's exchequer? But these letters will give you a +clearer insight into the working of the department."</p> +<p> +The first letter was addressed to Miss Cannon, at Maidstone:—</p> +<blockquote><p> +"<span class="sc">Dear Madam</span>,—We have no hesitation in advising you +to have a bishop in your family. Few purchases give greater +satisfaction. If, as you say, your late maternal grandfather +was curate of Slowden, and was, as far as you are +aware, a man of exemplary character, we could make him +a bishop without delay. Your home being in Kent, it +occurs to us that the see of Carlisle would suit the Right +Reverend Prelate best. The cost of the proceedings, including +a pre-dated <i>Congé d'Élire</i>, would be eight hundred +guineas. An archbishopric would be slightly more expensive +and, in our opinion, less suitable."</p></blockquote> +<p> +"Amazing," I said.</p> +<p> +"But so simple. Here is a letter from a man who +wants to have had forbears in the Navy. We say:—</p> +<blockquote><p> +"'Naturally it would have been an advantage for your +son, whom you destine for the Navy, to have had relations +in that service. But it is not too late to remedy +this defect.</p> +<p> +"'By virtue of the powers conferred upon us by Act of +Parliament (Ancestry Act, 1922), we are prepared to give +your sometime great-great-uncle William, who, according +to family tradition, always wanted to go to sea, a commission +in the Navy, and the rank of lieutenant, together +with appointment to any ship of the line—with the exception +of the <i>Victory</i>—which fought under Lord <span class="sc">Nelson</span>. The +making out the commission will be put in hand on the +receipt of your cheque for three hundred guineas.'"</p></blockquote> +<p> +"Do you always give satisfaction?"</p> +<p> +"Occasionally we have to disappoint people. For +instance, this letter to a lady at Plymouth:—</p> +<blockquote><p> +"'We fear we cannot grant your request to reserve a +berth on the <i>Mayflower</i> for your delightful ancestress, Mrs. +Patience Loveday. The <i>Mayflower</i> is already overcrowded, +and, owing to some ill-feeling raised in America, we decided +to resign all interest in the vessel. Should you desire +some other form of Puritan distinction how would you like +to provide yourself with a non-juring clergyman as an +ancestor? We could present any suitable departed member +of your family to a Crown living, and supply you with an +order of ejectment, dated the anniversary of St. Bartholomew's +Day, 1662.'"</p></blockquote> +<p> +"Judging from the address on this letter, 'X. O'Finny, +Esq.,' your jurisdiction extends to Ireland?"</p> +<p> +"Yes, Mr. O'Finny wants some persecuted ancestors. +We offer to supply him with a member of his family condemned +to be beheaded by order of <span class="sc">Queen Elizabeth</span>, +price one thousand, which includes a replica of the Great +Seal of England; or, to have another member shot by +order of <span class="sc">Cromwell</span>, at half the price; or a sentence of +hanging in '98. This would be three hundred only. We +advise him to take the complete set at a reduction, and +have no doubt we shall come to terms."</p> +<p> +"Have you anything more expensive?" I asked timidly.</p> +<p> +"Rather. Here is our answer to Lord—better not give +the name, perhaps; the creation is recent. He wished for +a Crusader, but we explained that the Crusades were not +under Government. We offer to introduce his family name +into our authorised supplement to the Domesday Book for +five thousand pounds. I call it cheap at the money. Now +what can we do for you?"</p> +<p> +"I must think it over," I stammered.</p> +<p> +"Do. You will come back. Pair of Colours, now, for +a great-great-grandfather. How would that suit you? +Only five hundred. Or a place at Court in the Regency? +Or, if you wish good business connection, a directorship +of the East India Company? The whole of the past lies +before you. Give your children a fair start in life, that is +what we say. Money is good, education is better, but +distinguished ancestry is best of all."</p> + + <hr /> + + +<h4>Stitches in Time.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"The breeches on the line between Sini and Jhursagudha have now +been repaired."—<i>Civil and Military Gazette.</i> +</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"The King has given Mr. William Armstrong, Director of Criminal +Intelligence of the Shanghai Municipal Police, authority to wear the +Insignia of the Fourth Class of the Order of the Excellent Crop, +conferred on him by the President of the Republic of China, in +recognition of valuable services."—<i>Times.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +We understand that extreme shortness of hair is not the +hall-mark of the Chinese criminal world.</p> + + <hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>[pg 223]</span> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 360px;"> +<a href="images/223.png"><img src="images/223-360.png" width="360" height="450" alt="Under a cloud (with a golden lining)." /></a> + +<h3>UNDER A CLOUD (WITH A GOLDEN LINING).</h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Comrade Lansbury.</span> "THANKS TO MY FAITHFUL BROLSKI NOT A DROP HAS TOUCHED ME."</p> + +<p class="author">[<i>Loud crows from "Daily Herald" bird.</i>]</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>[pg 224]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/224.png"><img src="images/224-600.png" width="600" height="404" alt="Mabel, you're surely not sucking your brush when you're painting toadstools?" /></a> + +<p><i>Horrified Sister</i> (<i>to small artist</i>). +"<span class="sc">Mabel, you're surely not sucking your brush when you're painting toadstools?</span>"]</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<h3>KINGS AND QUEENS.</h3> +<p> +There are thirty-six of them in +all, ranging from <span class="sc">William I.</span>, who is +"severe," to <span class="sc">Victoria</span>, who is just "good." +I first made their acquaintance in childhood, +when my grandmother gave them +me with the laudable object of teaching +me history. Each is a little wooden +block signifying a monarch. On one +side there is a portrait showing the face, +collar and upper portion of torso of the +monarch in question; on the other side +there is written a single word summing +up his whole character.</p> +<p> +By means of these royal blocks I was +brought up to a sound historical sense +based on religion and morality. At the +age of seven I could and did boast that +I knew the innermost souls of all the +monarchs of England. I could say their +dates by heart, often doing so during +sermon time on Sundays, with a grace +and ease that only lifelong acquaintance +with royalty could have bred. I was +even able to triumph through that +tricky period between the death of <span class="sc">Edward +III.</span> and the accession of <span class="sc">Elizabeth</span>. +I wonder if the late Lord <span class="sc">Acton</span> +was as learned at that age: I am sure +he could not say his dates backwards. +I could.</p> +<p> +It has always surprised those who +have endeavoured to teach me history +that my youthful brain should be so +strongly grounded in the historical tradition +of over half a century ago. Yet +all the historians of modern England +could not shake me in my faith. To me +<span class="sc">Queen Victoria</span> was no "panting little +German widow," as our latest searcher +after truth has affirmed, but the august +lady who listened entranced to the +beautiful poems of Lord <span class="sc">Tennyson</span> and +invented electricity and the tricycle. +In consequence I was considered a +counter-revolutionary, if not bourgeois. +My essays were deemed dangerously reactionary. +At Oxford I once found my +tutor burning one. This shows the +value the authorities attach to my work. +It is too dangerous to live; it is burnt.</p> +<p> +I venture to think, however, that my +work, based as it is on the most respectable +principles, will survive long after +my tutors have subsided into a permanent +state of death in life. Like <span class="sc">Shakspeare</span> +and the present Government I +am for all time.</p> +<p> +It is easy to see how I came to acquire +this stability of thought, owing +as I do my early training to the kings +and queens of England, who are nothing +if not stable. They are my acknowledged +guardians and to them I turn in all +difficulties. Only a year ago they came +to my aid in a most awkward predicament. +It was my lot to fill up army +forms; of what variety I cannot remember +save that they were of a jaundicy +colour and connected with the +men's demobilisation. On these documents +I was expected to enter, besides +the usual details as to religion and +connubial felicity, the character of each +man in a single word. I at once marshalled +my wooden royalties before me +in chronological order and proceeded to +deal with the squadron in rotation.</p> +<p> +The first name on my list was that of +the disciplinary sergeant-major. It was +with a glow of pride that I registered +him with <span class="sc">William I.</span> as "severe." The +designation of Tonks, the Mess waiter +(whom we had discovered on the night +the bomb fell on the aerodrome making +a home and a house of defence in the +cookhouse stove), as "heroic" was distinctly +happy. It was perhaps unfortunate +that the quartermaster-sergeant, +an austere man from Renfrew, should +have found, on perusing his demobilisation +card, that he was to be handed +down to posterity as "avaricious." I +was also sorry to find the padre, usually +so broad-minded, in a nasty temper +about the character given to his batman, +who was, he assured me, the only +pious man in the squadron and in +private life a dissenting minister. "Dissolute" +certainly was on the face of +things inappropriate, but then it was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>[pg 225]</span> +no fault of mine that the merriest of +English monarchs should have appeared +at the moment when I was filling up +the papers of a minister of religion.</p> +<p> +The light that my wooden monarchs +throw on history is both interesting +and, to a modern, precious. For instance, +the designation of the first +Angevin king as "patriotic" will surprise +many readers of the late Bishop +<span class="sc">Stubbs</span>. "Patriotic" is a wide term and +may be applied to almost anything from +after-dinner flag-wagging to successful +juggling with Colonial stocks and shares; +yet there are few who would have described +it as the besetting virtue of +<span class="sc">Henry I.</span> But it was; his little block +says so.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">John</span>, again, was "mean." I am sorry, +for, though in some respects blameworthy, +he had many agreeable traits. +His views on the honesty of his baronage +are most entertaining. He was +something of a wit, a good judge of food +and wine, and would have made an excellent +Fellow of an Oxford college. It is +much to be regretted that he was mean.</p> +<p> +Poor <span class="sc">Henry VI.</span> is "silly." This is +a hard judgment on the pioneer of the +movement against low backs in evening +frocks, but doubtless he was silly in +other things.</p> +<p> +Some of my monarchs had the most +excellent characters. <span class="sc">Edward I.</span> was +"just," <span class="sc">George IV.</span> "courteous," <span class="sc">Oliver +Cromwell</span> "noble"—a sad blow for +the White Rose Club. Our younger +monarchs were particularly attractive +persons, and it is a pity that they did +not live long enough to display their +qualities. <span class="sc">Edward VI.</span> was "amiable," +while <span class="sc">Edward V.</span>, like all with expectations +from their uncle, was "hopeful." +Poor child! he had need to be.</p> +<p> +I am pained however that <span class="sc">Charles II.</span> +was "dissolute." It was what <span class="sc">Henry +VIII.</span> dissolved the monasteries for +being—the impertinent old polygamist! +For my part I love <span class="sc">Charles</span> for the +affection that he bore little dogs, for +the chance saying on Sussex hills that +this England was a country well worth +fighting for. Alas! that he should have +been dissolute.</p> +<p> +Best of all my friends is <span class="sc">George III.</span> +He is portrayed with a jolly red nose +and a mouth that positively yawns for +pudding. His character, which is his +chief glory, is "benevolent." Who +would not rejoice to have been the object +of his regal philanthropy? <span class="sc">Samuel +Johnson</span> himself did not hesitate to accept +the bounty of this kindly monarch, +though, while his predecessor reigned, +the great lexicographer had defined a +pensioner as "a state hireling" paid +"for treason to his country."</p> +<p> +Such are my friends the kings and +queens of England. Happy the child +who has such majesty to be his guardian +spirit. To him life will be a pomp, where +vulgar democracy can have no part, and +death a trysting-place with old comrades—the +child for whom</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"The kings of England, lifting up their swords,</p> +<p>Shall gather at the gates of Paradise."</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"> +<a href="images/225.png"><img src="images/225-325.png" width="325" height="450" alt="The Super-Tramp." /></a> + +<p><i>The Super-Tramp.</i> "<span class="sc">Madam, if you have any more of that pie you gave me +this morning I should be pleased to pay for it.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + + + + +<h4>A HOME FROM HOME.</h4> + +<h4><span style="font-weight: normal;">(<i>An actual incident</i>.)</span></h4> + + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>My fancy sought no English field,</p> + <p class="i2">What time my holiday drew near;</p> +<p>I felt no fond desire to wield</p> + <p class="i2">The shrimping net of yesteryear;</p> +<p>I found it easy to eschew</p> + <p class="i2">All wish to hear a pierrot stating</p> +<p>His lust to learn the rendezvous</p> + <p class="i2">Of flies engaged in hibernating.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Beyond the Channel I would range</p> + <p class="i2">(I called it "cross the rolling main")</p> +<p>And there achieve the thorough change</p> + <p class="i2">Demanded by my jaded brain;</p> +<p>It might be that an alien clime</p> + <p class="i2">Would jog a failing inspiration,</p> +<p>Buck up a bard and render rhyme</p> + <p class="i2">Less difficult of excavation.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>A thorough change? Ah, barren quest,</p> + <p class="i2">Foredoomed to fail ere half begun!</p> +<p>Though left behind, my England pressed</p> + <p class="i2">In hot pursuit of me, her son;</p> +<p>London was brought again to view</p> + <p class="i2">By hordes of maidens out for pillage,</p> +<p>When from the train I stepped into</p> + <p class="i2">A flag day in an Alpine village.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>[pg 226]</span> + + +<h3>WIRE AND BARBED WIRE.</h3> +<p> +This was the telegram that, after +much hesitation, I had written out at +the side desk in the post-office and +carried to the main desk to despatch:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Pactolus, London.</p> +<p class="i4">St. Vitus carburetter stammer tyre scream</p> +<p>Sanguine.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +You will observe that it is unintelligible. +Decoded, it meant that I, whose +betting pseudonym is Sanguine, wished +to invest with Messrs. Lure, commission +agents (not bookmakers, no, not +for a moment), whose telegraphic address +is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten +pounds (carburetter) on a horse called +St. Vitus to win (stammer), and twenty +pounds (tyre) for a place (scream). I +had done this for various reasons, none +really good, but chiefly because every +paper that I had opened had urged me +to do so, some even going so far as to +dangle a double before me with St. Vitus +as one of the horses. Nearly all had +described St. Vitus as a nap, setting +up the name not only in capitals but +with a faithful asterisk beside it.</p> +<p> +Having an account with Messrs. Lure +and a liking now and then to indulge +in a little flutter over a gee (I am choosing +my words very carefully) I had +decided, after weighing the claims of +all the other runners, to take the advice +of the majority and back the favourite, +although favourites acclaimed with stridency +by the racing experts of the Press +in unison have, I knew, a way of failing. +In betting on races, however, +there are two elements that are never +lacking: hope against hope and an +incomplete recollection of the past.</p> +<p> +Having written out the telegram I +took it to the main counter, to the section +labelled "Telegrams," and slipped +it under the grating towards the young +woman, who, however, instead of dealing +with it, continued to tell an adjacent +young woman about the arrangements +that she and a friend had made for their +forthcoming holidays at Herne Bay.</p> +<p> +The nature of those who have little +flutters on gees is complex. The ordinary +man, having written out his telegram, +on whatever subject it may be—whether +it announces that he will +arrive before lunch and bring his clubs +with him, or that, having important +business to detain him at the office, he +will not be home to dinner—gets it +through as soon as possible. He may +be delayed by the telegraph girl's detachment, +but he would not be deterred. +He would still send the telegram. But +those who bet are different. They are +minutely sensitive to outside occurrences; +always seeking signs and interpreting +them as favourable or unfavourable +as the case may be; and +refraining from doing anything so decisive +as to call the girl to order. Their +game is to be plastic under the fingers +of chance; the faintest breath of dubiety +can sway them. I had been in so many +minds about this thirty pound bet, which +I could not really afford, that there was +therefore nothing for it, after waiting +the two minutes that seemed to be +ten, but to tear up the message, in the +belief that the friendly gods again had +intervened. For luck is as much an +affair of refraining as of rushing in.</p> +<p> +I therefore withdrew quietly from +the conversation and scattered the +little bits on the floor as I did so. But +I did not leave the office. Instead, I +went to the side desk again and wrote +another telegram, which, with the necessary +money (an awful lot), I pushed +through the grating, where the girls +were still talking. My second telegram +had no reference to horses—I +had done with gambling for the day—but +ran thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Postmaster-General, London.</p> + +<p class="i4">Suggest you remind telegraph clerk on duty</p> +<p>at this hour at this post-office that she perhaps</p> +<p>talks a shade too much about Herne Bay</p> +<p>and gives public too little consideration.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p> +The girl, having ceased her chatter, +took the telegram and began feverishly +to count the words. Then her tapping +pencil slowed down and her brows contracted; +she was assimilating their +meaning. Then, with a blush, and a +very becoming one, she looked at me +with an expression of distress and said, +"Do you really want this to go?"</p> +<p> +"No," I said, withdrawing the money.</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry I was not more attentive," +she said.</p> +<p> +"That's all right," I replied. "Tear +it up."</p> +<p> +And I came away, feeling, with a +certain glow of satisfaction not unmixed +with self-righteousness, that I had done +something to raise the post-office standard +and to ensure better attention. But +the joke is that, if I had myself received +better attention, I should have lost +thirty pounds, for St. Vitus was unplaced. +This story must therefore remain +without a moral.</p> +<p class="author"> +E.V.L.</p> + + <hr /> + +<h4>Notice in a Shop Window.</h4> + +<h4><span style="font-weight: normal;">"Hats made to order, or revenerated."</span></h4> + +<p> +Ah! that's what's wanted so badly +to-day for the headgear of the Higher +Clergy.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"V.C.W. Jupp, the Sussex amateur, has +been invited to become a member of the M.C.C. +team, which leaves for Australia on Saturday. +A fine all-round cricketer, Jupp is a useful +man to any team, but as he usually fields +cover-point his inclusion would not necessarily +improve the side in its weakest point—<i>viz.</i>, +the lack of oilfields."—<i>Daily Paper.</i></p> +</blockquote> +<p> +Surely the fewer the better, if that's +where the butter-fingers come from.</p> + + <hr /> + +<h4>BETWEEN TWO STOOLS.</h4> + +<blockquote class="note"><p> +[Dedicated to those high-minded and dispassionate +leader-writers who, after prefacing +their remarks with the declaration that "we +hold no brief for—" extreme views of all sorts, +proceed to show that the conduct of the extremist +is invariably explained, if not justified, +by the iniquities of the Coalition Government.]</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I hold no brief for <span class="sc">Lenin</span></p> + <p class="i2">Or <span class="sc">Trotsky</span> or their breed;</p> +<p>Their way of doing men in</p> + <p class="i2">Is foreign to my creed;</p> +<p>But, since to me <span class="sc">Lloyd George</span> is</p> + <p class="i2">A source of deeper dread,</p> +<p>For Bolshevistic orgies</p> + <p class="i2">A great deal may be said.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I hold a brief for no land</p> + <p class="i2">That tramples on its kin;</p> +<p>My heart once bled for Poland</p> + <p class="i2">And groaned for Russia's sin;</p> +<p>But, if to clear the tangle</p> + <p class="i2"><span class="sc">Winston</span> is given his head,</p> +<p>I feel that General <span class="sc">Wrangel</span></p> + <p class="i2">Were better downed and dead.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I hold no brief—I swear it—</p> + <p class="i2">For militant Sinn Fein;</p> +<p>I really cannot bear it</p> + <p class="i2">When constables are slain;</p> +<p>But if you mention <span class="sc">Carson</span></p> + <p class="i2">I feel that for the spread</p> +<p>Of murder and of arson</p> + <p class="i2">A good deal can be said.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I hold no brief for <span class="sc">Smillie</span></p> + <p class="i2">Or for the miners' claims;</p> +<p>I disapprove most highly</p> + <p class="i2">Of many of their aims;</p> +<p>But when I see the Wizard</p> + <p class="i2">Enthroned in <span class="sc">Asquith's</span> stead,</p> +<p>It cuts me to the gizzard</p> + <p class="i2">And dyes my vision Red.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I hold no brief for madmen</p> + <p class="i2">On revolution bent,</p> +<p>For bitter or for bad men</p> + <p class="i2">On anarchy intent;</p> +<p>But sooner far than "stop" them</p> + <p class="i2">With Coalition lead,</p> +<p>To foster and to prop them</p> + <p class="i2">I'd leave no word unsaid.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + + + + +<h4>Our Decadent Poets.</h4> + +<p> +Extract from an Indian's petition:—</p> +<blockquote><p> +"... to look after my old father, who +leads sickly life, and is going from bad to +verse every day."</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> +<blockquote><p> +"So far from Mr. Kameneff having had +nothing to do with any realisation of jewels, +he ... took plains to report it to his Government."—<i>Daily +Paper.</i></p></blockquote> +<p> +In fact, he took the necessary steppes.</p> + + <hr /> +<blockquote><p> +"A privately owned aeroplane, flying from +London to the Isle of Wight, descended in a +field near Carnforth, seven miles north of +Morecambe Bay. The propeller was broken, +but the occupants, a lady and a gentleman, +escaped with a shaking."—<i>Daily Paper.</i></p></blockquote> +<p> +The real shock came when they found +out where they were.</p> + + <hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>[pg 227]</span> +<br /> + +<table width="600px" align="center" summary="cartoon" border="0"> +<tr> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-1.png"><img src="images/227-1-200.png" width="200" height="187" alt="When a fellow gets his" border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">When a fellow gets his</span>—</td> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-2.png"><img src="images/227-2-200.png" width="200" height="187" alt="photo taken for the papers" border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">photo taken for the papers</span>—</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-3.png"><img src="images/227-3-200.png" width="200" height="143" alt="I think it's rotten bad form" border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">I think it's rotten bad form</span>—</td> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-4.png"><img src="images/227-4-200.png" width="200" height="143" alt="on the part of another fellow" border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">on the part of another fellow</span>—</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-5.png"><img src="images/227-5-240.png" width="240" height="169" alt="to spoil the picture by intruding a ball" border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">to spoil the picture by intruding a ball</span>—</td> + <td width="300px"><a href="images/227-6.png"><img src="images/227-6-164.png" width="164" height="169" alt="at the crucial moment." border="0" /></a><br /> +<span class="sc">at the crucial moment.</span></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<br /><br /> + +<h3>THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPH.</h3> + + +<br /><hr /><br /><br /> + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>[pg 228]</span> + +<h3>THE HANDY MAN.</h3> +<p> +The men I most admire at the present +time, though I take care not to tell +them so to their faces, are the men who +can do everything. By this I don't +mean people of huge intellectual attainments, +like Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous +physical powers, like <i>Tarzan</i> +of the Apes. It must be very nice to +be able to have a heart-to-heart talk +with <span class="sc">Krassin</span> or to write articles for +the Sunday picture-papers, and very +nice also to swing rapidly through the +tree-tops, say, in Eaton Square; but +none of these gifts is much help when +the door-handle comes off. I hate that +sort of thing to happen in a house.</p> +<p> +In the Victorian age, of course, which +was one of specialisation +based upon peace +and plenty, one simply +sent for a door-handle +replacer and he put it +right. But nowadays +the Door-handle Replacers' +Union is probably +affiliated to an +amalgamation which is +discussing sympathetic +action with somebody +who is striking, so nothing +is done. This +means that for weeks +and weeks, whenever +one tries to go out of +the room, there is a loud +crash like a 9.2 on the +further side and a large +blunt dagger clutched +melodramatically in the +right hand, and nobody +to murder with it.</p> +<p> +The man who can do +everything is the kind +of man who can mend +a thing like a broken door-handle as +soon as look at it. He always knows +which of the funny things you push or +pull on any kind of machine to make it +go or stop, and what is wrong with the +cistern and the drawing-room clock.</p> +<p> +Such a man came into my house the +other day. I call it my house, but it +really seems to belong to a number of +large people who walk in and out and +shift packing-cases and splash paint +and tramp heavily into the bathroom +about 8.30 <span class="sc">a.m.</span> when I am trying to get +off to sleep. They have also dug a +large moat right through the lawn and +the garden-path, which rather spoils +the appearance of these places, though +it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge +at night and feel that one is safe +from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is +my house or theirs, the fact remains +that the electric-bells were wrong. The +man of whom I am speaking lives next-door, +and he came in and pointed this +out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," +he said, "that don't ring."</p> +<p> +I might have argued this point. I +might have said that to press the button +of a bell that does not ring gives one +time to reflect on whether one really +wants the thing one rang for, and +thereafter on the whole vanity of human +wishes, and so inculcates patience and +self-discipline. It is quite possible that +an Eastern <i>yogi</i> might spend many +years of beneficial calm pressing the +buttons of bells that do not ring. But +I replied rather weakly, "No, I suppose +not."</p> +<p> +"I'll soon put that right for you," +he said cheerily, and about five minutes +later he asked me to press one of the +buttons, and there was a loud tinkling +noise. It seemed a pity that at the +moment when the bell did happen to +ring there should be nobody to come +and answer it.</p> +<p> +"Whatever did you do to them?" I +asked.</p> +<p> +"It only needed a little water," he +said, and I had hard work to suppress +my admiration. The very morning +before, feeling that I ought to take a +hand in all this practical work that was +going on about the place, I had filled +a large watering-can that I found lying +about and wetted some things which +someone had stuck into the garden. I +have a kind of idea that they were +carrots, but they may have been maiden-hair +ferns. Somehow it had never +occurred to me for a moment to go and +water the electric bells.</p> +<p> +Almost immediately afterwards this +man discovered that all the knives in +the kitchen were blunt and went and +fetched some kind of private grindstone +and sharpened them, and then told me +that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, +which I thought was a thing +one only did to engines. And, when he +had brought a hammer and some nails +and put together a large bookcase which +had collapsed as soon as <i>The Outline of +History</i> was put on to it (I should like +to know whether Canon <span class="sc">Barnes</span> can +explain <i>that</i>), I was obliged to ask him +to stop, in case the tramping men +should see him and strike immediately +for fear of the dilution of labour.</p> +<p> +But what impressed me most was +the part he took next day in the Railway +Carriage Conference, which curiously +enough was on the subject of +strikes. There were +several people in the +carriage, and they were +talking about what they +had done during the +railway strike last year, +and what they would +do if such a thing happened +again. I said I +should like to be a +station-master if possible, +because they had +top-hats and grew such +beautiful flowers. Only +four or five trains seem +to stop at our station +during the day, and if +there was a strike I +suppose the number +would be reduced to +one or two. And I +thought it would be +rather nice to spend +the day wearing a top-hat +and watering the +nasturtiums in the little +rock-gardens behind +the platform. Watering, I said, was +quite easy when once one got into the +swing of it.</p> +<p> +But the man who could do everything +seemed to know everything too, and he +told me that station-masters were much +too noble to strike. There were two +kinds of station-masters, he said, both +wearing top-hats, but one kind with +full morning-dress underneath it and +the other with uniform. But neither +kind struck.</p> +<p> +Slightly nettled at his superior knowledge, +I asked him, "What did <i>you</i> do +during the Great Strike?"</p> +<p> +"Oh, I had rather fun," he said; +"I controlled the signals at London +Bridge."</p> +<p> +If all the truth were known I expect +that he is quite ready for Mr. <span class="sc">Smillie's</span> +strike; that he has a handy little pick +in his bedroom and knows of rather a +jolly little coal-mine close by.</p> +<p class="author"> +<span class="sc">Evoe.</span></p> + + <hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 565px;"> +<a href="images/228.png"><img src="images/228-565.png" width="565" height="450" alt="Now, Betty, if you cry, I'll never take you to a dentist's again" /></a> + +<p> +<i>Mother</i> (<i>firmly, to little daughter about to have a tooth drawn</i>). "<span class="sc">Now, Betty, +if you cry, I'll never take you to a dentist's again</span>."</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>[pg 229]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/229.png"><img src="images/229-600.png" width="600" height="427" alt="I do wish you two would walk properly." /></a> + +<p><i>The Woman</i>. "<span class="sc">I do wish you two would walk properly</span>."</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<h4>FLOWERS' NAMES.</h4> + +<h4><span class="sc">Fool's Parsley</span>.</h4> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>In the village of Picking's Pool</p> +<p>Lived Theobald, the village fool;</p> +<p>He had been simple from his birth</p> +<p>But kindly as the simple earth,</p> +<p>And in his heart he sang a song</p> +<p>Of "Ave, Mary" all day long.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>On Good Friday the people came</p> +<p>To honour the rood of Christ His shame;</p> +<p>They scattered flowers and leaves and moss</p> +<p>About the foot of the humble cross</p> +<p>And, when they knelt and prayed and wailed,</p> +<p>Theobald saw the Mother, veiled</p> +<p>And bowed in a mother's agony.</p> +<p>"She suffers more than the Christ," said he.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Theobald searched the fields and lanes</p> +<p>To find a solace for <span class="sc">Mary's</span> pains;</p> +<p>All the flowers were plucked and gone</p> +<p>Save a little dull Parsley, sere and wan;</p> +<p>And Theobald wreathed it in simple guise;</p> +<p>"It mourns like her," said the Fool made wise.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>When Holy Saturday morning broke</p> +<p>Back to the shrine went the village folk;</p> +<p>And lo! on the weeping Mother's brow</p> +<p>A chaplet of flowers was gleaming now;</p> +<p>And Theobald smiled secretly</p> +<p>To think he had soothed her agony.</p> +<p>And ever since Theobald crowned his Queen</p> +<p>Fool's Parsley has flowered amongst its green.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + +<h3>HEADGEAR FOR HEROES.</h3> + +<blockquote class="note"><p> +[A contemporary, having heard of the hat +specially designed for <span class="sc">M. Clemenceau</span>, has +decided that the bowler, the topper, the Homburg, +the straw, the cloth cap and all other +styles at present more or less in vogue leave +much to be desired, and has therefore inaugurated +a search for the ideal male headdress.] +</p></blockquote> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Smillie</span>.—A Phrygian model, +executed in red Russia leather. Special +features are the asbestos lining, the +steam vents and the water-jacket, which +combine to minimise the natural heat +of the head. Embellished with an heraldic +cock's-comb <i>gules</i>, it is a striking +conception.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Premier</span>.—A semi-Tyrolean type +in resilient chamois, which can be +readily converted to any desired shape, +with or without extra stiffening. Its +adaptability and the patent sound-proof +ear-flaps make it particularly suitable +for travellers. Detachable edelweiss +and leek trimming.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Eric</span>.—An adaptation of the +<i>cap of maintenance</i> in a special elastic +material, warranted not to burst under +pressure of abnormal expansion of the +head of the wearer. Practically fool-proof.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Winnie</span>.—A fore-and-aft derived +from a French model of the First Empire +period, the severity of which is +mitigated by the addition of little bells. +A novelty is the mouthpiece in the +crown, which enables the hat to be +used as a megaphone at need. An +elastic loop holds a fountain-pen in +position. The whole to be worn on a +head several sizes too big for it.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Conan</span>.—A straw bonnet of bee-hive +shape. Medium weight. In a +diversity of shades. The special puggaree +of goblin blue material is designed +to protect the wearer from moonstroke +without obscuring the vision.</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">The Warner</span>.—An easy-fitting crown +carried out in harlequin flannel surmounts +a full brim of restful willow-green. +Garnished with intertwined +laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated +with the tail feather of a Surrey +fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished +headdress for a middle-aged +gentleman.</p> + + <hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>[pg 230]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/230.png"><img src="images/230-600.png" width="600" height="356" alt="Pinching." /></a> + +<p><i>Teacher.</i> "<span class="sc">And Ruth walked behind the reapers, picking up the corn that they left. +John, what do we call that?</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>John</i> (<i>very virtuously</i>). "<span class="sc">Pinching.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<h3>A SHIP IN A BOTTLE.</h3> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>In a sailormen's restaurant Rotherhithe way,</p> +<p>Where the din of the docksides is loud all the day,</p> +<p>And the breezes come bringing off basin and pond</p> +<p>And all the piled acres of lumber beyond</p> +<p>From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine</p> +<p>And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine,</p> +<p>In a fly-spotted window I there did behold,</p> +<p>Among the stale odours of hot food and cold,</p> +<p>A ship in a bottle some sailor had made</p> +<p>In watches below, swinging South with the Trade,</p> +<p>When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits,</p> +<p>Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots,</p> +<p>Or whittling a model or painting a chest,</p> +<p>Or yarning and smoking and watching the rest.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned,</p> +<p>Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around;</p> +<p>A pipe in the teeth that seemed little the worse</p> +<p>For Liverpool pantiles and stringy salt-horse;</p> +<p>The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo</p> +<p>Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue;</p> +<p>The fingers all roughened and toughened and scarred,</p> +<p>With hauling and hoisting so calloused and hard,</p> +<p>So crooked and stiff you would wonder that still</p> +<p>They could handle with cunning and fashion with skill</p> +<p>The tiny full-rigger predestined to ride</p> +<p>To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide</p> +<p>In its wine-bottle world, while the old world went on</p> +<p>And the sailor who made it was long ago gone.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>And still as he worked at the toy on his knee</p> +<p>He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea,</p> +<p><i>Thermopylć</i>, <i>Lightning</i>, <i>Lothair</i> and <i>Red Jacket</i>,</p> +<p>With many another such famous old packet,</p> +<p>And many a bucko and dare-devil skipper</p> +<p>In Liverpool blood-boat or Colonies' clipper;</p> +<p>The sail that they carried aboard the <i>Black Ball</i>,</p> +<p>Their skysails and stunsails and ringtail and all,</p> +<p>And storms that they weathered and races they won</p> +<p>And records they broke in the days that are done.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Or sometimes he'd sing you some droning old song,</p> +<p>Some old sailors' ditty both mournful and long,</p> +<p>With queer little curlycues, twiddles and quavers,</p> +<p>Of smugglers and privateers, pirates and slavers,</p> +<p>"The brave female smuggler," the "packet of fame</p> +<p>That sails from New York and the <i>Dreadnought</i>'s her name,"</p> +<p>And "all on the coast of the High Barbaree,"</p> +<p>And "the flash girls of London was the downfall of he."</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear</p> +<p>The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear,</p> +<p>The patter of reef-points on topsails a-shiver,</p> +<p>The song of the jibs when they tauten and quiver,</p> +<p>The cry of the frigate-bird following after,</p> +<p>The bow-wave that broke with a gurgle like laughter.</p> +<p>And I looked on my youth with its pleasure and pain,</p> +<p>And the shipmate I loved was beside me again.</p> +<p>In a ship in a bottle a-sailing away</p> +<p>In the flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray,</p> +<p>Over oceans of wonder by headlands of gleam,</p> +<p>To the harbours of Youth on the wind of a dream.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i32">C.F.S.</p> +</div> +</div> + <hr /> + +<h4>"<span class="sc">High Commissioner Pays Calls.</span></h4> + +<blockquote><p> +Jerusalem, August 27.—The High Commissioner visited yesterday +afternoon the tomb of Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Isaac, Jacob and +Leah in the Cave of Makpéla at Hebron."—<i>Egyptian Mail</i>. +</p></blockquote> +<p> +No flowers, by request.</p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>[pg 231]</span> + + <hr /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;"> +<a href="images/231.png"><img src="images/231-349.png" width="349" height="450" alt="Here, hop it, or you'll spoil the whole show." /></a> + +<h3>THE GREAT REPUDIATION.</h3> +<p> +<span class="sc">Mr. Smillie.</span> "HERE, HOP IT, OR YOU'LL SPOIL THE WHOLE SHOW. YOU DON'T +COME ON TILL MY NEXT TRICK."</p></div> + + <hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>[pg 232]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/232.png"><img src="images/232-600.png" width="600" height="423" alt="Why the deuce aren't you with hounds? They're in the next parish by this." /></a> + +<p><i>M.F.H</i>. "<span class="sc">Why the deuce aren't you with hounds? They're in the next parish by this.</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>New Whip</i> (<i>rib-roasting very bad cub-hunter</i>). "<span class="sc">'Tain't safe to go near 'em with this 'orse; they might think 'e was for +eatin'.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + + +<h4>THE BEN AND THE BOOT.</h4> + +<p> +Whither in these littered and overcrowded +islands should one flee to +escape the spectacle of outworn and +discarded boots? I should go to a +mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops +I should choose the highest. I +should scale the summit of Ben Nevis.</p> +<p> +Yet it is but a few days since I saw +on that proud eminence the unmistakable +remains of an ordinary walking +boot.</p> +<p> +It reposed on the perilous edge of a +snowdrift that even in summer curves +giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf +over which the eastern precipice beetles. +There is ever a certain pathos about +discarded articles of apparel: a baby's +outgrown shoe, a girl's forgotten glove, +an abandoned bowler; but the situation +of this boot, thus high uplifted towards +the eternal stars, gave to it a mystery, +a grandeur, a sublimity that held me +long in contemplation.</p> +<p> +How came it there?</p> +<p> +The path that winds up that grey +mountain is rough; its harsh stones +and remorseless gradients take toll of +leather as of flesh. Yet half a sole and +a sound upper are better than no boot; +and what climber but would postpone +till after his descent the discarding of +his damaged footgear?</p> +<p> +Could it be, I asked myself, the relic +and evidence of an inhuman crime? +Was it possible that some party of +climbers, arriving at the top lunchless +and desperately hungry, had sacrificed +their plumpest, disposing of his clothes +over the cliff, but failing to hole out +with this tell-tale boot?</p> +<p> +But no, I bethought me of the price +of leather. They would have reserved +the boots, even at the risk of suspicion. +Moreover, no one would ever reach +that exacting altitude in a state of +succulence.</p> +<p> +A glow of sympathy, a thrill of appreciation +swept through me as I realised +what was at once the worthiest +and the likeliest explanation.</p> +<p> +Who shall plumb the depths of the +affection of a true pedestrian for his +boots, the companions and comfort of +so many a pilgrimage? Who but the +climber, the hill-tramp, knows the pang +of regret with which he faces at last +the truth that his favourite boots are +past repair, the sorrow and self-reproach +with which he permits them to +be consigned to Erebus?</p> +<p> +I saw it all. As the Roman veteran +hung upon the temple wall of Mars the +arms he might no longer wield, so +hither came some lofty-minded climber, +bearing in devoted hands his outworn +and faithful boot, to leave it sadly and +with reverence in this most worthy +resting-place, here to repose at the end +of all the roads it had trod, on the +highest of all the native hills it had +climbed.</p> +<p class="author"> +W.K.H.</p> + + <hr /> + +<h4>Another Impending Apology.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"Mr. Roberts, Member of Parliament, has +arrived. Mr. Roberts is a tall and well-built +gentleman with a posing appearance."</p> + +<p class="author"> + <i>Mysore Patriot</i>.</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"Families supplied in 18, 12 or 6 gallon +casks."—<i>Hertford brewer's notice</i>. +</p></blockquote> +<p> +Where's your <span class="sc">Diogenes</span> now?</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"The dinner was in the House of Commons, +and I sat next to Henry. I was tremendously +impressed by his conversation and his clean +Cromwellian face."</p> +<p> +<i>From a famous autobiography.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p> +It was, we trust, the <span class="sc">Cromwell</span> touch +rather than the cleanness that was so +impressive.</p> + + <hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>[pg 233]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/233.png"><img src="images/233-600.png" width="600" height="417" alt="Ancient Gardener (who has just been paid)" /></a> + +<p><i>Ancient Gardener</i> (<i>who has just been paid</i>). +"<span class="sc">Oi say, Maister, there's summat wrong wi' ma brass.</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>Employer.</i> "<span class="sc">What's that, John?</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>A.G.</i> "<span class="sc">Wha, sithee, tha's gi'en ma one ta mony.</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>Employer.</i> "<span class="sc">You're very honest, John.</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>A.G.</i> "<span class="sc">Weel, tha sees I thoat it mid 'a' bin a trap.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + + +<h3>NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.</h3> + +<h4><span class="sc">The Earwig.</span></h4> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>How odd it is that our Papas</p> +<p>Keep taking us to cinemas,</p> +<p>But still expect the same old scares,</p> +<p>The tiger-cats, the woolly bears,</p> +<p>The lions on the nursery stairs</p> + <p class="i6">To frighten as of old!</p> +<p>Considering everybody knows</p> +<p>A girl can throttle one of those</p> +<p>While choking with the other hand</p> +<p>The captain of a robber band,</p> + <p class="i6">They leave one pretty cold.</p> +<p>The lion has no status now;</p> +<p>One has one's terrors, I'll allow,</p> +<p>The centipede, perhaps the cow,</p> + <p class="i6">But nothing in the Zoo;</p> +<p>The things that wriggle, jump or crawl,</p> +<p>The things that climb about the wall,</p> +<p>And I know what is worst of all—</p> +<p>It is the earwig—<i>ugh</i>!</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The earwig's face is far from kind;</p> +<p>He must have got a spiteful mind;</p> +<p>The pincers which he wears behind</p> + <p class="i6">Are poisonous, of course;</p> +<p>And Nanny knew a dreadful one</p> +<p>Which bit a gentleman for fun</p> + <p class="i6">And terrified a horse.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>He is extremely swift and slim,</p> +<p>And if you try to tread on him</p> + <p class="i6">He scuttles up the path;</p> +<p>He goes and burrows in your sponge</p> +<p>And takes one wild terrific plunge</p> + <p class="i6">When you are in the bath;</p> +<p>Or else—and this is simply foul—</p> +<p>He gets into a nice hot towel</p> + <p class="i6">And waits till you are dried,</p> +<p>And then, when Nanny does your ears,</p> +<p>He <i>wrrriggles</i> in and disappears:</p> +<p>He stays in there for years and years</p> + <p class="i6">And <i>crrrawls</i> about inside.</p> +<p>At last, if you are still alive,</p> +<p>A lot of baby ones arrive;</p> + <p class="i6">But probably you've died.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>How inconvenient it must be!</p> +<p>There isn't any way, you see,</p> + <p class="i6">To get him out again;</p> +<p>So, when you want to frighten me</p> + <p class="i6">Or really give me pain,</p> +<p>Please don't go on about that bear</p> +<p>And all those burglars on the stair;</p> +<p>I shouldn't turn a tiny hair</p> +<p>At such Victorian stuff;</p> +<p>You only have to say instead,</p> +<p>"<span class="sc">There is an Earwig in Your Bed</span>"</p> + <p class="i6">And that will be enough.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">A.P.H.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + + +<h3>MY RIGHT-HAND MAN.</h3> +<p> +On glancing the other day through +the only human column of my newspaper—that +headed "Personal"—I was +much intrigued by the advertisement +of a gentleman who styled himself a +"busy commercial magnate," and who +announced his urgent need of a "right-hand +man." The duties of the post +were not particularised, but their importance +was made clear by the statement +that "any salary within reason" +would be paid to a really suitable person.</p> +<p> +No, I did not think of applying for +the post myself; a twelve months' +adjutancy to a dyspeptic Colonel had +long cured me of the desire to bottle-wash +for anyone again, however lavish +the remuneration. But, I thought to +myself, it must evidently be a profitable +notion to employ a right-hand man, or +why should this magnate person be so +airy on the subject of salary? Would +it not then pay me to engage somebody +in a similar capacity? Increased production, +in spite of Trade Union economics, +is emphatically a need of the +moment. With a right-hand man at +my right hand (when he wasn't at +my left) I could, I felt sure, increase +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>[pg 234]</span> +my own output enormously; and I +began to plan out my daily work under +the reconstruction scheme.</p> +<p> +I will call him "Snaggs"; that will +save me the trouble of having to write +"my right-hand man" every time I +want to refer to him; but when he +enters my service such economy of +labour will not, of course, be necessary. +Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at +nine every morning—no, on second +thoughts he will sleep in, in case an +inspiration that needs recording arrives +after I have gone to bed. (I shrink +from estimating how much wealth I +have lost through going to sleep on my +nocturnal inspirations, which the most +thorough search next morning never +avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, +with alarm attachment, running +into Snaggs's room will alter all that.)</p> +<p> +His first duty of the day will be to +wade through all the newspapers and +cut out any paragraphs that may serve +as pegs for an article or a set of verses. +My own difficulty in this respect has +always been that I can never manage to +get through more than one paper in a +working morning, and not all of that; +invariably my attention gets caught by +some long and instructive but (for my +purposes) hopelessly unsuggestive dissertation +on Pedigree Pigs or The Co-operative +Movement in Lower Papua, +and I consequently overlook many of +those inspiring little "stories" that inform +us, for example, that a distinguished +physician advocates the use of +tomato-sauce as a hair-restorer.</p> +<p> +By the time I have finished breakfast, +I reckon, Snaggs will have found +me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, +neatly arranged with a few +skeleton suggestions for the treatment +of each. I shall first decide which are +to be handled in prose and which in +verse, and in the case of the latter shall +jot down a few words and phrases that +will obviously have to be dragged in as +line-endings. Then I shall put Snaggs +on to the purely mechanical drudgery +of finding all the possible rhymes to +these words (<i>e.g.</i>, fascinate, assassinate, +pro-Krassinate—you know the sort of +thing that's called for), and by the +time he has catalogued them all I +shall have dashed off most of the prose +articles, which Snaggs will then proceed +to type while I am engaged in +the comparatively simple task of piecing +together the verse jigsaws. In this +way I should easily be able to earn an +ordinary week's takings in a morning.</p> +<p> +The next task will be the placing of +this material, and that is how Snaggs's +afternoons will be spent. I have always +had an unnecessarily tender feeling for +editors, and often, after laboriously giving +birth to an article, have concealed +it in a drawer rather than run the risk +of boring anyone with its perusal. +Snaggs, however, will be fashioned of +more pachydermatous material and will +daily make himself such a nuisance that +they'll give him an order, and possibly +a long contract, to get rid of him. By +a proper system of book-keeping he +will also save me from the occasional +blunder of sending the same article to +the same paper twice.</p> +<p> +My wife, to whom I have submitted +this brain-wave, says that the first job +to employ Snaggs on will be calling on +the Bank Manager to arrange about +the overdraft which neither of us has +so far had the courage to moot. But +that, I am afraid, would inspire him +with foolish doubts as to the stability +of his princely salary. Perhaps it will +be best if, before actually engaging +Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited +company, "for the purpose of acquiring +and enlarging the business and goodwill +of the private enterprise known as +Percival Trumpington-Jones, Esq." A +sufficient number of shares will be +issued to guarantee Snaggs at least his +first year's screw; that done, the proposition +should be practically gilt-edged. +So who's coming in on the bargain-basement +floor?</p> + + <hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"> +<a href="images/234.png"><img src="images/234-324.png" width="324" height="450" alt="The Philanthropist." /></a> + +<h3>THE PHILANTHROPIST.</h3> +<p> +<i>Customer.</i> "<span class="sc">Why, you've put your prices up again!</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>Fishmonger.</i> "<span class="sc">Well, Mum, I ask yer, 'ow else are we to fight the profiteer +at 'is own game?</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>[pg 235]</span> + + +<h3>AT THE PLAY.</h3> + +<h4>"<span class="sc">The Daisy.</span>"</h4> +<p> +I imagine that the authors who +founded this play on a Hungarian original +regarded it as an ambitious piece +of work. If so, they were right in the +sense that they have attempted something +very much beyond their powers. +In the view of the gentleman who addressed +us at the fall of the curtain (I +understand that he was one of the +authors) it offered magnificent opportunities +(I think "magnificent" was +the word) for the brilliant gifts of two +of the actors. Certainly it covered a +good bit of ground, what with this +world and the next; for it started with +roundabouts on the Heath, and got as +far away as the Judgment Day (Hungarian +style?)—and fourteen years after.</p> +<p> +I may have a contemptibly weak +stomach for this kind of thing, but I +confess that I don't care much for a +representation of the Judgment Day +in a melodrama of low life. Of course +low life has just as much right as any +other sort of life to be represented in a +Judgment Day scene; but it ought to +behave itself there and not introduce +back-chat.</p> +<p> +I should explain that it was a special +Suicide Court, and that the object of +<i>The Magister</i>, as the Presiding Judge +was named in the programme, was to +inquire into the record of the delinquent +and, if his answers were satisfactory, +to allow him to revisit the scenes +of his earthly life in order to repair any +little omissions that he might have +made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately +the leading case was a bad +example of suicide. It had not been +deliberate; he had simply killed himself +impromptu in a tight corner to +avoid arrest for intended murder.</p> +<p> +Worse still, when he returned to +earth after a lapse of fourteen years' +purgatory (between the sixth and +seventh scenes), for his record was a +rotten one and he had shown no signs of +penitence, the <i>revenant</i> made very poor +use of his hour. Returning to his wife +whom he had brutalised, he found that +she had taught their girl-child to regard +him as a paragon of virtue, and most of +his limited time was spent in correcting +this beautiful legend. You see, at the +time of his death he had had no chance +of making the child realise how bad he +was, for the excellent reason that she +had not yet been born, so he seized this +opportunity of making good that omission.</p> +<p> +As a practical illustration of the kind +of man he really had been, he struck +the child violently on the arm. We all +saw him do it and we all heard the +smack, but the child assured us that +she had not felt anything. This I suppose +was the author's way, ingenuous +enough, of reminding us that it was a +case of spirit and not of flesh, whatever +our eyes and ears might persuade +us to think of it.</p> +<p> +Already in a previous scene there had +been the same old difficulty. While +the man lay dead on his bed his spirit +had been summoned by a Higher Power +(indicated in a peep-show), and his +corpse sat up, displacing the prostrate +form of the widow, who had to take up +a new position, without however appearing +to notice anything. It was +still sitting up when the curtain fell, +and incidentally was caught in the act +of resuming its recumbent position +when the curtain rose again for the +purpose of allowing the actors to receive +our respectful plaudits.</p> +<p> +Behind me I heard an American lady +suggest that if they could somehow distinguish +the spirit from the body it would +be better for our illusions. To which +her neighbour expressed the opinion +that they would eventually manage to +do that feat. I await, less hopefully, +this development in stage mechanism. +Meanwhile <i>Mary Rose</i> has much to +answer for.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 280px;"> +<a href="images/235.png"><img src="images/235-279.png" width="279" height="450" alt="What made you take a fancy to me?" /></a> + +<p> +"<i>The Daisy</i>" (<i>Mr. <span class="sc">Caine</span></i>). "<span class="sc">What made +you take a fancy to me?</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>Julia</i> (<i>Miss <span class="sc">Merrall</span></i>). "<span class="sc">I dunno.</span>"</p> +<p> +(<i>Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance +on part of audience.</i>)</p></div> + +<p> +The play began promisingly enough +with a scene full of colour and humanity, +of humour and pathos. We were +among the roundabouts, whose florid +and buxom manageress, <i>Mrs. Muscat</i> (admirably +played by Miss <span class="sc">Suzanne Sheldon</span>), +was having a quarrel of jealousy +with her assistant and late lover, "<i>The +Daisy</i>," who had been seen taking +notice of Another. The dumb devotion +of this child, <i>Julia</i> (Miss <span class="sc">Mary Merrall</span>), +who could never find words for her +love—she said little beyond "Yuss" and +"I dunno"—was a very moving thing; +and the patient stillness with which +she bore his subsequent brutality held +us always under a strange fascination.</p> +<p> +For the rest it was an ugly and sordid +business, relieved only by the coy confidences +of the amorous <i>Maria</i> (played +by Miss <span class="sc">Gladys Gordon</span> with a nice +sense of fun). Mr. <span class="sc">Henry Caine</span>, as +"<i>The Daisy</i>," presented very effectively +the rough-and-ready humour and the +frank brutality of his type; but he perhaps +failed to convey the devastating +attractions which he was alleged to +have for the frail sex; and his sudden +spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little +out of the picture.</p> +<p> +Apart from the painful crudity of the +scene that was loosely described as +"The Other Side," the play abounded +in amateurisms. For one thing there +was too much sermonising. It began +with an obtrusive homily on the part +of an inspector of police, who went out +of his way to admonish <i>Julia</i> about +the danger of associating with "<i>The +Daisy</i>." Another instance was that of +the bank-messenger, a person of such +self-possession and detachment that he +contrived to deliver a moral address +while holding one foiled villain at the +point of his revolver and gripping the +other's wrist as in a vice.</p> +<p> +Nothing again could have been more +naďve than the innocent home-coming +of the domestic carving-knive, freshly +sharpened, from the grinder's just in +time to be diverted to the objects of a +murderous enterprise.</p> +<p> +Altogether, it was rather poor stuff, +unworthy of the talent of many of its +interpreters and of the trouble that +Miss <span class="sc">Edith Craig</span> had spent over its +scenic effects. Perhaps the audience +had been led to expect too much, for +"<i>The Daisy</i>," far from being the "wee, +modest" flower of <span class="sc">Robert Burns</span>, had +been at some pains to draw preliminary +attention to its merits.</p> +<p class="author"> +O.S.</p> + + <hr /> + +<h4>The Bedroom Shortage.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"That a woman ought to dress quietly and +practically in the street is unquestionable."</p> +<p class="author"> +"<i>Times" Fashion article</i>.</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"As the harvest season this year is late, +sport will not be general for at least two weeks +hence, when grain crops may be expected to +be in stook. For some time to come sheep +will be confined to the low hill-sides and pasture +lands and turnip fields, and a few good bags +were had there yesterday."—<i>Scotch Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +We still prefer the old-fashioned sport +of partridge-shooting.</p> + +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>[pg 236]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/236.png"><img src="images/236-600.png" width="600" height="354" alt="War and Science." /></a> + +<h3>WAR AND SCIENCE.</h3> +<p> +<i>Greek Officer.</i> "<span class="sc">Can't you think of something quick? +The army is waiting and the enemy approaches.</span>"</p> +<p> +<i>Archimedes.</i> "<span class="sc">Science is not to be hustled, General. Just get your army to do a little plain fighting +while I think out a fancy scheme.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> + + +<h4>SPANISH LEDGES.</h4> + +<h4><span class="sc">Scilly.</span></h4> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="i4">The bells of Cadiz clashed for them</p> + <p class="i12">When they sailed away;</p> + <p class="i4">The Citadel guns, saluting, crashed for them</p> + <p class="i12">Over the Bay;</p> + <p class="i4">With banners of saints aloft unfolding,</p> + <p class="i4">Their poops a glitter of golden moulding,</p> + <p class="i4">Tambours throbbing and trumpets neighing,</p> + <p class="i4">Into the sunset they went swaying.</p> +<p>But the port they sought they wandered wide of,</p> +<p>And they won't see Spain again this side of</p> + <p class="i12">Judgment Day.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>For they're down, deep down, in Dead Man's Town,</p> + <p class="i4">Twenty fathoms under the clean green waters.</p> +<p>No more hauling sheets in the rolling treasure fleets,</p> + <p class="i4">No more stinking rations and dread red slaughters;</p> +<p>No galley oars shall bow them nor shrill whips cow them,</p> + <p class="i4">Frost shall not shrivel them nor the hot sun smite,</p> +<p>No more watch to keep, nothing now but sleep—</p> + <p class="i4">Sleep and take it easy in the long twilight.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="i4">The bells of Cadiz tolled for them</p> + <p class="i12">Mournful and glum;</p> + <p class="i4">Up in the Citadel requiems rolled for them</p> + <p class="i12">On the black drum;</p> + <p class="i4">Priests had many a mass to handle,</p> + <p class="i4">Nuestra Seńora many a candle,</p> + <p class="i4">And many a lass grew old in praying</p> + <p class="i4">For a sight of those topsails homeward swaying—</p> +<p>But it's late to wait till a girl is bride of</p> +<p>A Jack who won't be back this side of</p> + <p class="i12">Kingdom Come.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>But little they care down there, down there,</p> + <p class="i4">Hid from time and tempest by the jade-green waters;</p> +<p>They have loves a-plenty down at fathom twenty,</p> + <p class="i4">Pearly-skinned silver-finned mer-kings' daughters.</p> +<p>At the gilt quarter-ports sit the Dons at their sports,</p> + <p class="i4">A-dicing and drinking the red wine and white,</p> +<p>While the crews forget their wrongs in the sea-maids' songs</p> + <p class="i4">And dance upon the foc'sles in the grey ghost light.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i32"> <span class="sc">Patlander.</span></p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + + +<blockquote><p>"REMARKABLE OVAL SCORING."</p> +<p class="author"> +<i>Evening Paper Contents Bill.</i> +</p></blockquote> + +<p> +We have made some remarkable scores of that shape ourselves +in the past, but we never boast about them.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"He believed that the English pronounced in the streets of London +in, say, 200 years' time, will be much different, if not unintelligible, +to the man of to-day."—<i>Daily Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +Just like the English in some of our newspapers.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"The Secretary of State for India is not <i>persona grata</i> either to +the British House of Commons or to the British public. That is +the old-fashioned English of it."—<i>Bangalore Daily Post.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +It would be interesting to see the old-fashioned Latin of it.</p> + + <hr /> +<blockquote><p> +"Will any Lady Recommend Country Home of the best where 2 +precious Poms can be happy and would be looked after for 6 weeks? +Surrey preferred."—<i>Morning Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +Think of their disgust at finding themselves boarded out +in Sussex or Kent.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"Young Hungarian Lady with English and German knolidgement +wants sob with English or American Organization."—<i>Pester Lloyd.</i> +</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Laugh and the world laughs with you;</p> + <p class="i4">Sob and you sob alone.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>[pg 237]</span> + +<h3>A WAY OUT OF THE PRESENT UNREST.</h3> +<p> +"A penny for your thoughts," I said +to Kathleen.</p> +<p> +"I like that," said Kathleen indignantly. +"A penny was the market value +of my thoughts in 1914. Why should +butter and cheese and reels of cotton +go up more than double and my thoughts +stay the same?"</p> +<p> +"Twopence," I offered.</p> +<p> +"I said <i>more</i> than double," she remarked +coldly.</p> +<p> +I plunged. "Sixpence," I said.</p> +<p> +"Done!"</p> +<p> +"I'll put it in the collection bag for +you next Sunday," I added hastily.</p> +<p> +"Well, I was thinking of Veronica's +future. I was wondering what she +was going to be."</p> +<p> +"When we went to the Crystal +Palace," I said gently, "I rather +gathered that she wanted to be the +proprietor of a merry-go-round. They +were dragons with red-plush seats."</p> +<p> +"She might go into Parliament," +said Kathleen dreamily; "I expect +women will be able to do everything +by the time she's grown up. She +might be a Cabinet Minister. I don't +see why she shouldn't be Prime Minister."</p> +<p> +"Her hair's just about the right +length now," I said. "And perhaps +she could give me congenial employment. +I wouldn't mind being Minister +of Transport. There's quite a good +salary attached. But of course she may +have ideas of her own on the subject."</p> +<p> +Feeling curious, I went in search of +Veronica. I found her at a private +dance given by the butterflies and +hollyhocks at the other end of the lawn. +When she saw me she came to meet me +and made her excuses very politely.</p> +<p> +"We've just been wondering what +you're going to be when you've stopped +being a little girl," I said.</p> +<p> +"Me?" said Veronica calmly. "Oh, +I'm going to be a fairy. You don't +want me to be anything else, do you?" +she added anxiously.</p> +<p> +Even the Prime Minister's post +seemed suddenly quite flat.</p> +<p> +"Oh, no," I said. "I think you've +made a very good choice." But she +was not quite satisfied.</p> +<p> +"I shall hate going away from you," +she said. "Couldn't you come too?"</p> +<p> +"Where?"</p> +<p> +"To Fairyland."</p> +<p> +"Ah!" I said, "that takes some +thinking about. Could we come back +if we didn't like it?"</p> +<p> +"N-no, I don't fink so. I've never +heard of anyone doing that. But you'll +love it," she went on earnestly. +"You'll be ever so tiny and you can +draw funny frost pictures wiv rainbows +and fold up flowers into buds and +splash dew-water over everyfing at +night and ride on butterflies and help +the birds to make nests. Fink what +<i>fun</i> to help a bird to make a nest! +You'll <i>love</i> it!"</p> +<p> +"Is that all?" I said sternly. "Are +you keeping nothing from me? What +about witches and spells and being +turned into frogs? I'm sure I remember +that in my fairy tales."</p> +<p> +"Oh, nothing that <i>matters</i>," she +said quickly. "You can always <i>tell</i> a +witch, you know, and we'll keep out +of their way. An' if a nasty fairy +turns you into a frog a nice one will +always turn you back quite soon. It's +all right. You mustn't worry about +<i>that</i>. There won't be any fun if you +don't come too, darlin'," she ended +shamelessly.</p> +<p> +I considered.</p> +<p> +"Veronica," I said at last, "is there +such a thing as Ireland in Fairyland? +Is there an exchange that won't keep +steady? Is there any labour trouble?"</p> +<p> +She shook her head.</p> +<p> +"I've never heard of anyfing that +sounded like those," she said; "I'm +sure there isn't."</p> +<p> +"That decides it," I said. "We'll +all come. As soon as you can possibly +arrange it."</p> +<p> +She heaved a sigh of relief and ran +off to tell the glad news to the butterflies +and hollyhocks.</p> +<p> +So that's settled.</p> +<p> +I think we've made a wise decision.</p> +<p> +After all, what's a witch or two, or +even a temporary existence as a frog, +compared with a coal strike?</p> + + <hr /> + + +<h4>THE WAIL OF THE WASP.</h4> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>When that I was a tiny grub,</p> +<p>And peevish and inclined to blub,</p> + <p class="i6">Mother, my Queen,</p> +<p>My infant grief you would assuage</p> +<p>With promise of the ripe greengage</p> + <p class="i6">And purple sheen</p> + <p class="i4">Of luscious plums,</p> + <p class="i4">"When Autumn comes."</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The Autumn days are flying fast;</p> +<p>Across the bleak skies overcast</p> + <p class="i6">Scurries the wind;</p> +<p>Where are those plums of purple hue,</p> +<p>Mother? I only wish that you</p> + <p class="i6">Had disciplined</p> + <p class="i4">My pampered youth</p> + <p class="i4">To face the truth.</p></div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The time for wasps is nearly done,</p> +<p>And what is life without the sun,</p> + <p class="i6">Mother, my Queen?</p> +<p>Dull stupor numbs your royal head;</p> +<p>Torpid my sisters lie—or dead;</p> + <p class="i6">Come, let me lean</p> + <p class="i4">Back on my sting</p> + <p class="i4">And end the thing.</p> +</div> +</div> + + <hr /> + +<h3>SUGGESTIONS FOR A GENERAL PAPER.</h3> +<blockquote> +<h4><span style="font-weight: normal;"> +(<i>For the benefit of the Examiners in the +Oxford School of English Literature.</i>)</span></h4> +<p class="indent"> +(1) Compare, in respect of pulpit +oratory, (<i>a</i>) Dr. <span class="sc">South</span> with "<span class="sc">Woodbine +Willie</span>," and (<i>b</i>) Dr. <span class="sc">Michael Furse</span> +(Bishop of St. Albans) with the <span class="sc">Judicious +Hooker</span>.</p> +<p class="indent"> +(2) Give reasons in support of Mr. +<span class="sc">Beverley Nicholls</span>' emendation of the +lines in <i>The Ancient Mariner</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The wedding guest he beat his breast,</p> + <p class="i2">For he heard the proud <span class="sc">Sassoon</span>.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p class="indent"> +(3) Re-write "Tears, idle tears" in +the style of (<i>a</i>) Dr. <span class="sc">Johnson</span>, (<i>b</i>) <span class="sc">Calisthenes</span>, +(<i>c</i>) the <span class="sc">Sitwells</span>.</p> +<p class="indent"> +(4) What do you know of <span class="sc">Casanova</span>, +<span class="sc">Karsavina</span>, <span class="sc">Cagliostro</span>, <span class="sc">Kennedy +Jones</span>, Captain <span class="sc">Peter Wright</span>, <span class="sc">Epstein</span>, +<span class="sc">Eckstein</span> and <span class="sc">Einstein</span>? When +did Sir <span class="sc">Oliver Lodge</span> say that he would +not leave <i>ein Stein</i> unturned until he +had upset the theory of Relativity?</p> +<p class="indent"> +(5) Give a complete list of all the +poets, major and minor, at present residing +on Boar's Hill, and trace their +influence on the Baconian controversy.</p> +<p class="indent"> +(6) Distinguish by psycho-analysis +between (<i>a</i>) <span class="sc">Sydney Smith</span> and <span class="sc">Sidney +Lee</span>, (<i>b</i>) <span class="sc">George Meredith</span> and <span class="sc">George +Robey</span>, noting convergences as well as +divergences of mentality, physique and +sub-conscious uplift.</p> +<p class="indent"> +(7) Would Jason, who sailed in the +<i>Argo</i>, have laid an embargo on <span class="sc">Margot</span> +as passenger or supercargo? Estimate +the probable results of her introduction +to Medea, and its effect on the views +and translations of Professor <span class="sc">Gilbert +Murray</span>.</p> +<p class="indent"> +(8) What eminent Georgian critic +said that <span class="sc">Tennyson</span>'s greatest work +was his <i>Idols of the Queen</i>?</p> +<p class="indent"> +(9) Estimate the effect on Reconstruction +if Mr. <span class="sc">Bottomley</span> were to +devote himself exclusively to theological +studies, and Mr. <span class="sc">Wells</span> were to take +up his abode permanently in Russia.</p> +</blockquote> + + <hr /> + + +<h3>Another Impending Apology.</h3> + +<h4><span class="sc">"Fire at Children's Home.<br /> +Lady Henry Somerset's Work."</span></h4> +<blockquote><p class="author"> +<i>Daily Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + + <hr /> +<blockquote><p> +From a Pimlico shop window:—</p></blockquote> + +<h4>"<span class="sc">Gentlemen's War robes Bought</span>."</h4> +<p> +Apparently not worth a "d."</p> + + <hr /> +<blockquote><p> +"Professor ——, the pianist, who is trying +to complete 110 hours' continuous playing, +completed fifty-five hours on the first day."</p> +<p class="author"> +<i>Cologne Post.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +That makes it too easy.</p> + + <hr /> + +<blockquote><p> +"Mme. Karsavina is taller than Pavlova, +but has an equally perfect figure. The Greeks +would have bracketted her with Venus and +Aphrodite."—<i>Provincial Paper.</i> +</p></blockquote> +<p> +The two last have, of course, been +constantly bracketed.</p> + + <hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>[pg 238]</span> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/238.png"><img src="images/238-600.png" width="600" height="448" alt="One round nearer the grave." /></a> +<p>Golfer (very much off his game). "<span class="sc">One round nearer the grave.</span>"</p> +</div> + <hr /> + + +<h3>OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.</h3> + +<h4>(<i>By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.</i>)</h4> + +<p> +Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from +any collection of short sketches as now from Miss <span class="sc">Anne +Douglas Sedgwick's</span> <i>Autumn Crocuses</i> (<span class="sc">Secker</span>). Not only +has the whole book a pleasant title, but each of these +stories is happily called after some flower that plays a part +in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian +sound of such a description applied to art so modern as +that of Miss <span class="sc">Sedgwick</span>. You know already (I hope) how +wonderfully delicate is her almost passionate sensibility to +the finer shades of a situation. It is, I suppose, this quality +in her writing that makes me still have reminiscent shivers +when I think about that horrible little bogie-tale, <i>The +Third Window</i>; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 +might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish +I had space to give you the plots of some of them; +"Daffodils," for instance, a quite unexpected and thrilling +treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of literature; or +"Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss +Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely +into comedy; or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written +of all. As this liberty is denied me you must accept a plain +record of very rare enjoyment and take steps to share it.</p> + + <hr /> +<p> +Chief among the <i>Secrets of Crewe House</i> (<span class="sc">Hodder and +Stoughton</span>), now divulged to the mere public, are the +marvellous efficiency and superhuman success achieved by +the British Enemy Propaganda Committee, which operated +in Lord <span class="sc">Crewe's</span> London house under the directorate of Lord +<span class="sc">Northcliffe</span>. "What is propaganda?" the author asks +himself on an early page, and the right answer could have +been made in four letters: <span class="sc">Advt.</span> It is endorsed by the +eulogistic manner in which the Committee's work is written +up by one of them, Sir <span class="sc">Campbell Stuart</span>, K.B.E., and +illustrated by photographs of Lord <span class="sc">Northcliffe</span> (looking +positively Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all +great achievements, the main principle was a simple one. A +good article is best advertised by truth; and it was the +truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth which the +Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little ingenuity, +so promulgated that it could no longer escape +notice even in the Central Empires. Not the least of the +Committee's difficulties and achievements was to get the +truth of our cause and policy so defined as to be susceptible +of unequivocal statement by poster, leaflet, film and gramophone +record. Sir <span class="sc">Campbell Stuart</span> perhaps tends to +underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, +whose work, if it did Germany little good, has done +and is still doing colossal harm to us. Also he tends to +forget that Lord <span class="sc">Haig</span> and his little lot in France at any +rate helped the Committee to effect the breakdown of the +German <i>moral</i> in 1918 and so to win the war.</p> + + <hr /> +<p> +I feel that Miss <span class="sc">Margaret Symonds</span> had a purpose in +writing <i>A Child of the Alps</i> (<span class="sc">Fisher Unwin</span>), but, unless +it was to show how mistaken it is, as <i>Basil</i>, the Swiss +farmer, puts it, "to think when thou shouldst have been +living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a romantic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>[pg 239]</span> +marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a +Swiss peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their +daughter until she is about to marry <i>Basil</i>, her original +sweetheart. I cannot be more definite or tell you how her +first marriage—with an English cousin—turned out, because +<i>Linda's</i> own account of this is all we get, and that is somewhat +vague. A great many descriptions of beautiful scenery, +Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great many +people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the +author's concentration on <i>Linda</i> gives them, people and +scenery alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been +called into being solely to influence her heroine, and that +lessens their fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a +distinct impression, and once read will not easily be forgotten. +It seems a strange comment to make on a new +volume of a "First Novel Library," but <i>A Child of +the Alps</i>, as you will realise +if you have been reading +novels long enough, is almost +exactly the sort of +book its title would have +suggested had it appeared +thirty years ago.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 410px;"> +<a href="images/239.png"><img src="images/239-406.png" width="406" height="450" alt="Fourteen, and unmarried." /></a> + +<p><i>Prospective Employer.</i> "<span class="sc">How old are you?</span>" +<i>Applicant for Post.</i> "<span class="sc">Fourteen—and unmarried.</span>"</p></div> + + <hr /> +<p> +These wrapper-artists +should really exercise a +little more discretion. To +depict on the outside of a +book the facsimile of a +cheque for ten thousand +pounds might well be to +excite in some readers a +mood of wistfulness only +too apt to interfere with +their appreciation of the +contents. Fortunately, <i>Uncle +Simon</i> (<span class="sc">Hutchinson</span>) is +a story quite cheery enough +even to banish reflections +on the Profiteer. A middle-aged +and ultra-respectable +London solicitor, whose +thwarted youth periodically +awakes in him and insists +upon his indulging all those +follies that should have +been safely finished forty-odd +years before—here, you +will admit, is a figure simply +bursting with every kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, +<span class="sc">Margaret</span> and <span class="sc">H. de Vere Stacpoole</span> have shown +themselves not only fully alive to all the humorous chances +of their theme, but inspired with an infectious delight in +them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the +wild oats that <i>Uncle Simon</i> tries to retrieve are not of today +but from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian +London. Of course such a fantasy can't properly be ended. +Having extracted (as I gratefully admit) the last ounce of +entertainment from him, the authors simply wake <i>Uncle +Simon</i> up and go home. As a small literary coincidence I +may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book in +the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, +under a transparent disguise, is the scene of <i>Uncle Simon's</i> +restoration. Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a +sportive little comedy, which I can most cordially commend.</p> + + <hr /> +<p> +Mr. <span class="sc">St. John G. Ervine</span> is a versatile author who exhibits +that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting +sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good +indeed, and in <i>The Foolish Lovers</i> (<span class="sc">Collins</span>) he is at his +best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting +character. He has certain rude virtues which command +respect and other qualities, not in themselves virtues—such +as clan conceit and an intensely narrow provincialism—that +beget the virtues of industry, honesty and frugality. But to +the philosopher and student of character all types are interesting, +and Mr. <span class="sc">Ervine's</span> skill lies in his ability not merely to +draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his +unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is +merely clan conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit +of this purpose, for circumstances have clearly intended him +to carry on the grocery business in which the family have +achieved some success and a full measure of local esteem. +The <i>MacDermotts</i> never failed to accomplish their purpose; +he, as a <i>MacDermott</i>, proposed to achieve fame as a novelist. +It was quite simple. But it +turned out to be not at all +simple. The quite provincial +young <i>MacDermott</i> cannot +make London accept +him at his own valuation +and his novels are poor stuff. +His wife, loyal to him but +still more loyal to the +<i>MacDermott</i> clan into which +she has married and which +now includes a little <i>MacDermott</i>, +is the first to recognise +that her husband +had best seek romance in +the family grocery business. +Then the <i>MacDermott</i> +himself, with that shrewdness +which may be late in +coming to an Ulsterman +but never fails him altogether, +realises it too and +the story is finished.</p> + + <hr /> +<p> +The main object of the +characters in <i>The Courts of +Idleness</i> (<span class="sc">Ward</span>, <span class="sc">Lock</span>) was +to amuse themselves, and +as their sprightly conversations +were often punctuated +by laughter I take it +that they succeeded. To +give Mr. <span class="sc">Dornford Yates</span> +his due he is expert in light banter; but some three +hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense +of surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some +passed out of the Courts for ever," and then comes an +interlude, in which we are given at least one stirring war-incident. +I imagine that Mr. <span class="sc">Yates</span> desires to show that, +although certain people could frivol with the worst, they +could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How +others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set +of people but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. +<span class="sc">Yates</span> can be strongly recommended to anyone who thinks +that the British take themselves too seriously.</p> + + <hr /> + + +<h4>A Burning Question.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"The Germans have singed the Protocol."—<i>China Advertiser</i>. +</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + +<h4>A Master of Deduction.</h4> + +<blockquote><p> +"At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found +by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was +found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is +suspected."—<i>Evening Paper</i>. +</p></blockquote> + + <hr /> + + +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. +159, September 22, 1920, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + +***** This file should be named 17653-h.htm or 17653-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/5/17653/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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-0,0 +1,2339 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, +September 22, 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, September 22, 1920 + +Author: Various + +Editor: Owen Seaman + +Release Date: January 31, 2006 [EBook #17653] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. + +VOL. 159. + + + +September 22nd, 1920. + + + + +CHARIVARIA. + + +"'Strike while the iron is hot' must be the motto," says a business +man. Mr. SMILLIE, on the other hand, says that it doesn't so much +matter about the iron being hot. + + * * * + +A curious story reaches us from the Midlands. It appears that it had +been decided to call out the workmen in a certain factory, but the +strike-leader had unfortunately mislaid his notes and could not +remember their grievance. + + * * * + +Mr. C.B. COCHRAN has decided to have nothing further to do with the +promotion of boxing-matches owing to the way in which contracts are +continually being broken. It has since been reported that several of +our leading professional boxers are endeavouring to arrange a farewell +disappointment. + + * * * + +Mr. EVANS, the American golf champion, has invented a new putter. We +appreciate America's effort, but all the same we cannot forget her +apathy toward the League of Nations. + + * * * + +Last week the largest number of Alpinists ever assembled met on the +top of the Matterhorn. If this sort of thing goes on it is quite +likely that the summit will have to be strengthened. + + * * * + +Colder weather is promised and the close season for Councillor CLARK +should commence about October 1st. + + * * * + +"The ex-Kaiser," says _The Western Morning News_, "goes in daily +fear of being kidnapped." This is said to be due to the presence at +Amerongen of an enterprising party of American curio-hunters. + + * * * + +A headline in a weekly paper asks, "What will Charlie Chaplin Turn out +this Year?" "His feet," is the answer. + + * * * + +The language at Billingsgate, according to Sir E.E. COOPER, is much +better than it used to be. Fish porters invariably say "Excuse me" +before throwing a length of obsolete eel at a colleague. + + * * * + +In the event of a miners' strike arrangements have been made for the +staff of the Ministry of Transport to sleep at the office. It would be +more wise, we think, if they remained wide awake. + + * * * + +A feature of the new motor charabanc will be the space for passengers' +luggage. This is just what is wanted, as it so easily gets broken even +if the corks don't come out. + + * * * + +A message from Allahabad states that the appointment of Mr. WINSTON +CHURCHILL as Viceroy of India would be very popular. Unfortunately +they omit to say where it would be popular. + + * * * + +"Drink is Scotland's greatest sin," said a Prohibitionist speaker at +Glasgow. The gentleman does not seem to have heard of haggis. + + * * * + +Asked what he would have, a Scotsman, taking advantage of its high +price, replied, "A small petrol, please." + + * * * + +The National Gallery with its three thousand pictures is practically +priceless, we are informed. This probably accounts for the fact that +the hall-porter invariably takes visitors' umbrellas as security. + + * * * + +What is now wanted, says a contemporary, is a good spell of fine +weather. We feel that no good can be done by rubbing it in like this. +_The Daily Mail_ is doing its best. + + * * * + +We understand, by the way, that _The Daily Mail_ has definitely +decided not to offer a prize of a hundred pounds for a new world, but +to leave the matter entirely in the hands of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE. + + * * * + +The Astronomical Correspondent of _The Times_ suggests that the new +star may have been produced through a sun being struck by a comet. +This raises the question as to whether suns ought not to carry rear +lights. + + * * * + +There is some talk of a series of week-end summers being arranged for +next year. + + * * * + +"If necessary I will walk from John-o'-Groats to Land's End, +distributing propaganda literature all the way," announced a +well-known strike agitator at a recent conference. Personally we do +not mind if he does, provided that when he reaches Land's End he +continues to walk in the same direction. + + * * * + +According to a weekly journal the art of camouflage played a most +important part in recent naval warfare. It is, of course, quite an +open secret that the Naval authorities are aware that one of our +largest Dreadnoughts is somewhere in a certain English harbour, but, +owing to the excellence of its camouflage, they have not yet been able +to locate it. + + * * * + +We now learn that it was merely through an oversight that the pit +ponies did not record their votes at the strike ballot. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "WHO'S BILL 'IGGINS PLAYIN' FOR THIS SEASON?" + +"OH, 'E AIN'T SIGNED ON YET, BUT WE'VE OFFERED HIM FIRST SUCK AT THE +LEMON."] + + * * * * * + +=The Journalistic Touch.= + + "Shamming death, he moaned loudly." + +_Irish Paper._ + + * * * * * + +=Our Critics.= + + "'The Seven Deadly Sins.' Frederick Rogers. + + This is a subject that Mr. Rogers is eminently fitted to + explore."--_Review of Reviews._ + + * * * * * + + "Tenor wanted, to join bass; must have voice."--_Scotch Paper._ + +Some people are so exacting. + + * * * * * + + "Bride in apricot."--_Daily Paper._ + +A new significance is added to the calculation of one's fruit +stones--"This year, next year, some time, never." + + * * * * * + + +THE ASHES. + + [A final salutation to the M.C.C. team, from one who is destined + to perish in the event of a coal strike.] + + O ship that farest forth, a greater _Argo_, + Unto the homeland of the woolly fleece, + Soft gales attend thee! may thy precious cargo + Slide over oceans smoothed of every crease, + So as the very flower, or pick, + Of England's flanneled chivalry may not be sick! + + And thou, O gentle goddess Hygieia, + Hover propitious o'er the vessel's poop; + Keep them from chicken-pox and pyorrhoea, + Measles and nettle-rash and mumps and croup; + See they digest their food and drink, + And land them, even as they leave us, in the pink! + + Thou, too, whose favour they depend so much on + (Fortune, I mean) in this precarious game, + Oh let there be no blob on their escutcheon, + Or, if a few occur, accept the blame; + Do not, of course, abuse thy powers; + We'd have the best side win, but let that side be ours. + + Summer awaits them there while we are wheezing + By empty hearths through bitter days and black; + Yet we rejoice that, though we die of freezing + And cannot get cremated, all for lack + Of coal to feed our funeral pyres, + Still "in our ashes [yonder] live their wonted fires." + +O.S. + + * * * * * + + +THE MINISTRY OF ANCESTRY. + +"As you are aware," said a prominent official of the Ministry of +Ancestry, "although our department has only been in existence for a +few months the profits have enabled the Government to take twopence +off the income-tax and to provide employment for thousands of +deserving clerks dismissed, in deference to public opinion, from other +Government offices." + +"Yes. Could you tell me how this brilliant scheme came into being?" + +"The Chinese knew and practised it for centuries. Here the credit for +its re-discovery must be assigned to Sir Cuthbert Shover, who, owing +to handsome contributions to necessary funds, combined, of course, +with meritorious public service during the War, was offered a +baronetcy. He refused it for himself, but accepted it for his aged +father, thereby becoming second baronet in three months. He deplored +the fact that his grandfather was no longer eligible for the honour. +Then we saw light. Why should the mere accident of death prevent us +from honouring a man if his family were prepared to contribute towards +the country's exchequer? But these letters will give you a clearer +insight into the working of the department." + +The first letter was addressed to Miss Cannon, at Maidstone:-- + + "DEAR MADAM,--We have no hesitation in advising you to have a + bishop in your family. Few purchases give greater satisfaction. + If, as you say, your late maternal grandfather was curate of + Slowden, and was, as far as you are aware, a man of exemplary + character, we could make him a bishop without delay. Your home + being in Kent, it occurs to us that the see of Carlisle would suit + the Right Reverend Prelate best. The cost of the proceedings, + including a pre-dated _Conge d'Elire_, would be eight hundred + guineas. An archbishopric would be slightly more expensive and, in + our opinion, less suitable." + +"Amazing," I said. + +"But so simple. Here is a letter from a man who wants to have had +forbears in the Navy. We say:-- + + "'Naturally it would have been an advantage for your son, whom you + destine for the Navy, to have had relations in that service. But + it is not too late to remedy this defect. + + "'By virtue of the powers conferred upon us by Act of Parliament + (Ancestry Act, 1922), we are prepared to give your sometime + great-great-uncle William, who, according to family tradition, + always wanted to go to sea, a commission in the Navy, and the + rank of lieutenant, together with appointment to any ship of the + line--with the exception of the _Victory_--which fought under Lord + NELSON. The making out the commission will be put in hand on the + receipt of your cheque for three hundred guineas.'" + +"Do you always give satisfaction?" + +"Occasionally we have to disappoint people. For instance, this letter +to a lady at Plymouth:-- + + "'We fear we cannot grant your request to reserve a berth on the + _Mayflower_ for your delightful ancestress, Mrs. Patience Loveday. + The _Mayflower_ is already overcrowded, and, owing to some + ill-feeling raised in America, we decided to resign all interest + in the vessel. Should you desire some other form of Puritan + distinction how would you like to provide yourself with a + non-juring clergyman as an ancestor? We could present any suitable + departed member of your family to a Crown living, and supply + you with an order of ejectment, dated the anniversary of St. + Bartholomew's Day, 1662.'" + +"Judging from the address on this letter, 'X. O'Finny, Esq.,' your +jurisdiction extends to Ireland?" + +"Yes, Mr. O'Finny wants some persecuted ancestors. We offer to supply +him with a member of his family condemned to be beheaded by order of +QUEEN ELIZABETH, price one thousand, which includes a replica of the +Great Seal of England; or, to have another member shot by order of +CROMWELL, at half the price; or a sentence of hanging in '98. This +would be three hundred only. We advise him to take the complete set at +a reduction, and have no doubt we shall come to terms." + +"Have you anything more expensive?" I asked timidly. + +"Rather. Here is our answer to Lord--better not give the name, +perhaps; the creation is recent. He wished for a Crusader, but we +explained that the Crusades were not under Government. We offer to +introduce his family name into our authorised supplement to the +Domesday Book for five thousand pounds. I call it cheap at the money. +Now what can we do for you?" + +"I must think it over," I stammered. + +"Do. You will come back. Pair of Colours, now, for a +great-great-grandfather. How would that suit you? Only five hundred. +Or a place at Court in the Regency? Or, if you wish good business +connection, a directorship of the East India Company? The whole of the +past lies before you. Give your children a fair start in life, that +is what we say. Money is good, education is better, but distinguished +ancestry is best of all." + + * * * * * + +=Stitches in Time.= + + "The breeches on the line between Sini and Jhursagudha have now + been repaired."--_Civil and Military Gazette._ + + * * * * * + + "The King has given Mr. William Armstrong, Director of Criminal + Intelligence of the Shanghai Municipal Police, authority to wear + the Insignia of the Fourth Class of the Order of the Excellent + Crop, conferred on him by the President of the Republic of China, + in recognition of valuable services."--_Times._ + +We understand that extreme shortness of hair is not the hall-mark of +the Chinese criminal world. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: UNDER A CLOUD (WITH A GOLDEN LINING). + +COMRADE LANSBURY. "THANKS TO MY FAITHFUL BROLSKI NOT A DROP HAS +TOUCHED ME." + +[_Loud crows from "Daily Herald" bird._]] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Horrified Sister_ (_to small artist_). "MABEL, YOU'RE +SURELY NOT SUCKING YOUR BRUSH WHEN YOU'RE PAINTING TOADSTOOLS?"] + + * * * * * + + +KINGS AND QUEENS. + +There are thirty-six of them in all, ranging from WILLIAM I., who +is "severe," to VICTORIA, who is just "good." I first made their +acquaintance in childhood, when my grandmother gave them me with the +laudable object of teaching me history. Each is a little wooden block +signifying a monarch. On one side there is a portrait showing the +face, collar and upper portion of torso of the monarch in question; +on the other side there is written a single word summing up his whole +character. + +By means of these royal blocks I was brought up to a sound historical +sense based on religion and morality. At the age of seven I could +and did boast that I knew the innermost souls of all the monarchs +of England. I could say their dates by heart, often doing so during +sermon time on Sundays, with a grace and ease that only lifelong +acquaintance with royalty could have bred. I was even able to triumph +through that tricky period between the death of EDWARD III. and the +accession of ELIZABETH. I wonder if the late Lord ACTON was as learned +at that age: I am sure he could not say his dates backwards. I could. + +It has always surprised those who have endeavoured to teach me +history that my youthful brain should be so strongly grounded in +the historical tradition of over half a century ago. Yet all the +historians of modern England could not shake me in my faith. To me +QUEEN VICTORIA was no "panting little German widow," as our latest +searcher after truth has affirmed, but the august lady who listened +entranced to the beautiful poems of Lord TENNYSON and invented +electricity and the tricycle. In consequence I was considered a +counter-revolutionary, if not bourgeois. My essays were deemed +dangerously reactionary. At Oxford I once found my tutor burning one. +This shows the value the authorities attach to my work. It is too +dangerous to live; it is burnt. + +I venture to think, however, that my work, based as it is on the +most respectable principles, will survive long after my tutors have +subsided into a permanent state of death in life. Like SHAKSPEARE and +the present Government I am for all time. + +It is easy to see how I came to acquire this stability of thought, +owing as I do my early training to the kings and queens of England, +who are nothing if not stable. They are my acknowledged guardians and +to them I turn in all difficulties. Only a year ago they came to my +aid in a most awkward predicament. It was my lot to fill up army +forms; of what variety I cannot remember save that they were of a +jaundicy colour and connected with the men's demobilisation. On these +documents I was expected to enter, besides the usual details as to +religion and connubial felicity, the character of each man in a +single word. I at once marshalled my wooden royalties before me +in chronological order and proceeded to deal with the squadron in +rotation. + +The first name on my list was that of the disciplinary sergeant-major. +It was with a glow of pride that I registered him with WILLIAM I. +as "severe." The designation of Tonks, the Mess waiter (whom we had +discovered on the night the bomb fell on the aerodrome making a home +and a house of defence in the cookhouse stove), as "heroic" +was distinctly happy. It was perhaps unfortunate that the +quartermaster-sergeant, an austere man from Renfrew, should have +found, on perusing his demobilisation card, that he was to be handed +down to posterity as "avaricious." I was also sorry to find the padre, +usually so broad-minded, in a nasty temper about the character given +to his batman, who was, he assured me, the only pious man in the +squadron and in private life a dissenting minister. "Dissolute" +certainly was on the face of things inappropriate, but then it was +no fault of mine that the merriest of English monarchs should have +appeared at the moment when I was filling up the papers of a minister +of religion. + +The light that my wooden monarchs throw on history is both interesting +and, to a modern, precious. For instance, the designation of the first +Angevin king as "patriotic" will surprise many readers of the late +Bishop STUBBS. "Patriotic" is a wide term and may be applied to almost +anything from after-dinner flag-wagging to successful juggling with +Colonial stocks and shares; yet there are few who would have described +it as the besetting virtue of HENRY I. But it was; his little block +says so. + +JOHN, again, was "mean." I am sorry, for, though in some respects +blameworthy, he had many agreeable traits. His views on the honesty of +his baronage are most entertaining. He was something of a wit, a good +judge of food and wine, and would have made an excellent Fellow of an +Oxford college. It is much to be regretted that he was mean. + +Poor HENRY VI. is "silly." This is a hard judgment on the pioneer of +the movement against low backs in evening frocks, but doubtless he was +silly in other things. + +Some of my monarchs had the most excellent characters. EDWARD I. was +"just," GEORGE IV. "courteous," OLIVER CROMWELL "noble"--a sad blow +for the White Rose Club. Our younger monarchs were particularly +attractive persons, and it is a pity that they did not live long +enough to display their qualities. EDWARD VI. was "amiable," while +EDWARD V., like all with expectations from their uncle, was "hopeful." +Poor child! he had need to be. + +I am pained however that CHARLES II. was "dissolute." It was what +HENRY VIII. dissolved the monasteries for being--the impertinent old +polygamist! For my part I love CHARLES for the affection that he bore +little dogs, for the chance saying on Sussex hills that this England +was a country well worth fighting for. Alas! that he should have been +dissolute. + +Best of all my friends is GEORGE III. He is portrayed with a jolly red +nose and a mouth that positively yawns for pudding. His character, +which is his chief glory, is "benevolent." Who would not rejoice to +have been the object of his regal philanthropy? SAMUEL JOHNSON himself +did not hesitate to accept the bounty of this kindly monarch, though, +while his predecessor reigned, the great lexicographer had defined a +pensioner as "a state hireling" paid "for treason to his country." + +Such are my friends the kings and queens of England. Happy the child +who has such majesty to be his guardian spirit. To him life will be +a pomp, where vulgar democracy can have no part, and death a +trysting-place with old comrades--the child for whom + + "The kings of England, lifting up their swords, + Shall gather at the gates of Paradise." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _The Super-Tramp._ "MADAM, IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE OF THAT +PIE YOU GAVE ME THIS MORNING I SHOULD BE PLEASED TO PAY FOR IT."] + + * * * * * + + +A HOME FROM HOME. + +(_An actual incident_.) + + + My fancy sought no English field, + What time my holiday drew near; + I felt no fond desire to wield + The shrimping net of yesteryear; + I found it easy to eschew + All wish to hear a pierrot stating + His lust to learn the rendezvous + Of flies engaged in hibernating. + + Beyond the Channel I would range + (I called it "cross the rolling main") + And there achieve the thorough change + Demanded by my jaded brain; + It might be that an alien clime + Would jog a failing inspiration, + Buck up a bard and render rhyme + Less difficult of excavation. + + A thorough change? Ah, barren quest, + Foredoomed to fail ere half begun! + Though left behind, my England pressed + In hot pursuit of me, her son; + London was brought again to view + By hordes of maidens out for pillage, + When from the train I stepped into + A flag day in an Alpine village. + + * * * * * + +WIRE AND BARBED WIRE. + +This was the telegram that, after much hesitation, I had written out +at the side desk in the post-office and carried to the main desk to +despatch:-- + + Pactolus, London. + + St. Vitus carburetter stammer tyre scream Sanguine. + +You will observe that it is unintelligible. Decoded, it meant that I, +whose betting pseudonym is Sanguine, wished to invest with Messrs. +Lure, commission agents (not bookmakers, no, not for a moment), +whose telegraphic address is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten pounds +(carburetter) on a horse called St. Vitus to win (stammer), and twenty +pounds (tyre) for a place (scream). I had done this for various +reasons, none really good, but chiefly because every paper that I had +opened had urged me to do so, some even going so far as to dangle a +double before me with St. Vitus as one of the horses. Nearly all had +described St. Vitus as a nap, setting up the name not only in capitals +but with a faithful asterisk beside it. + +Having an account with Messrs. Lure and a liking now and then to +indulge in a little flutter over a gee (I am choosing my words very +carefully) I had decided, after weighing the claims of all the other +runners, to take the advice of the majority and back the favourite, +although favourites acclaimed with stridency by the racing experts +of the Press in unison have, I knew, a way of failing. In betting on +races, however, there are two elements that are never lacking: hope +against hope and an incomplete recollection of the past. + +Having written out the telegram I took it to the main counter, to the +section labelled "Telegrams," and slipped it under the grating towards +the young woman, who, however, instead of dealing with it, continued +to tell an adjacent young woman about the arrangements that she and a +friend had made for their forthcoming holidays at Herne Bay. + +The nature of those who have little flutters on gees is complex. The +ordinary man, having written out his telegram, on whatever subject +it may be--whether it announces that he will arrive before lunch and +bring his clubs with him, or that, having important business to detain +him at the office, he will not be home to dinner--gets it through +as soon as possible. He may be delayed by the telegraph girl's +detachment, but he would not be deterred. He would still send the +telegram. But those who bet are different. They are minutely sensitive +to outside occurrences; always seeking signs and interpreting them as +favourable or unfavourable as the case may be; and refraining from +doing anything so decisive as to call the girl to order. Their game +is to be plastic under the fingers of chance; the faintest breath of +dubiety can sway them. I had been in so many minds about this thirty +pound bet, which I could not really afford, that there was therefore +nothing for it, after waiting the two minutes that seemed to be ten, +but to tear up the message, in the belief that the friendly gods again +had intervened. For luck is as much an affair of refraining as of +rushing in. + +I therefore withdrew quietly from the conversation and scattered the +little bits on the floor as I did so. But I did not leave the office. +Instead, I went to the side desk again and wrote another telegram, +which, with the necessary money (an awful lot), I pushed through the +grating, where the girls were still talking. My second telegram had +no reference to horses--I had done with gambling for the day--but ran +thus:-- + + Postmaster-General, London. + + Suggest you remind telegraph clerk on duty at this hour at this + post-office that she perhaps talks a shade too much about Herne + Bay and gives public too little consideration. + +The girl, having ceased her chatter, took the telegram and began +feverishly to count the words. Then her tapping pencil slowed down and +her brows contracted; she was assimilating their meaning. Then, with a +blush, and a very becoming one, she looked at me with an expression of +distress and said, "Do you really want this to go?" + +"No," I said, withdrawing the money. + +"I'm sorry I was not more attentive," she said. + +"That's all right," I replied. "Tear it up." + +And I came away, feeling, with a certain glow of satisfaction not +unmixed with self-righteousness, that I had done something to raise +the post-office standard and to ensure better attention. But the joke +is that, if I had myself received better attention, I should have lost +thirty pounds, for St. Vitus was unplaced. This story must therefore +remain without a moral. + +E.V.L. + + * * * * * + +=Notice in a Shop Window.= + + "Hats made to order, or revenerated." + + +Ah! that's what's wanted so badly to-day for the headgear of the +Higher Clergy. + + * * * * * + + "V.C.W. Jupp, the Sussex amateur, has been invited to become a + member of the M.C.C. team, which leaves for Australia on Saturday. + A fine all-round cricketer, Jupp is a useful man to any team, + but as he usually fields cover-point his inclusion would not + necessarily improve the side in its weakest point--_viz._, the + lack of oilfields."--_Daily Paper._ + +Surely the fewer the better, if that's where the butter-fingers come +from. + + * * * * * + + +BETWEEN TWO STOOLS. + +[Dedicated to those high-minded and dispassionate leader-writers who, +after prefacing their remarks with the declaration that "we hold no +brief for--" extreme views of all sorts, proceed to show that the +conduct of the extremist is invariably explained, if not justified, by +the iniquities of the Coalition Government.] + + I hold no brief for LENIN + Or TROTSKY or their breed; + Their way of doing men in + Is foreign to my creed; + But, since to me LLOYD GEORGE is + A source of deeper dread, + For Bolshevistic orgies + A great deal may be said. + + I hold a brief for no land + That tramples on its kin; + My heart once bled for Poland + And groaned for Russia's sin; + But, if to clear the tangle + WINSTON is given his head, + I feel that General WRANGEL + Were better downed and dead. + + I hold no brief--I swear it-- + For militant Sinn Fein; + I really cannot bear it + When constables are slain; + But if you mention CARSON + I feel that for the spread + Of murder and of arson + A good deal can be said. + + I hold no brief for SMILLIE + Or for the miners' claims; + I disapprove most highly + Of many of their aims; + But when I see the Wizard + Enthroned in ASQUITH'S stead, + It cuts me to the gizzard + And dyes my vision Red. + + I hold no brief for madmen + On revolution bent, + For bitter or for bad men + On anarchy intent; + But sooner far than "stop" them + With Coalition lead, + To foster and to prop them + I'd leave no word unsaid. + + * * * * * + +=Our Decadent Poets.= + +Extract from an Indian's petition:-- + + "... to look after my old father, who leads sickly life, and is + going from bad to verse every day." + + * * * * * + + "So far from Mr. Kameneff having had nothing to do with any + realisation of jewels, he ... took plains to report it to his + Government."--_Daily Paper._ + +In fact, he took the necessary steppes. + + * * * * * + + "A privately owned aeroplane, flying from London to the Isle of + Wight, descended in a field near Carnforth, seven miles north of + Morecambe Bay. The propeller was broken, but the occupants, a lady + and a gentleman, escaped with a shaking."--_Daily Paper._ + +The real shock came when they found out where they were. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPH.= + +WHEN A FELLOW GETS HIS-- + +PHOTO TAKEN FOR THE PAPERS-- + +I THINK IT'S ROTTEN BAD FORM-- + +ON THE PART OF ANOTHER FELLOW-- + +TO SPOIL THE PICTURE BY INTRUDING A BALL-- + +AT THE CRUCIAL MOMENT.] + + * * * * * + + +THE HANDY MAN. + +The men I most admire at the present time, though I take care not to +tell them so to their faces, are the men who can do everything. By +this I don't mean people of huge intellectual attainments, like +Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like _Tarzan_ of the +Apes. It must be very nice to be able to have a heart-to-heart talk +with KRASSIN or to write articles for the Sunday picture-papers, and +very nice also to swing rapidly through the tree-tops, say, in Eaton +Square; but none of these gifts is much help when the door-handle +comes off. I hate that sort of thing to happen in a house. + +In the Victorian age, of course, which was one of specialisation based +upon peace and plenty, one simply sent for a door-handle replacer and +he put it right. But nowadays the Door-handle Replacers' Union is +probably affiliated to an amalgamation which is discussing sympathetic +action with somebody who is striking, so nothing is done. This means +that for weeks and weeks, whenever one tries to go out of the room, +there is a loud crash like a 9.2 on the further side and a large blunt +dagger clutched melodramatically in the right hand, and nobody to +murder with it. + +The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing +like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which +of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it +go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room +clock. + +Such a man came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but +it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and +out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into +the bathroom about 8.30 A.M. when I am trying to get off to sleep. +They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the +garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places, +though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and +feel that one is safe from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is my house or +theirs, the fact remains that the electric-bells were wrong. The man +of whom I am speaking lives next-door, and he came in and pointed this +out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," he said, "that don't +ring." + +I might have argued this point. I might have said that to press the +button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on +whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on +the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and +self-discipline. It is quite possible that an Eastern _yogi_ might +spend many years of beneficial calm pressing the buttons of bells that +do not ring. But I replied rather weakly, "No, I suppose not." + +"I'll soon put that right for you," he said cheerily, and about five +minutes later he asked me to press one of the buttons, and there was a +loud tinkling noise. It seemed a pity that at the moment when the bell +did happen to ring there should be nobody to come and answer it. + +"Whatever did you do to them?" I asked. + +"It only needed a little water," he said, and I had hard work to +suppress my admiration. The very morning before, feeling that I ought +to take a hand in all this practical work that was going on about the +place, I had filled a large watering-can that I found lying about and +wetted some things which someone had stuck into the garden. I have +a kind of idea that they were carrots, but they may have been +maiden-hair ferns. Somehow it had never occurred to me for a moment to +go and water the electric bells. + +Almost immediately afterwards this man discovered that all the knives +in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private +grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees +ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did +to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put +together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as _The Outline +of History_ was put on to it (I should like to know whether Canon +BARNES can explain _that_), I was obliged to ask him to stop, in case +the tramping men should see him and strike immediately for fear of the +dilution of labour. + +But what impressed me most was the part he took next day in the +Railway Carriage Conference, which curiously enough was on the subject +of strikes. There were several people in the carriage, and they were +talking about what they had done during the railway strike last year, +and what they would do if such a thing happened again. I said I should +like to be a station-master if possible, because they had top-hats and +grew such beautiful flowers. Only four or five trains seem to stop at +our station during the day, and if there was a strike I suppose the +number would be reduced to one or two. And I thought it would be +rather nice to spend the day wearing a top-hat and watering the +nasturtiums in the little rock-gardens behind the platform. Watering, +I said, was quite easy when once one got into the swing of it. + +But the man who could do everything seemed to know everything too, and +he told me that station-masters were much too noble to strike. There +were two kinds of station-masters, he said, both wearing top-hats, +but one kind with full morning-dress underneath it and the other with +uniform. But neither kind struck. + +Slightly nettled at his superior knowledge, I asked him, "What did +_you_ do during the Great Strike?" + +"Oh, I had rather fun," he said; "I controlled the signals at London +Bridge." + +If all the truth were known I expect that he is quite ready for Mr. +SMILLIE'S strike; that he has a handy little pick in his bedroom and +knows of rather a jolly little coal-mine close by. + +EVOE. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Mother_ (_firmly, to little daughter about to have +a tooth drawn_). "NOW, BETTY, IF YOU CRY, I'LL NEVER TAKE YOU TO A +DENTIST'S AGAIN."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _The Woman_. "I DO WISH YOU TWO WOULD WALK PROPERLY."] + + * * * * * + + +FLOWERS' NAMES. + +FOOL'S PARSLEY. + + In the village of Picking's Pool + Lived Theobald, the village fool; + He had been simple from his birth + But kindly as the simple earth, + And in his heart he sang a song + Of "Ave, Mary" all day long. + + On Good Friday the people came + To honour the rood of Christ His shame; + They scattered flowers and leaves and moss + About the foot of the humble cross + And, when they knelt and prayed and wailed, + Theobald saw the Mother, veiled + And bowed in a mother's agony. + "She suffers more than the Christ," said he. + + Theobald searched the fields and lanes + To find a solace for MARY'S pains; + All the flowers were plucked and gone + Save a little dull Parsley, sere and wan; + And Theobald wreathed it in simple guise; + "It mourns like her," said the Fool made wise. + + When Holy Saturday morning broke + Back to the shrine went the village folk; + And lo! on the weeping Mother's brow + A chaplet of flowers was gleaming now; + And Theobald smiled secretly + To think he had soothed her agony. + And ever since Theobald crowned his Queen + Fool's Parsley has flowered amongst its green. + + * * * * * + + +HEADGEAR FOR HEROES. + + [A contemporary, having heard of the hat specially designed for M. + CLEMENCEAU, has decided that the bowler, the topper, the Homburg, + the straw, the cloth cap and all other styles at present more + or less in vogue leave much to be desired, and has therefore + inaugurated a search for the ideal male headdress.] + +THE SMILLIE.--A Phrygian model, executed in red Russia leather. +Special features are the asbestos lining, the steam vents and the +water-jacket, which combine to minimise the natural heat of the head. +Embellished with an heraldic cock's-comb _gules_, it is a striking +conception. + +THE PREMIER.--A semi-Tyrolean type in resilient chamois, which can +be readily converted to any desired shape, with or without extra +stiffening. Its adaptability and the patent sound-proof ear-flaps make +it particularly suitable for travellers. Detachable edelweiss and leek +trimming. + +THE ERIC.--An adaptation of the _cap of maintenance_ in a special +elastic material, warranted not to burst under pressure of abnormal +expansion of the head of the wearer. Practically fool-proof. + +THE WINNIE.--A fore-and-aft derived from a French model of the First +Empire period, the severity of which is mitigated by the addition of +little bells. A novelty is the mouthpiece in the crown, which enables +the hat to be used as a megaphone at need. An elastic loop holds a +fountain-pen in position. The whole to be worn on a head several sizes +too big for it. + +THE CONAN.--A straw bonnet of bee-hive shape. Medium weight. In a +diversity of shades. The special puggaree of goblin blue material is +designed to protect the wearer from moonstroke without obscuring the +vision. + +THE WARNER.--An easy-fitting crown carried out in harlequin flannel +surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with +intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail +feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished +headdress for a middle-aged gentleman. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Teacher._ "AND RUTH WALKED BEHIND THE REAPERS, PICKING +UP THE CORN THAT THEY LEFT. JOHN, WHAT DO WE CALL THAT?" + +_John_ (_very virtuously_). "PINCHING."] + + * * * * * + + +A SHIP IN A BOTTLE. + + In a sailormen's restaurant Rotherhithe way, + Where the din of the docksides is loud all the day, + And the breezes come bringing off basin and pond + And all the piled acres of lumber beyond + From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine + And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, + In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, + Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, + A ship in a bottle some sailor had made + In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, + When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, + Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots, + Or whittling a model or painting a chest, + Or yarning and smoking and watching the rest. + + In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned, + Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around; + A pipe in the teeth that seemed little the worse + For Liverpool pantiles and stringy salt-horse; + The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo + Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue; + The fingers all roughened and toughened and scarred, + With hauling and hoisting so calloused and hard, + So crooked and stiff you would wonder that still + They could handle with cunning and fashion with skill + The tiny full-rigger predestined to ride + To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide + In its wine-bottle world, while the old world went on + And the sailor who made it was long ago gone. + + And still as he worked at the toy on his knee + He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea, + _Thermopylae_, _Lightning_, _Lothair_ and _Red Jacket_, + With many another such famous old packet, + And many a bucko and dare-devil skipper + In Liverpool blood-boat or Colonies' clipper; + The sail that they carried aboard the _Black Ball_, + Their skysails and stunsails and ringtail and all, + And storms that they weathered and races they won + And records they broke in the days that are done. + + Or sometimes he'd sing you some droning old song, + Some old sailors' ditty both mournful and long, + With queer little curlycues, twiddles and quavers, + Of smugglers and privateers, pirates and slavers, + "The brave female smuggler," the "packet of fame + That sails from New York and the _Dreadnought_'s her name," + And "all on the coast of the High Barbaree," + And "the flash girls of London was the downfall of he." + + In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear + The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear, + The patter of reef-points on topsails a-shiver, + The song of the jibs when they tauten and quiver, + The cry of the frigate-bird following after, + The bow-wave that broke with a gurgle like laughter. + And I looked on my youth with its pleasure and pain, + And the shipmate I loved was beside me again. + In a ship in a bottle a-sailing away + In the flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray, + Over oceans of wonder by headlands of gleam, + To the harbours of Youth on the wind of a dream. + +C.F.S. + + * * * * * + +"HIGH COMMISSIONER PAYS CALLS. + + Jerusalem, August 27.--The High Commissioner visited yesterday + afternoon the tomb of Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Isaac, Jacob and + Leah in the Cave of Makpela at Hebron."--_Egyptian Mail_. + +No flowers, by request. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE GREAT REPUDIATION. + +MR. SMILLIE. "HERE, HOP IT, OR YOU'LL SPOIL THE WHOLE SHOW. YOU DON'T +COME ON TILL MY NEXT TRICK."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _M.F.H_. "WHY THE DEUCE AREN'T YOU WITH HOUNDS? THEY'RE +IN THE NEXT PARISH BY THIS." + +_New Whip_ (_rib-roasting very bad cub-hunter_). "'TAIN'T SAFE TO GO +NEAR 'EM WITH THIS 'ORSE; THEY MIGHT THINK 'E WAS FOR EATIN'."] + + * * * * * + + +THE BEN AND THE BOOT. + + +Whither in these littered and overcrowded islands should one flee to +escape the spectacle of outworn and discarded boots? I should go to a +mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops I should choose the highest. I +should scale the summit of Ben Nevis. + +Yet it is but a few days since I saw on that proud eminence the +unmistakable remains of an ordinary walking boot. + +It reposed on the perilous edge of a snowdrift that even in summer +curves giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf over which the +eastern precipice beetles. There is ever a certain pathos about +discarded articles of apparel: a baby's outgrown shoe, a girl's +forgotten glove, an abandoned bowler; but the situation of this boot, +thus high uplifted towards the eternal stars, gave to it a mystery, a +grandeur, a sublimity that held me long in contemplation. + +How came it there? + +The path that winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones +and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a +sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but +would postpone till after his descent the discarding of his damaged +footgear? + +Could it be, I asked myself, the relic and evidence of an inhuman +crime? Was it possible that some party of climbers, arriving at the +top lunchless and desperately hungry, had sacrificed their plumpest, +disposing of his clothes over the cliff, but failing to hole out with +this tell-tale boot? + +But no, I bethought me of the price of leather. They would have +reserved the boots, even at the risk of suspicion. Moreover, no one +would ever reach that exacting altitude in a state of succulence. + +A glow of sympathy, a thrill of appreciation swept through me as I +realised what was at once the worthiest and the likeliest explanation. + +Who shall plumb the depths of the affection of a true pedestrian for +his boots, the companions and comfort of so many a pilgrimage? Who but +the climber, the hill-tramp, knows the pang of regret with which he +faces at last the truth that his favourite boots are past repair, the +sorrow and self-reproach with which he permits them to be consigned to +Erebus? + +I saw it all. As the Roman veteran hung upon the temple wall of Mars +the arms he might no longer wield, so hither came some lofty-minded +climber, bearing in devoted hands his outworn and faithful boot, to +leave it sadly and with reverence in this most worthy resting-place, +here to repose at the end of all the roads it had trod, on the highest +of all the native hills it had climbed. + +W.K.H. + + * * * * * + +=Another Impending Apology.= + + "Mr. Roberts, Member of Parliament, has arrived. Mr. Roberts is a + tall and well-built gentleman with a posing appearance." + +_Mysore Patriot_. + + * * * * * + + "Families supplied in 18, 12 or 6 gallon casks."--_Hertford + brewer's notice_. + +Where's your DIOGENES now? + + * * * * * + + "The dinner was in the House of Commons, and I sat next to Henry. + I was tremendously impressed by his conversation and his clean + Cromwellian face." + +_From a famous autobiography._ + +It was, we trust, the CROMWELL touch rather than the cleanness that +was so impressive. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Ancient Gardener_ (_who has just been paid_). "OI SAY, +MAISTER, THERE'S SUMMAT WRONG WI' MA BRASS." + +_Employer._ "WHAT'S THAT, JOHN?" + +_A.G._ "WHA, SITHEE, THA'S GI'EN MA ONE TA MONY." + +_Employer._ "YOU'RE VERY HONEST, JOHN." + +_A.G._ "WEEL, THA SEES I THOAT IT MID 'A' BIN A TRAP."] + + * * * * * + + +NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN. + +THE EARWIG. + + How odd it is that our Papas + Keep taking us to cinemas, + But still expect the same old scares, + The tiger-cats, the woolly bears, + The lions on the nursery stairs + To frighten as of old! + Considering everybody knows + A girl can throttle one of those + While choking with the other hand + The captain of a robber band, + They leave one pretty cold. + The lion has no status now; + One has one's terrors, I'll allow, + The centipede, perhaps the cow, + But nothing in the Zoo; + The things that wriggle, jump or crawl, + The things that climb about the wall, + And I know what is worst of all-- + It is the earwig--_ugh_! + + The earwig's face is far from kind; + He must have got a spiteful mind; + The pincers which he wears behind + Are poisonous, of course; + And Nanny knew a dreadful one + Which bit a gentleman for fun + And terrified a horse. + + He is extremely swift and slim, + And if you try to tread on him + He scuttles up the path; + He goes and burrows in your sponge + And takes one wild terrific plunge + When you are in the bath; + Or else--and this is simply foul-- + He gets into a nice hot towel + And waits till you are dried, + And then, when Nanny does your ears, + He _wrrriggles_ in and disappears: + He stays in there for years and years + And _crrrawls_ about inside. + At last, if you are still alive, + A lot of baby ones arrive; + But probably you've died. + + How inconvenient it must be! + There isn't any way, you see, + To get him out again; + So, when you want to frighten me + Or really give me pain, + Please don't go on about that bear + And all those burglars on the stair; + I shouldn't turn a tiny hair + At such Victorian stuff; + You only have to say instead, + "THERE IS AN EARWIG IN YOUR BED" + And that will be enough. + +A.P.H. + + * * * * * + + +MY RIGHT-HAND MAN. + +On glancing the other day through the only human column of my +newspaper--that headed "Personal"--I was much intrigued by the +advertisement of a gentleman who styled himself a "busy commercial +magnate," and who announced his urgent need of a "right-hand man." The +duties of the post were not particularised, but their importance was +made clear by the statement that "any salary within reason" would be +paid to a really suitable person. + +No, I did not think of applying for the post myself; a twelve months' +adjutancy to a dyspeptic Colonel had long cured me of the desire to +bottle-wash for anyone again, however lavish the remuneration. But, I +thought to myself, it must evidently be a profitable notion to employ +a right-hand man, or why should this magnate person be so airy on the +subject of salary? Would it not then pay me to engage somebody in +a similar capacity? Increased production, in spite of Trade Union +economics, is emphatically a need of the moment. With a right-hand man +at my right hand (when he wasn't at my left) I could, I felt sure, +increase my own output enormously; and I began to plan out my daily +work under the reconstruction scheme. + +I will call him "Snaggs"; that will save me the trouble of having to +write "my right-hand man" every time I want to refer to him; but when +he enters my service such economy of labour will not, of course, +be necessary. Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at nine every +morning--no, on second thoughts he will sleep in, in case an +inspiration that needs recording arrives after I have gone to bed. (I +shrink from estimating how much wealth I have lost through going to +sleep on my nocturnal inspirations, which the most thorough search +next morning never avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, with +alarm attachment, running into Snaggs's room will alter all that.) + +His first duty of the day will be to wade through all the newspapers +and cut out any paragraphs that may serve as pegs for an article or a +set of verses. My own difficulty in this respect has always been that +I can never manage to get through more than one paper in a working +morning, and not all of that; invariably my attention gets caught +by some long and instructive but (for my purposes) hopelessly +unsuggestive dissertation on Pedigree Pigs or The Co-operative +Movement in Lower Papua, and I consequently overlook many of those +inspiring little "stories" that inform us, for example, that a +distinguished physician advocates the use of tomato-sauce as a +hair-restorer. + +By the time I have finished breakfast, I reckon, Snaggs will have +found me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, neatly arranged with +a few skeleton suggestions for the treatment of each. I shall first +decide which are to be handled in prose and which in verse, and in the +case of the latter shall jot down a few words and phrases that will +obviously have to be dragged in as line-endings. Then I shall put +Snaggs on to the purely mechanical drudgery of finding all the +possible rhymes to these words (_e.g._, fascinate, assassinate, +pro-Krassinate--you know the sort of thing that's called for), and by +the time he has catalogued them all I shall have dashed off most of +the prose articles, which Snaggs will then proceed to type while I am +engaged in the comparatively simple task of piecing together the verse +jigsaws. In this way I should easily be able to earn an ordinary +week's takings in a morning. + +The next task will be the placing of this material, and that is how +Snaggs's afternoons will be spent. I have always had an unnecessarily +tender feeling for editors, and often, after laboriously giving birth +to an article, have concealed it in a drawer rather than run the risk +of boring anyone with its perusal. Snaggs, however, will be fashioned +of more pachydermatous material and will daily make himself such a +nuisance that they'll give him an order, and possibly a long contract, +to get rid of him. By a proper system of book-keeping he will also +save me from the occasional blunder of sending the same article to the +same paper twice. + +My wife, to whom I have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first +job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange +about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to +moot. But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as +to the stability of his princely salary. Perhaps it will be best if, +before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited +company, "for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business +and goodwill of the private enterprise known as Percival +Trumpington-Jones, Esq." A sufficient number of shares will be issued +to guarantee Snaggs at least his first year's screw; that done, the +proposition should be practically gilt-edged. So who's coming in on +the bargain-basement floor? + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =THE PHILANTHROPIST.= + +_Customer._ "WHY, YOU'VE PUT YOUR PRICES UP AGAIN!" + +_Fishmonger._ "WELL, MUM, I ASK YER, 'OW ELSE ARE WE TO FIGHT THE +PROFITEER AT 'IS OWN GAME?"] + + * * * * * + + +AT THE PLAY. + +"THE DAISY." + +I imagine that the authors who founded this play on a Hungarian +original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work. If so, they were +right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond +their powers. In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the +fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it +offered magnificent opportunities (I think "magnificent" was the word) +for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors. Certainly it covered a +good bit of ground, what with this world and the next; for it started +with roundabouts on the Heath, and got as far away as the Judgment Day +(Hungarian style?)--and fourteen years after. + +I may have a contemptibly weak stomach for this kind of thing, but I +confess that I don't care much for a representation of the Judgment +Day in a melodrama of low life. Of course low life has just as much +right as any other sort of life to be represented in a Judgment +Day scene; but it ought to behave itself there and not introduce +back-chat. + +I should explain that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the +object of _The Magister_, as the Presiding Judge was named in the +programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if +his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of +his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might +have made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately the leading case +was a bad example of suicide. It had not been deliberate; he had +simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for +intended murder. + +Worse still, when he returned to earth after a lapse of fourteen +years' purgatory (between the sixth and seventh scenes), for his +record was a rotten one and he had shown no signs of penitence, the +_revenant_ made very poor use of his hour. Returning to his wife whom +he had brutalised, he found that she had taught their girl-child to +regard him as a paragon of virtue, and most of his limited time was +spent in correcting this beautiful legend. You see, at the time of his +death he had had no chance of making the child realise how bad he was, +for the excellent reason that she had not yet been born, so he seized +this opportunity of making good that omission. + +As a practical illustration of the kind of man he really had been, he +struck the child violently on the arm. We all saw him do it and we +all heard the smack, but the child assured us that she had not felt +anything. This I suppose was the author's way, ingenuous enough, of +reminding us that it was a case of spirit and not of flesh, whatever +our eyes and ears might persuade us to think of it. + +Already in a previous scene there had been the same old difficulty. +While the man lay dead on his bed his spirit had been summoned by +a Higher Power (indicated in a peep-show), and his corpse sat up, +displacing the prostrate form of the widow, who had to take up a new +position, without however appearing to notice anything. It was still +sitting up when the curtain fell, and incidentally was caught in the +act of resuming its recumbent position when the curtain rose again for +the purpose of allowing the actors to receive our respectful plaudits. + +Behind me I heard an American lady suggest that if they could somehow +distinguish the spirit from the body it would be better for our +illusions. To which her neighbour expressed the opinion that they +would eventually manage to do that feat. I await, less hopefully, this +development in stage mechanism. Meanwhile _Mary Rose_ has much to +answer for. + +The play began promisingly enough with a scene full of colour and +humanity, of humour and pathos. We were among the roundabouts, whose +florid and buxom manageress, _Mrs. Muscat_ (admirably played by Miss +SUZANNE SHELDON), was having a quarrel of jealousy with her assistant +and late lover, "_The Daisy_," who had been seen taking notice of +Another. The dumb devotion of this child, _Julia_ (Miss MARY MERRALL), +who could never find words for her love--she said little beyond "Yuss" +and "I dunno"--was a very moving thing; and the patient stillness with +which she bore his subsequent brutality held us always under a strange +fascination. + +[Illustration: "_The Daisy_" (_Mr. CAINE_). "WHAT MADE YOU TAKE A +FANCY TO ME?" + +_Julia_ (_Miss MERRALL_). "I DUNNO." + +(_Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance on part of audience._)] + +For the rest it was an ugly and sordid business, relieved only by the +coy confidences of the amorous _Maria_ (played by Miss GLADYS GORDON +with a nice sense of fun). Mr. HENRY CAINE, as "_The Daisy_," +presented very effectively the rough-and-ready humour and the frank +brutality of his type; but he perhaps failed to convey the devastating +attractions which he was alleged to have for the frail sex; and his +sudden spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little out of the picture. + +Apart from the painful crudity of the scene that was loosely described +as "The Other Side," the play abounded in amateurisms. For one thing +there was too much sermonising. It began with an obtrusive homily +on the part of an inspector of police, who went out of his way to +admonish _Julia_ about the danger of associating with "_The Daisy_." +Another instance was that of the bank-messenger, a person of such +self-possession and detachment that he contrived to deliver a moral +address while holding one foiled villain at the point of his revolver +and gripping the other's wrist as in a vice. + +Nothing again could have been more naive than the innocent home-coming +of the domestic carving-knive, freshly sharpened, from the grinder's +just in time to be diverted to the objects of a murderous enterprise. + +Altogether, it was rather poor stuff, unworthy of the talent of many +of its interpreters and of the trouble that Miss EDITH CRAIG had spent +over its scenic effects. Perhaps the audience had been led to expect +too much, for "_The Daisy_," far from being the "wee, modest" flower +of ROBERT BURNS, had been at some pains to draw preliminary attention +to its merits. + +O.S. + + * * * * * + +=The Bedroom Shortage.= + + "That a woman ought to dress quietly and practically in the street + is unquestionable." + +"_Times" Fashion article_. + + * * * * * + + "As the harvest season this year is late, sport will not be + general for at least two weeks hence, when grain crops may be + expected to be in stook. For some time to come sheep will be + confined to the low hill-sides and pasture lands and turnip + fields, and a few good bags were had there yesterday."--_Scotch + Paper._ + +We still prefer the old-fashioned sport of partridge-shooting. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: =WAR AND SCIENCE.= + +_Greek Officer._ "CAN'T YOU THINK OF SOMETHING QUICK? THE ARMY IS +WAITING AND THE ENEMY APPROACHES." + +_Archimedes._ "SCIENCE IS NOT TO BE HUSTLED, GENERAL. JUST GET YOUR +ARMY TO DO A LITTLE PLAIN FIGHTING WHILE I THINK OUT A FANCY SCHEME."] + + * * * * * + + +SPANISH LEDGES. + +SCILLY. + + The bells of Cadiz clashed for them + When they sailed away; + The Citadel guns, saluting, crashed for them + Over the Bay; + With banners of saints aloft unfolding, + Their poops a glitter of golden moulding, + Tambours throbbing and trumpets neighing, + Into the sunset they went swaying. + But the port they sought they wandered wide of, + And they won't see Spain again this side of + Judgment Day. + + For they're down, deep down, in Dead Man's Town, + Twenty fathoms under the clean green waters. + No more hauling sheets in the rolling treasure fleets, + No more stinking rations and dread red slaughters; + No galley oars shall bow them nor shrill whips cow them, + Frost shall not shrivel them nor the hot sun smite, + No more watch to keep, nothing now but sleep-- + Sleep and take it easy in the long twilight. + + The bells of Cadiz tolled for them + Mournful and glum; + Up in the Citadel requiems rolled for them + On the black drum; + Priests had many a mass to handle, + Nuestra Senora many a candle, + And many a lass grew old in praying + For a sight of those topsails homeward swaying-- + But it's late to wait till a girl is bride of + A Jack who won't be back this side of + Kingdom Come. + + But little they care down there, down there, + Hid from time and tempest by the jade-green waters; + They have loves a-plenty down at fathom twenty, + Pearly-skinned silver-finned mer-kings' daughters. + At the gilt quarter-ports sit the Dons at their sports, + A-dicing and drinking the red wine and white, + While the crews forget their wrongs in the sea-maids' songs + And dance upon the foc'sles in the grey ghost light. + +PATLANDER. + + * * * * * + + "REMARKABLE OVAL SCORING." _Evening Paper Contents Bill._ + +We have made some remarkable scores of that shape ourselves in the +past, but we never boast about them. + + * * * * * + + "He believed that the English pronounced in the streets of + London in, say, 200 years' time, will be much different, if not + unintelligible, to the man of to-day."--_Daily Paper._ + +Just like the English in some of our newspapers. + + * * * * * + + "The Secretary of State for India is not _persona grata_ either to + the British House of Commons or to the British public. That is the + old-fashioned English of it."--_Bangalore Daily Post._ + +It would be interesting to see the old-fashioned Latin of it. + + * * * * * + +"Will any Lady Recommend Country Home of the best where 2 precious +Poms can be happy and would be looked after for 6 weeks? Surrey +preferred."--_Morning Paper._ + +Think of their disgust at finding themselves boarded out in Sussex or +Kent. + + * * * * * + + "Young Hungarian Lady with English and German knolidgement wants + sob with English or American Organization."--_Pester Lloyd._ + + Laugh and the world laughs with you; + Sob and you sob alone. + + * * * * * + + +A WAY OUT OF THE PRESENT UNREST. + +"A penny for your thoughts," I said to Kathleen. + +"I like that," said Kathleen indignantly. "A penny was the market +value of my thoughts in 1914. Why should butter and cheese and reels +of cotton go up more than double and my thoughts stay the same?" + +"Twopence," I offered. + +"I said _more_ than double," she remarked coldly. + +I plunged. "Sixpence," I said. + +"Done!" + +"I'll put it in the collection bag for you next Sunday," I added +hastily. + +"Well, I was thinking of Veronica's future. I was wondering what she +was going to be." + +"When we went to the Crystal Palace," I said gently, "I rather +gathered that she wanted to be the proprietor of a merry-go-round. +They were dragons with red-plush seats." + +"She might go into Parliament," said Kathleen dreamily; "I expect +women will be able to do everything by the time she's grown up. She +might be a Cabinet Minister. I don't see why she shouldn't be Prime +Minister." + +"Her hair's just about the right length now," I said. "And perhaps she +could give me congenial employment. I wouldn't mind being Minister of +Transport. There's quite a good salary attached. But of course she may +have ideas of her own on the subject." + +Feeling curious, I went in search of Veronica. I found her at a +private dance given by the butterflies and hollyhocks at the other end +of the lawn. When she saw me she came to meet me and made her excuses +very politely. + +"We've just been wondering what you're going to be when you've stopped +being a little girl," I said. + +"Me?" said Veronica calmly. "Oh, I'm going to be a fairy. You don't +want me to be anything else, do you?" she added anxiously. + +Even the Prime Minister's post seemed suddenly quite flat. + +"Oh, no," I said. "I think you've made a very good choice." But she +was not quite satisfied. + +"I shall hate going away from you," she said. "Couldn't you come too?" + +"Where?" + +"To Fairyland." + +"Ah!" I said, "that takes some thinking about. Could we come back if +we didn't like it?" + +"N-no, I don't fink so. I've never heard of anyone doing that. But +you'll love it," she went on earnestly. "You'll be ever so tiny and +you can draw funny frost pictures wiv rainbows and fold up flowers +into buds and splash dew-water over everyfing at night and ride on +butterflies and help the birds to make nests. Fink what _fun_ to help +a bird to make a nest! You'll _love_ it!" + +"Is that all?" I said sternly. "Are you keeping nothing from me? What +about witches and spells and being turned into frogs? I'm sure I +remember that in my fairy tales." + +"Oh, nothing that _matters_," she said quickly. "You can always _tell_ +a witch, you know, and we'll keep out of their way. An' if a nasty +fairy turns you into a frog a nice one will always turn you back quite +soon. It's all right. You mustn't worry about _that_. There won't be +any fun if you don't come too, darlin'," she ended shamelessly. + +I considered. + +"Veronica," I said at last, "is there such a thing as Ireland in +Fairyland? Is there an exchange that won't keep steady? Is there any +labour trouble?" + +She shook her head. + +"I've never heard of anyfing that sounded like those," she said; "I'm +sure there isn't." + +"That decides it," I said. "We'll all come. As soon as you can +possibly arrange it." + +She heaved a sigh of relief and ran off to tell the glad news to the +butterflies and hollyhocks. + +So that's settled. + +I think we've made a wise decision. + +After all, what's a witch or two, or even a temporary existence as a +frog, compared with a coal strike? + + * * * * * + + +THE WAIL OF THE WASP. + + When that I was a tiny grub, + And peevish and inclined to blub, + Mother, my Queen, + My infant grief you would assuage + With promise of the ripe greengage + And purple sheen + Of luscious plums, + "When Autumn comes." + + The Autumn days are flying fast; + Across the bleak skies overcast + Scurries the wind; + Where are those plums of purple hue, + Mother? I only wish that you + Had disciplined + My pampered youth + To face the truth. + + The time for wasps is nearly done, + And what is life without the sun, + Mother, my Queen? + Dull stupor numbs your royal head; + Torpid my sisters lie--or dead; + Come, let me lean + Back on my sting + And end the thing. + + * * * * * + + +SUGGESTIONS FOR A GENERAL PAPER. + +(_For the benefit of the Examiners in the Oxford School of English +Literature._) + + (1) Compare, in respect of pulpit oratory, (_a_) Dr. SOUTH with +"WOODBINE WILLIE," and (_b_) Dr. MICHAEL FURSE (Bishop of St. Albans) +with the JUDICIOUS HOOKER. + + (2) Give reasons in support of Mr. BEVERLEY NICHOLLS' emendation of +the lines in _The Ancient Mariner_-- + + The wedding guest he beat his breast, + For he heard the proud SASSOON. + + (3) Re-write "Tears, idle tears" in the style of (_a_) Dr. JOHNSON, +(_b_) CALISTHENES, (_c_) the SITWELLS. + + (4) What do you know of CASANOVA, KARSAVINA, CAGLIOSTRO, KENNEDY +JONES, Captain PETER WRIGHT, EPSTEIN, ECKSTEIN and EINSTEIN? When did +Sir OLIVER LODGE say that he would not leave _ein Stein_ unturned +until he had upset the theory of Relativity? + + (5) Give a complete list of all the poets, major and minor, at present +residing on Boar's Hill, and trace their influence on the Baconian +controversy. + + (6) Distinguish by psycho-analysis between (_a_) SYDNEY SMITH +and SIDNEY LEE, (_b_) GEORGE MEREDITH and GEORGE ROBEY, noting +convergences as well as divergences of mentality, physique and +sub-conscious uplift. + + (7) Would Jason, who sailed in the _Argo_, have laid an embargo on +MARGOT as passenger or supercargo? Estimate the probable results +of her introduction to Medea, and its effect on the views and +translations of Professor GILBERT MURRAY. + + (8) What eminent Georgian critic said that TENNYSON's greatest work +was his _Idols of the Queen_? + + (9) Estimate the effect on Reconstruction if Mr. BOTTOMLEY were to +devote himself exclusively to theological studies, and Mr. WELLS were +to take up his abode permanently in Russia. + + * * * * * + +=Another Impending Apology.= + + "FIRE AT CHILDREN'S HOME. + LADY HENRY SOMERSET'S WORK." + +_Daily Paper._ + + * * * * * + +From a Pimlico shop window:-- + + "GENTLEMEN'S WAR ROBES BOUGHT." + +Apparently not worth a "d." + + * * * * * + "Professor ----, the pianist, who is trying to complete 110 hours' + continuous playing, completed fifty-five hours on the first day." + + _Cologne Post._ + +That makes it too easy. + + * * * * * + + "Mme. Karsavina is taller than Pavlova, but has an equally perfect + figure. The Greeks would have bracketted her with Venus and + Aphrodite."--_Provincial Paper._ + +The two last have, of course, been constantly bracketed. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: Golfer (very much off his game). "ONE ROUND NEARER THE +GRAVE."] + + * * * * * + + +OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. + +(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) + + +Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from any collection +of short sketches as now from Miss ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK'S _Autumn +Crocuses_ (SECKER). Not only has the whole book a pleasant title, but +each of these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a +part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of +such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss SEDGWICK. +You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost +passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is, +I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have +reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little +bogie-tale, _The Third Window_; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 +might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to +give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite +unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of +literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss +Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy; +or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty +is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and +take steps to share it. + + * * * * * + +Chief among the _Secrets of Crewe House_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), +now divulged to the mere public, are the marvellous efficiency and +superhuman success achieved by the British Enemy Propaganda Committee, +which operated in Lord CREWE'S London house under the directorate of +Lord NORTHCLIFFE. "What is propaganda?" the author asks himself on an +early page, and the right answer could have been made in four letters: +ADVT. It is endorsed by the eulogistic manner in which the Committee's +work is written up by one of them, Sir CAMPBELL STUART, K.B.E., and +illustrated by photographs of Lord NORTHCLIFFE (looking positively +Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all great achievements, the +main principle was a simple one. A good article is best advertised by +truth; and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the +truth which the Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little +ingenuity, so promulgated that it could no longer escape notice even +in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties +and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so +defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster, +leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir CAMPBELL STUART perhaps tends +to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose +work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing +colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his +little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the +breakdown of the German _moral_ in 1918 and so to win the war. + + * * * * * + +I feel that Miss MARGARET SYMONDS had a purpose in writing _A Child of +the Alps_ (FISHER UNWIN), but, unless it was to show how mistaken +it is, as _Basil_, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou +shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a +romantic marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss +peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until +she is about to marry _Basil_, her original sweetheart. I cannot be +more definite or tell you how her first marriage--with an English +cousin--turned out, because _Linda's_ own account of this is all +we get, and that is somewhat vague. A great many descriptions of +beautiful scenery, Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great +many people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the +author's concentration on _Linda_ gives them, people and scenery +alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been called into +being solely to influence her heroine, and that lessens their +fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a distinct impression, and +once read will not easily be forgotten. It seems a strange comment to +make on a new volume of a "First Novel Library," but _A Child of +the Alps_, as you will realise if you have been reading novels long +enough, is almost exactly the sort of book its title would have +suggested had it appeared thirty years ago. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Prospective Employer._ "HOW OLD ARE YOU?" _Applicant +for Post._ "FOURTEEN--AND UNMARRIED."] + + * * * * * + +These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. +To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten +thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of +wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the +contents. Fortunately, _Uncle Simon_ (HUTCHINSON) is a story quite +cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A +middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted +youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all +those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years +before--here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every +kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, MARGARET and H. DE VERE +STACPOOLE have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the +humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious +delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the +wild oats that _Uncle Simon_ tries to retrieve are not of to-day but +from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course +such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I +gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the +authors simply wake _Uncle Simon_ up and go home. As a small literary +coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book +in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under +a transparent disguise, is the scene of _Uncle Simon's_ restoration. +Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy, +which I can most cordially commend. + + * * * * * + +Mr. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that +unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of +versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in _The +Foolish Lovers_ (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom +either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude +virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in +themselves virtues--such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow +provincialism--that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and +frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types +are interesting, and Mr. ERVINE'S skill lies in his ability not merely +to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his +unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan +conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for +circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery +business in which the family have achieved some success and a full +measure of local esteem. The _MacDermotts_ never failed to accomplish +their purpose; he, as a _MacDermott_, proposed to achieve fame as a +novelist. It was quite simple. But it turned out to be not at all +simple. The quite provincial young _MacDermott_ cannot make London +accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His +wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the _MacDermott_ clan into +which she has married and which now includes a little _MacDermott_, is +the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the +family grocery business. Then the _MacDermott_ himself, with that +shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails +him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished. + + * * * * * + +The main object of the characters in _The Courts of Idleness_ (WARD, +LOCK) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations +were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To +give Mr. DORNFORD YATES his due he is expert in light banter; but some +three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of +surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out +of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are +given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. YATES +desires to show that, although certain people could frivol with the +worst, they could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How +others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set of people +but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. YATES can be strongly +recommended to anyone who thinks that the British take themselves too +seriously. + + * * * * * + +=A Burning Question.= + + "The Germans have singed the Protocol."--_China Advertiser_. + + * * * * * + +=A Master of Deduction.= + + "At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found + by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was + found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is + suspected."--_Evening Paper_. + + * * * * * + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. +159, September 22, 1920, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON *** + +***** This file should be named 17653.txt or 17653.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/5/17653/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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