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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/22905-8.txt b/22905-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a16bab8 --- /dev/null +++ b/22905-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2042 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, +April 7, 1920, by Various, Edited by Owen Seaman + + +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. 158, April 7, 1920 + + +Author: Various + +Editor: Owen Seaman + +Release Date: October 6, 2007 [eBook #22905] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, +VOL. 158, APRIL 7, 1920*** + + +E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Jonathan Ingram, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 22905-h.htm or 22905-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905/22905-h/22905-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905/22905-h.zip) + + + + + +PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI + +VOL. 158 + +APRIL 7, 1920 + + + + + + + +CHARIVARIA. + +"Do the British people," asks Mr. BLATCHFORD, "understand the nature of the +monster modern military science has created?" We hope to hear later what +name Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL has found for Mr. BLATCHFORD. + + * * * + +Agitation for a Federal Divorce Law is being revived in the United States. +It appears that there are still some backward States where the expenses of +a divorce suit mount up to something like ten dollars and the parties often +have to wait as long as three weeks before the knot is untied. + + * * * + +"It has now been decided definitely," says _The Daily Express_, "that Sir +AUCKLAND GEDDES will leave England on April 10th." This disposes finally of +the rumour that he intended taking it with him. + + * * * + +The natives of the Andaman Islands average about seventy pounds each in +weight. They are so short in stature that their feet only just reach the +ground in time. + + * * * + +M. LOUCHEUR suggests that France should build houses similar to those which +are not being built in England. + + * * * + +"Sergeant R. Pernotte," says a student of human endeavour, "last week +punched a ball for fifty hours without a break." It is presumed that the +ball must have done something to annoy him. + + * * * + +Thirty thousand years ago, says a weekly journal, the seas around England +were at a higher level than at present. It is difficult to know what can be +done about it, but it is just as well that the matter should be mentioned. + + * * * + +According to Mr. M. T. SIMM, M.P., there are many wayside inns of a +passable nature. The trouble, of course, is that so many people have a +difficulty in passing them. + + * * * + +We understand that Mr. Justice ----'s question, "Who is Mr. LLOYD GEORGE?" +has been postponed to a date to be fixed later. + + * * * + +A trade journal advertises a new calculating machine which will total up +stupendous figures without any human help at all. A correspondent writes to +say that in his house he has the identical gas meter which gave the +inventor his idea. + + * * * + +The contemporary which refers to the discovery of a gold ring inside a +cod-fish as extraordinary evidently cannot be aware that many profiteers +who go in for fishing are nowadays using such articles as bait. + + * * * + +A purse containing nearly a hundred pounds in treasury notes, picked up by +a policeman in South Wales, has not yet been claimed. It is now thought +probable that a local miner may have dropped his week's wages whilst +entering his car and that his secretary has not yet called his attention to +the deficit. + + * * * + +"The way some newsboys dodge in and out of the moving traffic is most +dangerous and a serious accident is sure to result before very long," +complains a writer in an evening paper. For ourselves we cannot but admire +this attempt on the boys' part to make history while in the act of selling +it. + + * * * + +We learn from an evening paper that a large woollen warehouse in London was +completely destroyed by fire the other day. We cannot understand why some +people use such inflammable material for building purposes. + + * * * + +An old pleasure-boat proprietor at Yarmouth has stated in an interview +that, although all his skiffs and dinghies are ten to fifteen years old, +they are much more trustworthy than those being built at the present time. +We await, fearfully, the comments of Lord FISHER. + + * * * + +Dutch wasps, says a news item, are very much like British. Only the +finished expert can tell the difference on being stung. + + * * * + +It is said that the Dutch are the most religious race of to-day. Of course +it is well known that the Chinese pray more than the Dutch, but then nobody +understands what they are saying. + + * * * + +The Ascot Fire Brigade went on strike last week and several important fires +had to be postponed at the last moment. + + * * * + +The Bolsheviks, it appears, may not, after all, be as black as they are +painted. It is reported that TROTSKY has caused one of his Chinese guards +to be executed for calling another an Irishman. + + * * * + +Senator BORAH recently informed the American Press that the Presidential +election campaign was becoming a Saturnalia of public corruption. In one +flagrant case it appears that a man who was given the money to buy ten +dollars' worth of Irish Republic went and bought a box of cigars instead. + + * * * + +"To keep cats off the seed beds," says _Home Chat_, "bury a small bottle up +to the neck and fill it with liquid ammonia." The old practice of burying +the cat up to the neck in the seed bedding and keeping the ammonia for +subsequent use is considered obsolete. + + * * * + +During the past year in London 2,886 persons were knocked down by horsed +vehicles, as compared with 8,388 who were knocked down by motor vehicles. +The popularity of the latter, it seems, is still unchallenged. + + * * * + +A weekly paper has an article on "Bad Manners Among Fish." We have +ourselves noticed a tendency to ignore the old adage that fish, like little +children, should be seen and not heard. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: UNLIKELY SCENE AT THE LABOUR EXCHANGE: OUT-OF-WORK POET +PASSING THE INSPIRATION TEST BEFORE A SUPERVISING OFFICIAL OF THE BOARD OF +TRADE.] + + * * * * * + + "Young lady requires daily work as Cook-general; work not objected + to." + + _Provincial Paper._ + +Very obliging of her. + + * * * * * + +POSSESSION. + +The dear old home has been let to strangers. An interloper occupies the +messuage. A foreign master controls the demesne. + +To-day especially, when as I write the air is balmy and the skies are blue, +it is agonising to feel that our own spring rhubarb is growing crimson only +to be toyed with by alien lips, and that the thrush on our pear-tree +bough----But no, I am wrong; the pear-tree bough is in the garden of No. 9; +it is only the trunk that stands in the garden of No. 10. That, by the way, +is an accident that frequently occurs to estate-owners. Consider critically +for a moment those well-known lines in which BROWNING says-- + + "Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge + Leans to the field," + +and then goes on to speak of "the wise thrush" on "the bent spray's edge" +as "singing his song twice over." It is pretty obvious that the reason the +poet assigns to this action on the bird's part is not the correct one. +Evidently the part of the tree on which it was sitting was on the other +side of the hedge in the next-door fellow's garden, and it was +conscientiously trying to allot one performance to each of the two rival +householders. But I seem to have wandered a little from the ancient home. + +Come with me in imagination, reader, and let us have a look at it together. +The fourth house to the left in this winding road that fringes the common, +you see it standing there gazing a little wistfully, yet with a quiet air +of semi-detachment, out over the wide expanse of green. Half right and half +left are two monstrous blocks of red brick flats overlooking it with a +thousand envious eyes. The middle distance is dotted pleasantly with +hawthorn bushes and the pretty pieces of sandwich-paper that are always the +harbingers of London's Spring. Beyond these things, and far away to the +front, you may detect on clear days a white church-tower nestling like +Swiss milk amongst immemorial trees. And this view is mine--mine, like the +old home. If we linger for a moment in the road we shall probably see the +scornful face of the proud usurper at one of the windows calmly enjoying +this view of mine, all unconscious that I, the rightful owner, am standing +beneath. Does it not remind you of the films?-- + +"_Charles Carruthers_, an outcast from his ancestral halls, eyes mournfully +the scene of merry junketing within. _Charles Carruthers_--_blick! +blick!_"--and you see him eyeing mournfully outside--"_blick! blick!_"--and +you see the junketers eating his junket within. + +On looking back in a calmer mood on the lines which I have just written, I +feel it possible that I may have let my emotions run away with me and +conveyed a slightly false impression. I may have suggested that the old +home has belonged to my family since Domesday Book or dear-knows-when or +some other historic date in our island story. That would not be strictly +true. As a matter of fact I have never lived in the house, nor have any of +my relations either. It has belonged to me, to be quite accurate, since +March 25th, 1920, and the interloper was interloping on a short lease when +I bought the long lease over his head. It is also true that by an awkward +and absurd convention I have to restore the old home to the ground landlord +in 1941. But who cares about what is going to happen in 1941? The Coalition +may have come to an end by that time, and the first Labour Government, +under Lord NORTHCLIFFE or Mr. JACK JONES, may be in power. Some bricklayer, +in a mood of artistic frenzy, may have designed the plan of a new brick and +had it passed by the Ministry of Housing. DEMPSEY may have met CARPENTIER. + +No, the trouble is about the interloper. It appears that, having the +remainder of a lease to run, he can go on anteloping (you know what I mean) +for two years more if he likes. To do him justice he admits that the place +is mine and wants to leave it. He has no real love for the priceless old +spot. All that he asks is somewhere better to go to. So I am gladly doing +my best to help him. I send him notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions, +which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks, +ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful +bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him +extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow +larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes +laid on to each estate never cease to sing. I suggest the advantages of the +mercantile marine and a life on the rolling main, of big game shooting, +polar exploration, and the residential attractions of Constantinople, +Berlin, Dublin and Vladivostok. + +Concurrently with this I try hard to cultivate in him a certain distaste +for the dear old home. I walk up and down the road in front of it with a +pair of field-glasses, and, if I see that a little chip has fallen off +anywhere or the paint on the gate has been scratched, I call on him at +once. + +"I happened to be passing the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather +serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it +looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And +this worries him a good deal, because he is responsible for all repairs. + +I do not fail to point out to my friends, either, that this is my +well-known family seat, and I persuade them from time to time to go and ask +for me at the door. "What, isn't he living here _yet_?" I get them to say, +with a well-feigned surprise. "It is his house, isn't it?" I frequently +have letters addressed to myself sent there, and every morning and +afternoon the nurse takes the children past it for a walk. The children are +well drilled. + +"Look, Priscilla, that's our garden," says Richard in a high penetrating +treble; and + +"There's a darlin' little buttercup. I want to go in," Priscilla replies. + +All this quiet steady pressure is bound to have its due effect in time. +Gradually I think he will begin to feel that a shadow haunts the ancestral +halls (the front one, you know, and the back passage), that a footstep not +his own treads behind him on the stair, that the dear old home will never +be happy until it is occupied by its rightful lord. + +I shall send him a marked copy of this article. + +EVOE. + + * * * * * + +_VERS TRÈS LIBRE._ + +(_Arabesque on a field of blue_). + + These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate, + Imposing, intime, dazzling or repellent, + That sing--better than music's self, + Better than rhyme-- + The praise and liberty of blue: + The turquoise and the peacock's neck, + The blood of kings, the deeps + Of Southern lakes, the sky + That bends over the Azores, + The language of the links, the eyes + Of fair-haired angels, the + Policeman's helmet and the backs + Of books issued by the Government, + Also the Bird of Happiness (MAETERLINCK) + And many other things such as + The Varsity colours, various kinds + Of pottery and limelight, + Some things by SWINBURNE, BURNS and EZRA POUND, + The speedwell in the glade, and, oh! + The little cubes they put in wash-tubs. + + REFRAIN. + + These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate, + And so on down to "liberty of blue." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "OLIVER 'ASKS' FOR MORE." + +MINER. "YOU'LL BE SORRY ONE OF THESE DAYS THAT YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME +NATIONALIZATION." + +PREMIER. "IF YOU KEEP ON LIKE THIS THERE WON'T BE ANY NATION LEFT TO +NATIONALIZE YOU."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Owner._ "SMART LITTLE THING ISN'T SHE?" + +_Friend._ "PITY SHE'S SO UGLY BELOW THE WATER-LINE." + +_Owner._ "OH, WELL, NOBODY WILL SEE THAT." + +_Friend._ "WHAT ABOUT WHEN SHE CAPSIZES?"] + + * * * * * + +TOOLS OF TRADE. + +I am sorry for the man who took his typewriter on the Underground and was +made to buy a bicycle-ticket for it. But I have no doubt he deserved it. I +am sure that he did it in spiritual pride. He was trying to make himself +equal to the manual labourer who carries large bags of tools on the Tube +and sighs heavily as he lays them on your foot. I am sure that he was tired +of being scornfully regarded by manual labourers, and was determined to +make it quite clear that he too had done, or was about to do, a day's +labour, and manual labour at that. It was a sinful motive and it deserved +to be punished; but it was natural. Nowadays we all feel like that. We +caught it from the War, when the great thing was to show that you were +doing more work than anybody else. + +I take from a recent copy of _Hansard_[1] the following brisk and delicate +piece of dialogue:-- + +"Mr. MACQUISTEN: You Labour men have forgotten what sweat is. + +Mr. W. THORNE: I have never seen many lawyers sweat, anyhow. + +Mr. SPEAKER: This discussion is becoming intemperate. + +AN HON. MEMBER: The Hon. Member for Springburn never sweated in his life. + +Mr. MACQUISTEN: Yes, I have laboured in the docks." + +That is it, you see. Sweating is the great criterion of usefulness to-day. +If you cannot show that you have sweated in the past, you must at least +show that you are sweating now, or have every intention of sweating in a +moment or two. Personally, as a private secretary, I find it very +difficult, though I do my best. As a private secretary I labour in a rich +house in the notoriously idle neighbourhood of South Kensington, where +nobody would believe that anybody laboured, much less perspired over it. So +when I pass, on the way to my rich house, a builder's labourer or a milkman +or a dustman, I have to exhibit as clearly as I can all the signs of a +harsh employment and industrial fatigue. I take great pains about this; I +walk much faster; I frown heavily and I look as pale as possible. In the +Tube I close my eyes. I hope all this is effective, but as far as I can see +the milkman never looks at me, and the builder is always saying to another +builder, "'E says to me, 'Wot abaht it?' 'e says, and I says to 'im, 'Yus, +wot abaht it?' I says." But it is worth the effort. + +Well, that is why that poor man was carrying a typewriter. I wonder why +everybody else in the Tube carries an "attaché-case." It has been +calculated that if all the attaché-cases which get on to the train at +Hammersmith at 9 A.M. were left on the platform, six men or twelve women or +three horses could take their place in every car. That means about ninety +more men or one-hundred-and-eighty more women or forty-five more horses +could leave Hammersmith between 9 A.M. and 9.30. So that if attaché-cases +were forbidden the traffic problem would be practically solved. + +Why shouldn't they be forbidden? It depends, of course, on what is inside +the cases; and nobody knows that for certain. But one can guess. I have +been guessing for a long time. At first I thought they were full of very +confidential papers. In the old days the attaché-case was the peculiar +trademark of private secretaries and diplomats and high-up people like +that. Even attachés carried them sometimes. The very lowest a man with an +attaché-case could be was a First-Class Civil Servant; and one was +justified in imagining confidential papers inside, or, at any rate, +home-work of the first importance. But nowadays there are too many of them +for that. The attaché-case has been degraded; it is universal. This might +be because there is practically no male person alive just now who has not +been an adjutant at one time or another, and pinched at least one +attaché-case from the orderly-room. But most of the cases in the Tube are +carried by females, so that theory is no good. + +Well, then, I imagined sandwiches or knitting or powder-puffs or tea; but +those also are rotten hypotheses. I have too much faith in the good sense +of my fellow-countrywomen to believe that they would cart a horrible thing +like a cheap attaché-case about simply in order to convey a sandwich or a +powder-puff from one end of London to the other. So I had to fall back on +my own experience. + +I know, at any rate, what is inside mine. There are some rather grubby +envelopes which I borrowed from the House of Commons, and some very grubby +blotting-paper from the same source, and either a ream of foolscap or a +quire of foolscap, whichever is which; some pipe-cleaners and a few pieces +of milk-chocolate; and a letter from the Amalgamated Association of +Fish-Friers which ought to have been answered a long time ago; and a +memorandum on Hog-Importing which I am always going to read while waiting +at the station; and a nice piece of thick string with which I have tied a +bowline on a bight; and two broken pencils and some more envelopes; and a +Parliamentary Whip of last year and a stationery bill of the year before; +and several bills of my employer, not to mention a cheque for ninety-seven +pounds which I suppose he would like me to send to the bank; and a great +deal of fluff and a pipe or two and four or five stamped letters which it +is now too late to post. That is all there is in my case. + +But I carry it backwards and forwards, in and out, to and fro, day after +day; and the only time it is ever opened at either end of the journey is +when, in addition to the articles previously mentioned, it contains +bottles. But I do not carry it for the sake of bottles; far from it. I am +one of those men who do not mind going about with a comparatively naked +bottle. I carry it simply because it is the tool of my trade, and because, +if you don't carry a tool of some kind on the Underground, at any moment +you may be taken for an idle rich, if not actually a parasite, who never +sweated in his life. + +And that, I am persuaded, is why everybody else carries theirs. + +But this is a very serious conclusion. It will be a terrible thing if +everyone is going to carry the tools of his trade about with him to show +that he has a trade; the barrister his briefs, the doctor his stethoscope +or his shiny black bag; the butcher his chopper; the dentist--but no, we +cannot have that. There must be other ways. We might wear badges, as we did +in the War, only they would be office badges and trade badges, instead of +regimental badges or discharged badges. Then we should have again the dear +old war-game of trying to read what was on them without being rude. That is +what one really misses in public places in these days of Peace--that and +the uniforms. + +It was easy to make conversation in a restaurant in the old days, when +people kept on coming in in curious uniforms, and the ladies wondered what +they were and the men pretended they knew all about them. But all that is +dead now, and I think these sweat-badges would supply a serious want. + +But what will the author wear? And who will believe that he ever breaks +into beads of perspiration at his labour? + +A. P. H. + +[Footnote 1: February 24th, col. 1638.] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Butler_ (_in service of the Earl of Kyloes_), "IS THAT YOU, +MY LORD?" + +_Burglar_ (_full of guile_). "YUS, MATEY."] + + * * * * * + + "CAN EUROPE BE SAVED? + + By LOVAT FRASER." + + _Daily Mail._ + +We don't know; but there can be no harm in his trying. + + * * * * * + +Commercial Candour. + + "Your Soil needs a tonic. Send 2s. 6d. for 40 lb. Ground Lime in a + Government twill bag, worth half the money."--_Local Paper._ + + "Antique Copper Fire-irons and Dogs, almost new."--_Local Paper._ + + * * * * * + +THE PACKET RAT. + + "When I leave this Western Ocean, to the South'ard I will steer, + In a tall Colonial clipper far an' far enough from here, + Down the Channel on a bowline, through the Tropics runnin' free, + When I'm done with this 'ere ocean ... an' when it's done with me. + + "An' I'll run my ship in Sydney, an' then I'll work my way + To them smilin' South Seas Islands where there's sunshine all the day, + An' I'll sell my chest an' gear there as soon's I hit the shore, + An' sling my last discharge away, an' go to sea no more. + + "It's a pleasant time they have there--they've easy quiet lives; + They wear no clothes to speak on; they've a bunch of browny wives; + They're bathin' all the day long or baskin' on the sand, + With the jolly brown Kanakas as naked as your hand. + + "An' I'll lay there in the palm-shade, an' take my ease all day, + An' look across the harbour at the shippin' in the bay, + An' watch the workin' sailormen--the bloomin' same as me + In the workin' Western Ocean afore I left the sea. + + "I'll hear them at the capstan, a-heavin' good an' hard; + I'll hear them tallyin' on the fall or sweatin' up the yard; + Hear them lift a halliard shanty, hear the bosun swear and shout, + An' the thrashin' o' the headsheets as the vessel goes about. + + "An', if the fancy takes me, as it's like enough it may, + For to smell the old ship-smells again an' taste the salt an' spray, + I can take a spell o' pearlin' or a tradin' cruise or two + Where there's none but golden weather an' a sky that's always blue. + + "But I'll do no sailorisin' jobs--I'll walk or lay at ease, + Like a blessed packet-captain, just as lordly as you please, + With a steward for my table an' a boy to bring my beer, + An' a score or so Kanakas for to reef an' haul an' steer. + + "An' when I'm tired o' cruisin', up an' down an' here an' there, + There'll be kind Kanaka women wi' the red flowers in their hair + All a-waiting for to meet me there a-comin' in from sea, + When I'm through with this here ocean ... an' that'll never be! + + "For I'd hear the parrots screamin' an' the palm-trees' drowsy tune, + But I'd want the Banks in winter an' the smell of ice in June, + An' the hard-case mates a-bawlin', an' the strikin' o' the bell ... + God! I've cursed it oft an' cruel ... but I'd miss it all like Hell. + + "Yes, I'd miss the Western Ocean where the packets come an' go, + An' the grey gulls wheelin', callin', an' the grey sky hangin' low, + An' the blessed lights o' Liverpool a-winkin' through the rain + To welcome us poor packet-rats come back to port again. + + "An' if I took an' died out there my soul'd never stay + In them sunny Southern latitudes to wait the Judgment Day, + For acrost the seas from England, oh, I'd hear the old life call, + An' the bloomin' Western Ocean it'd get me after all. + + "I'd go flyin' like a seagull, as they say old shellbacks do, + For to see the ships I sailed in an' the shipmates that I knew, + An' the tough old North Atlantic where the roarin' gales do blow, + An' the Western Ocean packets all a-plyin' to an' fro. + + "An' I'd leave the trades behind me an' I'd leave the Southern Cross, + An' the mollymawks an' flyin'-fish an' stately albatross, + An' I'd come through wind an' weather an' the fogs as white as wool, + Till I sighted old Point Lynas an' the Port o' Liverpool. + + "An' I'd fly to some flash packet when the hands was bendin' sail, + An' I'd set up on the main-truck doin' out my wings an' tail, + An' I'd see the tug alongside an' the Peter flyin' free, + An' the pilot come aboard her for to take her out to sea. + + "An' I'd follow down to Fastnet light, an' then I'd hang around + There to watch 'em out to westward an' to meet the homeward bound, + For I know it's easy talkin', an' I know when all is said + It's the bloomin' Western Ocean what'll get me when I'm dead!" + +C. F. S. + + * * * * * + +ETIQUETTE FOR FIRES. + +It seems that Mr. A. R. DYER, the Chief Officer of the London Fire Brigade, +has issued a booklet giving hints on fire protection and also how to call +the Fire Brigade. We have pleasure in giving a few points which we are sure +are not included in this interesting and useful publication. + + * * * * * + +Before sending for the Fire Brigade it is advisable to make quite sure that +you have a fire in the house to offer them. But do not adopt the old plan +of waiting until it reaches the second-floor. This is rather apt to +discolour the wall-paper. + + * * * * * + +Above all the householder who intends to have a fire in his house must keep +calm. Immediately the maid rushes into the room to say that the kitchen is +on fire, place the book you are reading on the table, remove your slippers +and put on a thick pair of heavy boots and a Harris tweed shooting coat. +Your next duty is to call the Fire Brigade, and not to meddle with the fire +yourself, for very often an amateur completely spoils a fire before the +Brigade arrives. + + * * * * * + +When you see the Brigade engine dashing along the road don't stop it and +offer to show the driver a short cut. And when they start work do not worry +the firemen by telling them how to do it better. After all, while it may be +your house, it is their fire. + + * * * * * + + "TO SEVERAL INTERESTED.--Our editor, Mr. ---- is not an Englishman his + name is a pseudonime.--English ortograhist. Our setters do not yet + speak English at all, be assured that we will do sur best to escape + the errata in the nearest future." + + _The World's Trade (Budapest)._ + +We take their word for it but are not sanguine. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES. + +A MODERN PORTRAIT-PAINTER AND HIS "PATRONS."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MR. ----, THE GREAT CINEMA ACTOR, WHILE STAYING IN THE +COUNTRY INCOGNITO, IS ASKED BY THE MANAGER OF THE PUMPLEFIELD FILM COMPANY +TO HELP MAKE A CROWD.] + + * * * * * + +PARTY TACTICS. + +It began with my reading an article on "How to be a Success at an Evening +Party." I was rather surprised to know that, for one thing, some knowledge +of Spiritualism is necessary to enable one to be a popular entertainer +nowadays. It has never struck me before that spiritualists were such a +genial class, full of _bonhomie_ and great joy; but then, although I read +the Sunday papers, I'm afraid I don't know enough about the subject. + +Even if we haven't got the rollicking boisterous temperament of the born +spiritualist, however, there are, it seems, other ways of winning a mild +popularity. "If you confess to only a slight knowledge of palmistry," the +article continued, "it is often enough to make you the centre of interest +at once." + +This appealed to me strongly. I like to be the centre of interest. So I +bought a handbook on palmistry and, having absorbed it, set out for my next +party full of confidence. + +Surely enough, the first thing I saw on arrival was a dank-looking man +holding forth on Spiritualism, and enjoying what I should call a chastened +vogue with most of the company gathered about him. + +I took up my position on the fringe of the group. "Talking of psychics, the +occult and all that sort of thing," I remarked carelessly, "isn't +cheiromancy an interesting study?" + +"Nasty sort of study, I should call it," murmured one of the company, +evidently under a vague impression that it had something to do with feet. +My hostess looked up sharply. "Cheiromancy," she repeated; "can you read +the hand?" + +"Only a little," I confessed modestly. "Just enough to----" + +I don't quite know how it happened. There was a sort of flank and rear +movement and the entire company, excepting, of course, the dank +spiritualist, precipitated itself on me. Voices clamoured for me to +foretell destinies. Hands were thrust before me. They eddied, surged and +swirled about me. I never saw such a massed quantity of hands. It was like +leaving a Swiss hotel in the height of the season. + +"One at a time, please," I said limply. + +I seized a palm, followed it up, and found that it belonged to a pinched +sour-looking female. Her character was stamped on her face as well as on +her hand. If, however, I had said to her, "Yours is a flaccid repressed +disposition you have a lack of imagination and a total absence of humour; +your life is too narrow and self-centred to be of the least interest to +anyone," she might not have liked it. You see, with even a slight knowledge +of palmistry you soon find out when reading hands that it's no use telling +people the truth. They want a version which I can only describe as +"garbled." + +Accordingly I bent over the repressed female's hand with an air of +profundity and said, "There being a total absence of the mounts of Mercury +and the Sun, a calm and even nature is indicated." (You're nearly always +safe in saying this.) "Your sense of order and of the fitness of things +would not allow you to see any fun in the joke of, say, pulling away a +chair from anyone about to sit down. In fact you would not see a joke in +anything--like that," I added hastily, and gave her hand back, feeling I +had made the best of a bad job. + +But she still lingered. + +"Does it show if I shall----?" She paused in embarrassment. + +"Get married?" I asked, knowing human nature better than palmistry. + +She looked so fiercely eager, with such a vivid light of hope in her eye, +that I decided to award her a husband on the spot. + +"The Hepatica line, being allied to the line of Fate," I said impressively +"signifies that you will marry--late in life." + +The press around me at once grew terrific. All the girls said, "Tell me if +I'm going to get married;" and all the men remarked, "Of course it's utter +rubbish," and were more eager about it than the girls. I became reckless. I +worked my way steadily through the crowd, doling out husbands with an +unsparing hand. And it was just when I was beginning to feel a little tired +of the game that my enemy was delivered into my hands. + +We were not on visiting or even speaking terms; we were indeed the most +implacable foes. But that did not prevent the woman from shamelessly +thrusting herself before me and saying gushingly, "Do tell me what you see +in my hand." + +I looked at her, and before my searching glance even her brazen face fell. +Six months previously that creature had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I +ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but +every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more +unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think +lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would +extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed her of a +treasured servant. + +And Wilkins had been a treasure indeed. It brought the tears to my eyes +when I thought of her exquisite _omelettes aux rognons_, her salads, her +_poularde à la gelée_, her wide diversity of knowledge regarding _entrées_ +and savouries. With a hard and bitter smile I settled down to interpret the +hand of the woman before me. + +The company gathered closer round us and I noticed that Mrs. B., the +particular friend of my enemy, bent affectionately over her with truly +feminine expectation of "revelations." And from under the scarf which my +enemy wore about her arms and shoulders she seemed, I thought, to project +her hand rather timidly. Perhaps she realised too late what was in store +for her. + +I was quite dignified about it; I want you to understand that. Many +another, seeing that creature so plump and well-fed and knowing the reason, +would have broken out into vituperation. But my tactics were more subtle. +My manner, as I studied her palm, was at first nonchalant, even urbane. +Then I gave a start and faltered, "I--I suppose you wish me to tell you the +truth?" + +A frightened look came into her eyes which, I noted with satisfaction, were +beginning to show tinges of yellow (Wilkins' only fault is that in some of +her dishes she is over-liberal with the salad oil and high seasonings). "Of +course I want to know the truth," said my victim faintly. + +With an apparent air of diffidence I began my recital. I did not spare her +in the smallest degree. I ascribed to her all those sinister +characteristics I had read about in the handbook; and, when I suddenly +remembered a delicious _vol-au-vent_ upon which I had doted, I added a few +of my own. + +It was a terrible indictment. When I had finished an awed silence fell upon +the gathering. Everybody waited breathlessly for the victim to speak. + +"That was most interesting," she said with a sinister laugh. "But perhaps +you will read _my_ palm now. You see, it was Mrs. B.'s that you have just +read. She slipped her hand through under my scarf." + +There was a burst of laughter from everybody. Idiotic kind of joke, I call +it. + +I can assure the writer of the Sunday articles that a knowledge of +palmistry does not necessarily make one popular. + +I am now wondering where you can buy hand-books on spiritualism. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Philosopher_ (_who has been mistaken for the football_). +"THANK 'EVING THE CRICKET SEASON'LL SOON BE 'ERE!"] + + * * * * * + + "It is proposed that the family man shall be dealt with on a flat + rate. Every wife will confer exemption on £100 of + income."--_Spectator._ + +Surely our revered contemporary does not imply that the new Income Tax +proposals will encourage polygamy. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. + +_Polite Passenger._ "DO YOU MIND SMOKING, MADAM?" + +_Old Lady._ "NOT AT ALL. I'LL SMOKE WITH PLEASURE IF THEY'RE GYPPIES. CAN'T +_STAND_ GASPERS."] + + * * * * * + +THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION. + +AN APPEAL TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL. + +The League of Nations Union is engaged in a campaign for the purpose of +making the objects of the League of Nations better understood in the +country at large. The chief danger that threatens the League is to be found +in the apathy or unconsidered scepticism of the public; almost the sole +active opposition comes from those who would substitute for it a +proletarian Internationale devoted to the interests of one class only in +the world, and from certain reactionaries who favour a return to the system +of imperialism which was the cause of the War. In the words of HIS MAJESTY +THE KING, "We fought to gain a lasting Peace and it is our supreme duty to +take every measure to secure it. For that nothing is more essential than a +strong and enduring League of Nations. The Covenant of Paris is a good +foundation, well and truly laid. But it is and can be no more than a +foundation. The nature and strength of the structure to be built upon it +must depend on the earnestness and sincerity of popular support." + +To those, if any, who contend that the Government should be left to carry +out its own propaganda for the League of Nations the obvious answer is that +it is necessary for this work to be done by an independent body which can +bring public pressure to bear upon the Government of the day and urge such +amendments in the machinery and constitution of the League as time and +experience may show to be desirable. The Union, in fact, bears to the +League of Nations the same relation that the Navy League bears to the +Senior Service; it is an independent body organised to educate opinion in +the needs of a national cause. + +Since its inception in January of this year the activities of the League +have covered a wide range, which embraces organisation for the +administering of territory under its trusteeship, and for the consideration +of international questions relating to transit, finance, labour and health. +America's repudiation (only temporary, it may be hoped) of the pledges of +her own President, the original and chief advocate of the League of +Nations, has meanwhile thrown upon Great Britain the main burden of +responsibility in the Councils of the League, a fact that constitutes an +overwhelming claim upon the patriotism of British citizens. The duty of +bringing this claim home to the public has been taken up by the League of +Nations Union, under the Presidency of Lord GREY OF FALLODON. It has +already established a headquarters and a staff of experts; organised +hundreds of meetings throughout the country, and inaugurated nearly two +hundred branches. It publishes two periodicals and many pamphlets and is +preparing educational text-books; it is taking part in an international +conference with similar voluntary societies in other countries. + +Clearly such work cannot be carried on without generous support. The sum +for which the League of Nations Union appeals--a million pounds--may sound +large, but it represents only the cost of four hours of the War, and is not +much to ask as an insurance against another and yet more terrible war. + +Mr. Punch very earnestly begs his readers to send contributions in aid of +this great and necessary work to the Hon. Treasurer of the Fund (Sir BRIEN +COKAYNE, late Governor of the Bank of England), addressed to THE LEAGUE OF +NATIONS UNION, 22, Buckingham Gate, S.W. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE HOPE OF THE WORLD. + +PEACE. "THIS IS MY TEMPLE AND YOU ARE ITS PRIESTESS. GUARD WELL THE SACRED +FLAME." + +(The objects and needs of the League of Nations Union are set out on the +opposite page.)] + + * * * * * + +ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. + +_Monday, March 29th._--During a brief sitting the Lords got through a good +deal of business. The Silver Coinage Bill awakened Lord CHAPLIN'S +reminiscences of his bimetallic days, when he was accused by Sir WILLIAM +HARCOURT of trying to stir up mutiny in India. Undeterred by this warning, +however, the Peers gave a Second Reading to the measure and also to the +Coal Mines Emergency Bill, which is less up-to-date than it sounds, and +deals not with the present emergency but with the last emergency but one. +They also passed the Importation of Plumage Bill, at the instance of Lord +ABERDEEN, who pleaded that beautiful birds, "the result of myriads of years +of evolution," should not be exterminated to make a British matron's +picture-hat. + +[Illustration: _Mr. MACPHERSON._ "WITH ALL THESE CHERUBS GOING FOR MY KITE +FULL BLAST IT LOOKS AS IF I MIGHT KEEP THE THING FLYING." + +LORD ROBERT CECIL. CAPTAIN REDMOND. + +MESSRS. CLYNES AND ASQUITH.] + +A few noble lords tore themselves away from these entrancing topics to +attend the opening of the debate in the Commons on the Government of +Ireland Bill. They were ill-rewarded for their pains, for never has a Home +Rule debate produced fewer interesting moments. The CHIEF SECRETARY was so +studiously restrained in explaining the merits of the Bill that the +"yawning chasm" which, according to its opponents, the measure is going to +create between Southern and Northern Ireland was to be observed in advance +on the countenances of many of his listeners. Years ago Mr. BALFOUR told +the Irish Nationalists that Great Britain was not to be bored into +acceptance of Home Rule; but I am beginning to doubt now whether he was +right. If the Government get the Bill through it will be due more to John +Bull's weariness of the eternal Irish Question than to any enthusiastic +belief in the merits of this particular scheme. Hardly anyone off the +Treasury Bench had a good word to say for it, but fortunately for its +chances their criticisms were often mutually destructive. + +Mr. CLYNES moved its rejection. From his remark that Irish respect for the +law was destroyed in 1913, and that the present Administration was regarded +as "the most abominable form of government that had ever ruled in Ireland," +I should gather that he has only recently begun his researches into Irish +history and Irish character, and is working backwards. His prescription was +to cease governing Ireland by force and leave her to frame her own +constitution. + +Lord ROBERT CECIL agreed with Mr. CLYNES in regarding it as a very bad +Bill, but there parted company with him. In his view the deterioration of +Ireland began in 1906, when the era of "firm government" came to an end. +Drop coercion by all means, but "let the murderers begin." As for forcing +self-government on a country that rejected it, that was nonsense. + +As "a citizen of the world," and not merely an Irishman, Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR +denounced the Bill _urbi et orbi_. Nobody in Ireland wanted it unless it +was the place-hunters of the Bar and the Press, for whom it would provide +rich pickings. + +The House was brought back from rhetoric to plain fact by the CHANCELLOR OF +THE EXCHEQUER'S reminder that if the Bill were not passed the Home Rule Act +of 1914 would come into force. He hoped that Southern Ireland would recover +its sanity, accept the Bill and set itself to persuade Ulster into an +All-Ireland Parliament _viâ_ the golden bridge of the Irish Council. + +Captain CRAIG could not imagine that happening in his lifetime. To his mind +the only merit of the Bill was that it safeguarded Ulster against Dublin +domination. + +_Tuesday, March 30th._--Someone--I suspect a midshipman--has been telling +Mr. BROMFIELD that five British Admirals have been sent to Vienna to +supervise the breaking up of the Austrian Fleet, and that the said Fleet +now consists of three motor-boats. He was much relieved to hear from Mr. +HARMSWORTH that only one Admiral had been sent, and that the disposal of a +Dreadnought, several pre-Dreadnoughts and sundry smaller craft will give +him plenty to do. + +There appears to be a shortage of ice in Hull. It is supposed that the +Member for the Central Division (Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY) has not cut so +much as he expected. + +The debate on the Home Rule Bill was resumed in a much higher temperature +than that of yesterday. Mr. ASQUITH, as he thundered in carefully-polished +phrases against the "cumbrous, costly, unworkable scheme," earned many +cheers from his followers, and the even greater tribute of interruptions +from his opponents. For a moment he was pulled up, when to his rhetorical +question, "What has Home Rule meant to us?" some graceless Coalitionist +promptly answered, "Votes!" but he soon got going again. Ireland, he +declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background +of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and +bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the +Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we +don't trust _you_," came the swift reply from Sir EDWARD CARSON. + +Mr. ASQUITH'S own remedy for Irish unrest was to take the Act of 1914 and +transform it into something like Dominion Home Rule. Any county--Ulster or +Sinn Fein--that voted against coming under the Dublin Parliament should be +left under the present administration. + +Mr. BONAR LAW did not fail to point out the inconsistency of condemning the +Government scheme for its complexity and then immediately proposing another +which would involve not one but a dozen partitions and make the political +map of Ireland look like a crazy quilt. He advised the House to reject Mr. +ASQUITH'S advice and pass the Bill, even though it should have the +paradoxical result, for the moment, of leaving Nationalist Ireland under +British administration while providing Unionist Ulster with a Home Rule +Parliament for which it has never asked. + +I suppose Mr. DEVLIN is not like the Sinn Feiners, who, according to "T. +P.," are so contemptuous of the Bill that they have never read a line of +it. Parts of his speech, and particularly his peroration, seemed far more +suitable to a Coercion Bill than to a measure which is designed, however +imperfectly, to grant Home Rule to Ireland. The Nationalist leader may be +forgiven a great deal, however, for his inimitable description of Lord +ROBERT CECIL as "painfully struggling into the light with one foot in the +Middle Ages." + +_Wednesday, March 31st._--The third and last Act of the Home Rule drama was +the best. Nothing in the previous two days' debate--not even Mr. BONAR +LAW'S ruthless analysis of the Paisley policy for Ireland--gripped the +audience so intensely as Sir EDWARD CARSON'S explanation of the Ulster +attitude. He declared that the Union had not failed in Ulster, and would +not have failed anywhere if British politicians could have refrained from +bidding for Irish votes. There was no alternative to it but complete +separation, and that was what Home Rule would lead to. Ulster did not want +the Bill, and would not vote for it; but, as the only alternative was the +Act of 1914, she was prepared to accept it as a _pis aller_, and to work +her new Parliament for all it was worth. At least it would enable her to +find schools for the thirty thousand Belfast children now debarred from +education. More than that, he was prepared to co-operate with any men from +Southern Ireland who were willing to work _their_ Parliament in a similar +spirit; and he paid a personal tribute to Mr. DEVLIN, whose courage he +admired though he detested his politics. + +Thus there were gleams of hope even in his otherwise gloomy outlook, as the +PRIME MINISTER gladly acknowledged in winding up the debate; and they +probably had some influence in swelling the majority for the Bill, the +figures being 348 for the Second Reading, 94 against. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "PLEASE, MISTER, CAN I HAVE A PENNORTH OF CAMEL?"] + + * * * * * + +_POISSON D'AVRIL._ + +For the tragedy of which I am about to tell I consider that Brenda Scott is +entirely to blame. You shall judge. + +There is a vacancy in my domestic staff, and the rush to fill it has been +less enthusiastic than I could wish. My housewifely heart leapt, therefore, +when, last Thursday morning, I espied coming up the drive one whom I +classed at once as an applicant for the post of housemaid. Nor was I +deceived. She gave the name of Eliza Smudge, and said she came from my +friend, Mrs. Copplestone. + +My suspicions were first aroused by her extraordinary solicitude for my +comfort. "Outings" were entirely according to my convenience. And when she +added that she liked to have plenty to do, and that she always rose by 6 +A.M., I began to look at her closely. + +She wore a thick veil, and her eyes were further obscured by large +spectacles, but I could discern a wisp of rather artificial-looking hair +drawn across her forehead. And she was smiling. + +Now why was she smiling? I could certainly see nothing to smile at in +rising at six o'clock every morning. + +"I shall be free on 5th of April, ma'am," she was saying. "Let me see, +to-day is the 1st of April----" + +The 1st of April! It came to me then in a flash--in one of those moments of +intuition of which even the mind of the harassed housewife occasionally is +capable. It was Brenda Scott masquerading as a housemaid! + +Our conversation of a fortnight earlier came back to me--Brenda's desire to +disguise herself and apply to Lady Lupin for the post of kitchenmaid, her +confidence in her ability to carry it off successfully, my ridicule of the +possibility that she could pass unrecognised. So now, on the 1st of April, +she was for proving me wrong. + +The disguise was certainly masterly. Had it not been for that unaccountable +smile, and the hair---- + +I did not lose my head. I continued to carry on the conversation on +orthodox lines. Then I said, "Do you know Miss Brenda Scott, who lives near +Mrs. Copplestone?" + +"Oh, yes, I've known her since she was a little girl," was the answer. +"Sweet young lady she is." + +"Ye--es," I said. "A little too fond of practical jokes, perhaps." + +The eyebrows went up almost to the artificial-looking hair, which I had now +decided was horse-hair. + +"Indeed," she said. + +"Yes, my dear Brenda, it is your besetting sin. You should pray against +it," I said bluntly. + +She stood up with an opposing air of surprise and alarm. But I was not to +be deceived. + +"Your assumed name, Eliza Smudge," I said, "gave you away at the start. And +that hair--it is the tail of your nephew's rocking-horse, isn't it? +And----" + +But she had fled from the room and was scudding down the drive, heedless of +my cries of "Brenda, you idiot, come back!" + + * * * * * + +As I watched from the front-door I saw that "Eliza Smudge" had met another +woman in the lane and had engaged her in conversation. + +Then they parted, and the other woman came in at the gate and up the drive. + +"My dear Elfrida," said a well-known voice, "what have you been up to? You +seem to have thoroughly upset that nice woman who was with the Copplestones +so long. She told me you were a very strange lady; in fact she thought you +must be suffering from a nervous breakdown." + +I leaned for support against the door-post, feeling a little faint. + +"Brenda? You?" I gasped. "I thought----" + +"Such a splendid maid she is," Brenda went on. "You'll never find her equal +if you try for ten years." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Mistress._ "TOO MANY WEEDS, WILLIAM." + +_William._ "LET 'EM BIDE, MUM. NOTHING LIKE WEEDS TO SHOW YOUNG PLANTS 'OW +TO GROW."] + + * * * * * + +Eccentric Behaviour of a Cuckoo. + + "The summer-like weather which set in during the week-end has been + marked by the arrival of the cuckoo, which was heard at Shanklin on + Saturday and on Sunday morning at Staplers, bursting into full flower + of plum and pear trees, and general activity in the gardens and + fields."--_Local Paper._ + + * * * * * + + "He (Mr. Asquith) could only say 'O Sanctas Simplicitas.' (Laughter.)" + + _Irish Paper._ + + "I can only say: 'O sanctus simplicitus!'" + + _Yorkshire Paper._ + +Neither version seems to us quite worthy of an ex-Craven Scholar. + + * * * * * + +AT THE PLAY. + +"UNCLE NED." + +As the final curtain fell on the Fourth Act there was talk of celebrating +the conversion of the villain in a bottle of the best (1906). But this did +not mean that the good wine of the play had been kept to the end. Indeed it +had been practically exhausted about the middle of the Third Act, and the +rest was barley-water, sweet but relatively insipid. So long as Mr. HENRY +AINLEY was just allowed to sparkle, with beaded bubbles winking all round +the brim of him, everything went well and more than well; the trouble began +when the author, Mr. DOUGLAS MURRAY, remembered that no British audience +would be contented with mere irresponsible badinage, however fresh and +delicate; that somehow he must provide an ending where virtue prevailed and +sentiment was satisfied. + +So, when _Uncle Ned's_ humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his +brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, +he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it +was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all +the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have I been so profoundly +impressed with the difficulties of an art which depends for its success +(financial, that is to say) on the satisfaction of tastes that have nothing +in common beyond the crudest elements of human nature. + +Mr. AINLEY had things all his own way. Between him, the romancer of the +light heart and the free fancy, and his brother, the millionaire tradesman +of the tough hide, there was the clash of temperaments but never the clash +of intellects. ("Nobody with a sense of humour," says _Uncle Ned_, "ever +made a million pounds.") That the man with the iron will should be beaten +at the last with his own weapons, and brought to see the lifelong error of +his ways by a violent philippic that must have surprised the speaker hardly +less than his audience, was the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed +the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of +heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in +the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse, +from which he emerges unrecognisably reformed. + +I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully fantastic and inconsequent +humour of the first half of the play. Often it was the things that Mr. +AINLEY was given to say; but even more often, I think, it was the +incomparable way he said them, with those astonishingly swift and +unforeseen turns of gesture and glance and movement which are his peculiar +gift. Now and then, to remind us of his versatility, he may turn to +sentiment or even tragedy, but light comedy remains his natural _métier_. + +If I have a complaint to make it is that _Uncle Ned's_ studied refusal to +understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece, +who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the +reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books +and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused +needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not +be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere +child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on +the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play was too good +to need assistance from this sort of titillation. + +[Illustration: _Sir Robert Graham_ (_Mr. RANDLE AYRTON_). "MAKE YOURSELF AT +HOME. DON'T MIND ME." + +_Edward Graham_ (_Mr. HENRY AINLEY_). "I DON'T."] + +Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, as the plutocratic pachyderm, kept up his thankless end +with a fine imperviousness; and Miss IRENE ROOKE, in the part of his +secretary, played, as always, with a very gracious serenity, though I wish +this charming actress would pronounce her words with not quite so nice a +precision. Miss EDNA BEST was an admirable flapper, with just the right +note of _gaucherie_. + +As _Mears_, Mr. CLAUDE RAINS was not to be hampered by the methods dear to +the detective of convention; he looked like an apache and behaved, rather +effectively, like nothing in particular. + +The _Dawkins_ of Mr. G. W. ANSON knew well the first duty of a +stage-butler, to keep coming on whenever a stop-gap is wanted; but he had +also great personal qualities, to say nothing of his astounding record of +forty years' service in a house where strong liquor was only permitted for +"medicinal" purposes. + +O. S. + + +"THE YOUNG PERSON IN PINK." + +What the chair-man said about _The Young Person in Pink_ who had been +hanging about the Park every morning for a week was that nowadays you +couldn't really tell. He thought on the whole she was all right. The +balloon-woman was certain that with boots like that she must be a 'ussy; +but then she had refused to buy a balloon. As a matter of fact she +couldn't, being broke to the world. And worse. For she had arrived at +Victoria Station unable to remember who she was or where she came from, +ticketless, a few shillings in her purse. She had murmured "Season" at the +barrier and had taken rooms at the Carlton because she had a queer feeling +she had been there before. Her things had a coronet on them. The rest was a +blank. + +Of course nobody believed her; the women were scornful, the men not quite +nice, till very young _Lord Stevenage_, the one that was engaged to a +notorious baby-snatcher, _Lady Tonbridge_--in a high fever he'd +unfortunately said "Yes"--meets her, and you guess the rest. No, you don't. +You couldn't possibly guess _Mrs. Badger_, relict of an undertaker and now +in the old-clothes line, who has social ambitions. (I must here say in +parenthesis that _Mrs. Badger_ is a double stroke of genius on the part +both of Miss JENNINGS the author and of Miss SYDNEY FAIRBROTHER. You don't +know which to admire most, the things she says [Miss J.] or the way she +says them [Miss S. B.]. Honours divided and high honours at that.) + +_Lady Tonbridge_ had advertised for a clergyman's widow to render some +secretarial service, and the ambitious _Mrs. Badger_ had applied, duly +weeded. Meanwhile the elderly _Lady T._ had seen her _fiancé_ and with the +young person in pink, and it was a brilliant and base afterthought to bribe +the clergyman's widow to claim the girl as her long-missing daughter +(invented). Both the young Lord and the young person, too much in love +perhaps to be critical, accept the situation; but you haven't quite got +_Mrs. Badger_ if you think she's the sort of person one would precisely +jump at for a mother-in-law. + +At the supreme moment when _Mrs. B._, after an interview with the whisky +bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into the mere widow of the +undertaker, gives it to the intriguing _Lady Tonbridge_ in the neck with a +wealth of imagery, a command of slightly slurred invective and a range of +facial expression beyond adequate description, she is perhaps less +attractive in the capacity of mother-by-marriage than ever, even if the +interlude prove the goodness of her heart. But it is just at that moment +that the young person is recognised by her maid. The daughter of the +_Duchess of Hampshire_, no less! So all is well. + +Not that Miss JENNINGS' plot matters. She freely accepts the absurdities +which her bizarre outline demands, but doesn't shirk the pains to make her +situations possible within the pleasantly impossible frame. What is +all-important is that she does shake the house with genuinely explosive +humour. + +If they were Miss JENNINGS' bombs, Miss FAIRBROTHER threw the most and the +best of them with a perfect aim. The rest of the platoon helped in varying +degrees. I hope I don't irretrievably damage Miss JOYCE CAREY'S reputation +as a modern when I say that she looked so pretty and innocent that I don't +believe even sour old spinsters would have doubted her. A charming and +capable performance. Mr. DONALD CALTHROP made love quite admirably on the +lighter note; a little awkwardly, perhaps, on the more serious. Miss SYBIL +CARLISLE handled an unpromising part with great skill. Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS +as the ineffable _Lady Tonbridge_ was as competent as ever, and had a coat +and skirt in the Third Act which filled the female breast with envy. Looks +like a long run. + +T. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: DRESSING THE PART. + +_Stout Tramp_ (_who has been successful at the last house_). "THIS IS A +NICE 'AT SHE'S GIVEN ME." + +_Partner._ "YUS, IT _IS_ A NICE 'AT; BUT, MIND YOU, IT AIN'T GOT THE +BREAD-WINNIN' QUALITIES OF THE OLD 'UN."] + + * * * * * + + "Art in Washing--with economy.--Ladies desiring personal attention are + invited to apply to ---- Laundry."--_Daily Paper._ + +No "imperfect ablutioner" (_vide_ "The +Mikado") should miss this opportunity. + + * * * * * + + "Fun undiluted and rippling is the main feature of _The Little + Visiters_, and not a single feature of the author's book is lost in + the process of dramatisation."--_Weekly Paper._ + +Except, apparently, the title. + + * * * * * + +The Boat-Race. + +ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY CAMBRIDGE. + +In complimenting the Light Blues we cannot help calling attention to two +curious facts which may have contributed to their victory, and seem to have +escaped the notice of the Oxford crew. According to _The Weekly Dispatch_ +Mr. SWANN rowed "No. 9 in the Cambridge boat"; and a photograph in _The +Illustrated Sunday Herald_ ("the camera cannot lie") distinctly shows the +Cambridge crew rowing with as many as eight oars on the stroke side. How +many they were using on the bow side is not revealed. + + * * * * * + + "WANTED IMMEDIATELY! + + MEDICAL DOCTOR + + for Joe Batt's Arm and vicinity. Salary two thousand dollars + guaranteed. All specials additional. Address communication to + + ALEX. COFFIN, + Sec. Doctor's Committee." + + _Newfoundland Paper._ + +Even the serious condition of Joe Batt's Arm hardly interests us so much as +the challenge to the world's humourists implied in the Committee's +selection of their secretary. + + * * * * * + +MY ONE ADMIRER. + +Of course my wife had made me go to the bazaar. All men go to bazaars +either because their wives send them, or in search of possible wives. The +men who are never at bazaars are those with humane wives, or the true +bachelors. + +I did not mind the young lady who grabbed my walking-stick and presented me +with a shilling cloakroom ticket, or the other who placed a buttonhole in +my coat (two-and-sixpence), or the third who sprayed me with scent (one +shilling, but had I known of the threatened attack I would have paid two +shillings for immunity), or the fourth, who snatched my rather elderly silk +hat and renovated it, not before its time, with some mysterious fluid +(one-and-ninepence). These are the things one expects. + +But when I faced the stalls I must admit that I trembled. In pre-war days +it was occasionally hinted that bazaar prices were a trifle high. What +would they be now? How could I face the Bazaar profiteer? Sums, reminding +me of schooldays, ran in my head, "If milk be a shilling a quart what will +be the price of a sofa-cushion?" + +As I stood in the centre of the hall I could see that the eyes of the +stall-holders were upon me--cold, horrid, calculating eyes. I could read in +them, "How much has this man got?" I felt that it would be a proper +punishment for war-profiteers if they were sentenced to purchase all their +requirements at bazaars for six months. + +Glancing round the hall in search of a place of refuge I saw a sign, +"Autograph Exhibition--Admission one shilling." A shilling! Why, such a +comfortable hiding-place would have been cheap at half-a-crown. I bolted +for the Autograph Exhibition before a piratical lady, bearing down on me +with velvet smoking caps, could reduce me to pulp. + +A smiling elderly gentleman was in charge. "Hah, you would like to see my +little collection? Certainly, certainly." + +I am not interested in autographs. Most bygone celebrities wrote +undecipherable hands. I have been equally puzzled in trying to read the +handwriting of GUY FAWKES and Mr. GLADSTONE. But this collection was +different. It had letters from nearly every one distinguished in the world +to-day--good, lengthy, interesting, readable letters. + +"How did you contrive to get all these?" I asked the exhibitor. + +"Tact, foresight and flattery, my dear Sir. It would be no use writing to +these people to-day. You'd get ignored, or at best two lines type-written +by a secretary. Now look at that long letter from LLOYD GEORGE about Welsh +nationality and that other from HILAIRE BELLOC concerning the adulteration +of modern beer. You couldn't get them now. My idea is to catch your +celebrity young. When a man produces his first play or novel or book of +poems I write him an admiring letter. You can't lay it on too thick. Ask +him some question on a topic that interests him. It always draws. They are +unused to praise and you catch them before the public has spoilt them. I +card-index all the replies I get. Of course nine out of ten of the people +turn out of no account, but some are sure to come off. You just throw out +the failures and put the successes in your collection." + +At this point I heard our Archdeacon afar off. Our Archdeacon booms--not +like trade, but like the bittern. I heard him booming outside, "My dear +lady, I cannot miss the chance of seeing dear Mr. Fletterby's collection." + +Fletterby! The name was familiar. Long years ago I published +something--don't inquire into the details of my crime--and the sole +response I had from an unappreciative world was a highly eulogistic letter +from one Samuel Fletterby. I remembered the time I had spent in writing him +a lengthy and courteous reply. I remembered that often in my darker days I +had drawn out the letter of Fletterby to encourage me. + +And now! I looked at the collection. It was arranged alphabetically. As I +turned to the initial of my name I framed a dramatic revelation for my +friend Fletterby: "That writing is familiar to me. In fact, Mr. Fletterby, +I am its unworthy writer." + +But my letter was not included in the collection. + +"Throw out the failures," Mr. Fletterby had said. + +I threw myself out instantly from the Autograph Exhibition. Better, far +better buy things I didn't want at prices I couldn't afford than stay in +the company of that faithless one, my sole erstwhile (as the papers say) +admirer. + + * * * * * + + There was a great athlete named RUDD + Who was born with a Blue in his blood; + Stout-hearted, spring-heeled, + He achieved on the field + What his Varsity lost on the flood. + + But when he had breasted the tape + A cynic emitted this jape: + "Pray notice, old son, + 'Tisn't Oxford that's won, + But Utah, Bowdoin and the Cape." + + * * * * * + +EASTER IN WILD WALES. + +The recent discovery (duly noted in _The Daily Graphic_ of the 30th ult.) +of "seven pearls of excellent quality" by an Aberavon labourer in a mussel +stranded by the tide has led to an extraordinary influx of visitors to that +quiet seaside resort. Costers have been arriving at the rate of several +hundreds a day, attracted by the prospect of finding the raw materials for +the indispensable decoration of their costumes, and the local authorities +are at their wits' end to provide adequate accommodation. Amongst the +latest arrivals is the great architect, Sir MARTIN CONWAY, who has been +consulted with regard to the erection of a number of bungalow skyscrapers, +and an urgent message has been despatched to Sir EDWIN LUTYENS at Delhi, +begging him to supply designs of a suitable character. Meanwhile +pearl-diving goes on day and night on the sea-front, with the assistance of +a flock of oyster-catchers, whose brilliant plumage adds greatly to the +picturesqueness of the scene. + +Though the special good fortune of Aberavon has excited a certain amount of +natural jealousy in the breasts of hotel and boarding-house proprietors at +other Welsh seaside resorts, they have no serious reason to complain. The +usual attractions of Barmouth have been powerfully reinforced by the +presence in the neighbouring hills of a full-sized gorilla which recently +escaped from a travelling menagerie. When last seen the animal was making +in the direction of Harlech, which is at present the head-quarters of the +Easter Vacation School of the Cambrian section of the Yugo-Slav Doukhobors. +It is understood that the local police have the matter well in hand, and +arrangements have been made, in case of emergency, for withdrawing all the +population within the precincts of the castle. + +Great disappointment prevails at Llandudno owing to the refusal of Mr. EVAN +ROBERTS, the famous revivalist, to localise the materialisation of the +Millennium, which he has recently prophesied, at Llandudno during the +Easter holidays. By way of a set-off an effort was made to induce Sir +AUCKLAND GEDDES to give a vocal recital before his departure for America. +As his recent performance at a meeting of the London Scots Club proved, Sir +AUCKLAND is a singist of remarkable power, infinite humour and soul-shaking +pathos. Unfortunately his repertory is confined to Scottish songs, and on +this ground he has been obliged to decline the invitation, though the fee +offered was unprecedented in the economic annals of the variety stage. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN. + +_P.-W.S. at a Hunt Meeting_ (_concluding a passage-at-arms with a member of +the ring_). "I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE TOFFS THAT YOU THINK YOU CAN IMPOSE UPON. +I'M A SELF-MADE MAN, I AM." + +_Bookmaker._ "WELL, I WOULDN'T TALK SO LOUD ABOUT IT. IT'S A NASTY BIT O' +WORK."] + + * * * * * + +OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. + +(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) + +Mr. FORREST REID is a writer upon whose progress I have for some time kept +an appreciative eye. His latest story, bearing the attractive title of +_Pirates of the Spring_ (UNWIN), proves, I think, that progress to be well +sustained. As you may have guessed from the name, this is a tale of +adolescence; it shows Mr. REID'S North-Ireland lads differing slightly from +the more familiar home-product, though less in essentials than in tricks of +speech, and (since these are day-school boys, exposed to the influence of +their several homes) an echo of religious conflict happily rare in the +experience of English youth. Mr. REID is amongst the few novelists who can +be sympathetic to boyhood without sentimentalising over it; he has +admirably caught its strange mingling of pride and curiosity, of reticence +and romance and jealous loyalty. The tale has no particular plot; it is a +record of seeming trifles, friendships made and broken and renewed, +sporadic adventures and deep-laid intrigues that lead nowhere. But you will +catch in it a real air of youth, a spring-time wind blowing from the +half-forgotten world in which all of us once were chartered privateers. +There are, of course, worthy folk who would be simply bored by all +this--which is why I do not venture to call _Pirates of the Spring_ +everyone's reading; others, however, more fortunate, will find it a true +and delicately observed study of an engaging theme. + + * * * * * + +I must really warn the flippant. It would be appalling if admirers of +_Literary_ (and other) _Lapses_ were to send blithely to the libraries for +Mr. LEACOCK'S latest and find themselves landed with _The Unsolved Riddle +of Social Justice_ (LANE). And yet I don't know. Here is a subject which +even the flippant cannot long ignore. And a man of the world with a clear +head and a mastery of clearer idiom than a professor of political economy +usually commands has here said something desperately serious without a +trace of dulness. I should like Professor LEACOCK'S short book to be +divided into three. The first part, a trenchant analysis of some of the +evils of our social and industrial system, I would send to the +impossibilists and obstructives; the second, a critical examination of some +of the nostrums of the progressives, should go to the hasty optimists who +think that a sudden change of system will as suddenly change men, for it +contains much that they will do well (and now resolutely refuse) to ponder. +The third part I would return to the author for revision, for it contains +no more, when analysed, than an _ipse dixit_, and quite fails to show that +the evils denounced as intolerable in the first part can be remedied +without some substantial portion at least of the heroic reforms denounced +in his second. Also I would remind him, or rather perhaps the more +ingenuous of his readers, that there have been later contributions to the +theory and practice of new-world building than Mr. BELLAMY'S _Looking +Backward_. + + * * * * * + +_The Great Desire_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is a novel full of shrewd +philosophy and excellent talk. Mr. ALEXANDER BLACK sets out to prove +nothing, to justify no political or social attitude, but just to draw his +fellow-Americans as he sees them going about their war-time business, the +"great desire" being simply the thing that is uppermost in the mind of each +one. As a composite picture of what New York thought about the business of +getting into the War the result could hardly be bettered. One never feels +that latent antagonism which readers, even though they may agree with him, +unconsciously experience towards an author who seems to be arguing a point. +Mr. BLACK gives the extreme views of the blatant patriot, and of the +anarchist and socialist who cannot see the distinction between arguing +against war on paper and arguing against this War on the street corner. He +makes us realise the people who think only how to make the War an adjunct +of themselves and those who desire only to make themselves a useful adjunct +of the War. He draws his types cleverly and states the case of each one +fairly, but with a humorous restraint and from a standpoint of absolute +detachment. _The Great Desire_ has plenty of charm regarded merely as a +story, but I recommend it especially to those who are apt to judge the +Americans by their politicians or to assess New York on the basis of the +HEARST newspapers. + + * * * * * + +If it were only for his complete fearlessness in following well-worn +convention and his apparent reliance on his readers' ignorance or want of +memory, Mr. J. MURRAY GIBBON'S _Drums Afar_ (LANE) would be rather a +remarkable book in these psycho-analytical days. His hero actually has the +audacity to have blue eyes and fair hair, to start his career in the House, +and to end it, so far as the novel is concerned, lying wounded in a +hospital, where his _fiancée_, a famous singer, happened to be a nurse in +the same ward. Nor does the young man disdain the threadbare conversational +_cliché_. "Don't you think there is something elemental in most of us which +no veneer of civilisation or artificial living can ever deaden?" he says in +one place (rather as if veneer were a kind of rat poison). Still bolder, on +leaving America, where he has become engaged to a wealthy Chicagan's +daughter, he quotes-- + + "I could not love thee, dear, so much + Loved I not honour more." + +And, although the girl is annoyed, it is not on account of the citation. +Much of the story, however, deals with Chicago, and since my previous +knowledge of that city could have easily been contained in a tin of pressed +beef I can pardon Mr. GIBBON for being as informative about it as he is +about Oxford colleges. (He seems, by the way, to have a rooted contempt for +Balliol, which I had always supposed was a quite well-meaning place.) On +the whole, either in spite or because of its rather Baedeker-like +qualities, _Drums Afar_ will be found quite a restful and readable book. + + * * * * * + +Somewhere in the course of the tale that gives its title to _The Blower of +Bubbles_ (CHAMBERS) the character who is supposed to relate it denies that +he is a sentimentalist. I may as well say at once that, if this denial is +intended to apply also to Mr. ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER, who wrote the five +stories that make up the volume, a more comprehensive misstatement was +never embodied in print. Because, from the picture on the wrapper, +representing a starry-eyed infant conducting an imaginary orchestra, to the +final page, the book is one riot of sentiment--plots, characters and +treatment alike. Not that, save by the fastidious, it must be considered +any the worse for this; even had not Mr. BAXTER'S hearty little preface +explained the conditions of active service under which it was composed, +themselves enough to excuse any quantity of over-sweetening. I will not +give you the five long-shorts in detail. The first, about a German child +and a young man with heart trouble, shows Mr. BAXTER at his worst, with the +sob-stuff all but overwhelming a sufficiently nimble wit. My own favourite +is the fifth tale, a spirited and generous tribute to England's war effort. +(I should explain that the book, and I suppose the author also, is by +origin Canadian.) This last story, told partly in the form of letters to +his editor in New York by an American officer and journalist, has all the +interest that comes of seeing ourselves as others see us; though I could +not but think that the narrator erred in making the haughty _Lady Dorothy_, +daughter of his noble hosts, exclaim, on the entrance of a footman with a +letter, "Pardon me, it's the mail." So there you are. If you have a taste +for stories that make no pretence of being other than fiction pure and +simple, limpidly pure and transparently simple (yet witty too in places), +try these; otherwise pass. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Pedestrian._ "DROPPED ANYTHING, MISTER?" + +_Motorist._ "YES." + +_Pedestrian._ "WHAT IS IT?" + +_Motorist._ "MY GIRL."] + + * * * * * + + "UTOPIA. + + Miss Ruby ---- Sundayed under the parental."--_Canadian Paper._ + +We congratulate Utopia on its ideal language. + + ++------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| Transcriber's note: | +| | +| Typographical errors corrected: "Ted" for "Ned" and | +| "reelly" for "really" on page 262. | ++------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, VOL. +158, APRIL 7, 1920*** + + +******* This file should be named 22905-8.txt or 22905-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905 + + + +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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920</p> +<p>Author: Various</p> +<p>Editor: Owen Seaman</p> +<p>Release Date: October 6, 2007 [eBook #22905]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, VOL. 158, APRIL 7, 1920***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Jonathan Ingram,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pg" /> + +<h1>PUNCH,<br /> + +OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.</h1> + +<h2>VOL. 158.</h2> + +<h2>APRIL 7, 1920.</h2> + +<hr class="full" /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>[pg 248]</span> + +<h2>CHARIVARIA.</h2> + +<p>"Do the British people," asks Mr. +<span class="sc">Blatchford</span>, "understand the nature +of the monster modern military science +has created?" We hope to hear later +what name Mr. <span class="sc">Winston Churchill</span> +has found for Mr. <span class="sc">Blatchford</span>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Agitation for a Federal Divorce Law +is being revived in the United States. +It appears that there are still some +backward States where the expenses +of a divorce suit mount up to something +like ten dollars and the parties +often have to wait as long as three +weeks before the knot is untied.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"It has now been decided definitely," +says <i>The Daily Express</i>, +"that Sir <span class="sc">Auckland +Geddes</span> will leave England +on April 10th." This +disposes finally of the +rumour that he intended +taking it with him.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The natives of the Andaman +Islands average +about seventy pounds each +in weight. They are so +short in stature that their +feet only just reach the +ground in time.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p><span class="sc">M. Loucheur</span> suggests +that France should build +houses similar to those +which are not being built +in England.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"Sergeant R. Pernotte," +says a student of human +endeavour, "last week +punched a ball for fifty +hours without a break." It is presumed +that the ball must have done +something to annoy him.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Thirty thousand years ago, says a +weekly journal, the seas around England +were at a higher level than at present. +It is difficult to know what can be +done about it, but it is just as well that +the matter should be mentioned.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>According to Mr. <span class="sc">M. T. Simm, M.P.</span>, +there are many wayside inns of a passable +nature. The trouble, of course, is +that so many people have a difficulty in +passing them.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>We understand that Mr. Justice ——'s +question, "Who is Mr. <span class="sc">Lloyd George</span>?" +has been postponed to a date to be +fixed later.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A trade journal advertises a new +calculating machine which will total up +stupendous figures without any human +help at all. A correspondent writes to +say that in his house he has the identical +gas meter which gave the inventor +his idea.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The contemporary which refers to the +discovery of a gold ring inside a cod-fish +as extraordinary evidently cannot +be aware that many profiteers who go +in for fishing are nowadays using such +articles as bait.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A purse containing nearly a hundred +pounds in treasury notes, picked up by +a policeman in South Wales, has not +yet been claimed. It is now thought +probable that a local miner may have +dropped his week's wages whilst entering +his car and that his secretary has +not yet called his attention to the +deficit.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"The way some newsboys dodge in +and out of the moving traffic is most +dangerous and a serious accident is +sure to result before very long," complains +a writer in an evening paper. +For ourselves we cannot but admire +this attempt on the boys' part to make +history while in the act of selling it.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>We learn from an evening paper that +a large woollen warehouse in London +was completely destroyed by fire the +other day. We cannot understand why +some people use such inflammable +material for building purposes.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>An old pleasure-boat proprietor at +Yarmouth has stated in an interview +that, although all his skiffs and dinghies +are ten to fifteen years old, they are +much more trustworthy than those +being built at the present time. We +await, fearfully, the comments of Lord +<span class="sc">Fisher</span>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Dutch wasps, says a news item, are +very much like British. Only the finished +expert can tell the difference on +being stung.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>It is said that the Dutch are the most +religious race of to-day. Of course it +is well known that the Chinese pray +more than the Dutch, but then nobody +understands what they are saying.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The Ascot Fire Brigade went on +strike last week and several important +fires had to be postponed at the last +moment.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The Bolsheviks, it appears, +may not, after all, +be as black as they are +painted. It is reported +that <span class="sc">Trotsky</span> has caused +one of his Chinese guards +to be executed for calling +another an Irishman.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Senator <span class="sc">Borah</span> recently +informed the American +Press that the Presidential +election campaign was +becoming a Saturnalia of +public corruption. In one +flagrant case it appears +that a man who was given +the money to buy ten +dollars' worth of Irish +Republic went and bought +a box of cigars instead.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"To keep cats off the +seed beds," says <i>Home +Chat</i>, "bury a small bottle up to the +neck and fill it with liquid ammonia." +The old practice of burying the cat up +to the neck in the seed bedding and +keeping the ammonia for subsequent +use is considered obsolete.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>During the past year in London 2,886 +persons were knocked down by horsed +vehicles, as compared with 8,388 who +were knocked down by motor vehicles. +The popularity of the latter, it seems, +is still unchallenged.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A weekly paper has an article on +"Bad Manners Among Fish." We have +ourselves noticed a tendency to ignore +the old adage that fish, like little +children, should be seen and not heard.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:65%;"><a href="images/248.png"><img width="100%" src="images/248.png" alt="" /></a><p class="center">UNLIKELY SCENE AT THE LABOUR EXCHANGE: OUT-OF-WORK +POET PASSING THE INSPIRATION TEST BEFORE A SUPERVISING +OFFICIAL OF THE BOARD OF TRADE.</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"Young lady requires daily work as Cook-general; +work not objected to."</p> + +<p><i>Provincial Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>Very obliging of her.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>[pg 249]</span> + +<h2>POSSESSION.</h2> + +<p>The dear old home has been let to +strangers. An interloper occupies the +messuage. A foreign master controls +the demesne.</p> + +<p>To-day especially, when as I write +the air is balmy and the skies are blue, +it is agonising to feel that our own +spring rhubarb is growing crimson only +to be toyed with by alien lips, and that +the thrush on our pear-tree bough——But +no, I am wrong; the pear-tree +bough is in the garden of No. 9; it is +only the trunk that stands in the garden +of No. 10. That, by the way, is an accident +that frequently occurs to estate-owners. +Consider critically for a moment +those well-known lines in which +<span class="sc">Browning</span> says—</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge</p> +<p>Leans to the field,"</p> +</div></div> + +<p>and then goes on to speak of "the +wise thrush" on "the bent spray's edge" +as "singing his song twice over." It +is pretty obvious that the reason the +poet assigns to this action on the bird's +part is not the correct one. Evidently +the part of the tree on which it was sitting +was on the other side of the hedge +in the next-door fellow's garden, and +it was conscientiously trying to allot +one performance to each of the two +rival householders. But I seem to +have wandered a little from the ancient +home.</p> + +<p>Come with me in imagination, reader, +and let us have a look at it together. +The fourth house to the left in this +winding road that fringes the common, +you see it standing there gazing a little +wistfully, yet with a quiet air of semi-detachment, +out over the wide expanse +of green. Half right and half left are +two monstrous blocks of red brick flats +overlooking it with a thousand envious +eyes. The middle distance is dotted +pleasantly with hawthorn bushes and +the pretty pieces of sandwich-paper +that are always the harbingers of London's +Spring. Beyond these things, +and far away to the front, you may +detect on clear days a white church-tower +nestling like Swiss milk amongst +immemorial trees. And this view is +mine—mine, like the old home. If we +linger for a moment in the road we +shall probably see the scornful face of +the proud usurper at one of the windows +calmly enjoying this view of mine, +all unconscious that I, the rightful +owner, am standing beneath. Does it +not remind you of the films?—</p> + +<p>"<i>Charles Carruthers</i>, an outcast from +his ancestral halls, eyes mournfully +the scene of merry junketing within. +<i>Charles Carruthers</i>—<i>blick! blick!</i>"—and +you see him eyeing mournfully +outside—"<i>blick! blick!</i>"—and you +see the junketers eating his junket +within.</p> + +<p>On looking back in a calmer mood +on the lines which I have just written, +I feel it possible that I may have let +my emotions run away with me and +conveyed a slightly false impression. I +may have suggested that the old home +has belonged to my family since Domesday +Book or dear-knows-when or some +other historic date in our island story. +That would not be strictly true. As a +matter of fact I have never lived in the +house, nor have any of my relations +either. It has belonged to me, to be +quite accurate, since March 25th, 1920, +and the interloper was interloping on +a short lease when I bought the long +lease over his head. It is also true +that by an awkward and absurd convention +I have to restore the old home +to the ground landlord in 1941. But +who cares about what is going to +happen in 1941? The Coalition may +have come to an end by that time, and +the first Labour Government, under +Lord <span class="sc">Northcliffe</span> or Mr. <span class="sc">Jack Jones</span>, +may be in power. Some bricklayer, in +a mood of artistic frenzy, may have designed +the plan of a new brick and had +it passed by the Ministry of Housing. +<span class="sc">Dempsey</span> may have met <span class="sc">Carpentier</span>.</p> + +<p>No, the trouble is about the interloper. +It appears that, having the +remainder of a lease to run, he can go +on anteloping (you know what I mean) +for two years more if he likes. To do +him justice he admits that the place is +mine and wants to leave it. He has +no real love for the priceless old spot. +All that he asks is somewhere better to +go to. So I am gladly doing my best +to help him. I send him notices of +forty-roomed Tudor mansions, which +seem to abound in the market, mansions +with timbered parks, ornamental +waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, +herds of graceful bounding gazebos, +and immediate possession. I do more +than this. I send him extravagant +eulogies of lands across the seas, where +the grapes grow larger, the pear-trees +blossom all the year round and separate +thrushes laid on to each estate never +cease to sing. I suggest the advantages +of the mercantile marine and a +life on the rolling main, of big game +shooting, polar exploration, and the +residential attractions of Constantinople, +Berlin, Dublin and Vladivostok.</p> + +<p>Concurrently with this I try hard to +cultivate in him a certain distaste for +the dear old home. I walk up and +down the road in front of it with a pair +of field-glasses, and, if I see that a little +chip has fallen off anywhere or the +paint on the gate has been scratched, +I call on him at once.</p> + +<p>"I happened to be passing the +demesne," I say, "when I noticed a +rather serious item of dilapidation," or +"A word with you about the messuage; +it looks a trifle off colour to-day. +Have you had it blistered lately?" And +this worries him a good deal, because +he is responsible for all repairs.</p> + +<p>I do not fail to point out to my +friends, either, that this is my well-known +family seat, and I persuade +them from time to time to go and ask +for me at the door. "What, isn't he +living here <i>yet</i>?" I get them to say, +with a well-feigned surprise. "It is +his house, isn't it?" I frequently have +letters addressed to myself sent there, +and every morning and afternoon the +nurse takes the children past it for a +walk. The children are well drilled.</p> + +<p>"Look, Priscilla, that's our garden," +says Richard in a high penetrating +treble; and</p> + +<p>"There's a darlin' little buttercup. +I want to go in," Priscilla replies.</p> + +<p>All this quiet steady pressure is +bound to have its due effect in time. +Gradually I think he will begin to feel +that a shadow haunts the ancestral +halls (the front one, you know, and the +back passage), that a footstep not his +own treads behind him on the stair, +that the dear old home will never be +happy until it is occupied by its rightful +lord.</p> + +<p>I shall send him a marked copy of +this article.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Evoe</span>.</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2><i>VERS TRÈS LIBRE.</i></h2> + +<p class="center">(<i>Arabesque on a field of blue</i>).</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate,</p> +<p>Imposing, intime, dazzling or repellent,</p> +<p>That sing—better than music's self,</p> +<p>Better than rhyme—</p> +<p>The praise and liberty of blue:</p> +<p>The turquoise and the peacock's neck,</p> +<p>The blood of kings, the deeps</p> +<p>Of Southern lakes, the sky</p> +<p>That bends over the Azores,</p> +<p>The language of the links, the eyes</p> +<p>Of fair-haired angels, the</p> +<p>Policeman's helmet and the backs</p> +<p>Of books issued by the Government,</p> +<p>Also the Bird of Happiness (<span class="sc">Maeterlinck</span>)</p> +<p>And many other things such as</p> +<p>The Varsity colours, various kinds</p> +<p>Of pottery and limelight,</p> +<p>Some things by <span class="sc">Swinburne, Burns</span> and <span class="sc">Ezra Pound</span>,</p> +<p>The speedwell in the glade, and, oh!</p> +<p>The little cubes they put in wash-tubs.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10"><span class="sc">Refrain</span>.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate,</p> +<p>And so on down to "liberty of blue."</p> +</div> </div> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>[pg 250]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;"><a href="images/250.png"><img width="100%" src="images/250.png" alt="" /></a><h3>"OLIVER 'ASKS' FOR MORE."</h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Miner</span>. "YOU'LL BE SORRY ONE OF THESE DAYS THAT YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME +NATIONALIZATION."</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Premier</span>. "IF YOU KEEP ON LIKE THIS THERE WON'T BE ANY NATION LEFT TO +NATIONALIZE YOU."</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>[pg 251]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:77%;"><a href="images/251.png"><img width="100%" src="images/251.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Owner.</i> "<span class="sc">Smart little thing isn't she</span>?" + +<span class="wide"><i>Friend.</i></span> "<span class="sc">Pity she's so ugly below the water-line</span>."</p> + +<p><i>Owner.</i> "<span class="sc">Oh, well, nobody will see that</span>." + +<span class="wid"><i>Friend.</i></span> "<span class="sc">What about when she capsizes</span>?"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>TOOLS OF TRADE.</h2> + +<p>I am sorry for the man who took his +typewriter on the Underground and was +made to buy a bicycle-ticket for it. But +I have no doubt he deserved it. I am +sure that he did it in spiritual pride. +He was trying to make himself equal +to the manual labourer who carries +large bags of tools on the Tube and +sighs heavily as he lays them on your +foot. I am sure that he was tired of +being scornfully regarded by manual +labourers, and was determined to make +it quite clear that he too had done, or +was about to do, a day's labour, and +manual labour at that. It was a sinful +motive and it deserved to be punished; +but it was natural. Nowadays we all +feel like that. We caught it from the +War, when the great thing was to show +that you were doing more work than +anybody else.</p> + +<p>I take from a recent copy of <a name="hansard"><i>Hansard</i></a><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +the following brisk and delicate piece +of dialogue:—</p> + +<p>"Mr. <span class="sc">Macquisten</span>: You Labour men +have forgotten what sweat is.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">W. Thorne</span>: I have never seen +many lawyers sweat, anyhow.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Speaker</span>: This discussion is becoming +intemperate.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">An Hon. Member</span>: The Hon. Member +for Springburn never sweated in his life.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Macquisten</span>: Yes, I have laboured +in the docks."</p> + +<p>That is it, you see. Sweating is the +great criterion of usefulness to-day. If +you cannot show that you have sweated +in the past, you must at least show +that you are sweating now, or have +every intention of sweating in a moment +or two. Personally, as a private +secretary, I find it very difficult, though +I do my best. As a private secretary I +labour in a rich house in the notoriously +idle neighbourhood of South Kensington, +where nobody would believe +that anybody laboured, much less perspired +over it. So when I pass, on +the way to my rich house, a builder's +labourer or a milkman or a dustman, I +have to exhibit as clearly as I can all +the signs of a harsh employment and +industrial fatigue. I take great pains +about this; I walk much faster; I frown +heavily and I look as pale as possible. +In the Tube I close my eyes. I hope +all this is effective, but as far as I can +see the milkman never looks at me, +and the builder is always saying to +another builder, "'E says to me, 'Wot +abaht it?' 'e says, and I says to 'im, +'Yus, wot abaht it?' I says." But it is +worth the effort.</p> + +<p>Well, that is why that poor man was +carrying a typewriter. I wonder why +everybody else in the Tube carries an +"attaché-case." It has been calculated +that if all the attaché-cases which get +on to the train at Hammersmith at +9 <span class="sc">a.m.</span> were left on the platform, six +men or twelve women or three horses +could take their place in every car. +That means about ninety more men or +one-hundred-and-eighty more women +or forty-five more horses could leave +Hammersmith between 9 <span class="sc">a.m.</span> and 9.30. +So that if attaché-cases were forbidden +the traffic problem would be practically +solved.</p> + +<p>Why shouldn't they be forbidden? +It depends, of course, on what is inside +the cases; and nobody knows that for +certain. But one can guess. I have +been guessing for a long time. At first +I thought they were full of very confidential +papers. In the old days the +attaché-case was the peculiar trademark +of private secretaries and diplomats +and high-up people like that. +Even attachés carried them sometimes. +The very lowest a man with an attaché-case +could be was a First-Class Civil +Servant; and one was justified in +imagining confidential papers inside, or, +at any rate, home-work of the first +importance. But nowadays there are +too many of them for that. The +attaché-case has been degraded; it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>[pg 252]</span>universal. This might be because there +is practically no male person alive just +now who has not been an adjutant at +one time or another, and pinched at +least one attaché-case from the orderly-room. +But most of the cases in the +Tube are carried by females, so that +theory is no good.</p> + +<p>Well, then, I imagined sandwiches +or knitting or powder-puffs or tea; +but those also are rotten hypotheses. +I have too much faith in the good sense +of my fellow-countrywomen to believe +that they would cart a horrible thing +like a cheap attaché-case about simply +in order to convey a sandwich or a +powder-puff from one end of London +to the other. So I had to fall back on +my own experience.</p> + +<p>I know, at any rate, what is inside +mine. There are some rather grubby +envelopes which I borrowed from the +House of Commons, and some very +grubby blotting-paper from the same +source, and either a ream of foolscap +or a quire of foolscap, whichever is +which; some pipe-cleaners and a few +pieces of milk-chocolate; and a letter +from the Amalgamated Association of +Fish-Friers which ought to have been +answered a long time ago; and a memorandum +on Hog-Importing which I am +always going to read while waiting at the +station; and a nice piece of thick string +with which I have tied a bowline on +a bight; and two broken pencils and +some more envelopes; and a Parliamentary +Whip of last year and a +stationery bill of the year before; and +several bills of my employer, not to +mention a cheque for ninety-seven +pounds which I suppose he would like +me to send to the bank; and a great +deal of fluff and a pipe or two and four +or five stamped letters which it is now +too late to post. That is all there is in +my case.</p> + +<p>But I carry it backwards and forwards, +in and out, to and fro, day after +day; and the only time it is ever +opened at either end of the journey is +when, in addition to the articles previously +mentioned, it contains bottles. +But I do not carry it for the sake of +bottles; far from it. I am one of those +men who do not mind going about with +a comparatively naked bottle. I carry +it simply because it is the tool of my +trade, and because, if you don't carry a +tool of some kind on the Underground, +at any moment you may be taken for +an idle rich, if not actually a parasite, +who never sweated in his life.</p> + +<p>And that, I am persuaded, is why +everybody else carries theirs.</p> + +<p>But this is a very serious conclusion. +It will be a terrible thing if everyone +is going to carry the tools of his trade +about with him to show that he has a +trade; the barrister his briefs, the +doctor his stethoscope or his shiny +black bag; the butcher his chopper; +the dentist—but no, we cannot have +that. There must be other ways. We +might wear badges, as we did in the +War, only they would be office badges +and trade badges, instead of regimental +badges or discharged badges. Then +we should have again the dear old war-game +of trying to read what was on +them without being rude. That is what +one really misses in public places in +these days of Peace—that and the +uniforms.</p> + +<p>It was easy to make conversation in +a restaurant in the old days, when +people kept on coming in in curious +uniforms, and the ladies wondered +what they were and the men pretended +they knew all about them. But all +that is dead now, and I think these +sweat-badges would supply a serious +want.</p> + +<p>But what will the author wear? +And who will believe that he ever +breaks into beads of perspiration at his +labour?</p> + +<p>A. P. H.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>Footnote <a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">1:</span></a> February 24th, col. 1638.</p></div></div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:40%;"><a href="images/252.png"><img width="100%" src="images/252.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Butler</i> (<i>in service of the Earl of Kyloes</i>), "<span class="sc">Is that you, my lord?</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Burglar</i> (<i>full of guile</i>). "<span class="sc">Yus, matey</span>."</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"CAN EUROPE BE SAVED?</p> + +<p>By <span class="sc">Lovat Fraser.</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Daily Mail.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>We don't know; but there can be no +harm in his trying.</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Commercial Candour.</h2> + +<blockquote><p>"Your Soil needs a tonic. Send 2s. 6d. for +40 lb. Ground Lime in a Government twill +bag, worth half the money."—<i>Local Paper.</i></p> + +<p>"Antique Copper Fire-irons and Dogs, +almost new."—<i>Local Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>[pg 253]</span><h2>THE PACKET RAT.</h2> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"When I leave this Western Ocean, to the South'ard I will steer,</p> +<p>In a tall Colonial clipper far an' far enough from here,</p> +<p>Down the Channel on a bowline, through the Tropics runnin' free,</p> +<p>When I'm done with this 'ere ocean ... an' when it's done with me.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' I'll run my ship in Sydney, an' then I'll work my way</p> +<p>To them smilin' South Seas Islands where there's sunshine all the day,</p> +<p>An' I'll sell my chest an' gear there as soon's I hit the shore,</p> +<p>An' sling my last discharge away, an' go to sea no more.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"It's a pleasant time they have there—they've easy quiet lives;</p> +<p>They wear no clothes to speak on; they've a bunch of browny wives;</p> +<p>They're bathin' all the day long or baskin' on the sand,</p> +<p>With the jolly brown Kanakas as naked as your hand.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' I'll lay there in the palm-shade, an' take my ease all day,</p> +<p>An' look across the harbour at the shippin' in the bay,</p> +<p>An' watch the workin' sailormen—the bloomin' same as me</p> +<p>In the workin' Western Ocean afore I left the sea.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"I'll hear them at the capstan, a-heavin' good an' hard;</p> +<p>I'll hear them tallyin' on the fall or sweatin' up the yard;</p> +<p>Hear them lift a halliard shanty, hear the bosun swear and shout,</p> +<p>An' the thrashin' o' the headsheets as the vessel goes about.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An', if the fancy takes me, as it's like enough it may,</p> +<p>For to smell the old ship-smells again an' taste the salt an' spray,</p> +<p>I can take a spell o' pearlin' or a tradin' cruise or two</p> +<p>Where there's none but golden weather an' a sky that's always blue.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"But I'll do no sailorisin' jobs—I'll walk or lay at ease,</p> +<p>Like a blessed packet-captain, just as lordly as you please,</p> +<p>With a steward for my table an' a boy to bring my beer,</p> +<p>An' a score or so Kanakas for to reef an' haul an' steer.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' when I'm tired o' cruisin', up an' down an' here an' there,</p> +<p>There'll be kind Kanaka women wi' the red flowers in their hair</p> +<p>All a-waiting for to meet me there a-comin' in from sea,</p> +<p>When I'm through with this here ocean ... an' that'll never be!</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"For I'd hear the parrots screamin' an' the palm-trees' drowsy tune,</p> +<p>But I'd want the Banks in winter an' the smell of ice in June,</p> +<p>An' the hard-case mates a-bawlin', an' the strikin' o' the bell ...</p> +<p>God! I've cursed it oft an' cruel ... but I'd miss it all like Hell.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Yes, I'd miss the Western Ocean where the packets come an' go,</p> +<p>An' the grey gulls wheelin', callin', an' the grey sky hangin' low,</p> +<p>An' the blessed lights o' Liverpool a-winkin' through the rain</p> +<p>To welcome us poor packet-rats come back to port again.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' if I took an' died out there my soul'd never stay</p> +<p>In them sunny Southern latitudes to wait the Judgment Day,</p> +<p>For acrost the seas from England, oh, I'd hear the old life call,</p> +<p>An' the bloomin' Western Ocean it'd get me after all.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"I'd go flyin' like a seagull, as they say old shellbacks do,</p> +<p>For to see the ships I sailed in an' the shipmates that I knew,</p> +<p>An' the tough old North Atlantic where the roarin' gales do blow,</p> +<p>An' the Western Ocean packets all a-plyin' to an' fro.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' I'd leave the trades behind me an' I'd leave the Southern Cross,</p> +<p>An' the mollymawks an' flyin'-fish an' stately albatross,</p> +<p>An' I'd come through wind an' weather an' the fogs as white as wool,</p> +<p>Till I sighted old Point Lynas an' the Port o' Liverpool.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' I'd fly to some flash packet when the hands was bendin' sail,</p> +<p>An' I'd set up on the main-truck doin' out my wings an' tail,</p> +<p>An' I'd see the tug alongside an' the Peter flyin' free,</p> +<p>An' the pilot come aboard her for to take her out to sea.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"An' I'd follow down to Fastnet light, an' then I'd hang around</p> +<p>There to watch 'em out to westward an' to meet the homeward bound,</p> +<p>For I know it's easy talkin', an' I know when all is said</p> +<p>It's the bloomin' Western Ocean what'll get me when I'm dead!"</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>C. F. S.</p> +</div> </div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>ETIQUETTE FOR FIRES.</h2> + +<p>It seems that Mr. <span class="sc">A. R. Dyer</span>, the Chief Officer of the +London Fire Brigade, has issued a booklet giving hints +on fire protection and also how to call the Fire Brigade. +We have pleasure in giving a few points which we are +sure are not included in this interesting and useful publication.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Before sending for the Fire Brigade it is advisable to +make quite sure that you have a fire in the house to offer +them. But do not adopt the old plan of waiting until it +reaches the second-floor. This is rather apt to discolour +the wall-paper.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Above all the householder who intends to have a fire in +his house must keep calm. Immediately the maid rushes +into the room to say that the kitchen is on fire, place the +book you are reading on the table, remove your slippers +and put on a thick pair of heavy boots and a Harris tweed +shooting coat. Your next duty is to call the Fire Brigade, +and not to meddle with the fire yourself, for very often an +amateur completely spoils a fire before the Brigade arrives.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When you see the Brigade engine dashing along the +road don't stop it and offer to show the driver a short cut. +And when they start work do not worry the firemen by +telling them how to do it better. After all, while it may be +your house, it is their fire.</p> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"<span class="sc">To several interested</span>.—Our editor, Mr. —— is not an Englishman +his name is a pseudonime.—English ortograhist. Our +setters do not yet speak English at all, be assured that we will do sur +best to escape the errata in the nearest future."</p> + +<p><i>The World's Trade (Budapest).</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>We take their word for it but are not sanguine.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>[pg 254]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:45%;"><a href="images/254.png"><img width="100%" src="images/254.png" alt="" /></a><h3>MANNERS AND MODES.</h3> + +<p class="center">A MODERN PORTRAIT-PAINTER AND HIS "PATRONS."</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>[pg 255]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:75%;"><a href="images/255.png"><img width="100%" src="images/255.png" alt="" /></a><p>MR. ——, THE GREAT CINEMA ACTOR, WHILE STAYING IN THE COUNTRY INCOGNITO, IS ASKED BY THE +MANAGER OF THE PUMPLEFIELD FILM COMPANY TO HELP MAKE A CROWD.</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>PARTY TACTICS.</h2> + +<p>It began with my reading an article +on "How to be a Success at an Evening +Party." I was rather surprised to +know that, for one thing, some knowledge +of Spiritualism is necessary to +enable one to be a popular entertainer +nowadays. It has never struck me +before that spiritualists were such a +genial class, full of <i>bonhomie</i> and great +joy; but then, although I read the +Sunday papers, I'm afraid I don't know +enough about the subject.</p> + +<p>Even if we haven't got the rollicking +boisterous temperament of the +born spiritualist, however, there are, it +seems, other ways of winning a mild +popularity. "If you confess to only a +slight knowledge of palmistry," the +article continued, "it is often enough +to make you the centre of interest at +once."</p> + +<p>This appealed to me strongly. I like +to be the centre of interest. So I +bought a handbook on palmistry and, +having absorbed it, set out for my +next party full of confidence.</p> + +<p>Surely enough, the first thing I saw +on arrival was a dank-looking man holding +forth on Spiritualism, and enjoying +what I should call a chastened vogue +with most of the company gathered +about him.</p> + +<p>I took up my position on the fringe +of the group. "Talking of psychics, +the occult and all that sort of thing," +I remarked carelessly, "isn't cheiromancy +an interesting study?"</p> + +<p>"Nasty sort of study, I should call +it," murmured one of the company, evidently +under a vague impression that it +had something to do with feet. My +hostess looked up sharply. "Cheiromancy," +she repeated; "can you read +the hand?"</p> + +<p>"Only a little," I confessed modestly. +"Just enough to——"</p> + +<p>I don't quite know how it happened. +There was a sort of flank and rear +movement and the entire company, excepting, +of course, the dank spiritualist, +precipitated itself on me. Voices clamoured +for me to foretell destinies. Hands +were thrust before me. They eddied, +surged and swirled about me. I never +saw such a massed quantity of hands. +It was like leaving a Swiss hotel in the +height of the season.</p> + +<p>"One at a time, please," I said limply.</p> + +<p>I seized a palm, followed it up, and +found that it belonged to a pinched +sour-looking female. Her character +was stamped on her face as well as on +her hand. If, however, I had said to +her, "Yours is a flaccid repressed disposition +you have a lack of imagination +and a total absence of humour; +your life is too narrow and self-centred +to be of the least interest to anyone," +she might not have liked it. You see, +with even a slight knowledge of palmistry +you soon find out when reading +hands that it's no use telling people the +truth. They want a version which I +can only describe as "garbled."</p> + +<p>Accordingly I bent over the repressed +female's hand with an air of profundity +and said, "There being a total absence +of the mounts of Mercury and the Sun, +a calm and even nature is indicated." +(You're nearly always safe in saying +this.) "Your sense of order and of the +fitness of things would not allow you to +see any fun in the joke of, say, pulling +away a chair from anyone about to sit +down. In fact you would not see a +joke in anything—like that," I added +hastily, and gave her hand back, feeling +I had made the best of a bad job.</p> + +<p>But she still lingered.</p> + +<p>"Does it show if I shall——?" She +paused in embarrassment.</p> + +<p>"Get married?" I asked, knowing +human nature better than palmistry.</p> + +<p>She looked so fiercely eager, with +such a vivid light of hope in her eye, +that I decided to award her a husband +on the spot.</p> + +<p>"The Hepatica line, being allied to the +line of Fate," I said impressively "signifies +that you will marry—late in life."</p> + +<p>The press around me at once grew +terrific. All the girls said, "Tell me if +I'm going to get married;" and all the +men remarked, "Of course it's utter +rubbish," and were more eager about +it than the girls. I became reckless. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>[pg 256]</span>I worked my way steadily through the +crowd, doling out husbands with an unsparing +hand. And it was just when I +was beginning to feel a little tired of +the game that my enemy was delivered +into my hands.</p> + +<p>We were not on visiting or even +speaking terms; we were indeed the +most implacable foes. But that did +not prevent the woman from shamelessly +thrusting herself before me and +saying gushingly, "Do tell me what +you see in my hand."</p> + +<p>I looked at her, and before my searching +glance even her brazen face fell. +Six months previously that creature +had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I ever +had. Mere man may not understand +the enormity of this offence; but every +woman knows there is no crime more +heinous, more despicable, more unforgivable. +She might find it in her heart +to condone larceny, think lightly of +arson, or even excuse murder; but there +is not one who would extend even a +deathbed pardon to the person who had +robbed her of a treasured servant.</p> + +<p>And Wilkins had been a treasure indeed. +It brought the tears to my +eyes when I thought of her exquisite +<i>omelettes aux rognons</i>, her salads, her +<i>poularde à la gelée</i>, her wide diversity +of knowledge regarding <i>entrées</i> and savouries. +With a hard and bitter smile +I settled down to interpret the hand of +the woman before me.</p> + +<p>The company gathered closer round +us and I noticed that Mrs. B., the particular +friend of my enemy, bent affectionately +over her with truly feminine +expectation of "revelations." And from +under the scarf which my enemy wore +about her arms and shoulders she +seemed, I thought, to project her hand +rather timidly. Perhaps she realised +too late what was in store for her.</p> + +<p>I was quite dignified about it; I want +you to understand that. Many another, +seeing that creature so plump and well-fed +and knowing the reason, would have +broken out into vituperation. But my +tactics were more subtle. My manner, +as I studied her palm, was at first +nonchalant, even urbane. Then I gave +a start and faltered, "I—I suppose you +wish me to tell you the truth?"</p> + +<p>A frightened look came into her eyes +which, I noted with satisfaction, were +beginning to show tinges of yellow +(Wilkins' only fault is that in some of +her dishes she is over-liberal with the +salad oil and high seasonings). "Of +course I want to know the truth," said +my victim faintly.</p> + +<p>With an apparent air of diffidence I +began my recital. I did not spare her +in the smallest degree. I ascribed to +her all those sinister characteristics I +had read about in the handbook; and, +when I suddenly remembered a delicious +<i>vol-au-vent</i> upon which I had doted, +I added a few of my own.</p> + +<p>It was a terrible indictment. When +I had finished an awed silence fell +upon the gathering. Everybody waited +breathlessly for the victim to speak.</p> + +<p>"That was most interesting," she +said with a sinister laugh. "But perhaps +you will read <i>my</i> palm now. You +see, it was Mrs. B.'s that you have just +read. She slipped her hand through +under my scarf."</p> + +<p>There was a burst of laughter from +everybody. Idiotic kind of joke, I call it.</p> + +<p>I can assure the writer of the Sunday +articles that a knowledge of palmistry +does not necessarily make one popular.</p> + +<p>I am now wondering where you can +buy hand-books on spiritualism.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:75%;"><a href="images/256.png"><img width="100%" src="images/256.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Philosopher</i> (<i>who has been mistaken for the football</i>). "<span class="sc">Thank 'Eving the cricket season'll soon be 'ere</span>!"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"It is proposed that the family man shall be +dealt with on a flat rate. Every wife will confer +exemption on £100 of income."—<i>Spectator.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>Surely our revered contemporary does +not imply that the new Income Tax +proposals will encourage polygamy.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>[pg 257]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:70%;"><a href="images/257.png"><img width="100%" src="images/257.png" alt="" /></a><h3>THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.</h3> + +<p><i>Polite Passenger.</i> "<span class="sc">Do you mind smoking, Madam</span>?"</p> + +<p><i>Old Lady.</i> "<span class="sc">Not at all. I'll smoke with pleasure if they're Gyppies. Can't <i>stand</i> gaspers.</span>"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="sc">An appeal to all men of good will.</span></p> + +<p>The League of Nations Union is engaged in a campaign +for the purpose of making the objects of the League of +Nations better understood in the country at large. The +chief danger that threatens the League is to be found in +the apathy or unconsidered scepticism of the public; almost +the sole active opposition comes from those who would +substitute for it a proletarian Internationale devoted to the +interests of one class only in the world, and from certain reactionaries +who favour a return to the system of imperialism +which was the cause of the War. In the words of <span class="sc">His +Majesty the King</span>, "We fought to gain a lasting Peace +and it is our supreme duty to take every measure to secure +it. For that nothing is more essential than a strong and +enduring League of Nations. The Covenant of Paris is a +good foundation, well and truly laid. But it is and can be +no more than a foundation. The nature and strength of +the structure to be built upon it must depend on the +earnestness and sincerity of popular support."</p> + +<p>To those, if any, who contend that the Government should +be left to carry out its own propaganda for the League of +Nations the obvious answer is that it is necessary for this +work to be done by an independent body which can bring +public pressure to bear upon the Government of the day +and urge such amendments in the machinery and constitution +of the League as time and experience may show to +be desirable. The Union, in fact, bears to the League of +Nations the same relation that the Navy League bears to +the Senior Service; it is an independent body organised to +educate opinion in the needs of a national cause.</p> + +<p>Since its inception in January of this year the activities +of the League have covered a wide range, which embraces +organisation for the administering of territory under its +trusteeship, and for the consideration of international +questions relating to transit, finance, labour and health. +America's repudiation (only temporary, it may be hoped) +of the pledges of her own President, the original and chief +advocate of the League of Nations, has meanwhile thrown +upon Great Britain the main burden of responsibility in +the Councils of the League, a fact that constitutes an overwhelming +claim upon the patriotism of British citizens. +The duty of bringing this claim home to the public has been +taken up by the League of Nations Union, under the Presidency +of Lord <span class="sc">Grey of Fallodon</span>. It has already established +a headquarters and a staff of experts; organised hundreds +of meetings throughout the country, and inaugurated +nearly two hundred branches. It publishes two periodicals +and many pamphlets and is preparing educational text-books; +it is taking part in an international conference with similar +voluntary societies in other countries.</p> + +<p>Clearly such work cannot be carried on without generous +support. The sum for which the League of Nations Union +appeals—a million pounds—may sound large, but it represents +only the cost of four hours of the War, and is not +much to ask as an insurance against another and yet more +terrible war.</p> + +<p>Mr. Punch very earnestly begs his readers to send contributions +in aid of this great and necessary work to the +Hon. Treasurer of the Fund (Sir <span class="sc">Brien Cokayne</span>, late +Governor of the Bank of England), addressed to <span class="sc">The +League of Nations Union</span>, 22, Buckingham Gate, S.W.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>[pg 258]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:45%;"><a href="images/258.png"><img width="100%" src="images/258.png" alt="" /></a><h3>THE HOPE OF THE WORLD.</h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Peace.</span> "THIS IS MY TEMPLE AND YOU ARE ITS PRIESTESS. GUARD WELL THE +SACRED FLAME."</p> + +<p>[The objects and needs of the League of Nations Union are set out on the opposite page.]</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>[pg 259]</span><h2>ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.</h2> + +<p><i>Monday, March 29th.</i>—During a brief +sitting the Lords got through a good +deal of business. The Silver Coinage +Bill awakened Lord <span class="sc">Chaplin's</span> reminiscences +of his bimetallic days, when he +was accused by Sir <span class="sc">William Harcourt</span> +of trying to stir up mutiny in India. +Undeterred by this warning, however, +the Peers gave a Second Reading to +the measure and also to the Coal Mines +Emergency Bill, which is less +up-to-date than it sounds, +and deals not with the present +emergency but with the last +emergency but one. They +also passed the Importation +of Plumage Bill, at the instance +of Lord <span class="sc">Aberdeen</span>, who +pleaded that beautiful birds, +"the result of myriads of +years of evolution," should +not be exterminated to make +a British matron's picture-hat.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width:40%;"><a href="images/259.png"><img width="100%" src="images/259.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Mr. <span class="sc">Macpherson.</span></i> <span class="sc">"With all these cherubs going for my kite +full blast it looks as if I might keep the thing flying</span>."</p> +<br /> +<p class="center">LORD ROBERT CECIL. CAPTAIN REDMOND.</p> + +<p class="center">MESSRS. CLYNES AND ASQUITH.</p></div> + +<p>A few noble lords tore +themselves away from these +entrancing topics to attend +the opening of the debate in +the Commons on the Government +of Ireland Bill. They +were ill-rewarded for their +pains, for never has a Home +Rule debate produced fewer +interesting moments. The +<span class="sc">Chief Secretary</span> was so +studiously restrained in explaining +the merits of the Bill +that the "yawning chasm" +which, according to its opponents, +the measure is going +to create between Southern +and Northern Ireland was to +be observed in advance on the +countenances of many of his +listeners. Years ago Mr. <span class="sc">Balfour</span> +told the Irish Nationalists +that Great Britain was +not to be bored into acceptance +of Home Rule; but I +am beginning to doubt now +whether he was right. If the +Government get the Bill through it will +be due more to John Bull's weariness +of the eternal Irish Question than to +any enthusiastic belief in the merits of +this particular scheme. Hardly anyone +off the Treasury Bench had a good +word to say for it, but fortunately for +its chances their criticisms were often +mutually destructive.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Clynes</span> moved its rejection. From +his remark that Irish respect for the +law was destroyed in 1913, and that +the present Administration was regarded +as "the most abominable form +of government that had ever ruled in +Ireland," I should gather that he has +only recently begun his researches into +Irish history and Irish character, and is +working backwards. His prescription +was to cease governing Ireland by +force and leave her to frame her own +constitution.</p> + +<p>Lord <span class="sc">Robert Cecil</span> agreed with Mr. +<span class="sc">Clynes</span> in regarding it as a very bad +Bill, but there parted company with +him. In his view the deterioration of +Ireland began in 1906, when the era of +"firm government" came to an end. +Drop coercion by all means, but "let +the murderers begin." As for forcing +self-government on a country that rejected +it, that was nonsense.</p> + +<p>As "a citizen of the world," and +not merely an Irishman, Mr. <span class="sc">T. P. +O'Connor</span> denounced the Bill <i>urbi et +orbi</i>. Nobody in Ireland wanted it +unless it was the place-hunters of the +Bar and the Press, for whom it would +provide rich pickings.</p> + +<p>The House was brought back from +rhetoric to plain fact by the <span class="sc">Chancellor +of the Exchequer's</span> reminder that if +the Bill were not passed the Home +Rule Act of 1914 would come into +force. He hoped that Southern Ireland +would recover its sanity, accept the Bill +and set itself to persuade Ulster into an +All-Ireland Parliament <i>viâ</i> the golden +bridge of the Irish Council.</p> + +<p>Captain <span class="sc">Craig</span> could not imagine +that happening in his lifetime. To his +mind the only merit of the Bill was +that it safeguarded Ulster against +Dublin domination.</p> + +<p><i>Tuesday, March 30th.</i>—Someone—I +suspect a midshipman—has been telling +Mr. <span class="sc">Bromfield</span> that five +British Admirals have been +sent to Vienna to supervise +the breaking up of the Austrian +Fleet, and that the said +Fleet now consists of three +motor-boats. He was much +relieved to hear from Mr. +<span class="sc">Harmsworth</span> that only one +Admiral had been sent, and +that the disposal of a Dreadnought, +several pre-Dreadnoughts +and sundry smaller +craft will give him plenty to do.</p> + +<p>There appears to be a shortage +of ice in Hull. It is supposed +that the Member for the +Central Division (Lieut.-Commander +<span class="sc">Kenworthy</span>) has not +cut so much as he expected.</p> + +<p>The debate on the Home +Rule Bill was resumed in a +much higher temperature +than that of yesterday. Mr. +<span class="sc">Asquith</span>, as he thundered in +carefully-polished phrases +against the "cumbrous, costly, +unworkable scheme," earned +many cheers from his followers, +and the even greater +tribute of interruptions from +his opponents. For a moment +he was pulled up, when to his +rhetorical question, "What +has Home Rule meant to us?" +some graceless Coalitionist +promptly answered, "Votes!" +but he soon got going again. +Ireland, he declared, was a +unit. The Bill gave her dualism +"with a shadowy background +of remote and potential unity." +The vaunted Council was "a fleshless +and bloodless skeleton." He remarked +upon "the sombre acquiescence of the +Ulstermen," and wondered why they +had accepted the Bill at all. "Because +we don't trust <i>you</i>," came the swift +reply from Sir <span class="sc">Edward Carson</span>.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Asquith's</span> own remedy for Irish +unrest was to take the Act of 1914 +and transform it into something like +Dominion Home Rule. Any county—Ulster +or Sinn Fein—that voted against +coming under the Dublin Parliament +should be left under the present administration.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>[pg 260]</span>Mr. <span class="sc">Bonar Law</span> did not fail to point +out the inconsistency of condemning +the Government scheme for its complexity +and then immediately proposing +another which would involve not one +but a dozen partitions and make the +political map of Ireland look like a +crazy quilt. He advised the House to +reject Mr. <span class="sc">Asquith's</span> advice and pass +the Bill, even though it should have +the paradoxical result, for the moment, +of leaving Nationalist Ireland under +British administration while providing +Unionist Ulster with a Home Rule Parliament +for which it has never asked.</p> + +<p>I suppose Mr. <span class="sc">Devlin</span> is not like the +Sinn Feiners, who, according to "T. P.," +are so contemptuous of the Bill that +they have never read a line of it. Parts +of his speech, and particularly his +peroration, seemed far more suitable +to a Coercion Bill than to a measure +which is designed, however imperfectly, +to grant Home Rule to Ireland. The +Nationalist leader may be forgiven a +great deal, however, for his inimitable +description of Lord <span class="sc">Robert Cecil</span> as +"painfully struggling into the light +with one foot in the Middle Ages."</p> + +<p><i>Wednesday, March 31st.</i>—The third +and last Act of the Home Rule drama +was the best. Nothing in the previous +two days' debate—not even Mr. <span class="sc">Bonar +Law's</span> ruthless analysis of the Paisley +policy for Ireland—gripped the audience +so intensely as Sir <span class="sc">Edward Carson's</span> +explanation of the Ulster attitude. He +declared that the Union had not failed +in Ulster, and would not have failed +anywhere if British politicians could +have refrained from bidding for Irish +votes. There was no alternative to it +but complete separation, and that was +what Home Rule would lead to. Ulster +did not want the Bill, and would not +vote for it; but, as the only alternative +was the Act of 1914, she was +prepared to accept it as a <i>pis aller</i>, and +to work her new Parliament for all it +was worth. At least it would enable her +to find schools for the thirty thousand +Belfast children now debarred from +education. More than that, he was +prepared to co-operate with any men +from Southern Ireland who were willing +to work <i>their</i> Parliament in a +similar spirit; and he paid a personal +tribute to Mr. <span class="sc">Devlin</span>, whose courage +he admired though he detested his +politics.</p> + +<p>Thus there were gleams of hope even +in his otherwise gloomy outlook, as the +<span class="sc">Prime Minister</span> gladly acknowledged +in winding up the debate; and they +probably had some influence in swelling +the majority for the Bill, the figures +being 348 for the Second Reading, 94 +against.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:65%;"><a href="images/260.png"><img width="100%" src="images/260.png" alt="" /></a><p class="center">"<span class="sc">Please, Mister, can I have a pennorth of camel</span>?"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2><i>POISSON D'AVRIL.</i></h2> + +<p>For the tragedy of which I am about +to tell I consider that Brenda Scott is +entirely to blame. You shall judge.</p> + +<p>There is a vacancy in my domestic +staff, and the rush to fill it has been +less enthusiastic than I could wish. +My housewifely heart leapt, therefore, +when, last Thursday morning, I espied +coming up the drive one whom I classed +at once as an applicant for the post of +housemaid. Nor was I deceived. She +gave the name of Eliza Smudge, and +said she came from my friend, Mrs. +Copplestone.</p> + +<p>My suspicions were first aroused by her +extraordinary solicitude for my comfort. +"Outings" were entirely according to +my convenience. And when she added +that she liked to have plenty to do, and +that she always rose by 6 <span class="sc">a.m.</span>, I began +to look at her closely.</p> + +<p>She wore a thick veil, and her eyes +were further obscured by large spectacles, +but I could discern a wisp of rather +artificial-looking hair drawn across her +forehead. And she was smiling.</p> + +<p>Now why was she smiling? I could +certainly see nothing to smile at in +rising at six o'clock every morning.</p> + +<p>"I shall be free on 5th of April, +ma'am," she was saying. "Let me see, +to-day is the 1st of April——"</p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>[pg 261]</span><p>The 1st of April! It came to me then +in a flash—in one of those moments +of intuition of which even the mind of +the harassed housewife occasionally is +capable. It was Brenda Scott masquerading +as a housemaid!</p> + +<p>Our conversation of a fortnight earlier +came back to me—Brenda's desire +to disguise herself and apply to Lady +Lupin for the post of kitchenmaid, her +confidence in her ability to carry it +off successfully, my ridicule of the +possibility that she could pass unrecognised. +So now, on the 1st of April, +she was for proving me wrong.</p> + +<p>The disguise was certainly masterly. +Had it not been for that unaccountable +smile, and the hair——</p> + +<p>I did not lose my head. I continued +to carry on the conversation on orthodox +lines. Then I said, "Do you know +Miss Brenda Scott, who lives near +Mrs. Copplestone?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I've known her since she +was a little girl," was the answer. +"Sweet young lady she is."</p> + +<p>"Ye—es," I said. "A little too fond +of practical jokes, perhaps."</p> + +<p>The eyebrows went up almost to the +artificial-looking hair, which I had now +decided was horse-hair.</p> + +<p>"Indeed," she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear Brenda, it is your +besetting sin. You should pray against +it," I said bluntly.</p> + +<p>She stood up with an opposing air of +surprise and alarm. But I was not to +be deceived.</p> + +<p>"Your assumed name, Eliza Smudge," +I said, "gave you away at the start. And +that hair—it is the tail of your nephew's +rocking-horse, isn't it? And——"</p> + +<p>But she had fled from the room and +was scudding down the drive, heedless +of my cries of "Brenda, you idiot, come +back!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>As I watched from the front-door +I saw that "Eliza Smudge" had met +another woman in the lane and had +engaged her in conversation.</p> + +<p>Then they parted, and the other +woman came in at the gate and up the +drive.</p> + +<p>"My dear Elfrida," said a well-known +voice, "what have you been up to? +You seem to have thoroughly upset +that nice woman who was with the +Copplestones so long. She told me you +were a very strange lady; in fact she +thought you must be suffering from a +nervous breakdown."</p> + +<p>I leaned for support against the +door-post, feeling a little faint.</p> + +<p>"Brenda? You?" I gasped. "I +thought——"</p> + +<p>"Such a splendid maid she is," +Brenda went on. "You'll never find +her equal if you try for ten years."</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:65%;"><a href="images/261.png"><img width="100%" src="images/261.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Mistress.</i> "<span class="sc">Too many weeds, William</span>."</p> + +<p><i>William.</i> "<span class="sc">Let 'em bide, Mum. Nothing like weeds to show young plants 'ow to grow</span>."</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Eccentric Behaviour of a Cuckoo.</h2> + +<blockquote><p>"The summer-like weather which set in +during the week-end has been marked by the +arrival of the cuckoo, which was heard at +Shanklin on Saturday and on Sunday morning +at Staplers, bursting into full flower of plum +and pear trees, and general activity in the +gardens and fields."—<i>Local Paper.</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p>"He (Mr. Asquith) could only say 'O +Sanctas Simplicitas.' (Laughter.)"</p> + +<p><i>Irish Paper.</i></p> + +<p>"I can only say: 'O sanctus simplicitus!'"</p> + +<p><i>Yorkshire Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>Neither version seems to us quite worthy +of an ex-Craven Scholar.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>[pg 262]</span><h2>AT THE PLAY.</h2> + +<p class="center">"<span class="sc">Uncle Ned.</span>"</p> + +<p>As the final curtain fell on the Fourth +Act there was talk of celebrating the +conversion of the villain in a bottle of +the best (1906). But this did not mean +that the good wine of the play had been +kept to the end. Indeed it had been +practically exhausted about the middle +of the Third Act, and the rest was barley-water, +sweet but relatively insipid. +So long as Mr. <span class="sc">Henry Ainley</span> was just +allowed to sparkle, with beaded bubbles +winking all round the brim of him, +everything went well and more than +well; the trouble began when the +author, Mr. <span class="sc">Douglas Murray</span>, remembered +that no British audience would +be contented with mere irresponsible +badinage, however fresh and delicate; +that somehow he must provide an ending +where virtue prevailed and sentiment +was satisfied.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width:40%;"><a href="images/262.png"><img width="100%" src="images/262.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Sir Robert Graham</i> (<i>Mr. <span class="sc">Randle Ayrton</span></i>). +"<span class="sc">Make yourself at home. Don't mind me.</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Edward Graham</i> (<i>Mr. <span class="sc">Henry Ainley</span></i>). "<span class="sc">I +don't.</span>"</p></div> + +<p>So, when <i>Uncle Ned's</i> humour had +failed to move the brutal egoism of his +brother, beating upon it like the lightest +of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, he +was made to fall back upon the alternative +of heavy denunciation. And it was +significant that this commonplace tirade +drew more applause than all the pretty +wit that had gone before it. Seldom +have I been so profoundly impressed +with the difficulties of an art which +depends for its success (financial, that +is to say) on the satisfaction of tastes +that have nothing in common beyond +the crudest elements of human nature.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Ainley</span> had things all his own +way. Between him, the romancer of the +light heart and the free fancy, and +his brother, the millionaire tradesman +of the tough hide, there was the clash +of temperaments but never the clash of +intellects. ("Nobody with a sense of +humour," says <i>Uncle Ned</i>, "ever made +a million pounds.") That the man with +the iron will should be beaten at the +last with his own weapons, and brought +to see the lifelong error of his ways by +a violent philippic that must have surprised +the speaker hardly less than his +audience, was the most incredible thing +in the play. Indeed the author was +reduced to showing us the results of the +bad man's change of heart and leaving +us to imagine the processes, these being +worked out in the interval between two +Acts by means of a fortnight's physical +collapse, from which he emerges +unrecognisably reformed.</p> + +<p>I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully +fantastic and inconsequent +humour of the first half of the play. +Often it was the things that Mr. <span class="sc">Ainley</span> +was given to say; but even more often, +I think, it was the incomparable way +he said them, with those astonishingly +swift and unforeseen turns of gesture +and glance and movement which are +his peculiar gift. Now and then, to remind +us of his versatility, he may turn +to sentiment or even tragedy, but light +comedy remains his natural <i>métier</i>.</p> + +<p>If I have a complaint to make it is +that <i>Uncle Ned's</i> studied refusal to +understand from an intimate woman-friend +why it was that his elder niece, +who had been privily married, "could +no longer hide her secret" (the reticence +of his friend was the sort of silly thing +that you get in books and plays, but +never in life) was perhaps a little +wanton and caused needless embarrassment +both to the young wife and to us. +And one need not be very squeamish to +feel that it was a pity to put into the +lips of a mere child, a younger sister, +the rather precocious comment that she +makes on the inconvenience of a secret +marriage. The humour of the play +was too good to need assistance from +this sort of titillation.</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Randle Ayrton</span>, as the plutocratic +pachyderm, kept up his thankless +end with a fine imperviousness; and +Miss <span class="sc">Irene Rooke</span>, in the part of his +secretary, played, as always, with a very +gracious serenity, though I wish this +charming actress would pronounce her +words with not quite so nice a precision. +Miss <span class="sc">Edna Best</span> was an admirable +flapper, with just the right note +of <i>gaucherie</i>.</p> + +<p>As <i>Mears</i>, Mr. <span class="sc">Claude Rains</span> was not +to be hampered by the methods dear to +the detective of convention; he looked +like an apache and behaved, rather +effectively, like nothing in particular.</p> + +<p>The <i>Dawkins</i> of Mr. <span class="sc">G. W. Anson</span> knew +well the first duty of a stage-butler, to +keep coming on whenever a stop-gap +is wanted; but he had also great personal +qualities, to say nothing of his +astounding record of forty years' service +in a house where strong liquor +was only permitted for "medicinal" +purposes.</p> + +<p>O. S.</p> + +<br /> + +<p class="center">"<span class="sc">The Young Person in Pink.</span>"</p> + +<p>What the chair-man said about <i>The +Young Person in Pink</i> who had been +hanging about the Park every morning +for a week was that nowadays you +couldn't really tell. He thought on the +whole she was all right. The balloon-woman +was certain that with boots +like that she must be a 'ussy; but then +she had refused to buy a balloon. As +a matter of fact she couldn't, being +broke to the world. And worse. For +she had arrived at Victoria Station unable +to remember who she was or where +she came from, ticketless, a few shillings +in her purse. She had murmured +"Season" at the barrier and had taken +rooms at the Carlton because she had +a queer feeling she had been there before. +Her things had a coronet on +them. The rest was a blank.</p> + +<p>Of course nobody believed her; the +women were scornful, the men not quite +nice, till very young <i>Lord Stevenage</i>, +the one that was engaged to a notorious +baby-snatcher, <i>Lady Tonbridge</i>—in +a high fever he'd unfortunately said +"Yes"—meets her, and you guess the +rest. No, you don't. You couldn't +possibly guess <i>Mrs. Badger</i>, relict of an +undertaker and now in the old-clothes +line, who has social ambitions. (I must +here say in parenthesis that <i>Mrs. Badger</i> +is a double stroke of genius on the part +both of Miss <span class="sc">Jennings</span> the author and +of Miss <span class="sc">Sydney Fairbrother</span>. You +don't know which to admire most, the +things she says [Miss J.] or the way +she says them [Miss S. B.]. Honours +divided and high honours at that.)</p> + +<p><i>Lady Tonbridge</i> had advertised for a +clergyman's widow to render some +secretarial service, and the ambitious +<i>Mrs. Badger</i> had applied, duly weeded. +Meanwhile the elderly <i>Lady T.</i> had +seen her <i>fiancé</i> and with the young +person in pink, and it was a brilliant +and base afterthought to bribe the +clergyman's widow to claim the girl as +her long-missing daughter (invented). +Both the young Lord and the young +person, too much in love perhaps to be +critical, accept the situation; but you +haven't quite got <i>Mrs. Badger</i> if you +think she's the sort of person one +would precisely jump at for a mother-in-law.</p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>[pg 263]</span><p>At the supreme moment when <i>Mrs. B.</i>, +after an interview with the whisky +bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into +the mere widow of the undertaker, gives +it to the intriguing <i>Lady Tonbridge</i> in +the neck with a wealth of imagery, a +command of slightly slurred invective +and a range of facial expression beyond +adequate description, she is perhaps +less attractive in the capacity of mother-by-marriage +than ever, even if the interlude +prove the goodness of her heart. +But it is just at that moment that the +young person is recognised by her maid. +The daughter of the <i>Duchess of Hampshire</i>, +no less! So all is well.</p> + +<p>Not that Miss <span class="sc">Jennings'</span> plot matters. +She freely accepts the absurdities which +her bizarre outline demands, but doesn't +shirk the pains to make her situations +possible within the pleasantly impossible +frame. What is all-important is +that she does shake the house with +genuinely explosive humour.</p> + +<p>If they were Miss <span class="sc">Jennings'</span> bombs, +Miss <span class="sc">Fairbrother</span> threw the most and +the best of them with a perfect aim. The +rest of the platoon helped in varying +degrees. I hope I don't irretrievably +damage Miss <span class="sc">Joyce Carey's</span> reputation +as a modern when I say that she looked +so pretty and innocent that I don't believe +even sour old spinsters would have +doubted her. A charming and capable +performance. Mr. <span class="sc">Donald Calthrop</span> +made love quite admirably on the lighter +note; a little awkwardly, perhaps, on +the more serious. Miss <span class="sc">Sybil Carlisle</span> +handled an unpromising part with great +skill. Miss <span class="sc">Ellis Jeffreys</span> as the ineffable +<i>Lady Tonbridge</i> was as competent +as ever, and had a coat and skirt +in the Third Act which filled the female +breast with envy. Looks like a long run.</p> + +<p>T.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:65%;"><a href="images/263.png"><img width="100%" src="images/263.png" alt="" /></a><h3>DRESSING THE PART.</h3> + +<p><i>Stout Tramp</i> (<i>who has been successful at the last house</i>). "<span class="sc">This is a nice 'at she's given me.</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Partner.</i> "<span class="sc">Yus, it <i>is</i> a nice 'at; but, mind you, it ain't got the bread-winnin' qualities of the old 'un.</span>"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"Art in Washing—with economy.—Ladies +desiring personal attention are invited to apply +to —— Laundry."—<i>Daily Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>No "imperfect ablutioner" (<i>vide</i> "The +Mikado") should miss this opportunity.</p> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p>"Fun undiluted and rippling is the main +feature of <i>The Little Visiters</i>, and not a single +feature of the author's book is lost in the process +of dramatisation."—<i>Weekly Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>Except, apparently, the title.</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>The Boat-Race.</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="sc">Advantages Enjoyed by Cambridge.</span></p> + +<p>In complimenting the Light Blues +we cannot help calling attention to two +curious facts which may have contributed +to their victory, and seem to +have escaped the notice of the Oxford +crew. According to <i>The Weekly Dispatch</i> +Mr. <span class="sc">Swann</span> rowed "No. 9 in the +Cambridge boat"; and a photograph +in <i>The Illustrated Sunday Herald</i> +("the camera cannot lie") distinctly +shows the Cambridge crew rowing with +as many as eight oars on the stroke +side. How many they were using on +the bow side is not revealed.</p> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p class="center">"WANTED IMMEDIATELY!</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="sc">Medical Doctor</span></p> + +<p>for Joe Batt's Arm and vicinity. Salary two +thousand dollars guaranteed. All specials additional. +Address communication to</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Alex. Coffin</span>,</p> +<p>Sec. Doctor's Committee."</p> +</div></div> +<p><i>Newfoundland Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>Even the serious condition of Joe Batt's +Arm hardly interests us so much as +the challenge to the world's humourists +implied in the Committee's selection of +their secretary.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>[pg 264]</span><h2>MY ONE ADMIRER.</h2> + +<p>Of course my wife had made me go +to the bazaar. All men go to bazaars +either because their wives send them, +or in search of possible wives. The +men who are never at bazaars are +those with humane wives, or the true +bachelors.</p> + +<p>I did not mind the young lady who +grabbed my walking-stick and presented +me with a shilling cloakroom ticket, +or the other who placed a buttonhole +in my coat (two-and-sixpence), or the +third who sprayed me with scent (one +shilling, but had I known of the +threatened attack I would have paid +two shillings for immunity), or the +fourth, who snatched my rather elderly +silk hat and renovated it, not before its +time, with some mysterious fluid (one-and-ninepence). +These are the things +one expects.</p> + +<p>But when I faced the stalls I must +admit that I trembled. In pre-war +days it was occasionally hinted that +bazaar prices were a trifle high. What +would they be now? How could I face +the Bazaar profiteer? Sums, reminding +me of schooldays, ran in my head, "If +milk be a shilling a quart what will be +the price of a sofa-cushion?"</p> + +<p>As I stood in the centre of the hall +I could see that the eyes of the stall-holders +were upon me—cold, horrid, +calculating eyes. I could read in them, +"How much has this man got?" I +felt that it would be a proper punishment +for war-profiteers if they were +sentenced to purchase all their requirements +at bazaars for six months.</p> + +<p>Glancing round the hall in search +of a place of refuge I saw a sign, +"Autograph Exhibition—Admission one +shilling." A shilling! Why, such a +comfortable hiding-place would have +been cheap at half-a-crown. I bolted +for the Autograph Exhibition before a +piratical lady, bearing down on me +with velvet smoking caps, could reduce +me to pulp.</p> + +<p>A smiling elderly gentleman was +in charge. "Hah, you would like to +see my little collection? Certainly, +certainly."</p> + +<p>I am not interested in autographs. +Most bygone celebrities wrote undecipherable +hands. I have been equally +puzzled in trying to read the handwriting +of <span class="sc">Guy Fawkes</span> and Mr. +<span class="sc">Gladstone</span>. But this collection was +different. It had letters from nearly +every one distinguished in the world +to-day—good, lengthy, interesting, +readable letters.</p> + +<p>"How did you contrive to get all +these?" I asked the exhibitor.</p> + +<p>"Tact, foresight and flattery, my +dear Sir. It would be no use writing +to these people to-day. You'd get +ignored, or at best two lines type-written +by a secretary. Now look at +that long letter from <span class="sc">Lloyd George</span> +about Welsh nationality and that other +from <span class="sc">Hilaire Belloc</span> concerning the +adulteration of modern beer. You +couldn't get them now. My idea is to +catch your celebrity young. When a +man produces his first play or novel +or book of poems I write him an admiring +letter. You can't lay it on too +thick. Ask him some question on a +topic that interests him. It always +draws. They are unused to praise and +you catch them before the public has +spoilt them. I card-index all the +replies I get. Of course nine out of +ten of the people turn out of no +account, but some are sure to come off. +You just throw out the failures and +put the successes in your collection."</p> + +<p>At this point I heard our Archdeacon +afar off. Our Archdeacon booms—not +like trade, but like the bittern. I heard +him booming outside, "My dear lady, +I cannot miss the chance of seeing dear +Mr. Fletterby's collection."</p> + +<p>Fletterby! The name was familiar. +Long years ago I published something—don't +inquire into the details of my +crime—and the sole response I had +from an unappreciative world was a +highly eulogistic letter from one Samuel +Fletterby. I remembered the time I +had spent in writing him a lengthy and +courteous reply. I remembered that +often in my darker days I had drawn +out the letter of Fletterby to encourage +me.</p> + +<p>And now! I looked at the collection. +It was arranged alphabetically. As +I turned to the initial of my name I +framed a dramatic revelation for my +friend Fletterby: "That writing is +familiar to me. In fact, Mr. Fletterby, +I am its unworthy writer."</p> + +<p>But my letter was not included in +the collection.</p> + +<p>"Throw out the failures," Mr. Fletterby +had said.</p> + +<p>I threw myself out instantly from +the Autograph Exhibition. Better, far +better buy things I didn't want at +prices I couldn't afford than stay in the +company of that faithless one, my sole +erstwhile (as the papers say) admirer.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>There was a great athlete named <span class="sc">Rudd</span></p> +<p>Who was born with a Blue in his blood;</p> +<p class="i6">Stout-hearted, spring-heeled,</p> +<p class="i6">He achieved on the field</p> +<p>What his Varsity lost on the flood.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But when he had breasted the tape</p> +<p>A cynic emitted this jape:</p> +<p class="i6">"Pray notice, old son,</p> +<p class="i6">'Tisn't Oxford that's won,</p> +<p>But Utah, Bowdoin and the Cape."</p> +</div> </div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>EASTER IN WILD WALES.</h2> + +<p>The recent discovery (duly noted in +<i>The Daily Graphic</i> of the 30th ult.) of +"seven pearls of excellent quality" by +an Aberavon labourer in a mussel +stranded by the tide has led to an +extraordinary influx of visitors to that +quiet seaside resort. Costers have been +arriving at the rate of several hundreds +a day, attracted by the prospect of +finding the raw materials for the indispensable +decoration of their costumes, +and the local authorities are at their +wits' end to provide adequate accommodation. +Amongst the latest arrivals +is the great architect, Sir <span class="sc">Martin Conway</span>, +who has been consulted with +regard to the erection of a number of +bungalow skyscrapers, and an urgent +message has been despatched to Sir +<span class="sc">Edwin Lutyens</span> at Delhi, begging him +to supply designs of a suitable character. +Meanwhile pearl-diving goes on day and +night on the sea-front, with the assistance +of a flock of oyster-catchers, whose +brilliant plumage adds greatly to the +picturesqueness of the scene.</p> + +<p>Though the special good fortune of +Aberavon has excited a certain amount +of natural jealousy in the breasts of +hotel and boarding-house proprietors at +other Welsh seaside resorts, they have +no serious reason to complain. The +usual attractions of Barmouth have +been powerfully reinforced by the presence +in the neighbouring hills of a +full-sized gorilla which recently escaped +from a travelling menagerie. When +last seen the animal was making in the +direction of Harlech, which is at present +the head-quarters of the Easter Vacation +School of the Cambrian section of +the Yugo-Slav Doukhobors. It is understood +that the local police have the +matter well in hand, and arrangements +have been made, in case of emergency, +for withdrawing all the population +within the precincts of the castle.</p> + +<p>Great disappointment prevails at +Llandudno owing to the refusal of Mr. +<span class="sc">Evan Roberts</span>, the famous revivalist, +to localise the materialisation of the +Millennium, which he has recently +prophesied, at Llandudno during the +Easter holidays. By way of a set-off +an effort was made to induce Sir +<span class="sc">Auckland Geddes</span> to give a vocal recital +before his departure for America. +As his recent performance at a meeting +of the London Scots Club proved, Sir +<span class="sc">Auckland</span> is a singist of remarkable +power, infinite humour and soul-shaking +pathos. Unfortunately his repertory is +confined to Scottish songs, and on this +ground he has been obliged to decline +the invitation, though the fee offered +was unprecedented in the economic +annals of the variety stage.</p> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>[pg 265]</span><div class="figcenter" style="width:65%;"><a href="images/265.png"><img width="100%" src="images/265.png" alt="" /></a><h3>MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN.</h3> + +<p><i>P.-W.S. at a Hunt Meeting</i> (<i>concluding a passage-at-arms with a member of the ring</i>). "<span class="sc">I'm not one of those toffs that you +think you can impose upon. I'm a self-made man, I am.</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Bookmaker.</i> "<span class="sc">Well, I wouldn't talk so loud about it. It's a nasty bit o' work.</span>"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h2>OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.</h2> + +<p class="center">(<i>By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.</i>)</p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Forrest Reid</span> is a writer upon whose progress I have +for some time kept an appreciative eye. His latest story, +bearing the attractive title of <i>Pirates of the Spring</i> (<span class="sc">Unwin</span>), +proves, I think, that progress to be well sustained. As +you may have guessed from the name, this is a tale of +adolescence; it shows Mr. <span class="sc">Reid's</span> North-Ireland lads differing +slightly from the more familiar home-product, though +less in essentials than in tricks of speech, and (since these +are day-school boys, exposed to the influence of their several +homes) an echo of religious conflict happily rare in the +experience of English youth. Mr. <span class="sc">Reid</span> is amongst the +few novelists who can be sympathetic to boyhood without +sentimentalising over it; he has admirably caught its strange +mingling of pride and curiosity, of reticence and romance +and jealous loyalty. The tale has no particular plot; it is +a record of seeming trifles, friendships made and broken and +renewed, sporadic adventures and deep-laid intrigues that +lead nowhere. But you will catch in it a real air of youth, +a spring-time wind blowing from the half-forgotten world +in which all of us once were chartered privateers. There +are, of course, worthy folk who would be simply bored +by all this—which is why I do not venture to call +<i>Pirates of the Spring</i> everyone's reading; others, however, +more fortunate, will find it a true and delicately observed +study of an engaging theme.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I must really warn the flippant. It would be appalling if +admirers of <i>Literary</i> (and other) <i>Lapses</i> were to send blithely +to the libraries for Mr. <span class="sc">Leacock's</span> latest and find themselves +landed with <i>The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice</i> +(<span class="sc">Lane</span>). And yet I don't know. Here is a subject which +even the flippant cannot long ignore. And a man of the +world with a clear head and a mastery of clearer idiom than +a professor of political economy usually commands has +here said something desperately serious without a trace of +dulness. I should like Professor <span class="sc">Leacock's</span> short book to +be divided into three. The first part, a trenchant analysis +of some of the evils of our social and industrial system, +I would send to the impossibilists and obstructives; the +second, a critical examination of some of the nostrums of +the progressives, should go to the hasty optimists who +think that a sudden change of system will as suddenly +change men, for it contains much that they will do well +(and now resolutely refuse) to ponder. The third part I +would return to the author for revision, for it contains no +more, when analysed, than an <i>ipse dixit</i>, and quite fails to +show that the evils denounced as intolerable in the first +part can be remedied without some substantial portion at +least of the heroic reforms denounced in his second. Also +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>[pg 266]</span>I would remind him, or rather perhaps the more ingenuous +of his readers, that there have been later contributions to +the theory and practice of new-world building than Mr. +<span class="sc">Bellamy's</span> <i>Looking Backward</i>.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><i>The Great Desire</i> (<span class="sc">Hodder and Stoughton</span>) is a novel full +of shrewd philosophy and excellent talk. Mr. <span class="sc">Alexander +Black</span> sets out to prove nothing, to justify no political or +social attitude, but just to draw his fellow-Americans as he +sees them going about their war-time business, the "great +desire" being simply the thing that is uppermost in the +mind of each one. As a composite picture of what New +York thought about the business +of getting into the War +the result could hardly be +bettered. One never feels +that latent antagonism which +readers, even though they +may agree with him, unconsciously +experience towards +an author who seems to be +arguing a point. Mr. <span class="sc">Black</span> +gives the extreme views of the +blatant patriot, and of the +anarchist and socialist who +cannot see the distinction +between arguing against war +on paper and arguing against +this War on the street corner. +He makes us realise the people +who think only how to +make the War an adjunct of +themselves and those who desire +only to make themselves +a useful adjunct of the War. +He draws his types cleverly +and states the case of each one +fairly, but with a humorous +restraint and from a standpoint +of absolute detachment. +<i>The Great Desire</i> has plenty +of charm regarded merely as a +story, but I recommend it +especially to those who are +apt to judge the Americans +by their politicians or to assess +New York on the basis of the +<span class="sc">Hearst</span> newspapers.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If it were only for his complete +fearlessness in following +well-worn convention and +his apparent reliance on his +readers' ignorance or want of memory, Mr. <span class="sc">J. Murray +Gibbon's</span> <i>Drums Afar</i> (<span class="sc">Lane</span>) would be rather a remarkable +book in these psycho-analytical days. His hero actually +has the audacity to have blue eyes and fair hair, to start +his career in the House, and to end it, so far as the novel +is concerned, lying wounded in a hospital, where his <i>fiancée</i>, +a famous singer, happened to be a nurse in the same ward. +Nor does the young man disdain the threadbare conversational +<i>cliché</i>. "Don't you think there is something +elemental in most of us which no veneer of civilisation or +artificial living can ever deaden?" he says in one place +(rather as if veneer were a kind of rat poison). Still bolder, +on leaving America, where he has become engaged to a +wealthy Chicagan's daughter, he quotes—</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"I could not love thee, dear, so much</p> +<p class="i6">Loved I not honour more."</p> +</div> </div> + +<p>And, although the girl is annoyed, it is not on account of +the citation. Much of the story, however, deals with Chicago, +and since my previous knowledge of that city could have +easily been contained in a tin of pressed beef I can pardon +Mr. <span class="sc">Gibbon</span> for being as informative about it as he is about +Oxford colleges. (He seems, by the way, to have a rooted +contempt for Balliol, which I had always supposed was a +quite well-meaning place.) On the whole, either in spite +or because of its rather Baedeker-like qualities, <i>Drums Afar</i> +will be found quite a restful and readable book.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Somewhere in the course of the tale that gives its title to +<i>The Blower of Bubbles</i> (<span class="sc">Chambers</span>) +the character who is +supposed to relate it denies +that he is a sentimentalist. +I may as well say at once +that, if this denial is intended +to apply also to Mr. <span class="sc">Arthur +Beverley Baxter</span>, who +wrote the five stories that +make up the volume, a more +comprehensive misstatement +was never embodied in print. +Because, from the picture on +the wrapper, representing a +starry-eyed infant conducting +an imaginary orchestra, to +the final page, the book is +one riot of sentiment—plots, +characters and treatment +alike. Not that, save by the +fastidious, it must be considered +any the worse for +this; even had not Mr. <span class="sc">Baxter's</span> +hearty little preface +explained the conditions of +active service under which it +was composed, themselves +enough to excuse any quantity +of over-sweetening. I +will not give you the five +long-shorts in detail. The +first, about a German child +and a young man with heart +trouble, shows Mr. <span class="sc">Baxter</span> at +his worst, with the sob-stuff +all but overwhelming a sufficiently +nimble wit. My own +favourite is the fifth tale, a +spirited and generous tribute +to England's war effort. (I +should explain that the book, +and I suppose the author also, is by origin Canadian.) +This last story, told partly in the form of letters to his +editor in New York by an American officer and journalist, +has all the interest that comes of seeing ourselves as others +see us; though I could not but think that the narrator +erred in making the haughty <i>Lady Dorothy</i>, daughter of +his noble hosts, exclaim, on the entrance of a footman with +a letter, "Pardon me, it's the mail." So there you are. +If you have a taste for stories that make no pretence of +being other than fiction pure and simple, limpidly pure +and transparently simple (yet witty too in places), try +these; otherwise pass.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:40%;"><a href="images/266.png"><img width="100%" src="images/266.png" alt="" /></a><p><i>Pedestrian.</i> "<span class="sc">Dropped anything, Mister?</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Motorist.</i> "<span class="sc">Yes.</span>"</p> + +<p><i>Pedestrian.</i> "<span class="sc">What is it</span>?"</p> + +<p><i>Motorist.</i> "<span class="sc">My girl.</span>"</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote><p class="center">"UTOPIA.</p> + +<p class="center">Miss Ruby —— Sundayed under the parental."—<i>Canadian Paper.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>We congratulate Utopia on its ideal language.</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p class="center">Transcriber's Note</p> +<p>Typographical errors corrected: "Ted" for "Ned" and +"reelly" for "really" on page 262.</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pg" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, VOL. 158, APRIL 7, 1920***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 22905-h.txt or 22905-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/9/0/22905</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>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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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. 158, April 7, 1920 + + +Author: Various + +Editor: Owen Seaman + +Release Date: October 6, 2007 [eBook #22905] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, +VOL. 158, APRIL 7, 1920*** + + +E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Jonathan Ingram, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 22905-h.htm or 22905-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905/22905-h/22905-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905/22905-h.zip) + + + + + +PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI + +VOL. 158 + +APRIL 7, 1920 + + + + + + + +CHARIVARIA. + +"Do the British people," asks Mr. BLATCHFORD, "understand the nature of the +monster modern military science has created?" We hope to hear later what +name Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL has found for Mr. BLATCHFORD. + + * * * + +Agitation for a Federal Divorce Law is being revived in the United States. +It appears that there are still some backward States where the expenses of +a divorce suit mount up to something like ten dollars and the parties often +have to wait as long as three weeks before the knot is untied. + + * * * + +"It has now been decided definitely," says _The Daily Express_, "that Sir +AUCKLAND GEDDES will leave England on April 10th." This disposes finally of +the rumour that he intended taking it with him. + + * * * + +The natives of the Andaman Islands average about seventy pounds each in +weight. They are so short in stature that their feet only just reach the +ground in time. + + * * * + +M. LOUCHEUR suggests that France should build houses similar to those which +are not being built in England. + + * * * + +"Sergeant R. Pernotte," says a student of human endeavour, "last week +punched a ball for fifty hours without a break." It is presumed that the +ball must have done something to annoy him. + + * * * + +Thirty thousand years ago, says a weekly journal, the seas around England +were at a higher level than at present. It is difficult to know what can be +done about it, but it is just as well that the matter should be mentioned. + + * * * + +According to Mr. M. T. SIMM, M.P., there are many wayside inns of a +passable nature. The trouble, of course, is that so many people have a +difficulty in passing them. + + * * * + +We understand that Mr. Justice ----'s question, "Who is Mr. LLOYD GEORGE?" +has been postponed to a date to be fixed later. + + * * * + +A trade journal advertises a new calculating machine which will total up +stupendous figures without any human help at all. A correspondent writes to +say that in his house he has the identical gas meter which gave the +inventor his idea. + + * * * + +The contemporary which refers to the discovery of a gold ring inside a +cod-fish as extraordinary evidently cannot be aware that many profiteers +who go in for fishing are nowadays using such articles as bait. + + * * * + +A purse containing nearly a hundred pounds in treasury notes, picked up by +a policeman in South Wales, has not yet been claimed. It is now thought +probable that a local miner may have dropped his week's wages whilst +entering his car and that his secretary has not yet called his attention to +the deficit. + + * * * + +"The way some newsboys dodge in and out of the moving traffic is most +dangerous and a serious accident is sure to result before very long," +complains a writer in an evening paper. For ourselves we cannot but admire +this attempt on the boys' part to make history while in the act of selling +it. + + * * * + +We learn from an evening paper that a large woollen warehouse in London was +completely destroyed by fire the other day. We cannot understand why some +people use such inflammable material for building purposes. + + * * * + +An old pleasure-boat proprietor at Yarmouth has stated in an interview +that, although all his skiffs and dinghies are ten to fifteen years old, +they are much more trustworthy than those being built at the present time. +We await, fearfully, the comments of Lord FISHER. + + * * * + +Dutch wasps, says a news item, are very much like British. Only the +finished expert can tell the difference on being stung. + + * * * + +It is said that the Dutch are the most religious race of to-day. Of course +it is well known that the Chinese pray more than the Dutch, but then nobody +understands what they are saying. + + * * * + +The Ascot Fire Brigade went on strike last week and several important fires +had to be postponed at the last moment. + + * * * + +The Bolsheviks, it appears, may not, after all, be as black as they are +painted. It is reported that TROTSKY has caused one of his Chinese guards +to be executed for calling another an Irishman. + + * * * + +Senator BORAH recently informed the American Press that the Presidential +election campaign was becoming a Saturnalia of public corruption. In one +flagrant case it appears that a man who was given the money to buy ten +dollars' worth of Irish Republic went and bought a box of cigars instead. + + * * * + +"To keep cats off the seed beds," says _Home Chat_, "bury a small bottle up +to the neck and fill it with liquid ammonia." The old practice of burying +the cat up to the neck in the seed bedding and keeping the ammonia for +subsequent use is considered obsolete. + + * * * + +During the past year in London 2,886 persons were knocked down by horsed +vehicles, as compared with 8,388 who were knocked down by motor vehicles. +The popularity of the latter, it seems, is still unchallenged. + + * * * + +A weekly paper has an article on "Bad Manners Among Fish." We have +ourselves noticed a tendency to ignore the old adage that fish, like little +children, should be seen and not heard. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: UNLIKELY SCENE AT THE LABOUR EXCHANGE: OUT-OF-WORK POET +PASSING THE INSPIRATION TEST BEFORE A SUPERVISING OFFICIAL OF THE BOARD OF +TRADE.] + + * * * * * + + "Young lady requires daily work as Cook-general; work not objected + to." + + _Provincial Paper._ + +Very obliging of her. + + * * * * * + +POSSESSION. + +The dear old home has been let to strangers. An interloper occupies the +messuage. A foreign master controls the demesne. + +To-day especially, when as I write the air is balmy and the skies are blue, +it is agonising to feel that our own spring rhubarb is growing crimson only +to be toyed with by alien lips, and that the thrush on our pear-tree +bough----But no, I am wrong; the pear-tree bough is in the garden of No. 9; +it is only the trunk that stands in the garden of No. 10. That, by the way, +is an accident that frequently occurs to estate-owners. Consider critically +for a moment those well-known lines in which BROWNING says-- + + "Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge + Leans to the field," + +and then goes on to speak of "the wise thrush" on "the bent spray's edge" +as "singing his song twice over." It is pretty obvious that the reason the +poet assigns to this action on the bird's part is not the correct one. +Evidently the part of the tree on which it was sitting was on the other +side of the hedge in the next-door fellow's garden, and it was +conscientiously trying to allot one performance to each of the two rival +householders. But I seem to have wandered a little from the ancient home. + +Come with me in imagination, reader, and let us have a look at it together. +The fourth house to the left in this winding road that fringes the common, +you see it standing there gazing a little wistfully, yet with a quiet air +of semi-detachment, out over the wide expanse of green. Half right and half +left are two monstrous blocks of red brick flats overlooking it with a +thousand envious eyes. The middle distance is dotted pleasantly with +hawthorn bushes and the pretty pieces of sandwich-paper that are always the +harbingers of London's Spring. Beyond these things, and far away to the +front, you may detect on clear days a white church-tower nestling like +Swiss milk amongst immemorial trees. And this view is mine--mine, like the +old home. If we linger for a moment in the road we shall probably see the +scornful face of the proud usurper at one of the windows calmly enjoying +this view of mine, all unconscious that I, the rightful owner, am standing +beneath. Does it not remind you of the films?-- + +"_Charles Carruthers_, an outcast from his ancestral halls, eyes mournfully +the scene of merry junketing within. _Charles Carruthers_--_blick! +blick!_"--and you see him eyeing mournfully outside--"_blick! blick!_"--and +you see the junketers eating his junket within. + +On looking back in a calmer mood on the lines which I have just written, I +feel it possible that I may have let my emotions run away with me and +conveyed a slightly false impression. I may have suggested that the old +home has belonged to my family since Domesday Book or dear-knows-when or +some other historic date in our island story. That would not be strictly +true. As a matter of fact I have never lived in the house, nor have any of +my relations either. It has belonged to me, to be quite accurate, since +March 25th, 1920, and the interloper was interloping on a short lease when +I bought the long lease over his head. It is also true that by an awkward +and absurd convention I have to restore the old home to the ground landlord +in 1941. But who cares about what is going to happen in 1941? The Coalition +may have come to an end by that time, and the first Labour Government, +under Lord NORTHCLIFFE or Mr. JACK JONES, may be in power. Some bricklayer, +in a mood of artistic frenzy, may have designed the plan of a new brick and +had it passed by the Ministry of Housing. DEMPSEY may have met CARPENTIER. + +No, the trouble is about the interloper. It appears that, having the +remainder of a lease to run, he can go on anteloping (you know what I mean) +for two years more if he likes. To do him justice he admits that the place +is mine and wants to leave it. He has no real love for the priceless old +spot. All that he asks is somewhere better to go to. So I am gladly doing +my best to help him. I send him notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions, +which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks, +ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful +bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him +extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow +larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes +laid on to each estate never cease to sing. I suggest the advantages of the +mercantile marine and a life on the rolling main, of big game shooting, +polar exploration, and the residential attractions of Constantinople, +Berlin, Dublin and Vladivostok. + +Concurrently with this I try hard to cultivate in him a certain distaste +for the dear old home. I walk up and down the road in front of it with a +pair of field-glasses, and, if I see that a little chip has fallen off +anywhere or the paint on the gate has been scratched, I call on him at +once. + +"I happened to be passing the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather +serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it +looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And +this worries him a good deal, because he is responsible for all repairs. + +I do not fail to point out to my friends, either, that this is my +well-known family seat, and I persuade them from time to time to go and ask +for me at the door. "What, isn't he living here _yet_?" I get them to say, +with a well-feigned surprise. "It is his house, isn't it?" I frequently +have letters addressed to myself sent there, and every morning and +afternoon the nurse takes the children past it for a walk. The children are +well drilled. + +"Look, Priscilla, that's our garden," says Richard in a high penetrating +treble; and + +"There's a darlin' little buttercup. I want to go in," Priscilla replies. + +All this quiet steady pressure is bound to have its due effect in time. +Gradually I think he will begin to feel that a shadow haunts the ancestral +halls (the front one, you know, and the back passage), that a footstep not +his own treads behind him on the stair, that the dear old home will never +be happy until it is occupied by its rightful lord. + +I shall send him a marked copy of this article. + +EVOE. + + * * * * * + +_VERS TRES LIBRE._ + +(_Arabesque on a field of blue_). + + These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate, + Imposing, intime, dazzling or repellent, + That sing--better than music's self, + Better than rhyme-- + The praise and liberty of blue: + The turquoise and the peacock's neck, + The blood of kings, the deeps + Of Southern lakes, the sky + That bends over the Azores, + The language of the links, the eyes + Of fair-haired angels, the + Policeman's helmet and the backs + Of books issued by the Government, + Also the Bird of Happiness (MAETERLINCK) + And many other things such as + The Varsity colours, various kinds + Of pottery and limelight, + Some things by SWINBURNE, BURNS and EZRA POUND, + The speedwell in the glade, and, oh! + The little cubes they put in wash-tubs. + + REFRAIN. + + These are the things, or gorgeous or delicate, + And so on down to "liberty of blue." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "OLIVER 'ASKS' FOR MORE." + +MINER. "YOU'LL BE SORRY ONE OF THESE DAYS THAT YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME +NATIONALIZATION." + +PREMIER. "IF YOU KEEP ON LIKE THIS THERE WON'T BE ANY NATION LEFT TO +NATIONALIZE YOU."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Owner._ "SMART LITTLE THING ISN'T SHE?" + +_Friend._ "PITY SHE'S SO UGLY BELOW THE WATER-LINE." + +_Owner._ "OH, WELL, NOBODY WILL SEE THAT." + +_Friend._ "WHAT ABOUT WHEN SHE CAPSIZES?"] + + * * * * * + +TOOLS OF TRADE. + +I am sorry for the man who took his typewriter on the Underground and was +made to buy a bicycle-ticket for it. But I have no doubt he deserved it. I +am sure that he did it in spiritual pride. He was trying to make himself +equal to the manual labourer who carries large bags of tools on the Tube +and sighs heavily as he lays them on your foot. I am sure that he was tired +of being scornfully regarded by manual labourers, and was determined to +make it quite clear that he too had done, or was about to do, a day's +labour, and manual labour at that. It was a sinful motive and it deserved +to be punished; but it was natural. Nowadays we all feel like that. We +caught it from the War, when the great thing was to show that you were +doing more work than anybody else. + +I take from a recent copy of _Hansard_[1] the following brisk and delicate +piece of dialogue:-- + +"Mr. MACQUISTEN: You Labour men have forgotten what sweat is. + +Mr. W. THORNE: I have never seen many lawyers sweat, anyhow. + +Mr. SPEAKER: This discussion is becoming intemperate. + +AN HON. MEMBER: The Hon. Member for Springburn never sweated in his life. + +Mr. MACQUISTEN: Yes, I have laboured in the docks." + +That is it, you see. Sweating is the great criterion of usefulness to-day. +If you cannot show that you have sweated in the past, you must at least +show that you are sweating now, or have every intention of sweating in a +moment or two. Personally, as a private secretary, I find it very +difficult, though I do my best. As a private secretary I labour in a rich +house in the notoriously idle neighbourhood of South Kensington, where +nobody would believe that anybody laboured, much less perspired over it. So +when I pass, on the way to my rich house, a builder's labourer or a milkman +or a dustman, I have to exhibit as clearly as I can all the signs of a +harsh employment and industrial fatigue. I take great pains about this; I +walk much faster; I frown heavily and I look as pale as possible. In the +Tube I close my eyes. I hope all this is effective, but as far as I can see +the milkman never looks at me, and the builder is always saying to another +builder, "'E says to me, 'Wot abaht it?' 'e says, and I says to 'im, 'Yus, +wot abaht it?' I says." But it is worth the effort. + +Well, that is why that poor man was carrying a typewriter. I wonder why +everybody else in the Tube carries an "attache-case." It has been +calculated that if all the attache-cases which get on to the train at +Hammersmith at 9 A.M. were left on the platform, six men or twelve women or +three horses could take their place in every car. That means about ninety +more men or one-hundred-and-eighty more women or forty-five more horses +could leave Hammersmith between 9 A.M. and 9.30. So that if attache-cases +were forbidden the traffic problem would be practically solved. + +Why shouldn't they be forbidden? It depends, of course, on what is inside +the cases; and nobody knows that for certain. But one can guess. I have +been guessing for a long time. At first I thought they were full of very +confidential papers. In the old days the attache-case was the peculiar +trademark of private secretaries and diplomats and high-up people like +that. Even attaches carried them sometimes. The very lowest a man with an +attache-case could be was a First-Class Civil Servant; and one was +justified in imagining confidential papers inside, or, at any rate, +home-work of the first importance. But nowadays there are too many of them +for that. The attache-case has been degraded; it is universal. This might +be because there is practically no male person alive just now who has not +been an adjutant at one time or another, and pinched at least one +attache-case from the orderly-room. But most of the cases in the Tube are +carried by females, so that theory is no good. + +Well, then, I imagined sandwiches or knitting or powder-puffs or tea; but +those also are rotten hypotheses. I have too much faith in the good sense +of my fellow-countrywomen to believe that they would cart a horrible thing +like a cheap attache-case about simply in order to convey a sandwich or a +powder-puff from one end of London to the other. So I had to fall back on +my own experience. + +I know, at any rate, what is inside mine. There are some rather grubby +envelopes which I borrowed from the House of Commons, and some very grubby +blotting-paper from the same source, and either a ream of foolscap or a +quire of foolscap, whichever is which; some pipe-cleaners and a few pieces +of milk-chocolate; and a letter from the Amalgamated Association of +Fish-Friers which ought to have been answered a long time ago; and a +memorandum on Hog-Importing which I am always going to read while waiting +at the station; and a nice piece of thick string with which I have tied a +bowline on a bight; and two broken pencils and some more envelopes; and a +Parliamentary Whip of last year and a stationery bill of the year before; +and several bills of my employer, not to mention a cheque for ninety-seven +pounds which I suppose he would like me to send to the bank; and a great +deal of fluff and a pipe or two and four or five stamped letters which it +is now too late to post. That is all there is in my case. + +But I carry it backwards and forwards, in and out, to and fro, day after +day; and the only time it is ever opened at either end of the journey is +when, in addition to the articles previously mentioned, it contains +bottles. But I do not carry it for the sake of bottles; far from it. I am +one of those men who do not mind going about with a comparatively naked +bottle. I carry it simply because it is the tool of my trade, and because, +if you don't carry a tool of some kind on the Underground, at any moment +you may be taken for an idle rich, if not actually a parasite, who never +sweated in his life. + +And that, I am persuaded, is why everybody else carries theirs. + +But this is a very serious conclusion. It will be a terrible thing if +everyone is going to carry the tools of his trade about with him to show +that he has a trade; the barrister his briefs, the doctor his stethoscope +or his shiny black bag; the butcher his chopper; the dentist--but no, we +cannot have that. There must be other ways. We might wear badges, as we did +in the War, only they would be office badges and trade badges, instead of +regimental badges or discharged badges. Then we should have again the dear +old war-game of trying to read what was on them without being rude. That is +what one really misses in public places in these days of Peace--that and +the uniforms. + +It was easy to make conversation in a restaurant in the old days, when +people kept on coming in in curious uniforms, and the ladies wondered what +they were and the men pretended they knew all about them. But all that is +dead now, and I think these sweat-badges would supply a serious want. + +But what will the author wear? And who will believe that he ever breaks +into beads of perspiration at his labour? + +A. P. H. + +[Footnote 1: February 24th, col. 1638.] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Butler_ (_in service of the Earl of Kyloes_), "IS THAT YOU, +MY LORD?" + +_Burglar_ (_full of guile_). "YUS, MATEY."] + + * * * * * + + "CAN EUROPE BE SAVED? + + By LOVAT FRASER." + + _Daily Mail._ + +We don't know; but there can be no harm in his trying. + + * * * * * + +Commercial Candour. + + "Your Soil needs a tonic. Send 2s. 6d. for 40 lb. Ground Lime in a + Government twill bag, worth half the money."--_Local Paper._ + + "Antique Copper Fire-irons and Dogs, almost new."--_Local Paper._ + + * * * * * + +THE PACKET RAT. + + "When I leave this Western Ocean, to the South'ard I will steer, + In a tall Colonial clipper far an' far enough from here, + Down the Channel on a bowline, through the Tropics runnin' free, + When I'm done with this 'ere ocean ... an' when it's done with me. + + "An' I'll run my ship in Sydney, an' then I'll work my way + To them smilin' South Seas Islands where there's sunshine all the day, + An' I'll sell my chest an' gear there as soon's I hit the shore, + An' sling my last discharge away, an' go to sea no more. + + "It's a pleasant time they have there--they've easy quiet lives; + They wear no clothes to speak on; they've a bunch of browny wives; + They're bathin' all the day long or baskin' on the sand, + With the jolly brown Kanakas as naked as your hand. + + "An' I'll lay there in the palm-shade, an' take my ease all day, + An' look across the harbour at the shippin' in the bay, + An' watch the workin' sailormen--the bloomin' same as me + In the workin' Western Ocean afore I left the sea. + + "I'll hear them at the capstan, a-heavin' good an' hard; + I'll hear them tallyin' on the fall or sweatin' up the yard; + Hear them lift a halliard shanty, hear the bosun swear and shout, + An' the thrashin' o' the headsheets as the vessel goes about. + + "An', if the fancy takes me, as it's like enough it may, + For to smell the old ship-smells again an' taste the salt an' spray, + I can take a spell o' pearlin' or a tradin' cruise or two + Where there's none but golden weather an' a sky that's always blue. + + "But I'll do no sailorisin' jobs--I'll walk or lay at ease, + Like a blessed packet-captain, just as lordly as you please, + With a steward for my table an' a boy to bring my beer, + An' a score or so Kanakas for to reef an' haul an' steer. + + "An' when I'm tired o' cruisin', up an' down an' here an' there, + There'll be kind Kanaka women wi' the red flowers in their hair + All a-waiting for to meet me there a-comin' in from sea, + When I'm through with this here ocean ... an' that'll never be! + + "For I'd hear the parrots screamin' an' the palm-trees' drowsy tune, + But I'd want the Banks in winter an' the smell of ice in June, + An' the hard-case mates a-bawlin', an' the strikin' o' the bell ... + God! I've cursed it oft an' cruel ... but I'd miss it all like Hell. + + "Yes, I'd miss the Western Ocean where the packets come an' go, + An' the grey gulls wheelin', callin', an' the grey sky hangin' low, + An' the blessed lights o' Liverpool a-winkin' through the rain + To welcome us poor packet-rats come back to port again. + + "An' if I took an' died out there my soul'd never stay + In them sunny Southern latitudes to wait the Judgment Day, + For acrost the seas from England, oh, I'd hear the old life call, + An' the bloomin' Western Ocean it'd get me after all. + + "I'd go flyin' like a seagull, as they say old shellbacks do, + For to see the ships I sailed in an' the shipmates that I knew, + An' the tough old North Atlantic where the roarin' gales do blow, + An' the Western Ocean packets all a-plyin' to an' fro. + + "An' I'd leave the trades behind me an' I'd leave the Southern Cross, + An' the mollymawks an' flyin'-fish an' stately albatross, + An' I'd come through wind an' weather an' the fogs as white as wool, + Till I sighted old Point Lynas an' the Port o' Liverpool. + + "An' I'd fly to some flash packet when the hands was bendin' sail, + An' I'd set up on the main-truck doin' out my wings an' tail, + An' I'd see the tug alongside an' the Peter flyin' free, + An' the pilot come aboard her for to take her out to sea. + + "An' I'd follow down to Fastnet light, an' then I'd hang around + There to watch 'em out to westward an' to meet the homeward bound, + For I know it's easy talkin', an' I know when all is said + It's the bloomin' Western Ocean what'll get me when I'm dead!" + +C. F. S. + + * * * * * + +ETIQUETTE FOR FIRES. + +It seems that Mr. A. R. DYER, the Chief Officer of the London Fire Brigade, +has issued a booklet giving hints on fire protection and also how to call +the Fire Brigade. We have pleasure in giving a few points which we are sure +are not included in this interesting and useful publication. + + * * * * * + +Before sending for the Fire Brigade it is advisable to make quite sure that +you have a fire in the house to offer them. But do not adopt the old plan +of waiting until it reaches the second-floor. This is rather apt to +discolour the wall-paper. + + * * * * * + +Above all the householder who intends to have a fire in his house must keep +calm. Immediately the maid rushes into the room to say that the kitchen is +on fire, place the book you are reading on the table, remove your slippers +and put on a thick pair of heavy boots and a Harris tweed shooting coat. +Your next duty is to call the Fire Brigade, and not to meddle with the fire +yourself, for very often an amateur completely spoils a fire before the +Brigade arrives. + + * * * * * + +When you see the Brigade engine dashing along the road don't stop it and +offer to show the driver a short cut. And when they start work do not worry +the firemen by telling them how to do it better. After all, while it may be +your house, it is their fire. + + * * * * * + + "TO SEVERAL INTERESTED.--Our editor, Mr. ---- is not an Englishman his + name is a pseudonime.--English ortograhist. Our setters do not yet + speak English at all, be assured that we will do sur best to escape + the errata in the nearest future." + + _The World's Trade (Budapest)._ + +We take their word for it but are not sanguine. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES. + +A MODERN PORTRAIT-PAINTER AND HIS "PATRONS."] + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MR. ----, THE GREAT CINEMA ACTOR, WHILE STAYING IN THE +COUNTRY INCOGNITO, IS ASKED BY THE MANAGER OF THE PUMPLEFIELD FILM COMPANY +TO HELP MAKE A CROWD.] + + * * * * * + +PARTY TACTICS. + +It began with my reading an article on "How to be a Success at an Evening +Party." I was rather surprised to know that, for one thing, some knowledge +of Spiritualism is necessary to enable one to be a popular entertainer +nowadays. It has never struck me before that spiritualists were such a +genial class, full of _bonhomie_ and great joy; but then, although I read +the Sunday papers, I'm afraid I don't know enough about the subject. + +Even if we haven't got the rollicking boisterous temperament of the born +spiritualist, however, there are, it seems, other ways of winning a mild +popularity. "If you confess to only a slight knowledge of palmistry," the +article continued, "it is often enough to make you the centre of interest +at once." + +This appealed to me strongly. I like to be the centre of interest. So I +bought a handbook on palmistry and, having absorbed it, set out for my next +party full of confidence. + +Surely enough, the first thing I saw on arrival was a dank-looking man +holding forth on Spiritualism, and enjoying what I should call a chastened +vogue with most of the company gathered about him. + +I took up my position on the fringe of the group. "Talking of psychics, the +occult and all that sort of thing," I remarked carelessly, "isn't +cheiromancy an interesting study?" + +"Nasty sort of study, I should call it," murmured one of the company, +evidently under a vague impression that it had something to do with feet. +My hostess looked up sharply. "Cheiromancy," she repeated; "can you read +the hand?" + +"Only a little," I confessed modestly. "Just enough to----" + +I don't quite know how it happened. There was a sort of flank and rear +movement and the entire company, excepting, of course, the dank +spiritualist, precipitated itself on me. Voices clamoured for me to +foretell destinies. Hands were thrust before me. They eddied, surged and +swirled about me. I never saw such a massed quantity of hands. It was like +leaving a Swiss hotel in the height of the season. + +"One at a time, please," I said limply. + +I seized a palm, followed it up, and found that it belonged to a pinched +sour-looking female. Her character was stamped on her face as well as on +her hand. If, however, I had said to her, "Yours is a flaccid repressed +disposition you have a lack of imagination and a total absence of humour; +your life is too narrow and self-centred to be of the least interest to +anyone," she might not have liked it. You see, with even a slight knowledge +of palmistry you soon find out when reading hands that it's no use telling +people the truth. They want a version which I can only describe as +"garbled." + +Accordingly I bent over the repressed female's hand with an air of +profundity and said, "There being a total absence of the mounts of Mercury +and the Sun, a calm and even nature is indicated." (You're nearly always +safe in saying this.) "Your sense of order and of the fitness of things +would not allow you to see any fun in the joke of, say, pulling away a +chair from anyone about to sit down. In fact you would not see a joke in +anything--like that," I added hastily, and gave her hand back, feeling I +had made the best of a bad job. + +But she still lingered. + +"Does it show if I shall----?" She paused in embarrassment. + +"Get married?" I asked, knowing human nature better than palmistry. + +She looked so fiercely eager, with such a vivid light of hope in her eye, +that I decided to award her a husband on the spot. + +"The Hepatica line, being allied to the line of Fate," I said impressively +"signifies that you will marry--late in life." + +The press around me at once grew terrific. All the girls said, "Tell me if +I'm going to get married;" and all the men remarked, "Of course it's utter +rubbish," and were more eager about it than the girls. I became reckless. I +worked my way steadily through the crowd, doling out husbands with an +unsparing hand. And it was just when I was beginning to feel a little tired +of the game that my enemy was delivered into my hands. + +We were not on visiting or even speaking terms; we were indeed the most +implacable foes. But that did not prevent the woman from shamelessly +thrusting herself before me and saying gushingly, "Do tell me what you see +in my hand." + +I looked at her, and before my searching glance even her brazen face fell. +Six months previously that creature had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I +ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but +every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more +unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think +lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would +extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed her of a +treasured servant. + +And Wilkins had been a treasure indeed. It brought the tears to my eyes +when I thought of her exquisite _omelettes aux rognons_, her salads, her +_poularde a la gelee_, her wide diversity of knowledge regarding _entrees_ +and savouries. With a hard and bitter smile I settled down to interpret the +hand of the woman before me. + +The company gathered closer round us and I noticed that Mrs. B., the +particular friend of my enemy, bent affectionately over her with truly +feminine expectation of "revelations." And from under the scarf which my +enemy wore about her arms and shoulders she seemed, I thought, to project +her hand rather timidly. Perhaps she realised too late what was in store +for her. + +I was quite dignified about it; I want you to understand that. Many +another, seeing that creature so plump and well-fed and knowing the reason, +would have broken out into vituperation. But my tactics were more subtle. +My manner, as I studied her palm, was at first nonchalant, even urbane. +Then I gave a start and faltered, "I--I suppose you wish me to tell you the +truth?" + +A frightened look came into her eyes which, I noted with satisfaction, were +beginning to show tinges of yellow (Wilkins' only fault is that in some of +her dishes she is over-liberal with the salad oil and high seasonings). "Of +course I want to know the truth," said my victim faintly. + +With an apparent air of diffidence I began my recital. I did not spare her +in the smallest degree. I ascribed to her all those sinister +characteristics I had read about in the handbook; and, when I suddenly +remembered a delicious _vol-au-vent_ upon which I had doted, I added a few +of my own. + +It was a terrible indictment. When I had finished an awed silence fell upon +the gathering. Everybody waited breathlessly for the victim to speak. + +"That was most interesting," she said with a sinister laugh. "But perhaps +you will read _my_ palm now. You see, it was Mrs. B.'s that you have just +read. She slipped her hand through under my scarf." + +There was a burst of laughter from everybody. Idiotic kind of joke, I call +it. + +I can assure the writer of the Sunday articles that a knowledge of +palmistry does not necessarily make one popular. + +I am now wondering where you can buy hand-books on spiritualism. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Philosopher_ (_who has been mistaken for the football_). +"THANK 'EVING THE CRICKET SEASON'LL SOON BE 'ERE!"] + + * * * * * + + "It is proposed that the family man shall be dealt with on a flat + rate. Every wife will confer exemption on L100 of + income."--_Spectator._ + +Surely our revered contemporary does not imply that the new Income Tax +proposals will encourage polygamy. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. + +_Polite Passenger._ "DO YOU MIND SMOKING, MADAM?" + +_Old Lady._ "NOT AT ALL. I'LL SMOKE WITH PLEASURE IF THEY'RE GYPPIES. CAN'T +_STAND_ GASPERS."] + + * * * * * + +THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION. + +AN APPEAL TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL. + +The League of Nations Union is engaged in a campaign for the purpose of +making the objects of the League of Nations better understood in the +country at large. The chief danger that threatens the League is to be found +in the apathy or unconsidered scepticism of the public; almost the sole +active opposition comes from those who would substitute for it a +proletarian Internationale devoted to the interests of one class only in +the world, and from certain reactionaries who favour a return to the system +of imperialism which was the cause of the War. In the words of HIS MAJESTY +THE KING, "We fought to gain a lasting Peace and it is our supreme duty to +take every measure to secure it. For that nothing is more essential than a +strong and enduring League of Nations. The Covenant of Paris is a good +foundation, well and truly laid. But it is and can be no more than a +foundation. The nature and strength of the structure to be built upon it +must depend on the earnestness and sincerity of popular support." + +To those, if any, who contend that the Government should be left to carry +out its own propaganda for the League of Nations the obvious answer is that +it is necessary for this work to be done by an independent body which can +bring public pressure to bear upon the Government of the day and urge such +amendments in the machinery and constitution of the League as time and +experience may show to be desirable. The Union, in fact, bears to the +League of Nations the same relation that the Navy League bears to the +Senior Service; it is an independent body organised to educate opinion in +the needs of a national cause. + +Since its inception in January of this year the activities of the League +have covered a wide range, which embraces organisation for the +administering of territory under its trusteeship, and for the consideration +of international questions relating to transit, finance, labour and health. +America's repudiation (only temporary, it may be hoped) of the pledges of +her own President, the original and chief advocate of the League of +Nations, has meanwhile thrown upon Great Britain the main burden of +responsibility in the Councils of the League, a fact that constitutes an +overwhelming claim upon the patriotism of British citizens. The duty of +bringing this claim home to the public has been taken up by the League of +Nations Union, under the Presidency of Lord GREY OF FALLODON. It has +already established a headquarters and a staff of experts; organised +hundreds of meetings throughout the country, and inaugurated nearly two +hundred branches. It publishes two periodicals and many pamphlets and is +preparing educational text-books; it is taking part in an international +conference with similar voluntary societies in other countries. + +Clearly such work cannot be carried on without generous support. The sum +for which the League of Nations Union appeals--a million pounds--may sound +large, but it represents only the cost of four hours of the War, and is not +much to ask as an insurance against another and yet more terrible war. + +Mr. Punch very earnestly begs his readers to send contributions in aid of +this great and necessary work to the Hon. Treasurer of the Fund (Sir BRIEN +COKAYNE, late Governor of the Bank of England), addressed to THE LEAGUE OF +NATIONS UNION, 22, Buckingham Gate, S.W. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: THE HOPE OF THE WORLD. + +PEACE. "THIS IS MY TEMPLE AND YOU ARE ITS PRIESTESS. GUARD WELL THE SACRED +FLAME." + +(The objects and needs of the League of Nations Union are set out on the +opposite page.)] + + * * * * * + +ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. + +_Monday, March 29th._--During a brief sitting the Lords got through a good +deal of business. The Silver Coinage Bill awakened Lord CHAPLIN'S +reminiscences of his bimetallic days, when he was accused by Sir WILLIAM +HARCOURT of trying to stir up mutiny in India. Undeterred by this warning, +however, the Peers gave a Second Reading to the measure and also to the +Coal Mines Emergency Bill, which is less up-to-date than it sounds, and +deals not with the present emergency but with the last emergency but one. +They also passed the Importation of Plumage Bill, at the instance of Lord +ABERDEEN, who pleaded that beautiful birds, "the result of myriads of years +of evolution," should not be exterminated to make a British matron's +picture-hat. + +[Illustration: _Mr. MACPHERSON._ "WITH ALL THESE CHERUBS GOING FOR MY KITE +FULL BLAST IT LOOKS AS IF I MIGHT KEEP THE THING FLYING." + +LORD ROBERT CECIL. CAPTAIN REDMOND. + +MESSRS. CLYNES AND ASQUITH.] + +A few noble lords tore themselves away from these entrancing topics to +attend the opening of the debate in the Commons on the Government of +Ireland Bill. They were ill-rewarded for their pains, for never has a Home +Rule debate produced fewer interesting moments. The CHIEF SECRETARY was so +studiously restrained in explaining the merits of the Bill that the +"yawning chasm" which, according to its opponents, the measure is going to +create between Southern and Northern Ireland was to be observed in advance +on the countenances of many of his listeners. Years ago Mr. BALFOUR told +the Irish Nationalists that Great Britain was not to be bored into +acceptance of Home Rule; but I am beginning to doubt now whether he was +right. If the Government get the Bill through it will be due more to John +Bull's weariness of the eternal Irish Question than to any enthusiastic +belief in the merits of this particular scheme. Hardly anyone off the +Treasury Bench had a good word to say for it, but fortunately for its +chances their criticisms were often mutually destructive. + +Mr. CLYNES moved its rejection. From his remark that Irish respect for the +law was destroyed in 1913, and that the present Administration was regarded +as "the most abominable form of government that had ever ruled in Ireland," +I should gather that he has only recently begun his researches into Irish +history and Irish character, and is working backwards. His prescription was +to cease governing Ireland by force and leave her to frame her own +constitution. + +Lord ROBERT CECIL agreed with Mr. CLYNES in regarding it as a very bad +Bill, but there parted company with him. In his view the deterioration of +Ireland began in 1906, when the era of "firm government" came to an end. +Drop coercion by all means, but "let the murderers begin." As for forcing +self-government on a country that rejected it, that was nonsense. + +As "a citizen of the world," and not merely an Irishman, Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR +denounced the Bill _urbi et orbi_. Nobody in Ireland wanted it unless it +was the place-hunters of the Bar and the Press, for whom it would provide +rich pickings. + +The House was brought back from rhetoric to plain fact by the CHANCELLOR OF +THE EXCHEQUER'S reminder that if the Bill were not passed the Home Rule Act +of 1914 would come into force. He hoped that Southern Ireland would recover +its sanity, accept the Bill and set itself to persuade Ulster into an +All-Ireland Parliament _via_ the golden bridge of the Irish Council. + +Captain CRAIG could not imagine that happening in his lifetime. To his mind +the only merit of the Bill was that it safeguarded Ulster against Dublin +domination. + +_Tuesday, March 30th._--Someone--I suspect a midshipman--has been telling +Mr. BROMFIELD that five British Admirals have been sent to Vienna to +supervise the breaking up of the Austrian Fleet, and that the said Fleet +now consists of three motor-boats. He was much relieved to hear from Mr. +HARMSWORTH that only one Admiral had been sent, and that the disposal of a +Dreadnought, several pre-Dreadnoughts and sundry smaller craft will give +him plenty to do. + +There appears to be a shortage of ice in Hull. It is supposed that the +Member for the Central Division (Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY) has not cut so +much as he expected. + +The debate on the Home Rule Bill was resumed in a much higher temperature +than that of yesterday. Mr. ASQUITH, as he thundered in carefully-polished +phrases against the "cumbrous, costly, unworkable scheme," earned many +cheers from his followers, and the even greater tribute of interruptions +from his opponents. For a moment he was pulled up, when to his rhetorical +question, "What has Home Rule meant to us?" some graceless Coalitionist +promptly answered, "Votes!" but he soon got going again. Ireland, he +declared, was a unit. The Bill gave her dualism "with a shadowy background +of remote and potential unity." The vaunted Council was "a fleshless and +bloodless skeleton." He remarked upon "the sombre acquiescence of the +Ulstermen," and wondered why they had accepted the Bill at all. "Because we +don't trust _you_," came the swift reply from Sir EDWARD CARSON. + +Mr. ASQUITH'S own remedy for Irish unrest was to take the Act of 1914 and +transform it into something like Dominion Home Rule. Any county--Ulster or +Sinn Fein--that voted against coming under the Dublin Parliament should be +left under the present administration. + +Mr. BONAR LAW did not fail to point out the inconsistency of condemning the +Government scheme for its complexity and then immediately proposing another +which would involve not one but a dozen partitions and make the political +map of Ireland look like a crazy quilt. He advised the House to reject Mr. +ASQUITH'S advice and pass the Bill, even though it should have the +paradoxical result, for the moment, of leaving Nationalist Ireland under +British administration while providing Unionist Ulster with a Home Rule +Parliament for which it has never asked. + +I suppose Mr. DEVLIN is not like the Sinn Feiners, who, according to "T. +P.," are so contemptuous of the Bill that they have never read a line of +it. Parts of his speech, and particularly his peroration, seemed far more +suitable to a Coercion Bill than to a measure which is designed, however +imperfectly, to grant Home Rule to Ireland. The Nationalist leader may be +forgiven a great deal, however, for his inimitable description of Lord +ROBERT CECIL as "painfully struggling into the light with one foot in the +Middle Ages." + +_Wednesday, March 31st._--The third and last Act of the Home Rule drama was +the best. Nothing in the previous two days' debate--not even Mr. BONAR +LAW'S ruthless analysis of the Paisley policy for Ireland--gripped the +audience so intensely as Sir EDWARD CARSON'S explanation of the Ulster +attitude. He declared that the Union had not failed in Ulster, and would +not have failed anywhere if British politicians could have refrained from +bidding for Irish votes. There was no alternative to it but complete +separation, and that was what Home Rule would lead to. Ulster did not want +the Bill, and would not vote for it; but, as the only alternative was the +Act of 1914, she was prepared to accept it as a _pis aller_, and to work +her new Parliament for all it was worth. At least it would enable her to +find schools for the thirty thousand Belfast children now debarred from +education. More than that, he was prepared to co-operate with any men from +Southern Ireland who were willing to work _their_ Parliament in a similar +spirit; and he paid a personal tribute to Mr. DEVLIN, whose courage he +admired though he detested his politics. + +Thus there were gleams of hope even in his otherwise gloomy outlook, as the +PRIME MINISTER gladly acknowledged in winding up the debate; and they +probably had some influence in swelling the majority for the Bill, the +figures being 348 for the Second Reading, 94 against. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "PLEASE, MISTER, CAN I HAVE A PENNORTH OF CAMEL?"] + + * * * * * + +_POISSON D'AVRIL._ + +For the tragedy of which I am about to tell I consider that Brenda Scott is +entirely to blame. You shall judge. + +There is a vacancy in my domestic staff, and the rush to fill it has been +less enthusiastic than I could wish. My housewifely heart leapt, therefore, +when, last Thursday morning, I espied coming up the drive one whom I +classed at once as an applicant for the post of housemaid. Nor was I +deceived. She gave the name of Eliza Smudge, and said she came from my +friend, Mrs. Copplestone. + +My suspicions were first aroused by her extraordinary solicitude for my +comfort. "Outings" were entirely according to my convenience. And when she +added that she liked to have plenty to do, and that she always rose by 6 +A.M., I began to look at her closely. + +She wore a thick veil, and her eyes were further obscured by large +spectacles, but I could discern a wisp of rather artificial-looking hair +drawn across her forehead. And she was smiling. + +Now why was she smiling? I could certainly see nothing to smile at in +rising at six o'clock every morning. + +"I shall be free on 5th of April, ma'am," she was saying. "Let me see, +to-day is the 1st of April----" + +The 1st of April! It came to me then in a flash--in one of those moments of +intuition of which even the mind of the harassed housewife occasionally is +capable. It was Brenda Scott masquerading as a housemaid! + +Our conversation of a fortnight earlier came back to me--Brenda's desire to +disguise herself and apply to Lady Lupin for the post of kitchenmaid, her +confidence in her ability to carry it off successfully, my ridicule of the +possibility that she could pass unrecognised. So now, on the 1st of April, +she was for proving me wrong. + +The disguise was certainly masterly. Had it not been for that unaccountable +smile, and the hair---- + +I did not lose my head. I continued to carry on the conversation on +orthodox lines. Then I said, "Do you know Miss Brenda Scott, who lives near +Mrs. Copplestone?" + +"Oh, yes, I've known her since she was a little girl," was the answer. +"Sweet young lady she is." + +"Ye--es," I said. "A little too fond of practical jokes, perhaps." + +The eyebrows went up almost to the artificial-looking hair, which I had now +decided was horse-hair. + +"Indeed," she said. + +"Yes, my dear Brenda, it is your besetting sin. You should pray against +it," I said bluntly. + +She stood up with an opposing air of surprise and alarm. But I was not to +be deceived. + +"Your assumed name, Eliza Smudge," I said, "gave you away at the start. And +that hair--it is the tail of your nephew's rocking-horse, isn't it? +And----" + +But she had fled from the room and was scudding down the drive, heedless of +my cries of "Brenda, you idiot, come back!" + + * * * * * + +As I watched from the front-door I saw that "Eliza Smudge" had met another +woman in the lane and had engaged her in conversation. + +Then they parted, and the other woman came in at the gate and up the drive. + +"My dear Elfrida," said a well-known voice, "what have you been up to? You +seem to have thoroughly upset that nice woman who was with the Copplestones +so long. She told me you were a very strange lady; in fact she thought you +must be suffering from a nervous breakdown." + +I leaned for support against the door-post, feeling a little faint. + +"Brenda? You?" I gasped. "I thought----" + +"Such a splendid maid she is," Brenda went on. "You'll never find her equal +if you try for ten years." + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Mistress._ "TOO MANY WEEDS, WILLIAM." + +_William._ "LET 'EM BIDE, MUM. NOTHING LIKE WEEDS TO SHOW YOUNG PLANTS 'OW +TO GROW."] + + * * * * * + +Eccentric Behaviour of a Cuckoo. + + "The summer-like weather which set in during the week-end has been + marked by the arrival of the cuckoo, which was heard at Shanklin on + Saturday and on Sunday morning at Staplers, bursting into full flower + of plum and pear trees, and general activity in the gardens and + fields."--_Local Paper._ + + * * * * * + + "He (Mr. Asquith) could only say 'O Sanctas Simplicitas.' (Laughter.)" + + _Irish Paper._ + + "I can only say: 'O sanctus simplicitus!'" + + _Yorkshire Paper._ + +Neither version seems to us quite worthy of an ex-Craven Scholar. + + * * * * * + +AT THE PLAY. + +"UNCLE NED." + +As the final curtain fell on the Fourth Act there was talk of celebrating +the conversion of the villain in a bottle of the best (1906). But this did +not mean that the good wine of the play had been kept to the end. Indeed it +had been practically exhausted about the middle of the Third Act, and the +rest was barley-water, sweet but relatively insipid. So long as Mr. HENRY +AINLEY was just allowed to sparkle, with beaded bubbles winking all round +the brim of him, everything went well and more than well; the trouble began +when the author, Mr. DOUGLAS MURRAY, remembered that no British audience +would be contented with mere irresponsible badinage, however fresh and +delicate; that somehow he must provide an ending where virtue prevailed and +sentiment was satisfied. + +So, when _Uncle Ned's_ humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his +brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, +he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it +was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all +the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have I been so profoundly +impressed with the difficulties of an art which depends for its success +(financial, that is to say) on the satisfaction of tastes that have nothing +in common beyond the crudest elements of human nature. + +Mr. AINLEY had things all his own way. Between him, the romancer of the +light heart and the free fancy, and his brother, the millionaire tradesman +of the tough hide, there was the clash of temperaments but never the clash +of intellects. ("Nobody with a sense of humour," says _Uncle Ned_, "ever +made a million pounds.") That the man with the iron will should be beaten +at the last with his own weapons, and brought to see the lifelong error of +his ways by a violent philippic that must have surprised the speaker hardly +less than his audience, was the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed +the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of +heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in +the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse, +from which he emerges unrecognisably reformed. + +I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully fantastic and inconsequent +humour of the first half of the play. Often it was the things that Mr. +AINLEY was given to say; but even more often, I think, it was the +incomparable way he said them, with those astonishingly swift and +unforeseen turns of gesture and glance and movement which are his peculiar +gift. Now and then, to remind us of his versatility, he may turn to +sentiment or even tragedy, but light comedy remains his natural _metier_. + +If I have a complaint to make it is that _Uncle Ned's_ studied refusal to +understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece, +who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the +reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books +and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused +needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not +be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere +child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on +the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play was too good +to need assistance from this sort of titillation. + +[Illustration: _Sir Robert Graham_ (_Mr. RANDLE AYRTON_). "MAKE YOURSELF AT +HOME. DON'T MIND ME." + +_Edward Graham_ (_Mr. HENRY AINLEY_). "I DON'T."] + +Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, as the plutocratic pachyderm, kept up his thankless end +with a fine imperviousness; and Miss IRENE ROOKE, in the part of his +secretary, played, as always, with a very gracious serenity, though I wish +this charming actress would pronounce her words with not quite so nice a +precision. Miss EDNA BEST was an admirable flapper, with just the right +note of _gaucherie_. + +As _Mears_, Mr. CLAUDE RAINS was not to be hampered by the methods dear to +the detective of convention; he looked like an apache and behaved, rather +effectively, like nothing in particular. + +The _Dawkins_ of Mr. G. W. ANSON knew well the first duty of a +stage-butler, to keep coming on whenever a stop-gap is wanted; but he had +also great personal qualities, to say nothing of his astounding record of +forty years' service in a house where strong liquor was only permitted for +"medicinal" purposes. + +O. S. + + +"THE YOUNG PERSON IN PINK." + +What the chair-man said about _The Young Person in Pink_ who had been +hanging about the Park every morning for a week was that nowadays you +couldn't really tell. He thought on the whole she was all right. The +balloon-woman was certain that with boots like that she must be a 'ussy; +but then she had refused to buy a balloon. As a matter of fact she +couldn't, being broke to the world. And worse. For she had arrived at +Victoria Station unable to remember who she was or where she came from, +ticketless, a few shillings in her purse. She had murmured "Season" at the +barrier and had taken rooms at the Carlton because she had a queer feeling +she had been there before. Her things had a coronet on them. The rest was a +blank. + +Of course nobody believed her; the women were scornful, the men not quite +nice, till very young _Lord Stevenage_, the one that was engaged to a +notorious baby-snatcher, _Lady Tonbridge_--in a high fever he'd +unfortunately said "Yes"--meets her, and you guess the rest. No, you don't. +You couldn't possibly guess _Mrs. Badger_, relict of an undertaker and now +in the old-clothes line, who has social ambitions. (I must here say in +parenthesis that _Mrs. Badger_ is a double stroke of genius on the part +both of Miss JENNINGS the author and of Miss SYDNEY FAIRBROTHER. You don't +know which to admire most, the things she says [Miss J.] or the way she +says them [Miss S. B.]. Honours divided and high honours at that.) + +_Lady Tonbridge_ had advertised for a clergyman's widow to render some +secretarial service, and the ambitious _Mrs. Badger_ had applied, duly +weeded. Meanwhile the elderly _Lady T._ had seen her _fiance_ and with the +young person in pink, and it was a brilliant and base afterthought to bribe +the clergyman's widow to claim the girl as her long-missing daughter +(invented). Both the young Lord and the young person, too much in love +perhaps to be critical, accept the situation; but you haven't quite got +_Mrs. Badger_ if you think she's the sort of person one would precisely +jump at for a mother-in-law. + +At the supreme moment when _Mrs. B._, after an interview with the whisky +bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into the mere widow of the +undertaker, gives it to the intriguing _Lady Tonbridge_ in the neck with a +wealth of imagery, a command of slightly slurred invective and a range of +facial expression beyond adequate description, she is perhaps less +attractive in the capacity of mother-by-marriage than ever, even if the +interlude prove the goodness of her heart. But it is just at that moment +that the young person is recognised by her maid. The daughter of the +_Duchess of Hampshire_, no less! So all is well. + +Not that Miss JENNINGS' plot matters. She freely accepts the absurdities +which her bizarre outline demands, but doesn't shirk the pains to make her +situations possible within the pleasantly impossible frame. What is +all-important is that she does shake the house with genuinely explosive +humour. + +If they were Miss JENNINGS' bombs, Miss FAIRBROTHER threw the most and the +best of them with a perfect aim. The rest of the platoon helped in varying +degrees. I hope I don't irretrievably damage Miss JOYCE CAREY'S reputation +as a modern when I say that she looked so pretty and innocent that I don't +believe even sour old spinsters would have doubted her. A charming and +capable performance. Mr. DONALD CALTHROP made love quite admirably on the +lighter note; a little awkwardly, perhaps, on the more serious. Miss SYBIL +CARLISLE handled an unpromising part with great skill. Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS +as the ineffable _Lady Tonbridge_ was as competent as ever, and had a coat +and skirt in the Third Act which filled the female breast with envy. Looks +like a long run. + +T. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: DRESSING THE PART. + +_Stout Tramp_ (_who has been successful at the last house_). "THIS IS A +NICE 'AT SHE'S GIVEN ME." + +_Partner._ "YUS, IT _IS_ A NICE 'AT; BUT, MIND YOU, IT AIN'T GOT THE +BREAD-WINNIN' QUALITIES OF THE OLD 'UN."] + + * * * * * + + "Art in Washing--with economy.--Ladies desiring personal attention are + invited to apply to ---- Laundry."--_Daily Paper._ + +No "imperfect ablutioner" (_vide_ "The +Mikado") should miss this opportunity. + + * * * * * + + "Fun undiluted and rippling is the main feature of _The Little + Visiters_, and not a single feature of the author's book is lost in + the process of dramatisation."--_Weekly Paper._ + +Except, apparently, the title. + + * * * * * + +The Boat-Race. + +ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY CAMBRIDGE. + +In complimenting the Light Blues we cannot help calling attention to two +curious facts which may have contributed to their victory, and seem to have +escaped the notice of the Oxford crew. According to _The Weekly Dispatch_ +Mr. SWANN rowed "No. 9 in the Cambridge boat"; and a photograph in _The +Illustrated Sunday Herald_ ("the camera cannot lie") distinctly shows the +Cambridge crew rowing with as many as eight oars on the stroke side. How +many they were using on the bow side is not revealed. + + * * * * * + + "WANTED IMMEDIATELY! + + MEDICAL DOCTOR + + for Joe Batt's Arm and vicinity. Salary two thousand dollars + guaranteed. All specials additional. Address communication to + + ALEX. COFFIN, + Sec. Doctor's Committee." + + _Newfoundland Paper._ + +Even the serious condition of Joe Batt's Arm hardly interests us so much as +the challenge to the world's humourists implied in the Committee's +selection of their secretary. + + * * * * * + +MY ONE ADMIRER. + +Of course my wife had made me go to the bazaar. All men go to bazaars +either because their wives send them, or in search of possible wives. The +men who are never at bazaars are those with humane wives, or the true +bachelors. + +I did not mind the young lady who grabbed my walking-stick and presented me +with a shilling cloakroom ticket, or the other who placed a buttonhole in +my coat (two-and-sixpence), or the third who sprayed me with scent (one +shilling, but had I known of the threatened attack I would have paid two +shillings for immunity), or the fourth, who snatched my rather elderly silk +hat and renovated it, not before its time, with some mysterious fluid +(one-and-ninepence). These are the things one expects. + +But when I faced the stalls I must admit that I trembled. In pre-war days +it was occasionally hinted that bazaar prices were a trifle high. What +would they be now? How could I face the Bazaar profiteer? Sums, reminding +me of schooldays, ran in my head, "If milk be a shilling a quart what will +be the price of a sofa-cushion?" + +As I stood in the centre of the hall I could see that the eyes of the +stall-holders were upon me--cold, horrid, calculating eyes. I could read in +them, "How much has this man got?" I felt that it would be a proper +punishment for war-profiteers if they were sentenced to purchase all their +requirements at bazaars for six months. + +Glancing round the hall in search of a place of refuge I saw a sign, +"Autograph Exhibition--Admission one shilling." A shilling! Why, such a +comfortable hiding-place would have been cheap at half-a-crown. I bolted +for the Autograph Exhibition before a piratical lady, bearing down on me +with velvet smoking caps, could reduce me to pulp. + +A smiling elderly gentleman was in charge. "Hah, you would like to see my +little collection? Certainly, certainly." + +I am not interested in autographs. Most bygone celebrities wrote +undecipherable hands. I have been equally puzzled in trying to read the +handwriting of GUY FAWKES and Mr. GLADSTONE. But this collection was +different. It had letters from nearly every one distinguished in the world +to-day--good, lengthy, interesting, readable letters. + +"How did you contrive to get all these?" I asked the exhibitor. + +"Tact, foresight and flattery, my dear Sir. It would be no use writing to +these people to-day. You'd get ignored, or at best two lines type-written +by a secretary. Now look at that long letter from LLOYD GEORGE about Welsh +nationality and that other from HILAIRE BELLOC concerning the adulteration +of modern beer. You couldn't get them now. My idea is to catch your +celebrity young. When a man produces his first play or novel or book of +poems I write him an admiring letter. You can't lay it on too thick. Ask +him some question on a topic that interests him. It always draws. They are +unused to praise and you catch them before the public has spoilt them. I +card-index all the replies I get. Of course nine out of ten of the people +turn out of no account, but some are sure to come off. You just throw out +the failures and put the successes in your collection." + +At this point I heard our Archdeacon afar off. Our Archdeacon booms--not +like trade, but like the bittern. I heard him booming outside, "My dear +lady, I cannot miss the chance of seeing dear Mr. Fletterby's collection." + +Fletterby! The name was familiar. Long years ago I published +something--don't inquire into the details of my crime--and the sole +response I had from an unappreciative world was a highly eulogistic letter +from one Samuel Fletterby. I remembered the time I had spent in writing him +a lengthy and courteous reply. I remembered that often in my darker days I +had drawn out the letter of Fletterby to encourage me. + +And now! I looked at the collection. It was arranged alphabetically. As I +turned to the initial of my name I framed a dramatic revelation for my +friend Fletterby: "That writing is familiar to me. In fact, Mr. Fletterby, +I am its unworthy writer." + +But my letter was not included in the collection. + +"Throw out the failures," Mr. Fletterby had said. + +I threw myself out instantly from the Autograph Exhibition. Better, far +better buy things I didn't want at prices I couldn't afford than stay in +the company of that faithless one, my sole erstwhile (as the papers say) +admirer. + + * * * * * + + There was a great athlete named RUDD + Who was born with a Blue in his blood; + Stout-hearted, spring-heeled, + He achieved on the field + What his Varsity lost on the flood. + + But when he had breasted the tape + A cynic emitted this jape: + "Pray notice, old son, + 'Tisn't Oxford that's won, + But Utah, Bowdoin and the Cape." + + * * * * * + +EASTER IN WILD WALES. + +The recent discovery (duly noted in _The Daily Graphic_ of the 30th ult.) +of "seven pearls of excellent quality" by an Aberavon labourer in a mussel +stranded by the tide has led to an extraordinary influx of visitors to that +quiet seaside resort. Costers have been arriving at the rate of several +hundreds a day, attracted by the prospect of finding the raw materials for +the indispensable decoration of their costumes, and the local authorities +are at their wits' end to provide adequate accommodation. Amongst the +latest arrivals is the great architect, Sir MARTIN CONWAY, who has been +consulted with regard to the erection of a number of bungalow skyscrapers, +and an urgent message has been despatched to Sir EDWIN LUTYENS at Delhi, +begging him to supply designs of a suitable character. Meanwhile +pearl-diving goes on day and night on the sea-front, with the assistance of +a flock of oyster-catchers, whose brilliant plumage adds greatly to the +picturesqueness of the scene. + +Though the special good fortune of Aberavon has excited a certain amount of +natural jealousy in the breasts of hotel and boarding-house proprietors at +other Welsh seaside resorts, they have no serious reason to complain. The +usual attractions of Barmouth have been powerfully reinforced by the +presence in the neighbouring hills of a full-sized gorilla which recently +escaped from a travelling menagerie. When last seen the animal was making +in the direction of Harlech, which is at present the head-quarters of the +Easter Vacation School of the Cambrian section of the Yugo-Slav Doukhobors. +It is understood that the local police have the matter well in hand, and +arrangements have been made, in case of emergency, for withdrawing all the +population within the precincts of the castle. + +Great disappointment prevails at Llandudno owing to the refusal of Mr. EVAN +ROBERTS, the famous revivalist, to localise the materialisation of the +Millennium, which he has recently prophesied, at Llandudno during the +Easter holidays. By way of a set-off an effort was made to induce Sir +AUCKLAND GEDDES to give a vocal recital before his departure for America. +As his recent performance at a meeting of the London Scots Club proved, Sir +AUCKLAND is a singist of remarkable power, infinite humour and soul-shaking +pathos. Unfortunately his repertory is confined to Scottish songs, and on +this ground he has been obliged to decline the invitation, though the fee +offered was unprecedented in the economic annals of the variety stage. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN. + +_P.-W.S. at a Hunt Meeting_ (_concluding a passage-at-arms with a member of +the ring_). "I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE TOFFS THAT YOU THINK YOU CAN IMPOSE UPON. +I'M A SELF-MADE MAN, I AM." + +_Bookmaker._ "WELL, I WOULDN'T TALK SO LOUD ABOUT IT. IT'S A NASTY BIT O' +WORK."] + + * * * * * + +OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. + +(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) + +Mr. FORREST REID is a writer upon whose progress I have for some time kept +an appreciative eye. His latest story, bearing the attractive title of +_Pirates of the Spring_ (UNWIN), proves, I think, that progress to be well +sustained. As you may have guessed from the name, this is a tale of +adolescence; it shows Mr. REID'S North-Ireland lads differing slightly from +the more familiar home-product, though less in essentials than in tricks of +speech, and (since these are day-school boys, exposed to the influence of +their several homes) an echo of religious conflict happily rare in the +experience of English youth. Mr. REID is amongst the few novelists who can +be sympathetic to boyhood without sentimentalising over it; he has +admirably caught its strange mingling of pride and curiosity, of reticence +and romance and jealous loyalty. The tale has no particular plot; it is a +record of seeming trifles, friendships made and broken and renewed, +sporadic adventures and deep-laid intrigues that lead nowhere. But you will +catch in it a real air of youth, a spring-time wind blowing from the +half-forgotten world in which all of us once were chartered privateers. +There are, of course, worthy folk who would be simply bored by all +this--which is why I do not venture to call _Pirates of the Spring_ +everyone's reading; others, however, more fortunate, will find it a true +and delicately observed study of an engaging theme. + + * * * * * + +I must really warn the flippant. It would be appalling if admirers of +_Literary_ (and other) _Lapses_ were to send blithely to the libraries for +Mr. LEACOCK'S latest and find themselves landed with _The Unsolved Riddle +of Social Justice_ (LANE). And yet I don't know. Here is a subject which +even the flippant cannot long ignore. And a man of the world with a clear +head and a mastery of clearer idiom than a professor of political economy +usually commands has here said something desperately serious without a +trace of dulness. I should like Professor LEACOCK'S short book to be +divided into three. The first part, a trenchant analysis of some of the +evils of our social and industrial system, I would send to the +impossibilists and obstructives; the second, a critical examination of some +of the nostrums of the progressives, should go to the hasty optimists who +think that a sudden change of system will as suddenly change men, for it +contains much that they will do well (and now resolutely refuse) to ponder. +The third part I would return to the author for revision, for it contains +no more, when analysed, than an _ipse dixit_, and quite fails to show that +the evils denounced as intolerable in the first part can be remedied +without some substantial portion at least of the heroic reforms denounced +in his second. Also I would remind him, or rather perhaps the more +ingenuous of his readers, that there have been later contributions to the +theory and practice of new-world building than Mr. BELLAMY'S _Looking +Backward_. + + * * * * * + +_The Great Desire_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is a novel full of shrewd +philosophy and excellent talk. Mr. ALEXANDER BLACK sets out to prove +nothing, to justify no political or social attitude, but just to draw his +fellow-Americans as he sees them going about their war-time business, the +"great desire" being simply the thing that is uppermost in the mind of each +one. As a composite picture of what New York thought about the business of +getting into the War the result could hardly be bettered. One never feels +that latent antagonism which readers, even though they may agree with him, +unconsciously experience towards an author who seems to be arguing a point. +Mr. BLACK gives the extreme views of the blatant patriot, and of the +anarchist and socialist who cannot see the distinction between arguing +against war on paper and arguing against this War on the street corner. He +makes us realise the people who think only how to make the War an adjunct +of themselves and those who desire only to make themselves a useful adjunct +of the War. He draws his types cleverly and states the case of each one +fairly, but with a humorous restraint and from a standpoint of absolute +detachment. _The Great Desire_ has plenty of charm regarded merely as a +story, but I recommend it especially to those who are apt to judge the +Americans by their politicians or to assess New York on the basis of the +HEARST newspapers. + + * * * * * + +If it were only for his complete fearlessness in following well-worn +convention and his apparent reliance on his readers' ignorance or want of +memory, Mr. J. MURRAY GIBBON'S _Drums Afar_ (LANE) would be rather a +remarkable book in these psycho-analytical days. His hero actually has the +audacity to have blue eyes and fair hair, to start his career in the House, +and to end it, so far as the novel is concerned, lying wounded in a +hospital, where his _fiancee_, a famous singer, happened to be a nurse in +the same ward. Nor does the young man disdain the threadbare conversational +_cliche_. "Don't you think there is something elemental in most of us which +no veneer of civilisation or artificial living can ever deaden?" he says in +one place (rather as if veneer were a kind of rat poison). Still bolder, on +leaving America, where he has become engaged to a wealthy Chicagan's +daughter, he quotes-- + + "I could not love thee, dear, so much + Loved I not honour more." + +And, although the girl is annoyed, it is not on account of the citation. +Much of the story, however, deals with Chicago, and since my previous +knowledge of that city could have easily been contained in a tin of pressed +beef I can pardon Mr. GIBBON for being as informative about it as he is +about Oxford colleges. (He seems, by the way, to have a rooted contempt for +Balliol, which I had always supposed was a quite well-meaning place.) On +the whole, either in spite or because of its rather Baedeker-like +qualities, _Drums Afar_ will be found quite a restful and readable book. + + * * * * * + +Somewhere in the course of the tale that gives its title to _The Blower of +Bubbles_ (CHAMBERS) the character who is supposed to relate it denies that +he is a sentimentalist. I may as well say at once that, if this denial is +intended to apply also to Mr. ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER, who wrote the five +stories that make up the volume, a more comprehensive misstatement was +never embodied in print. Because, from the picture on the wrapper, +representing a starry-eyed infant conducting an imaginary orchestra, to the +final page, the book is one riot of sentiment--plots, characters and +treatment alike. Not that, save by the fastidious, it must be considered +any the worse for this; even had not Mr. BAXTER'S hearty little preface +explained the conditions of active service under which it was composed, +themselves enough to excuse any quantity of over-sweetening. I will not +give you the five long-shorts in detail. The first, about a German child +and a young man with heart trouble, shows Mr. BAXTER at his worst, with the +sob-stuff all but overwhelming a sufficiently nimble wit. My own favourite +is the fifth tale, a spirited and generous tribute to England's war effort. +(I should explain that the book, and I suppose the author also, is by +origin Canadian.) This last story, told partly in the form of letters to +his editor in New York by an American officer and journalist, has all the +interest that comes of seeing ourselves as others see us; though I could +not but think that the narrator erred in making the haughty _Lady Dorothy_, +daughter of his noble hosts, exclaim, on the entrance of a footman with a +letter, "Pardon me, it's the mail." So there you are. If you have a taste +for stories that make no pretence of being other than fiction pure and +simple, limpidly pure and transparently simple (yet witty too in places), +try these; otherwise pass. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: _Pedestrian._ "DROPPED ANYTHING, MISTER?" + +_Motorist._ "YES." + +_Pedestrian._ "WHAT IS IT?" + +_Motorist._ "MY GIRL."] + + * * * * * + + "UTOPIA. + + Miss Ruby ---- Sundayed under the parental."--_Canadian Paper._ + +We congratulate Utopia on its ideal language. + + ++------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| Transcriber's note: | +| | +| Typographical errors corrected: "Ted" for "Ned" and | +| "reelly" for "really" on page 262. | ++------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, VOL. +158, APRIL 7, 1920*** + + +******* This file should be named 22905.txt or 22905.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/0/22905 + + + +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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