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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October 10,
+1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Owen Seaman
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2008 [EBook #27421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Neville Allen, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
+
+  Vol. 159.
+
+  October 20, 1920.
+
+
+  CHARIVARIA.
+
+"Whenever I am in London," writes an American journalist, "I never miss
+the House of Commons." Nor do we, during the Recess.
+
+       * * *
+
+"If Lord KENYON wishes, I am prepared to fight him with any weapon he
+chooses to name at any time," announced Sir CLAUDE CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY
+recently to a representative of _The Star_. In sporting circles it is
+thought that, in spite of his recent declaration, Mr. C. B. COCHRAN may
+consent to stage the encounter.
+
+       * * *
+
+At the Air Conference last week Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON, M. P.,
+said the Government should appoint experts to control the weather. It
+looks as if _The Daily Mail_ was not going to have things all its own
+way.
+
+       * * *
+
+"The object of Poland," says M. DOMBSKI, "is peace, hard work and
+production." These were at one time the object of England, and she still
+hopes to get peace.
+
+       * * *
+
+Mr. PUSSYFOOT JOHNSON has told a Glasgow audience that he is no
+kill-joy, but smokes cigars. It is also said that he has been seen going
+the pace playing dominoes.
+
+       * * *
+
+"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." We can only add that the price
+of apples is enough to keep anybody away.
+
+       * * *
+
+"What is a Penny Roll?" asks a headline. The answer is "Three
+half-pence."
+
+       * * *
+
+The average boarding-house, says a gossip writer, is not what it seems.
+No, unfortunately it is what it is.
+
+       * * *
+
+We understand that the world's record fast has been accomplished by a
+Scotsman, who has succeeded in remaining in Prohibition America for
+seven months and three days.
+
+       * * *
+
+South Sea Islanders, when greeting friends, says _Tit Bits_, fling a jar
+of water over them. Cats on night duty are now putting a kindlier
+interpretation on the treatment they receive.
+
+       * * *
+
+An employee at a coal-mine in Ohio is reported to have died from
+overwork. There is consolation in the fact that this could not possibly
+happen in England.
+
+       * * *
+
+Three Glasgow workmen have started on a walk to London. With the
+possibility of a vote in favour of a dry Scotland we suppose they
+started early to avoid the rush.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is still very doubtful whether JACK DEMPSEY can meet JESS WILLARD,
+says a sporting paper. A dear old lady thinks he might get over the
+difficulty by dropping him a letter.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is reported that the captain of a village fire brigade recently
+declined to call his men out to a fire because it was raining.
+Unfortunately the owner of the fire was too busy to keep it going till
+the first fine day.
+
+       * * *
+
+A clerk employed behind the counter at a post-office in the South of
+England recently rescued a young girl from drowning. In order to show
+their appreciation of the young man's bravery, local residents have now
+decided to purchase their stamps at his post-office.
+
+       * * *
+
+"Life is uncertain and often full of trouble," bewails a writer in the
+"Picture" Press. Still, in our opinion it's the only thing worth living.
+
+       * * *
+
+On two separate occasions last week a cat entered one of the largest
+churches in Yorkshire whilst a wedding was in progress. This supports
+our belief that feline society is contemplating the introduction of more
+ceremony into their own marriage system.
+
+       * * *
+
+Ex-sailors on the reserve need not be alarmed by the repeated rumours
+that a surprise mobilisation of the Fleet may be ordered very shortly,
+as we now have it on good authority that, in order to ensure its
+complete success, plenty of notice will be given to them beforehand.
+
+       * * *
+
+Women are said to be fonder than men are of morbid stage plays. Weddings
+also have a greater fascination for them.
+
+       * * *
+
+Mr. T. A. EDISON is reported to have invented a machine to record
+communication with the other world. As a final experiment an attempt is
+to be made to get into touch with the POET LAUREATE.
+
+       * * *
+
+The motor-car of polished steel and no paint-work is the latest
+innovation. It is said that this will do away with the objection of
+pedestrians that under present conditions one cannot be knocked down
+without soiling one's clothing.
+
+       * * *
+
+"Water," says an official of the Metropolitan Water Board, "costs far
+too much to waste to-day." Adulterated with whisky, we believe it costs
+about eightpence a time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: DIPLOMACY.
+
+_Mistress._ "NORAH, WILL YOU TRY TO HAVE THE STEAK A LITTLE MORE
+UNDERDONE?"
+
+_Norah_ (_bristling up_). "IS IT FINDING FAULT YE ARE?"
+
+_Mistress._ "OH, NO, NO! I MERELY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICER FOR YOU NOT
+TO REMAIN OVER THE FIRE SO LONG."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The Music of the Future.
+
+    "MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
+
+    For Sale, one small Economic Roller, 1 Brown's triple action Roller,
+    2 Eastern Produce Roll Breakers, 1 Updraft Sirocco Dryer--all the
+    above in good order and can be seen working. 1 Saw Mill, good order.
+    1 Souter's roll Breaker, fair order."--_Ceylon Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Mr. ---- won £400,000 at Aix-les-Bains. The lucky player, _who was
+    educated at Harrow_...."--_Daily Paper._
+
+The italics are Mr. Punch's. Are our public schools beginning to
+advertise?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FALLING PRICES.
+
+(_With grateful acknowledgments to the Commercial Statistician of "The
+Times."_)
+
+  Sad is the sight, but not so strange,
+    When the dead leaf to earth declines:
+  I have observed this annual change
+    As one of Autumn's surest signs;
+      But oh, how very odd it is
+  To mark the falling prices of commodities.
+
+  One had supposed the boom of War
+    (Still raging with the desperate Turk),
+  Whose closure seemed past praying for,
+    Would carry on its hideous work
+      And swell for years and years
+  The bulging waistcoats of our profiteers.
+
+  But lo! a lot of useful wares
+    Within my modest range have come;
+  Trousers, I hear, are sold (in pairs)
+    At three-fifteen--a paltry sum;
+      And you can even get
+  Dittos as low as thirteen pounds the set.
+
+  I can afford a further lump
+    Of sugar in my cocoa--yes,
+  And cocoa too is on the slump,
+    Its "second grade" now costs me less;
+      And green peas (marrowfat)
+  Are down to fourpence. I can run to that.
+
+  And, though my coffers, sadly thinned,
+    May not command a home-killed ham,
+  And though the fees for pilchards (tinned)
+    And eggs (to eat) and strawberry-jam
+      Are still beyond my means
+  (The same remark applies to butter-beans);
+
+  Yet milk (condensed) and salmon ("pink"),
+    And arrowroot and pines (preserved)--
+  All "easier," I am glad to think--
+    These, and a soul not yet unnerved,
+      Shall keep me going strong,
+  Now that the price of boots is not so long.
+
+    O. S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GONE AWAY!
+
+It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I
+believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn"
+by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering
+morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village
+we hunt the 8.52. Morning after morning, if you watch from a high place,
+you can see our bowlers and squash hats just above the hedgerows bobbing
+down to the covert side. That one bobbing last is me.
+
+As we trudge homeward under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes
+are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging
+of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find
+again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early at the meet in the
+morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the
+platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to
+be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to
+the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season
+ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put
+trains into the feminine gender. This is a slight compensation for
+having to pay again when they are challenged and can only pull out a
+complimentary pass to the Chrysanthemum Show.
+
+As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I
+am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle
+about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry
+that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his
+marmalade.
+
+In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid
+certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the
+sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is
+hardly playing the game. Of the stout-hearted fellows who follow on
+foot, both Enderby and Jackson pass in front of my house and may be
+discerned dimly through a gap in the hedge, which was probably made for
+that purpose by the previous tenant. Or it may have been because the
+gate-latch sticks and he did not jump well. Enderby asserts that my
+house is nine minutes from the station, and Jackson says it is six, and
+therein lies the whole difference between optimism and pessimism. All I
+know is that, if I gather my hat, coat, _Times_, stick, pipe, tobacco
+and matches and put as many as possible of them in appropriate places
+just after Enderby has passed the gap, I catch the 8.52 nicely. If I do
+these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just
+about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should
+encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them
+twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do
+this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have
+pointed out that a "View halloo" from Enderby, followed by a stirring
+
+    "Tantivvy, Tantivvy, Tantivvy;
+      Tra-la, Tra-la, Tra-la"
+
+from Jackson, will, if any power on earth can do it, bring me from my
+toast in time for my train in the morning.
+
+I have explained to them that nothing can be pleasanter or more
+beautiful for the baker, the butcher and the grocer to look at every
+morning than Enderby and Jackson dressed in pink, with a despatch-case
+in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other. There must be other
+sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little
+lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they
+all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.
+
+I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye
+to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of
+the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes
+through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." I
+have replied that I cannot hear express trains when I am eating toast,
+and that the only warner I recognise is PLUM WARNER, who cannot by any
+stretch of language be called an express train. There the matter rests
+at present, and I suppose in a few days I shall miss the 8.52 again.
+
+Happily I have now found out what to do when this occurs. Enderby and
+Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their
+narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes
+after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting
+from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on
+the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy
+good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted
+along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at
+home, the half-drunk stirrup-cup of coffee standing tepid and forlorn.
+But, as I say, the 9.5 is a perfectly sound train. It is quite true that
+it goes to Brighton, but the weather has been very warm of late. I hate
+these splits in the local Hunt, but there it is.
+
+    EVOE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "THE RESOURCES OF CIVILISATION."
+
+MR. LLOYD GEORGE. "STICK TO IT, BONAR. POOR OLD SISYPHUS NEVER HAD AN
+IMPLEMENT LIKE THIS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: HIGH LIFE ON THE UNDERGROUND.
+
+_Lady (to tiresome individual)._ "I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU--HAMMERSMITH IS
+THE NEXT BUT ONE. THE NEXT IS BARON'S COURT. THAT'S MY STATION, NOT
+YOURS."
+
+_The Individual._ "AHEM! THE BARONESS, I PRESOOM?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE DINING GLADIATOR;
+
+OR, WAR TO THE KNIFE (AND FORK).
+
+(_Being further Extracts from a certain Diary_).
+
+_August 4th, 1914._--Declaration of War. I hereby take a solemn oath not
+to relax my efforts to win this struggle for England, even if it costs
+me my last drop of ink.
+
+Began my series of powerful articles by calling for KITCHENER, of whom I
+now, if guardedly, approve. Lunched at the Carlton and dined at the Ritz
+to let all the world see that I am not downhearted.
+
+       * * *
+
+Spent the morning at the War Office, showing everyone how the work there
+ought to be done. Then to Downing Street to put things right there.
+
+Lunched at Claridge's with six Leading Ladies, all of them cheery souls.
+
+       * * *
+
+Week-ended at Melton. Some good tennis and bridge. Fear that none of our
+generals really knows his job.
+
+       * * *
+
+I have been wondering to-day if any other military journalist could
+possibly know such a lot of the Smart Set, and so intimately as I do. I
+am extraordinary lucky in having all these nice people to fall back on
+when I am worn out with War-winning and Tribunal duties.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote a wonderful article on the importance of dressing up some one to
+look like HINDENBURG and dropping him at night by parachute from an
+aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be
+a biggish man who can speak German well--Mr. CHESTERTON perhaps, but I
+have never met Mr. CHESTERTON, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the
+Ritz; or even Lord HALDANE. Once safely landed (my article goes on to
+explain) he would make his way to German H. Q., being mistaken for the
+real HINDENBURG, kill him and then issue orders to the Army which would
+quickly put the Germans in our power. Strange that no one else has
+thought of this.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is very awkward to be the only man in London who has the truth in
+him. Relieved some of my embarrassment by a glass or two of remarkable
+1794 brandy.
+
+       * * *
+
+WINSTON came to Carryon Hall to dine and we discussed his future. I
+mapped out the next six months for him very carefully, and he promised
+to follow my counsel; but I am afraid that Lady RANDOLPH may interfere.
+
+       * * *
+
+My HINDENBURG article not in _The Times_ yet. Cannot think what is
+coming to journalism. And NORTHCLIFFE calls himself a hustler.
+
+Sent for the PRIME MINISTER and gave him a piece of my mind. He ought to
+be more careful in future.
+
+       * * *
+
+Lunched at the Carlton with GEORGE GRAVES and had some valuable War
+talk.
+
+In the afternoon to the Tribunal, where all excuses were disregarded and
+everyone packed off to the recruiting officer.
+
+In the evening to a first-class revue at the Palace.
+
+       * * *
+
+Had gratifying visit from ANATOLE FRANCE'S friend, M. PUTOIS, who told
+me that the French look to me as the only Englishman capable of winning
+the War. My articles are read everywhere, and some have been set to
+music.
+
+       * * *
+
+More men must be obtained, and therefore wrote a capital article calling
+on all criminals to cease their labours during the War, in order to
+release the police for the army. After this effort, which was very
+tiring, lunched at the Ritz with ETHEL LEVEY, LAVERY and SOVERAL. Some
+good riddles were asked. A discussion followed on ladies' boots, and
+whether toes should be pointed or square. From this we passed to
+stockings and then to lingerie. Tore myself away to attend to my
+Tribunal duties.
+
+       * * *
+
+Met the GLOOMY DEAN in the Mall and walked with him to the Rag., where
+he left me. A most diverting man. He told me a capital story about a
+curate and an egg.
+
+       * * *
+
+Finished a rattling good article on a way to make our army look more
+impressive to the foe, namely by fitting each man with a dummy man on
+either side of him. Bosch aeroplane observers would imagine then that we
+were three times as strong as we are, and some very desirable results
+might follow.
+
+       * * *
+
+Sent for NORTHCLIFFE and told him that unless my articles are treated
+with more respect I cannot go on and the War will be lost. He seemed to
+be impressed, but you never know.
+
+Lunched at Claridge's with Lady CUNARD, Lady DIANA MANNERS and GEORGE
+ROBEY. We were all very witty.
+
+In the afternoon saw ROBERTSON at the W.O. and told him of my dummy
+soldier idea. He roared with delight.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of either L. G.
+learning French or CLEMENCEAU learning English. Very depressed all day;
+have lost my appetite.
+
+       * * *
+
+Dined at the Ritz. A large party, including Lady CUNARD and Lady DIANA
+MANNERS. The Princess of X. was present and I found her intelligent.
+Afterwards to Lady Y.'s for bridge. The cards were mad, but we had some
+wonderful rubbers, the four best players in London being concerned.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of eating and drinking
+and being merry during great national crises. Urged among other things
+the addition of restaurant cars to all trains, even those on the Tubes.
+It is madness to encourage seriousness, as _The Times_ is doing.
+
+       * * *
+
+My eating article not printed. Practice, however, is more than precept,
+and I shall continue to do my bite.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+    E. V. L.
+
+Illustration: THE END OF AN IMPERFECT DAY.
+
+"ONE OF THOSE TINS OF SALMON, PLEASE."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another Sex-Problem.
+
+    "SALE OF LIVE AND DEAD FARM STOCK.
+    6 Steers in milk and in Calf."
+
+    _Local Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "In the second part of the programme Miss ---- was associated with
+    Mr. ---- in 'It was a Lover and His Last.'"--_Australian Paper._
+
+Let us hope she will remain so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Rejoicing in a measure of freedom after the harassing restrictions
+    of the war, Scotsmen are not eager to thrust their necks into the
+    nose again."--_Daily Paper._
+
+They prefer, we imagine, to thrust the nose of the bottle into their
+necks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Every British voter on the sea coast is at heart a sailor."--_Daily
+    Chronicle._
+
+At heart, no doubt. But how many have found to their cost that it is in
+fact another organ which affords the ultimate test of sailorship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHECK BY THE QUEEN.
+
+I had never before seen the Fairy Queen in such an agitated condition.
+She came dashing in, her cheeks glowing, her eyes aflame, her tiny form
+positively quivering with indignation and excitement.
+
+In her hand she held a small scrap of paper, which she waved about in a
+frantic manner just in front of my nose.
+
+"Look," she said, "look! My Press Agency sent it me this morning. Did
+you ever hear of such a thing? It's outrageous, it's incredible,
+it's.... Oh, don't sit staring there as if it didn't matter. Can't you
+say something--suggest something?"
+
+"Your Majesty," I said humbly, for one has to be a little careful when
+dealing with incensed Royalty, "I haven't been able to read it yet."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with quick contrition; "I'm afraid I'm apt
+to get a little carried away when I'm upset. But surely this is more
+than anybody could be expected to stand, mortal or immortal."
+
+She settled down on the desk in front of me, spreading out the crumpled
+bit of paper on the blotter and holding the ends down with her little
+hands.
+
+"There," she said--"read it." And this is what I read:--
+
+    "M----'s FAIRY RING DESTROYER.
+
+    After prolonged experiments we have succeeded in producing a
+    preparation which checks the growth of unsightly rings on Lawns, &c.
+    Two pounds of the Destroyer per square pole is sufficient for a
+    single dressing. Full particulars with each consignment."
+
+"'Unsightly'!" said the Queen in a trembling voice. "Do you see that?"
+and she pointed to the offending word with a tiny forefinger.
+"'Prolonged experiments' too. Do you know, I remember now that I _have_
+had complaints from some of our Garden Settlements about discomfort; but
+of course I never dreamed of anyone doing it on purpose. Do you
+think--oh, do you think"--she looked at me with tears in her bright
+eyes--"that it's really true that human beings are beginning to get
+tired of us? That we're"--she dropped her voice and I saw that she could
+hardly get out the next words--"out-of-date?"
+
+Her falling tears made tiny marks on the blotting-paper.
+
+"Of course not," I said stoutly. "On the contrary, you're coming in
+stronger than ever. Why, one might almost look upon you as one of the
+newest fashionable crazes, like motor-scooters and cinema stars and
+indiscreet memoirs." I hardly knew what I was saying, it was so dreadful
+to see her cry.
+
+"Oh, I hope not," she said, half-laughing and hastily dabbing her nose
+with a ridiculous atom of swansdown which she produced from a minute
+reticule.
+
+"As to these gentlemen," I continued, pointing contemptuously to the
+announcement, "we'll very soon settle them." I seized a sheet of paper
+and began scribbling away as hard as I could go.
+
+The Queen amused herself meanwhile by balancing on the letter-scales.
+She seemed almost happy. I heard her murmur to herself, "Dear me. Two
+ounces. I shall have to start dieting. No more honey----"
+
+"There," I said presently, "send them that, and we shall see what we
+shall see."
+
+This is what I had written:--
+
+"We, Titania, Queen of Fairyland, Empress of the Kingdom of Dreams,
+Grand Dame of the Order of Absolute Darlings, etc., etc., beg to draw
+the attention of Messrs. M---- to the enclosed paragraph, impinging
+gravely on the ancient and indisputable rights and prerogatives of
+ourselves and our loyal subjects, which appeared in their recent seed
+catalogue. We feel that the inclusion of the aforesaid paragraph must be
+due to some oversight, since Messrs. M---- can hardly be unaware of the
+fact that it is only owing to the co-operation of ourselves and our
+subjects that they are able to carry on their business with success. We
+are unwilling to resort to extreme measures, but unless the paragraph is
+immediately withdrawn we shall be obliged to take steps accordingly, in
+which case Messrs. M---- are warned that the whole of next year's flower
+crop may prove an utter and complete failure. Given under our Royal Hand
+and Seal. TITANIA R."
+
+The Queen seemed very pleased when I read it over to her.
+
+"It's perfectly splendid," she said, clapping her hands. "How silly of
+me not to have thought of it; but I was so distracted. Won't it make
+them sit up? And of course we could do it easily, though it would be
+rather dreadful, wouldn't it? I shall have it copied out the minute I
+get home and sent off to-night. By the way" (a little anxiously) "there
+aren't any split infinitives in it, are there? My chamberlain's rather
+peculiar about them--they make him ill. Extraordinary, isn't it?
+But--don't tell anyone--I never quite understand myself what they are or
+where they split, though it certainly does sound very uncomfortable."
+
+I reassured her on that point.
+
+"Oh, then _that_'s all right," she said; "and I don't think even he
+would ever have thought of 'impinging'; it's lovely, isn't it? Thank you
+very much indeed," she added, as she folded up the paper and slipped it
+under her girdle. "You are a most helpful person. I really think I
+must--" I felt a touch on my cheek, lighter than the caress of a
+butterfly's wing, softer than the tip of a baby's finger, sweeter than
+the perfume of jessamine at night. For a moment the Queen continued to
+flutter close about me, radiant and shining. I shut my dazzled eyes for
+an instant. When I opened them she was gone.
+
+I can't help wondering what Messrs. M---- will do. They'll be rather
+rash if they persist. And yet it does seem a little----Well, doesn't it?
+
+    R. F.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.
+
+THE BEE.
+
+  I never, never could admit
+    The virtues of the bee;
+      I thought she seemed a dreadful prig
+      When I was small, and now I'm big
+  I see she is a hypocrite,
+    And so, of course, are we.
+
+  It's true she rushes to and fro
+    With business promptitude,
+      But what about the busy ant?
+      Oh, let us clear our minds of cant--
+  Why _is_ it that we love her so?
+    _She manufactures food._
+
+  But not for us. If it were shown
+    She organised the feast
+      For _us_ to eat, one might agree
+      About her virtue; but, you see,
+  She does it for herself alone,
+    The greedy little beast!
+
+  So grasping is the little dear
+    That every now and then
+      She readjusts the ration scales
+      By simply murdering the males,
+  With many a base, malicious jeer
+    At "idle gentlemen."
+
+  Nor does a man of us cry "Shame!"
+    Though every man would own
+      If there is one high hope for which
+      He labours on at fever-pitch
+  It is not honour, wealth or fame--
+    He wants to be a drone.
+
+  Why is it, then, we don't abhor
+    This horrid little prude?
+      Why don't we cast the foullest slur
+      On such a Prussian character?
+  Because, as I remarked before,
+    _She manufactures food_.
+
+  The world is full of beasts, my son,
+    And I know two or three
+      That any parent might employ
+      To be a model for their boy,
+  But take my word, we've overdone
+    The insufferable bee.
+
+    A. P. H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: THE NEW POOR.
+
+"I REMEMBER THE TIME--
+
+--WHEN I THOUGHT--
+
+--I NEVER SHOULD RIDE IN A BUS--
+
+--AND NOW--
+
+--I AM ALMOST CERTAIN--
+
+--I NEVER SHALL."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: CURE FOR INSOMNIA. MESMERISE YOURSELF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE CONSPIRATORS
+
+IV.
+
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--The other evening I was sitting at an open-air café
+whose coffee is better than its social reputation. To be exact it is a
+low haunt. I always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I
+am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was
+happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To
+confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of
+professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for
+the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion,
+and says that now he cannot bring himself to return to his normal work,
+since by contrast it is so very tame. For a time he was stranded, but
+now the international conspiracy business provides him with just the
+sport he was looking for.
+
+After a little conversation about pocket-picking, as it used to be in
+the good old days, he asked me if I was interested in communist plots. I
+said I was interested in anything. He looked round the café to see that
+all was well, leant across the table and asked me if I was not
+_particularly_ interested in communist plots. "Yes," I whispered, "as
+long as it's a plot I'm interested in it, even though it is a communist
+one."
+
+He grew suspicious; why was I so interested? There is always a lot of
+whispering and mutual suspicion about on these occasions. I told him of
+these letters I was writing to you on the subject. This made him more
+than suspicious; positively hostile. Who was this Charles? he wanted to
+know. I told him all about you; explained that you were a good friend of
+mine; quite all right--one of us.
+
+He rather took to the description of you, dropped all signs of doubt or
+anxiety and wondered if we couldn't get hold of you to come and take
+coffee with us one evening? You may rest assured, Charles, that there is
+now one café in Central Europe where you are regarded as a first-class
+fellow, even though your acquaintance has yet to be made; _bon
+camarade_; not above picking a pocket or two yourself in a moment of
+enthusiasm. You must come here and show yourself one day. You need have
+no fear. We never pick each others' pockets; it isn't considered
+etiquette.
+
+"I am now a Young Socialist," said my friend with great pride. The Young
+Socialists are the worst communists there are.
+
+"Really?" said I; "the last time we had a chat you were an ardent German
+Monarchist."
+
+He produced his Matriculation card; it wasn't in his proper name, but,
+as he explained, one name is as good as another and he has had so many
+from time to time that now he cannot rightly say which is his own. I
+asked him to elaborate the Young Socialists' programme of murder and
+sudden death, a subject which, as a proposed victim, had a morbid
+fascination for me. He said he knew nothing about that; their
+everlasting talk bored him and he never attended the public meetings. It
+was the committee work which interested him.
+
+He told me about the first committee meeting he attended. He wasn't a
+member of the committee at the time, a fact which put difficulties in
+the way of his attending the meeting, as it was held behind closed
+doors. All the doors were closed and locked, including the cupboard
+door. He was in the cupboard. I wondered what they would have done to
+him if they had found him there. He told me he had had plenty of time to
+wonder that himself when he had once got himself locked in.
+
+"Begin at the beginning," said I.
+
+It was a question, first, of getting round the door-keeper. He made
+friends with that door-keeper, took him out to supper, gave him a kirsch
+with his coffee and a cigar with his kirsch. He told the door-keeper
+that he was the most distinguished door-keeper he had ever met. He
+encouraged him to go through his ailments and his grievances and was
+visibly distressed by the recital. He got in the habit of sitting with
+the door-keeper while he was keeping the door for the committee
+assembled inside. And, when he thought the friendship was sufficiently
+advanced, he poured forth his inmost heart to that door-keeper. He said
+that Young Socialism was to him the breath of life, and the tragedy was
+that he was always kept on the outskirts of it. He said he would give
+anything to take part in a committee meeting, or anyhow to hear the
+great ones at it; and, to make this sound plausible, he expounded a
+scheme of Young Socialism of his own, which was far more drastic and
+bloodthirsty than anything that had yet occurred to any committee.
+
+The door-keeper didn't believe there could be anybody who really cared
+all that much for communism; for his part he kept the door because there
+was money to be made easily that way. At the next committee meeting he
+made more money and made it more easily, and my friend was safely locked
+up in the cupboard before the committee arrived. What with the heat
+inside, the thought that the door-keeper might be more cunning than had
+appeared and a persistent desire to sneeze, he questioned all the time
+whether he was the right man in the right place. The committee meanwhile
+did little more than vote its own salaries from the central fund and
+quarrel amongst itself who should be treasurer.
+
+Later proceedings of the committee, as noted in the cupboard, were more
+interesting. When the question turned on finding someone trustworthy and
+competent to take secret instructions to comrades in France and England,
+my friend very nearly burst forth from his shelf to say to them, "I'm
+your man!" He restrained himself, however, and thought out a more
+elaborate scheme than that.
+
+He secured a front seat at the next public meeting of the section,
+applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more
+briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after
+the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services
+to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was
+quite a practical man and, though he didn't use these words, he
+indicated to my friend as follows: "If you are a genuine blackguard the
+police won't let you go; if you are not a genuine blackguard you are not
+really one of us."
+
+My friend said that that would be all right, and they agreed to meet
+later on. He then went to the police and explained that he was about to
+be entrusted with important letters to carry over the frontier, if they
+would afford the necessary facilities. The police also were practical
+and, without wishing in any way to hurt his feelings, raised the
+question of his being genuine. Genuine was, of course, the very last
+thing he was claiming to be, but he understood what they meant, said
+that that would be all right and arranged a later appointment. He then
+called on the President and found him duly suspicious.
+
+"I've had a talk with the police," said my friend, "and I've told them
+all about you and your messages, and they are going to give me the
+facilities and I am going to give them the messages."
+
+This was the first occasion on which the President had had to handle the
+plain truth, and he didn't know what to do or say next.
+
+"Give me some dud messages, of course," said my friend, and the
+President, thinking what a bright young Socialist this was, complied.
+
+He then went back to the police. "I've had a talk with the President,"
+said he, "and I've told them all about you and your interest in the
+messages, and here the messages are; and you needn't worry to read them
+because they are dud."
+
+The police had also got so unused to the truth from such quarters that
+they were taken aback when they met it.
+
+"And now have I your full confidence?" said he, and they said that he
+might take it that he had. He then went back to the President.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. President," said he. "I have given your messages to
+the police and told them they are dud messages, so that now I have their
+full confidence and can move about as I like. Give me the real messages
+and I'll be getting on with my journey."
+
+Throwing precaution to the winds, the President wrote out the real
+messages in full and handed them to him.
+
+"Come, come, come," said he, "you must be more careful than that," and
+he told him what he ought to do to make sure. He did it.
+
+My friend then proceeded to the frontier, where, by arrangement, he was
+arrested. In the inside pocket of his inside coat a bundle of messages
+were found. The police nodded at him.
+
+"Yes," they said, "here are the messages all right. We don't know that
+they help much, but we suppose that we mustn't blame you."
+
+"Come, come, come," said my friend, "if you doubt me, search me." They
+did so, and, written on linen and sewn into the lining of his coat, they
+found some more messages, which really did help them. Yours ever, HENRY.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Profiteer Host._ "I'M AFRAID WE'LL HAVE TO DRINK THE
+FIZZ OUT OF PORT GLASSES."
+
+_Profiteer Guest._ "OH, WE DON'T MIND ROUGHIN' IT; WE'RE ALL SPORTSMEN,
+I TAKE IT."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RELATIVES WITHOUT ANTECEDENTS.
+
+    "YOUTHFUL HOSTESSES.--A few years ago when a bachelor entertained he
+    invited his aunt or his mother to act as hostess for him. Now he
+    asks his grand-daughter."--_Daily Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Ostensibly £it was a move to check the ever-rising cost of living,
+    £and in a way not fully realised by the public £it was a method of
+    riveting control on the industry."
+
+_Evening Paper._
+
+With money flung about like this the cost of living is bound to go up
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: SINISTER SIGNS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON.
+
+_Alarmed House Agent._ "MADAM, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PARTNER?"
+
+_Client._ "I was just giving particulars of my flat, which I am anxious
+to let, and when I said, 'No premium required,' he crumpled up as if
+he'd been shot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT._
+
+    [The taking of finger-prints of all new-born babies is advocated.
+    These will be useful for identification at trials, inquests, etc.,
+    since the pattern of the print does not change from the cradle to
+    the grave.]
+
+  With paternal pride I used to glow
+    When the neighbours dropped their pleasant hints
+  How like Daddy Reginald would grow,
+    But to-day they took his finger-prints;
+      Now I am convinced they spoke in haste--
+      Such expressions show a lack of taste.
+
+  Operator was a kindly man,
+    Formerly a sergeant of police;
+  Dipped our Reggie's digits in a pan
+    Filled with printers' ink and oil and grease,
+      Pressed them on a card and soothed his moans,
+      Saying "Diddums" in official tones.
+
+  Mother stood and gazed upon the thing,
+    Lovingly as doting mothers do;
+  Asked, "Does Reggie's hieroglyphic bring
+    Memories of famous men to you--
+      Men who, having made their lives sublime,
+      Left their thumb-prints on the sands of time?
+
+  "Will it be his destiny to write
+    Or to earn a living with his brains?
+  Will he share a 'loop' with GRAHAME WHITE?
+    Do his 'arches' pair with those of BAINES?
+      Is there similarity between
+      Reggie's 'whorls' and those of M. MASSINE?"
+
+  Operator coughed behind his hand,
+    Moved his feet and shook his hoary head,
+  Thrust his fingers in his bellyband,
+    Then at last reluctantly he said,
+      "I've encountered in the course of biz
+      Many prints that much resembled his.
+
+  "One, I mind me, such impressions made;
+    P'r'aps you never heard of Ginger Hicks,
+  Him what done in uncle with a spade
+    Down in Canning Town in ninety-six?
+      Ginger was a wrong 'un from the fust;
+      As a child he bellowed fit to bust.
+
+  "Then there was another, something like,
+    Got a lifer seven years ago;
+  Surely you remember Mealy Mike,
+    Robbery with violence at Bow?
+      Michael's thumb-print, though of larger size,
+      Was the spit of Reggie's otherwise.
+
+  "Then again his lines could be compared--"
+    Mother snatched her precious up and fled,
+  Pausing once to ask him how he dared
+    Put such notions in um's little head.
+      Her departure mid a storm of kissing
+      Put the lid on further reminiscing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: ALADDIN AND THE MINER'S LAMP.
+
+THE GENIE. "I AM THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP. I THINK YOU SUMMONED ME."
+
+MR. SMILLIE. "YES, I KNOW. BUT I DIDN'T REALISE YOU'D BE SO UGLY."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "YES, A NICE LITTLE BUS. BUT I SAY, OLD TOP, THE
+FOOTBOARDS ARE DEUCEDLY LOW. IF YOU RAN OVER ANYONE YOU MIGHT BE
+CAPSIZED--WHAT?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY SHOCKER.
+
+John Antony Grunch was one of the mildest, most innocent men I ever
+knew. He had a wife to whom he was devoted with a dog-like devotion; he
+went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position
+in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul,
+and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off--and that is
+seldom--he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and
+excitement by writing sensational novels. One of these was recently
+published, and John Antony is now dead. The novel did it.
+
+Yet it was a very mild sort of "shocker," about a very ordinary murder.
+The villain simply slew one of his typists in the counting-house with a
+sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting her in a pillar-box.
+But it had "power," and it was very favourably reviewed. One critic said
+that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular
+delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our
+great industrial centres." Another said that the book was "a brilliant
+burlesque of the fashionable type of detective fiction." Another wrote
+that "it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing phase of
+agricultural life." John thought that must refer to the page where he
+had described the allotments at Shepherd's Bush. But he was pleased and
+surprised by what they said.
+
+What he did _not_ like was the interpretation offered by his family and
+his friends, who at once decided that the work was the autobiography of
+John Antony. You see, the scene was laid in London, and John lived in
+London; the murdered girl was a typist, and there were two typists in
+John's office; and, to crown all, the villain in the book had a
+boar-hound, and John himself had a Skye-terrier. The thing was as plain
+as could be. Men he met in the City said, "How's that boar-hound of
+yours?" or "I like that bit where you hit the policeman. When did you do
+that?" "_You_," mark you. Old friends took him aside and whispered,
+"Very sorry to hear you don't hit it off with Mrs. Grunch; I always
+thought you were such a happy couple." His wife's family said, "Poor
+Gladys! what a life she must have had!" His own family said, "Poor John!
+what a life she must have led him to make him go off with that
+adventuress!" Several people identified the adventuress as Miss Crook,
+the Secretary of the local Mothers' Welfare League, of which John was a
+vice-president.
+
+The fog of suspicion swelled and spread and penetrated into every cranny
+and level of society. No servants would come near the house, or if they
+did they soon stumbled on a copy of the shocker while doing the
+drawing-room, read it voraciously and rushed screaming out of the
+front-door. When he took a parcel of washing to the post-office the
+officials refused to accept it until he had opened it and shown that
+there were no bodies in it.
+
+The animal kingdom is very sensitive to the suspicion of guilt. John
+noticed that dogs avoided him, horses neighed at him, earwigs fled from
+him in horror, caterpillars madly spun themselves into cocoons as he
+approached, owls hooted, snakes hissed. Only Mrs. Grunch remained
+faithful.
+
+But one morning at breakfast Mrs. Grunch said, "Pass the salt, please,
+John." John didn't hear. He was reading a letter. Mrs. Grunch said
+again, "Pass the salt, please, John." John was still engrossed. Mrs.
+Grunch wanted the salt pretty badly, so she got up and fetched it. As
+she did so she noticed that the handwriting of the letter was the
+handwriting of A Woman. Worse, it was written on the embossed paper of
+the Mothers' Welfare League. It must be from Miss Crook. _And it was._
+It was about the annual outing. "Ah, ha!" said Mrs. Grunch. (I am afraid
+that "Ah, ha!" doesn't really convey to you the sort of sound she made,
+but you must just imagine.) "Ah, ha! So _that_'s why you couldn't pass
+the salt!"
+
+Mad with rage, hatred, fear, chagrin, pique, jealousy and indigestion,
+John rushed out of the house and went to the office. At the door of the
+office he met one of the typists. He held the door open for her. She
+simpered and refused to go in front of him. Being still mad with rage,
+hatred, chagrin and all those other things, John made a cross gesture
+with his umbrella. With a shrill, shuddering shriek of "Murder!" the
+girl cantered violently down Ludgate Hill and was never seen again.
+Entering the office, John found two detectives waiting to ask him a few
+questions in connection with the Newcastle Pig-sty Murder, which had
+been done with some pointed instrument, probably an umbrella.
+
+After that _The Daily Horror_ rang up and asked if he would contribute
+an article to their series on "Is Bigamy Worth While?"
+
+Having had enough rushing for one day John walked slowly out into the
+street, trying to remember the various ways in which his characters had
+committed suicide. He threw himself over the Embankment wall into the
+river, but fell in a dinghy which he had not noticed; he bought some
+poison, but the chemist recognised his face from a photograph in the
+Literary Column of _The Druggist_ and gave him ipecacuanha (none of you
+can spell that); he thought of cutting his throat, but broke his
+thumb-nail trying to open the big blade, and gave it up. Desperate, he
+decided to go home. At Victoria he was hustled along the platform on the
+pretence that there is more room in the rear of trains. Finally he was
+hustled on to the line and electrocuted.
+
+And everybody said, "So it _was_ true."
+
+    A. P. H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "THERE BE MRS. ROUSE'S, OVER AGIN THE CHURCH. I BELIEVE
+SHE DO PUT UP WITH LODGERS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Commercial Candour.
+
+From an Indian trade-circular:--
+
+    "We believe in making a Small Profit and selling Everybody rather
+    than making a Big Profit and selling only a Few."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wanted for Tea Estate, Nilgiris, good climate
+    Superintendent."--_Indian Paper._
+
+We could do with one here, too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "THE WANDERING JEW,
+    E. TEMPLE THURSTON'S WANDERFUL PLAY."
+
+_Advt. in Daily Paper._
+
+And still the wander grew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "When the Prime Minister, accompanied by Mr. Lloyd George, appeared
+    a magnificent ovation was accorded them."--_Welsh Paper._
+
+This tends to confirm the statements in the anti-Coalition Press that
+the PRIME MINISTER was beside himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From an examination-paper at a girls' school:--
+
+_Question._ Why are the days in summer longer than those in winter?
+
+_Answer._ Because they are warmer and therefore expand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Visitor._ "LUCKY TO FIND A HAIRDRESSER IN A SMALL
+VILLAGE LIKE THIS."
+
+_Native._ "WELL, BE RIGHTS IT'S MY SON'S BUSINESS AND 'E'S AWAY; BUT
+I'VE DONE A WUNNERFUL DEAL OF 'ORSE-CLIPPIN'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ERNEST EXPERIMENTS.
+
+There is no doubt that Ernest was to blame. I know, of course, that he
+meant well. But a passion for fresh air, unless it is checked in time,
+is bound to lead one into all sorts of trouble.
+
+You see, Ernest suffers so from theories. He has theories about eating,
+sleeping and waking, talking and thinking; but those on fresh air are
+the worst (or perhaps I ought to say the best) of all. Not that we, who
+constitute his family, would object to his theories if he didn't get us
+involved in them as well; but that is exactly what does happen. There
+was, for example, the camping-out proposition.
+
+It began with Mother sitting at a table one evening in the early autumn
+and jotting down figures. Her brow was troubled. "We really can't afford
+a holiday this year, girls," she said, "though I suppose we shall _have_
+to. What with the price of everything just now and--" She then went on
+to speak with hostility of things like the Government and Sir ERIC
+GEDDES, though she is a peaceable woman as a rule.
+
+Whereupon Ernest, who was at the open window engaged in a little quiet
+biceps-training (we won't allow him to do the more rowdy muscular
+exercises in the living-room), remarked, "But why should we be subjected
+to these eternal trammels of civilisation? Isn't the open country man's
+rightful heritage?"
+
+"I see the prices have gone up at the select boarding-house where we
+stayed last year and met such nice people," went on Mother, ignoring
+Ernest. "It's five guineas a week each now."
+
+"Monstrous," put in Ernest again. "Five guineas a week just to breathe
+the pure air of Heaven."
+
+"Oh, they give you more than that," said Mother, "though I suspect the
+meat isn't English."
+
+Ernest laughed sardonically. "Now let me tell you of my plan," he said,
+taking a newspaper cutting from his pocket. "Here is my solution to the
+holiday problem, and it certainly doesn't cost five guineas a week. Why
+not adopt it?"
+
+"Why, it's an umbrella," commented Mother, feeling for her glasses. "But
+surely you don't expect it to rain all the time?"
+
+"That is not an umbrella, it is an illustration of a portable tent,"
+explained Ernest. "The canvas folds up and can be carried in the pocket,
+while the pole also folds and is convertible into a walking-stick by
+day. Thus you are able to camp where you will; throw off the shackles of
+convention----"
+
+"It may be all right for throwing off the shackles of convention,"
+remarked Mother, "but nothing would induce me to undress in a thing like
+that."
+
+"But when it's erected it's perfectly solid----"
+
+"So am I," said Mother, "and I like room to turn round. No, Ernest, I am
+as fond of fresh air as anyone--you know I always have my bedroom window
+open at least two inches at night--but air is not everything. Give me a
+comfortable bed and good catering if I am to go on holiday and enjoy it.
+_You_ can please yourself."
+
+That is the mistake Mother made. Ernest ought not to be allowed to
+please himself. He doesn't know what is good for him. And, when he
+departed on his walking tour accompanied by his tent, his sponge-bag, a
+copy of OMAR KHÁYYÁM, but very little else, Mother felt uneasy.
+
+"What will happen if you get your feet wet?" she asked. "I'm sure you
+ought to take more things with you, Ernest."
+
+"What more do I want?" he demanded, "'A loaf of bread beneath the
+bough----'"
+
+"A loaf of bread indeed!" echoed Mother. "Fiddlesticks! Mind you get at
+least three good meals a day." She then gave him the address of the
+boarding-house where we had finally decided to spend our holidays and
+told him to send her a wire at once if he got a cold in the head.
+
+       * * *
+
+It was the hour of dinner at the Select Boarding Establishment (sep.
+tables, 3 mins. sea, elec. lt., mod.) where we had spent ten days of our
+entirely select holiday. Everyone was assembled in the lounge hall
+waiting for the gong to announce the meal. Mother, basking her soul in
+the atmosphere of gentility, was chatting with the half-sister of a
+bishop, who was just remarking that Mother must call on her in town,
+when a strange _fracas_ was heard at the back of the hall; a moment
+later a strange figure thrust itself in our midst and looked wildly
+round.
+
+"Ernest!" murmured Mother faintly. She was a wise woman to know her own
+child under the circumstances. Perhaps she identified the tent-pole to
+which he was still clinging. Otherwise he was scarcely recognisable. His
+hair was wild and unkempt, his clothing torn and damaged. His boots
+clung to his feet by the uppers only and were held together by fragments
+of a sponge-bag.
+
+"Mother!" said Ernest, singling her out from amongst the gay throng. The
+moment was dramatic.
+
+"I--I was arrested," went on Ernest. He spoke in a purely conversational
+tone, but it's surprising how far the human voice will carry at times.
+Everybody about the place, including the lift-boy and the Belgian
+waiter, seemed to hear that remark.
+
+"Arrested?" whispered Mother in reverberating tone-waves.
+
+"Yes. How was I to know that I had pitched my tent on private property
+and was unwittingly trespassing? They would have prosecuted me if I
+hadn't----"
+
+"You had better come up to my room and explain there," interposed
+Mother; and we followed her, a broken woman, to the lift. People fell
+aside to make a passage for us.
+
+Mother held up until she got to her own room. Then she sat down and
+cried. "Why did you disgrace us like this?" she asked at last of Ernest.
+"Was it necessary for you to come _here_?"
+
+"I had to," said Ernest apologetically. "You see I hadn't any money."
+
+Mother looked up quickly. "But what of the extra ten pounds I insisted
+on your taking with you in case of emergency?"
+
+Ernest appeared slightly shame-faced. "Well, when those fatuous asses
+hauled me up for trespassing they left me in the charge of a gamekeeper
+while they 'phoned for the police. I induced the chap to let me go, and
+I had to square him with a tenner."
+
+There was a long pause. Mother's mind seemed to be working at some
+abstruse calculation. Then she dried her eyes and looked up with the
+triumphant smile of the woman who gets the last word and wins her point.
+
+"And so, Ernest," she said, "it _did_ cost you five guineas a week to
+'breathe the pure air of Heaven' after all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "SORRY TO HEAR YOUR HUSBAND IS LAID UP AGAIN, MRS.
+GRIGGS."
+
+"YES. THE TROUBLE IS HE BE AN OLD MAN, AND HE _WILL_ TURN A DEAF EAR TO
+THE WRITIN' ON THE WALL."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRAWLING'S THEORY.
+
+(_By a Student of Jargon._)
+
+By the courtesy of Professor Prawling, F. R. S., who has supplied us
+with the MS. of his recent lecture before the Psycho-Economical Society,
+we are in a position to give our readers a full account of that masterly
+and epoch-making address, of which, strange to say, no adequate notice
+has so far appeared in any newspaper.
+
+Professor Prawling's credentials, we may premise, are of a nature to
+inspire the utmost confidence. His father, Theodore Prawling, was the
+inventor of the speedle, that remarkable implement, fully described by
+_Punch_ in the early seventies, which rendered possible the
+emulsification of all gelatinoid substances and revolutionised the
+marmalade industry. He is duly commemorated by the fine statue which is
+one of the principal features of Dundee. His son, however, has even
+greater claims on our respect and admiration. Educated at the High
+School, Crieff, and the Universities of Glasgow, Upsala, the Sorbonne
+and Princeton, he is generally recognised in the United States as the
+foremost authority on Pædological Gongorism and the cognate science of
+Mendelian Economics.
+
+The problem with which he grapples in his latest contribution to these
+fascinating studies may be tersely summed up in a single sentence: Can a
+healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing
+symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?
+
+Professor Prawling is of opinion that it _can_, but only if and when the
+evils of co-partnership and co-operation have been neutralized by a
+diastolic synthesis. To compute exactly the extent to which these evils
+have been developed he has devised a syncretic abacus, in which, on the
+principle of the spectroscope, the aplanatic foci are arranged in
+fluorescent nodules each equidistant from the metacentre. With a
+frankness that cannot be too highly commended, Professor Prawling admits
+that this instrument is founded on BENTHAM'S Panopticon. But the
+deviations from BENTHAM and the expansions of his machine are far more
+remarkable than the resemblances to it. Prawling--if he will allow us
+the familiarity--is not a utilitarian. His aim is to re-establish our
+textile pre-eminence by reconciling monistic individualism with the
+fullest solidarity of the social complex. He is meticulously careful in
+stressing the point that the demarcations arrived at by the use of his
+abacus are not absolute, but conditioned by EINSTEIN'S theory of
+relativity. The ancillary industries, each moving in its orbit, whether
+jurassic or botulistic, must be placed on a contractual basis with
+liberty of preferential retaliation. Thus the whole industrial polyphony
+is linked up by enharmonic modulations, and thrombosis--or, at any rate,
+conglucination--of the central ganglia of commerce is reduced to
+negligible dimensions.
+
+At this juncture it is well to point out in the interests of clarity
+that regurgitation can only be avoided by a rigorous adhesion to the
+canon of CRITTENDEN--that the unit of nutrition must vary inversely with
+the square of dilution.
+
+It will thus be seen that by the logical application of a few simple and
+easily apprehended principles Professor Prawling has built up a great
+edifice of practical economics, which, whether we regard it in its
+subliminal or its pragmatic aspects, cannot fail to have influence on
+the dynamics of International Industrialism.
+
+One word more. The conglucination theory appeals with especial force to
+_Punch_, because it reminds him of the kindred and remarkable
+speculation on Snooling discussed by him many years ago. The new theory,
+like the old, deserves to be treated "in no spirit of sedentary
+sentimentalism, but in its largest and most oleaginous entirety. It is
+no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating
+neuralgia with treacle." How true and appropriate this is. _Mutatis
+mutandis_ we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and
+tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The
+corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest
+achievement of which the present generation is capable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "I TRUST YOU'LL EXCUSE ME MENTIONING IT, MY GOOD FELLOW,
+BUT THAT IS THE RIGHT ENTRANCE--ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More Impending Apologies.
+
+    "Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Rouen, has been translated, as most
+    of us expected, to the Archbishopric in Paris. Being a very
+    distinguished man of letters, the Académie Française would like to
+    include him among the Immorals, but, alas! they are 'full inside.'"
+
+    _Evening Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HEADLINING.
+
+The thrilling incident of the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely
+to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which
+do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is
+the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would
+otherwise skip.
+
+The affair began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that
+Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper
+lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow
+she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the
+wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat which had appeared--merely appeared.
+
+As she told me, she softly exclaimed, "A cat!" (right first time); then,
+because it looked so wistful, she directed the maid to set before the
+creature a saucer of milk. In fact--
+
+    HOMELESS BLACK-AND-TAN.
+    LUCKY CHANCE CALL.
+    TOOTING GOOD SAMARITAN.
+
+When I arrived home, Marjorie ran into the hall to give me one of her
+smooth evening kisses. I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my
+stubbly ones when--
+
+"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"
+
+"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"
+
+"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You
+really might have been more careful."
+
+"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the
+teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a
+sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first
+outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or,
+as the headlines would have it:--
+
+    NEAR BREAKING-POINT.
+    STRAIN OF BUSINESS LIFE.
+    ORIGIN OF THE DRUG HABIT.
+
+After a bath and a change I felt better, and came down to dinner humming
+a sentimental ballad in Marjorie's honour. But the word "love" died on
+my lips when I saw that in the lap of Marjorie's pretty pink gown
+reposed the stray cat. The colour-clash and the misapplication of
+caresses which should have been my monopoly threw me back with a jerk to
+a state of bearishness.
+
+"Surely you're not going to keep that animal?" I asked.
+
+"Of course I am, as long as she likes to stay," said Marjorie. "She's
+very fond of me, aren't you, pussy? Fonder than my husband, I 'spect."
+
+"I know these stray cats," I said. "Stiff with microbes. Tribes of mangy
+lovers prowling round the house. A nest of kittens in my top-hat. I
+know."
+
+"Poor li'l pussy," cooed Marjorie. "Don'tum listen to the big coarse
+man."
+
+"Coarse be----"
+
+In other (and more suitable) words--
+
+    HUSBAND'S PROFANITY.
+    MASK OFF AFTER TWO YEARS.
+    PEEVISH ABOUT WIFE'S PET.
+
+Marjorie said coldly that she didn't know I had such a temper. I said
+hotly that I didn't know she could be so infantile.
+
+We went on discovering things we hadn't known about each other:--
+
+    THE TESTING TIME
+    IN CONJUGAL FELICITY,
+    IS IT THE THIRD YEAR?
+
+Dinner was an ordeal. I felt miles apart from Marjorie. A great gulf
+filled with black-and-yellow cat lay between us. Once only the topic of
+the beast arose (on the subject of fish-bones) and just as I was
+becoming big and coarse again the maid entered with the joint. She must
+have heard what I said.
+
+    SHOULD SERVANTS TELL?
+    BACKDOOR SCANDAL.
+
+Still, the meal itself was a cheering one, and, after Marjorie had
+risen, the sentimental ballad mood gained on me again. After all, what
+was a stray cat compared with one's marriage vows? If the dear girl
+wanted to keep the thing we would have it vetted, definitely named, and
+warned as to followers.
+
+Marjorie's voice interrupted my amiable planning. "Puss, puss," she
+called. I joined her and stated my decision to relent.
+
+"But she's vanished," said Marjorie. She had. And she has never come
+back. Ah! those stray cats.
+
+    NINE LIVES SPENT WHERE?
+    FOUR-FOOTED NOMADS.
+    FICKLE FELINE FRIENDSHIPS.
+
+"Look here, old girl," I said, "I take back all I said about your little
+friend. I'm with you that she was the dearest, most hygienic, most moral
+cat that ever strafed a mouse."
+
+"Perhaps it's all for the best that she's gone," said Marjorie.
+
+The dear girl inclined her head towards my shoulder. Well, well.
+
+    WHAT EVERY WOMAN WANTS
+    TO KNOW.
+    IS KISSING DYING OUT?
+    PRACTICIANS SAY "NO."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More Precocity.
+
+    "Unfurnished Rooms wanted (two or three), with attendance; one
+    child, 4-1/2 years; at business all day."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LOVE'S HANDICAP.
+
+[A daily paper points out that many girls find their sweethearts in
+print, and expresses the hope that when "a real man comes along he may
+be as brave and tender, as cheery and clean-living," as these heroes of
+fiction.]
+
+  Dear lady, put down for a minute
+    That book which you eagerly scan,
+  Intent upon finding within it
+    Your perfect ideal of a man;
+  Its pages reflectively closing,
+    Consider a moment the strain
+  Your standard may soon be imposing
+    Upon some susceptible swain.
+
+  Those heroes whose fortunes you follow
+    I've noticed are able to show
+  The unparalleled charms of Apollo,
+    The muscles of SAMSON and Co.;
+  But he who comes seeking to win you
+    May have, for supporting his plea,
+  A palpable shortage of sinew
+    And beauty distinctly C 3.
+
+  And, unprepossessing in mien, he
+    May also lack some of the art
+  With which Saccharissa the Tweeny
+    Was wooed by Sir Marmaduke, Bart.;
+  His tongue may (conceivably) stammer,
+    His heart (not impossibly) quake,
+  And in stress of emotion his grammar
+    May even develop a shake.
+
+  But pause ere you "spurn his addresses;"
+    His merits may still be as high
+  As the sort that your hero possesses,
+    Though they leap not so quick to the eye;
+  At the least, you've the comfort of knowing,
+    Since his heart at _your_ feet he has placed,
+  That in one thing at least he is showing
+    A wholly impeccable taste.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How Some Advertisers "Tell the Tale."
+
+    "We spin the yarn ourselves."
+
+    _Advt. in Daily Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'FULL TERM.'"
+
+AN IMPRESSION AT CAMBRIDGE.
+
+    I watch the faces of the 'men,' boys in so many cases, jumping from
+    their trains; from the north, the south, the east, the west they
+    come, and they come not alone but _dona ferentes_--they carry
+    tennis-racquets, golf-sticks, cycles, sidecars, kitbags,
+    gladstone-bags, trunks, hold-alls."--_Evening Paper._
+
+Hefty chaps, these post-war undergraduates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Question.--How much has the time for crossing the ocean been
+    shortened since the day of Columbus?
+
+    T. E. C.
+
+    Answer.--Idaho is a North American Indian word meaning 'Gem of the
+    Mountains' or 'Sunrise Mountains.'"
+
+    _Boston (Massachusetts) Herald._
+
+We hope that T. E. C. isn't going to be put off with such a simple
+device as this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Injured Party._ "IT'S ALL VERY WELL, PASSON, FOR YOU TO
+SAY WOT 'ORRIBLE LANGWIDGE, BUT 'APPEN YOUR MISSIS AIN'T SUCH A GOOD
+SHOT WITH A FLAT-IRON AS MINE IS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
+
+(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
+
+There is certainly this to be said of Mr. HUGH WALPOLE--that, having
+devised a tale of gloom, he allows no weak consideration for his
+readers' feelings to deter him from making the worst of it. I write,
+having but now emerged, blinking a little at the familiar sunlight (yet
+oddly invigorated too), from a perusal of the four-hundred-and-seventy
+pages of his _Captives_ (MACMILLAN). Of course I have nothing like space
+to detail for you its plot. Summarised, it tells the life of a young
+woman, _Maggie Cardinal_, whom one may briefly call the bemused victim
+of religions--and relations. You never knew any well-intentioned heroine
+who had such abysmal luck with both. Her clergyman father, a bad hat,
+who spared us his acquaintance by expiring on the first page; her
+semi-moribund aunts in their detestable London home; the circle of the
+Inner Saints, with their intrigues that centred in the ugly little
+meeting-house; the seaside parish with its spiritually-dead atmosphere,
+in which _Maggie's_ hopeless married life is spent--all these and more
+are realised with an art that is almost devastating in its unforced
+effect. Sometimes I hoped that such universal drabness was too bad to be
+true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor
+_Captives_ seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the
+wires of Mr. WALPOLE. The queer result was that I found myself believing
+in his compellingly human characters, but protesting that such unbroken
+misfortune could not, or need not, have encompassed them. To take an
+example, when _Maggie's_ "tipsy" uncle was shown into the Vicarage
+drawing-room on her "At Home day," no other guests had yet arrived.
+Surely therefore (save for peremptory orders from Mr. WALPOLE) she might
+somehow have removed the culprit to another room, or at least denied
+herself to subsequent callers, who included (of course) the most
+influential and scandal-mongering of the parish ladies. That is the kind
+of rather piled-up agony that made me suspect Mr. WALPOLE of letting his
+fortitude get at times the better of his commonsense. But he has written
+a big book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. E. F. BENSON, of whom it might justly be said that he produces not
+books but libraries (and the quality of his output under these
+circumstances remains for me amongst the literary wonders of the age),
+has been at it again. Hardly have I finished laughing over _Queen
+Lucia_, when I find him claiming a wholly different interest with a
+volume of personal recollections called _Our Family Affairs_ (CASSELL).
+By its theme and treatment this is work standing naturally a little
+outside criticism; but I can say at once that Mr. BENSON has never
+written with a more sympathetic charm than in these pictures of the
+childhood of himself and his sister and brothers; of the various
+scholastic and ecclesiastical homes to which the increasing dignities of
+that rather alarming parent, the Archbishop, transported his family; and
+(quite the best and most attractive portrait in the collection) of the
+mother whom all of them united to adore. There is an actual photograph
+of her here, taken at the age of twenty, which goes far to explain how
+she came to be the heroine of the story; the lurking gaiety and laughter
+of it quaintly foretelling the great ecclesiastical lady who, on one
+occasion when the Archbishop was absent, could announce to her
+enraptured children that family prayers should be remitted, "as a
+treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the
+Georgian _régime_ in Athens, and (what will interest many readers most
+of all) the history of the origin of that famous lady, _Dodo_--these are
+but a selection from the contents of a volume that should find hosts of
+friends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Girl in Fancy Dress_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) was so very much
+disguised in one way and another that _Anthony_, the hero, when he asked
+her to marry him, even for the second time, was taking considerable
+risks. The speed of the affair must also have been bewildering.
+_Cynthia_, the heiress, arrives on a Thursday to stay with his people,
+but, having tumbled out of a motor-car into a wet ditch on her way, she
+is dressed, rather like a stage coster-girl, in garments borrowed from a
+cottager. Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more
+likely than an heiress to look like that, _Anthony's_ people mistake her
+for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and _Cynthia_,
+discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend
+the heiress to marry _Anthony_ and, worse than that, that he has called
+her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her
+best to pay them all out. She leaves on the following Tuesday, but
+before that _Anthony_ has taken her to one dance as a peasant girl and
+she has talked to him at another disguised as a green domino, and he has
+proposed to her as his cousin and withdrawn his declaration when he
+finds she isn't. Next he sees her as _Lady Teazle_ in amateur
+theatricals, and then comes his final meeting with her in her proper
+person, which brings about a satisfactory ending for everyone but
+_Cynthia's_ other lover. I don't say that all these things couldn't have
+happened; I only say that as a rule they don't. Apart from that, the
+bright bustling action of Mrs. J. E. BUCKROSE'S story has a cheerful
+charm of its own, and _Cynthia_, as poor relation of one of the
+anxiously best families in a little country town, provides some amusing
+situations--for the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If the shade of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON is jealous of its rights and its
+copyrights, Mr. JEFFREY FARNOL may look to be hauled up before the
+Recording Angel, on his arrival, in the matter of his _Black Bartlemy's
+Treasure_ (SAMPSON LOW), which he might just as well have called _Black
+Bartlemy's Treasure Island_ and have done. Never was such frank adoption
+of ideas; and yet no God-fearing, adventure-loving Englishman will
+regret it. For all my devotion to R. L. S. I heartily enjoyed this
+elaboration of his idea, split me (to quote the thorough-going language
+of it)--split me crosswise else! There are forty-seven chapters and a
+bloody fight in every one of them, save in the dozen set apart for an
+interval of refreshment and romance in the middle. Nay, but was not the
+primitive romance a gentler combat, itself, between _Martin Conisby_ and
+_Lady Joan Brandon_, marooned, solitary, upon the Island where they did
+find (and lose) a treasure even greater than _Black Bartlemy's_? After
+having "consorted with pirates and like rogues" and having "endured much
+of harms and dangers, as battle, shipwreck, prison and solitude," it
+seemed we had sighted happiness at last. But even at the very end things
+took an ill turn and our _Martin_, our dear _Martin_, is left stranded
+and in sorry plight. Yet must there be a sequel to this. Had he been
+left to die on the Island he could not have told us his story thus far;
+moreover his last word is that the tale is yet to finish. May I be there
+to hear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I rather think that the lady who elects to write under the name of O.
+DOUGLAS did less than justice to the peculiar quality of her own gifts
+in calling her last story _Penny Plain_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Because
+really such confectionery as this, covered inches deep with the sweetest
+and smoothest and pinkest of sugar, could never in these days be bought
+for many pennies, while as for "plain"...! Most of the plot (which
+really isn't at all the right word for such caramel-stuff) takes place
+in a small Scottish town, where lives a family of book-children,
+mothered by an elder sister named _Jean_, all of them rich in char-r-rm
+but poor in cash. To this town comes, first, a pleasant single lady with
+a lord for her brother; secondly an aged man full of money; and, because
+the family (and the tale) is what it is, _Jean_, in fewer chapters than
+you would easily credit, has clasped the young lord to her breast and is
+saying the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man
+concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have
+it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as
+suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a
+world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are
+not only cheerful to cook but likely to prove highly remunerative.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: TACT IN TIME.
+
+_King Alfred_ (_to shopman_). "AH! I SEE YOU STOCK MY PATENT
+CANDLE-CLOCKS. HOW ARE THEY SELLING?"
+
+_Shopman._ "THEY'RE SELLING LIKE HOT----I MEAN THERE'S QUITE A RUN ON
+THEM, YOUR MAJESTY."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Confession.
+
+    "The ---- Manufacturing Co. (The Profiteering Stranglers)." _Advt. in
+    Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wanted, 1,000 pairs running shoes for local expeditionary force
+    about to be organised."--_North China Daily News._
+
+The wise commander always prepares for a retreat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The limits of age for entrance to the [Royal Air Force] college will
+    be from 157-1/2 to 1 years."--_Daily Paper._
+
+    "Percy ---- has recently joined the R. A. F. He is only 199 years of
+    age."--_Local Paper._
+
+We are sorry for PERCY, who will probably get the "push" as soon as the
+authorities find out that he has exceeded their very liberal age-limit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October
+20, 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 27421-8.txt or 27421-8.zip *****
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 20, 1920, by Various</title>
+  <style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October 10,
+1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Owen Seaman
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2008 [EBook #27421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Neville Allen, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>PUNCH,<br /> OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.</h1>
+
+<h2>VOLUME 159.</h2>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h2>October 20, 1920.</h2>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+
+<h2>CHARIVARIA.</h2>
+
+<p>"Whenever I am in London," writes an American journalist, "I never miss
+the House of Commons." Nor do we, during the Recess.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"If Lord <span class="sc">Kenyon</span> wishes, I am prepared to fight him with any weapon he
+chooses to name at any time," announced Sir <span class="sc">Claude Champion de Crespigny</span>
+recently to a representative of <i>The Star</i>. In sporting circles it is
+thought that, in spite of his recent declaration, Mr. <span class="sc">C. B. Cochran</span> may
+consent to stage the encounter.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>At the Air Conference last week Lieut.-Colonel <span class="sc">Moore-Brabazon</span>, M. P.,
+said the Government should appoint experts to control the weather. It
+looks as if <i>The Daily Mail</i> was not going to have things all its own
+way.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"The object of Poland," says <span class="sc">M. Dombski</span>, "is peace, hard work and
+production." These were at one time the object of England, and she still
+hopes to get peace.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Pussyfoot Johnson</span> has told a Glasgow audience that he is no
+kill-joy, but smokes cigars. It is also said that he has been seen going
+the pace playing dominoes.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." We can only add that the price
+of apples is enough to keep anybody away.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"What is a Penny Roll?" asks a headline. The answer is "Three
+half-pence."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The average boarding-house, says a gossip writer, is not what it seems.
+No, unfortunately it is what it is.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>We understand that the world's record fast has been accomplished by a
+Scotsman, who has succeeded in remaining in Prohibition America for
+seven months and three days.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>South Sea Islanders, when greeting friends, says <i>Tit Bits</i>, fling a jar
+of water over them. Cats on night duty are now putting a kindlier
+interpretation on the treatment they receive.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>An employee at a coal-mine in Ohio is reported to have died from
+overwork. There is consolation in the fact that this could not possibly
+happen in England.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Three Glasgow workmen have started on a walk to London. With the
+possibility of a vote in favour of a dry Scotland we suppose they
+started early to avoid the rush.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It is still very doubtful whether <span class="sc">Jack Dempsey</span> can meet <span class="sc">Jess Willard</span>,
+says a sporting paper. A dear old lady thinks he might get over the
+difficulty by dropping him a letter.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It is reported that the captain of a village fire brigade recently
+declined to call his men out to a fire because it was raining.
+Unfortunately the owner of the fire was too busy to keep it going till
+the first fine day.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>A clerk employed behind the counter at a post-office in the South of
+England recently rescued a young girl from drowning. In order to show
+their appreciation of the young man's bravery, local residents have now
+decided to purchase their stamps at his post-office.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"Life is uncertain and often full of trouble," bewails a writer in the
+"Picture" Press. Still, in our opinion it's the only thing worth living.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>On two separate occasions last week a cat entered one of the largest
+churches in Yorkshire whilst a wedding was in progress. This supports
+our belief that feline society is contemplating the introduction of more
+ceremony into their own marriage system.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Ex-sailors on the reserve need not be alarmed by the repeated rumours
+that a surprise mobilisation of the Fleet may be ordered very shortly,
+as we now have it on good authority that, in order to ensure its
+complete success, plenty of notice will be given to them beforehand.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Women are said to be fonder than men are of morbid stage plays. Weddings
+also have a greater fascination for them.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="sc">T. A. Edison</span> is reported to have invented a machine to record
+communication with the other world. As a final experiment an attempt is
+to be made to get into touch with the <span class="sc">Poet Laureate</span>.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The motor-car of polished steel and no paint-work is the latest
+innovation. It is said that this will do away with the objection of
+pedestrians that under present conditions one cannot be knocked down
+without soiling one's clothing.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"Water," says an official of the Metropolitan Water Board, "costs far
+too much to waste to-day." Adulterated with whisky, we believe it costs
+about eightpence a time.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/301.png">
+<img src="images/301.png" width="100%" alt="DIPLOMACY." /></a>
+<h3>DIPLOMACY.</h3>
+<p><i>Mistress.</i> "<span class="sc">Norah, will you try to have the steak a little more
+underdone?</span>"</p>
+<p><i>Norah</i> (<i>bristling up</i>). "<span class="sc">Is it finding fault ye are?</span>"</p>
+<p><i>Mistress.</i> "<span class="sc">Oh, no, no! I merely thought it would be nicer for you not
+to remain over the fire so long.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>The Music of the Future.</h3>
+
+<center>"<span class="sc">Musical Instruments.</span></center>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>For Sale, one small Economic Roller, 1 Brown's triple action Roller,
+2 Eastern Produce Roll Breakers, 1 Updraft Sirocco Dryer&mdash;all the
+above in good order and can be seen working. 1 Saw Mill, good order.
+1 Souter's roll Breaker, fair order."&mdash;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Ceylon Paper.</i></p>
+<hr />
+
+<blockquote><p>"Mr. &mdash;&mdash; won &pound;400,000 at Aix-les-Bains. The lucky player, <i>who was
+educated at Harrow</i>...."&mdash;<i>Daily Paper.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The italics are Mr. Punch's. Are our public schools beginning to
+advertise?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+
+<h2>FALLING PRICES</h2>.
+
+<center>(<i>With grateful acknowledgments to the Commercial Statistician of "The
+Times."</i>)</center>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Sad is the sight, but not so strange,</p>
+<p class="i2">When the dead leaf to earth declines:</p>
+<p class="i0">I have observed this annual change</p>
+<p class="i2">As one of Autumn's surest signs;</p>
+<p class="i4">But oh, how very odd it is</p>
+<p class="i0">To mark the falling prices of commodities.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">One had supposed the boom of War</p>
+<p class="i2">(Still raging with the desperate Turk),</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose closure seemed past praying for,</p>
+<p class="i2">Would carry on its hideous work</p>
+<p class="i4">And swell for years and years</p>
+<p class="i0">The bulging waistcoats of our profiteers.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But lo! a lot of useful wares</p>
+<p class="i2">Within my modest range have come;</p>
+<p class="i0">Trousers, I hear, are sold (in pairs)</p>
+<p class="i2">At three-fifteen&mdash;a paltry sum;</p>
+<p class="i4">And you can even get</p>
+<p class="i0">Dittos as low as thirteen pounds the set.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I can afford a further lump</p>
+<p class="i2">Of sugar in my cocoa&mdash;yes,</p>
+<p class="i0">And cocoa too is on the slump,</p>
+<p class="i2">Its "second grade" now costs me less;</p>
+<p class="i4">And green peas (marrowfat)</p>
+<p class="i0">Are down to fourpence. I can run to that.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And, though my coffers, sadly thinned,</p>
+<p class="i2">May not command a home-killed ham,</p>
+<p class="i0">And though the fees for pilchards (tinned)</p>
+<p class="i2">And eggs (to eat) and strawberry-jam</p>
+<p class="i4">Are still beyond my means</p>
+<p class="i0">(The same remark applies to butter-beans);</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Yet milk (condensed) and salmon ("pink"),</p>
+<p class="i2">And arrowroot and pines (preserved)&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">All "easier," I am glad to think&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">These, and a soul not yet unnerved,</p>
+<p class="i4">Shall keep me going strong,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now that the price of boots is not so long.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="author">O. S.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>GONE AWAY!</h2>
+
+<p>It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I
+believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn"
+by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering
+morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village
+we hunt the 8.52. Morning after morning, if you watch from a high place,
+you can see our bowlers and squash hats just above the hedgerows bobbing
+down to the covert side. That one bobbing last is me.</p>
+
+<p>As we trudge homeward under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes
+are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging
+of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find
+again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early at the meet in the
+morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the
+platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to
+be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to
+the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season
+ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put
+trains into the feminine gender. This is a slight compensation for
+having to pay again when they are challenged and can only pull out a
+complimentary pass to the Chrysanthemum Show.</p>
+
+<p>As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I
+am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle
+about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry
+that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his
+marmalade.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid
+certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the
+sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is
+hardly playing the game. Of the stout-hearted fellows who follow on
+foot, both Enderby and Jackson pass in front of my house and may be
+discerned dimly through a gap in the hedge, which was probably made for
+that purpose by the previous tenant. Or it may have been because the
+gate-latch sticks and he did not jump well. Enderby asserts that my
+house is nine minutes from the station, and Jackson says it is six, and
+therein lies the whole difference between optimism and pessimism. All I
+know is that, if I gather my hat, coat, <i>Times</i>, stick, pipe, tobacco
+and matches and put as many as possible of them in appropriate places
+just after Enderby has passed the gap, I catch the 8.52 nicely. If I do
+these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just
+about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should
+encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them
+twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do
+this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have
+pointed out that a "View halloo" from Enderby, followed by a stirring</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Tantivvy, Tantivvy, Tantivvy;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tra-la, Tra-la, Tra-la"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>from Jackson, will, if any power on earth can do it, bring me from my
+toast in time for my train in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>I have explained to them that nothing can be pleasanter or more
+beautiful for the baker, the butcher and the grocer to look at every
+morning than Enderby and Jackson dressed in pink, with a despatch-case
+in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other. There must be other
+sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little
+lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they
+all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.</p>
+
+<p>I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye
+to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of
+the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes
+through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." I
+have replied that I cannot hear express trains when I am eating toast,
+and that the only warner I recognise is <span class="sc">Plum Warner</span>, who cannot by any
+stretch of language be called an express train. There the matter rests
+at present, and I suppose in a few days I shall miss the 8.52 again.</p>
+
+<p>Happily I have now found out what to do when this occurs. Enderby and
+Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their
+narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes
+after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting
+from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on
+the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy
+good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted
+along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at
+home, the half-drunk stirrup-cup of coffee standing tepid and forlorn.
+But, as I say, the 9.5 is a perfectly sound train. It is quite true that
+it goes to Brighton, but the weather has been very warm of late. I hate
+these splits in the local Hunt, but there it is.</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="sc">Evoe</span>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/303.png">
+<img src="images/303.png" width="100%" alt="THE RESOURCES OF CIVILISATION." /></a>
+<h3>"THE RESOURCES OF CIVILISATION."</h3>
+<p><span class="sc">Mr. Lloyd George</span>. "STICK TO IT, BONAR. POOR OLD SISYPHUS NEVER HAD AN
+IMPLEMENT LIKE THIS."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/304.png">
+<img src="images/304.png" width="100%" alt="HIGH LIFE ON THE UNDERGROUND" /></a>
+<h3>HIGH LIFE ON THE UNDERGROUND.</h3>.
+<p><i>Lady (to tiresome individual).</i> "<span class="sc">I've already told you&mdash;Hammersmith is
+the next but one. The next is Baron's Court. That's my station, not
+yours</span>."</p>
+<p><i>The Individual.</i> "<span class="sc">Ahem! The Baroness, I presoom?</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>THE DINING GLADIATOR;</h2>
+
+<center><span class="sc">or, War to the Knife (and Fork).</span><br /><br />
+
+(<i>Being further Extracts from a certain Diary</i>).</center>
+
+<p><i>August 4th, 1914.</i>&mdash;Declaration of War. I hereby take a solemn oath not
+to relax my efforts to win this struggle for England, even if it costs
+me my last drop of ink.</p>
+
+<p>Began my series of powerful articles by calling for <span class="sc">Kitchener</span>, of whom I
+now, if guardedly, approve. Lunched at the Carlton and dined at the Ritz
+to let all the world see that I am not downhearted.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Spent the morning at the War Office, showing everyone how the work there
+ought to be done. Then to Downing Street to put things right there.</p>
+
+<p>Lunched at Claridge's with six Leading Ladies, all of them cheery souls.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Week-ended at Melton. Some good tennis and bridge. Fear that none of our
+generals really knows his job.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>I have been wondering to-day if any other military journalist could
+possibly know such a lot of the Smart Set, and so intimately as I do. I
+am extraordinary lucky in having all these nice people to fall back on
+when I am worn out with War-winning and Tribunal duties.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Wrote a wonderful article on the importance of dressing up some one to
+look like <span class="sc">Hindenburg</span> and dropping him at night by parachute from an
+aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be
+a biggish man who can speak German well&mdash;Mr. <span class="sc">Chesterton</span> perhaps, but I
+have never met Mr. <span class="sc">Chesterton</span>, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the
+Ritz; or even Lord <span class="sc">Haldane</span>. Once safely landed (my article goes on to
+explain) he would make his way to German H. Q., being mistaken for the
+real <span class="sc">Hindenburg</span>, kill him and then issue orders to the Army which would
+quickly put the Germans in our power. Strange that no one else has
+thought of this.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It is very awkward to be the only man in London who has the truth in
+him. Relieved some of my embarrassment by a glass or two of remarkable
+1794 brandy.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><span class="sc">Winston</span> came to Carryon Hall to dine and we discussed his future. I
+mapped out the next six months for him very carefully, and he promised
+to follow my counsel; but I am afraid that Lady <span class="sc">Randolph</span> may interfere.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>My <span class="sc">Hindenburg</span> article not in <i>The Times</i> yet. Cannot think what is
+coming to journalism. And <span class="sc">Northcliffe</span> calls himself a hustler.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+
+<p>Sent for the <span class="sc">Prime Minister</span> and gave him a piece of my mind. He ought to
+be more careful in future.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Lunched at the Carlton with <span class="sc">George Graves</span> and had some valuable War
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon to the Tribunal, where all excuses were disregarded and
+everyone packed off to the recruiting officer.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening to a first-class revue at the Palace.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Had gratifying visit from <span class="sc">Anatole France's</span> friend, <span class="sc">M. Putois</span>, who told
+me that the French look to me as the only Englishman capable of winning
+the War. My articles are read everywhere, and some have been set to
+music.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>More men must be obtained, and therefore wrote a capital article calling
+on all criminals to cease their labours during the War, in order to
+release the police for the army. After this effort, which was very
+tiring, lunched at the Ritz with <span class="sc">Ethel Levey</span>, <span class="sc">Lavery</span> and <span class="sc">Soveral</span>. Some
+good riddles were asked. A discussion followed on ladies' boots, and
+whether toes should be pointed or square. From this we passed to
+stockings and then to lingerie. Tore myself away to attend to my
+Tribunal duties.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Met the <span class="sc">Gloomy Dean</span> in the Mall and walked with him to the Rag., where
+he left me. A most diverting man. He told me a capital story about a
+curate and an egg.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Finished a rattling good article on a way to make our army look more
+impressive to the foe, namely by fitting each man with a dummy man on
+either side of him. Bosch aeroplane observers would imagine then that we
+were three times as strong as we are, and some very desirable results
+might follow.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Sent for <span class="sc">Northcliffe</span> and told him that unless my articles are treated
+with more respect I cannot go on and the War will be lost. He seemed to
+be impressed, but you never know.</p>
+
+<p>Lunched at Claridge's with Lady <span class="sc">Cunard</span>, Lady <span class="sc">Diana Manners</span> and <span class="sc">George
+Robey</span>. We were all very witty.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon saw <span class="sc">Robertson</span> at the W.O. and told him of my dummy
+soldier idea. He roared with delight.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of either L. G.
+learning French or <span class="sc">Clemenceau</span> learning English. Very depressed all day;
+have lost my appetite.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Dined at the Ritz. A large party, including Lady <span class="sc">Cunard</span> and Lady <span class="sc">Diana
+Manners</span>. The Princess of X. was present and I found her intelligent.
+Afterwards to Lady Y.'s for bridge. The cards were mad, but we had some
+wonderful rubbers, the four best players in London being concerned.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of eating and drinking
+and being merry during great national crises. Urged among other things
+the addition of restaurant cars to all trains, even those on the Tubes.
+It is madness to encourage seriousness, as <i>The Times</i> is doing.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>My eating article not printed. Practice, however, is more than precept,
+and I shall continue to do my bite.</p>
+
+<center>(<i>To be continued.</i>)</center>
+
+<p class="author">E. V. L.</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50%">
+<a href="images/305.png">
+<img src="images/305.png" width="100%" alt="THE END OF AN IMPERFECT DAY." /></a>
+<h3>THE END OF AN IMPERFECT DAY.</h3>
+<p>"<span class="sc">One of those tins of salmon, please.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>Another Sex-Problem.</h3>
+
+<center><span class="sc">Sale of Live and Dead Farm Stock</span>.<br /><br />
+6 Steers in milk and in Calf."</center>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Local Paper.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"In the second part of the programme Miss &mdash;&mdash; was associated with
+Mr. &mdash;&mdash; in 'It was a Lover and His Last.'</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Australian Paper.</i></p>
+
+<p>Let us hope she will remain so.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Rejoicing in a measure of freedom after the harassing restrictions
+of the war, Scotsmen are not eager to thrust their necks into the
+nose again."</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Daily Paper.</i></p>
+
+<p>They prefer, we imagine, to thrust the nose of the bottle into their
+necks.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Every British voter on the sea coast is at heart a sailor."</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Daily Chronicle.</i></p>
+
+<p>At heart, no doubt. But how many have found to their cost that it is in
+fact another organ which affords the ultimate test of sailorship.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+
+<h2>CHECK BY THE QUEEN</h2>.
+
+<p>I had never before seen the Fairy Queen in such an agitated condition.
+She came dashing in, her cheeks glowing, her eyes aflame, her tiny form
+positively quivering with indignation and excitement.</p>
+
+<p>In her hand she held a small scrap of paper, which she waved about in a
+frantic manner just in front of my nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Look," she said, "look! My Press Agency sent it me this morning. Did
+you ever hear of such a thing? It's outrageous, it's incredible,
+it's.... Oh, don't sit staring there as if it didn't matter. Can't you
+say something&mdash;suggest something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Majesty," I said humbly, for one has to be a little careful when
+dealing with incensed Royalty, "I haven't been able to read it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with quick contrition; "I'm afraid I'm apt
+to get a little carried away when I'm upset. But surely this is more
+than anybody could be expected to stand, mortal or immortal."</p>
+
+<p>She settled down on the desk in front of me, spreading out the crumpled
+bit of paper on the blotter and holding the ends down with her little
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"There," she said&mdash;"read it." And this is what I read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="sc">M&mdash;&mdash;'s Fairy Ring Destroyer</span>.</p>
+
+<p>After prolonged experiments we have succeeded in producing a
+preparation which checks the growth of unsightly rings on Lawns, &amp;c.
+Two pounds of the Destroyer per square pole is sufficient for a
+single dressing. Full particulars with each consignment."</p></div>
+
+<p>"'Unsightly'!" said the Queen in a trembling voice. "Do you see that?"
+and she pointed to the offending word with a tiny forefinger.
+"'Prolonged experiments' too. Do you know, I remember now that I <i>have</i>
+had complaints from some of our Garden Settlements about discomfort; but
+of course I never dreamed of anyone doing it on purpose. Do you
+think&mdash;oh, do you think"&mdash;she looked at me with tears in her bright
+eyes&mdash;"that it's really true that human beings are beginning to get
+tired of us? That we're"&mdash;she dropped her voice and I saw that she could
+hardly get out the next words&mdash;"out-of-date?"</p>
+
+<p>Her falling tears made tiny marks on the blotting-paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," I said stoutly. "On the contrary, you're coming in
+stronger than ever. Why, one might almost look upon you as one of the
+newest fashionable crazes, like motor-scooters and cinema stars and
+indiscreet memoirs." I hardly knew what I was saying, it was so dreadful
+to see her cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope not," she said, half-laughing and hastily dabbing her nose
+with a ridiculous atom of swansdown which she produced from a minute
+reticule.</p>
+
+<p>"As to these gentlemen," I continued, pointing contemptuously to the
+announcement, "we'll very soon settle them." I seized a sheet of paper
+and began scribbling away as hard as I could go.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen amused herself meanwhile by balancing on the letter-scales.
+She seemed almost happy. I heard her murmur to herself, "Dear me. Two
+ounces. I shall have to start dieting. No more honey&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There," I said presently, "send them that, and we shall see what we
+shall see."</p>
+
+<p>This is what I had written:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We, Titania, Queen of Fairyland, Empress of the Kingdom of Dreams,
+Grand Dame of the Order of Absolute Darlings, etc., etc., beg to draw
+the attention of Messrs. M&mdash;&mdash; to the enclosed paragraph, impinging
+gravely on the ancient and indisputable rights and prerogatives of
+ourselves and our loyal subjects, which appeared in their recent seed
+catalogue. We feel that the inclusion of the aforesaid paragraph must be
+due to some oversight, since Messrs. M&mdash;&mdash; can hardly be unaware of the
+fact that it is only owing to the co-operation of ourselves and our
+subjects that they are able to carry on their business with success. We
+are unwilling to resort to extreme measures, but unless the paragraph is
+immediately withdrawn we shall be obliged to take steps accordingly, in
+which case Messrs. M&mdash;&mdash; are warned that the whole of next year's flower
+crop may prove an utter and complete failure. Given under our Royal Hand
+and Seal. <span class="sc">Titania R</span>."</p>
+
+<p>The Queen seemed very pleased when I read it over to her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly splendid," she said, clapping her hands. "How silly of
+me not to have thought of it; but I was so distracted. Won't it make
+them sit up? And of course we could do it easily, though it would be
+rather dreadful, wouldn't it? I shall have it copied out the minute I
+get home and sent off to-night. By the way" (a little anxiously) "there
+aren't any split infinitives in it, are there? My chamberlain's rather
+peculiar about them&mdash;they make him ill. Extraordinary, isn't it?
+But&mdash;don't tell anyone&mdash;I never quite understand myself what they are or
+where they split, though it certainly does sound very uncomfortable."</p>
+
+<p>I reassured her on that point.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then <i>that</i>'s all right," she said; "and I don't think even he
+would ever have thought of 'impinging'; it's lovely, isn't it? Thank you
+very much indeed," she added, as she folded up the paper and slipped it
+under her girdle. "You are a most helpful person. I really think I
+must&mdash;" I felt a touch on my cheek, lighter than the caress of a
+butterfly's wing, softer than the tip of a baby's finger, sweeter than
+the perfume of jessamine at night. For a moment the Queen continued to
+flutter close about me, radiant and shining. I shut my dazzled eyes for
+an instant. When I opened them she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>I can't help wondering what Messrs. M&mdash;&mdash; will do. They'll be rather
+rash if they persist. And yet it does seem a little&mdash;Well, doesn't it?</p>
+
+<p class="author">R. F.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.</h2>
+
+<center><span class="sc">The Bee.</span></center>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I never, never could admit</p>
+<p class="i2">The virtues of the bee;</p>
+<p class="i4">I thought she seemed a dreadful prig</p>
+<p class="i4">When I was small, and now I'm big</p>
+<p class="i0">I see she is a hypocrite,</p>
+<p class="i2">And so, of course, are we.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">It's true she rushes to and fro</p>
+<p class="i2">With business promptitude,</p>
+<p class="i4">But what about the busy ant?</p>
+<p class="i4">Oh, let us clear our minds of cant&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">Why <i>is</i> it that we love her so?</p>
+<p class="i2"><i>She manufactures food.</i></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But not for us. If it were shown</p>
+<p class="i2">She organised the feast</p>
+<p class="i4">For <i>us</i> to eat, one might agree</p>
+<p class="i4">About her virtue; but, you see,</p>
+<p class="i0">She does it for herself alone,</p>
+<p class="i2">The greedy little beast!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">So grasping is the little dear</p>
+<p class="i2">That every now and then</p>
+<p class="i4">She readjusts the ration scales</p>
+<p class="i4">By simply murdering the males,</p>
+<p class="i0">With many a base, malicious jeer</p>
+<p class="i2">At "idle gentlemen."</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Nor does a man of us cry "Shame!"</p>
+<p class="i2">Though every man would own</p>
+<p class="i4">If there is one high hope for which</p>
+<p class="i4">He labours on at fever-pitch</p>
+<p class="i0">It is not honour, wealth or fame&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">He wants to be a drone.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Why is it, then, we don't abhor</p>
+<p class="i2">This horrid little prude?</p>
+<p class="i4">Why don't we cast the foullest slur</p>
+<p class="i4">On such a Prussian character?</p>
+<p class="i0">Because, as I remarked before,</p>
+<p class="i2"><i>She manufactures food</i>.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The world is full of beasts, my son,</p>
+<p class="i2">And I know two or three</p>
+<p class="i4">That any parent might employ</p>
+<p class="i4">To be a model for their boy,</p>
+<p class="i0">But take my word, we've overdone</p>
+<p class="i2">The insufferable bee.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="author">A. P. H.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+
+<h3>THE NEW POOR.</h3>
+<table summary="I remember the time">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<a href="images/307a.png"></a>
+<img style="width" alt="I remember the time" src="images/307a.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">I remember the time&mdash;</span></p>
+</td>
+
+<td>
+<a href="images/307b.png"></a>
+<img style="width" alt="when I thought" src="images/307b.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">&mdash;when I thought&mdash;</span></p>
+</td>
+
+<td>
+<a href="images/307c.png"></a>
+<img style="width" alt="I never should ride in a bus" src="images/307c.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">&mdash;I never should ride in a bus&mdash;</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table summary="I remember the time">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<a href="images/307d.png"></a>
+<img style="width" alt="and now" src="images/307d.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">&mdash;and now&mdash;</span></p>
+</td>
+
+<td>
+<a href="images/307e.png"></a>
+<img style="width" alt="I am almost certain" src="images/307e.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">&mdash;I am almost certain&mdash;</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table summary="I remember the time">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<a href="images/307f.png"></a>
+<img style="width"  alt="I never shall." src="images/307f.png" />
+<br />
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">&mdash;I never shall.</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+
+<h2>THE CONSPIRATORS</h2>
+
+<center>IV.</center>
+
+<p><span class="sc">My dear Charles</span>,&mdash;The other evening I was sitting at an open-air caf&eacute;
+whose coffee is better than its social reputation. To be exact it is a
+low haunt. I always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I
+am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was
+happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To
+confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of
+professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for
+the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion,
+and says that now he cannot bring himself to return to his normal work,
+since by contrast it is so very tame. For a time he was stranded, but
+now the international conspiracy business provides him with just the
+sport he was looking for.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 50%">
+<a href="images/308.png">
+<img src="images/308.png" width="100%" alt="CURE FOR INSOMNIA." /></a><br /><br />
+<p>CURE FOR INSOMNIA. MESMERISE YOURSELF.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>After a little conversation about pocket-picking, as it used to be in
+the good old days, he asked me if I was interested in communist plots. I
+said I was interested in anything. He looked round the caf&eacute; to see that
+all was well, leant across the table and asked me if I was not
+<i>particularly</i> interested in communist plots. "Yes," I whispered, "as
+long as it's a plot I'm interested in it, even though it is a communist
+one."</p>
+
+<p>He grew suspicious; why was I so interested? There is always a lot of
+whispering and mutual suspicion about on these occasions. I told him of
+these letters I was writing to you on the subject. This made him more
+than suspicious; positively hostile. Who was this Charles? he wanted to
+know. I told him all about you; explained that you were a good friend of
+mine; quite all right&mdash;one of us.</p>
+
+<p>He rather took to the description of you, dropped all signs of doubt or
+anxiety and wondered if we couldn't get hold of you to come and take
+coffee with us one evening? You may rest assured, Charles, that there is
+now one caf&eacute; in Central Europe where you are regarded as a first-class
+fellow, even though your acquaintance has yet to be made; <i>bon
+camarade</i>; not above picking a pocket or two yourself in a moment of
+enthusiasm. You must come here and show yourself one day. You need have
+no fear. We never pick each others' pockets; it isn't considered
+etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now a Young Socialist," said my friend with great pride. The Young
+Socialists are the worst communists there are.</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" said I; "the last time we had a chat you were an ardent German
+Monarchist."</p>
+
+<p>He produced his Matriculation card; it wasn't in his proper name, but,
+as he explained, one name is as good as another and he has had so many
+from time to time that now he cannot rightly say which is his own. I
+asked him to elaborate the Young Socialists' programme of murder and
+sudden death, a subject which, as a proposed victim, had a morbid
+fascination for me. He said he knew nothing about that; their
+everlasting talk bored him and he never attended the public meetings. It
+was the committee work which interested him.</p>
+
+<p>He told me about the first committee meeting he attended. He wasn't a
+member of the committee at the time, a fact which put difficulties in
+the way of his attending the meeting, as it was held behind closed
+doors. All the doors were closed and locked, including the cupboard
+door. He was in the cupboard. I wondered what they would have done to
+him if they had found him there. He told me he had had plenty of time to
+wonder that himself when he had once got himself locked in.</p>
+
+<p>"Begin at the beginning," said I.</p>
+
+<p>It was a question, first, of getting round the door-keeper. He made
+friends with that door-keeper, took him out to supper, gave him a kirsch
+with his coffee and a cigar with his kirsch. He told the door-keeper
+that he was the most distinguished door-keeper he had ever met. He
+encouraged him to go through his ailments and his grievances and was
+visibly distressed by the recital. He got in the habit of sitting with
+the door-keeper while he was keeping the door for the committee
+assembled inside. And, when he thought the friendship was sufficiently
+advanced, he poured forth his inmost heart to that door-keeper. He said
+that Young Socialism was to him the breath of life, and the tragedy was
+that he was always kept on the outskirts of it. He said he would give
+anything to take part in a committee meeting, or anyhow to hear the
+great ones at it; and, to make this sound plausible, he expounded a
+scheme of Young Socialism of his own, which was far more drastic and
+bloodthirsty than anything that had yet occurred to any committee.</p>
+
+<p>The door-keeper didn't believe there could be anybody who really cared
+all that much for communism; for his part he kept the door because there
+was money to be made easily that way. At the next committee meeting he
+made more money and made it more easily, and my friend was safely locked
+up in the cupboard before the committee arrived. What with the heat
+inside, the thought that the door-keeper might be more cunning than had
+appeared and a persistent desire to sneeze, he questioned all the time
+whether he was the right man in the right place. The committee meanwhile
+did little more than vote its own salaries from the central fund and
+quarrel amongst itself who should be treasurer.</p>
+
+<p>Later proceedings of the committee, as noted in the cupboard, were more
+interesting. When the question turned on finding someone trustworthy and
+competent to take secret instructions to comrades in France and England,
+my friend very nearly burst forth from his shelf to say to them, "I'm
+your man!" He restrained himself, however, and thought out a more
+elaborate scheme than that.</p>
+
+<p>He secured a front seat at the next public meeting of the section,
+applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more
+briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after
+the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services
+to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was
+quite a practical man and, though he didn't use these words, he
+indicated to my friend as follows: "If you are a genuine blackguard the
+police won't let you go; if you are not a genuine blackguard you are not
+really one of us."</p>
+
+<p>My friend said that that would be all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> right, and they agreed to meet
+later on. He then went to the police and explained that he was about to
+be entrusted with important letters to carry over the frontier, if they
+would afford the necessary facilities. The police also were practical
+and, without wishing in any way to hurt his feelings, raised the
+question of his being genuine. Genuine was, of course, the very last
+thing he was claiming to be, but he understood what they meant, said
+that that would be all right and arranged a later appointment. He then
+called on the President and found him duly suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a talk with the police," said my friend, "and I've told them
+all about you and your messages, and they are going to give me the
+facilities and I am going to give them the messages."</p>
+
+<p>This was the first occasion on which the President had had to handle the
+plain truth, and he didn't know what to do or say next.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me some dud messages, of course," said my friend, and the
+President, thinking what a bright young Socialist this was, complied.</p>
+
+<p>He then went back to the police. "I've had a talk with the President,"
+said he, "and I've told them all about you and your interest in the
+messages, and here the messages are; and you needn't worry to read them
+because they are dud."</p>
+
+<p>The police had also got so unused to the truth from such quarters that
+they were taken aback when they met it.</p>
+
+<p>"And now have I your full confidence?" said he, and they said that he
+might take it that he had. He then went back to the President.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mr. President," said he. "I have given your messages to
+the police and told them they are dud messages, so that now I have their
+full confidence and can move about as I like. Give me the real messages
+and I'll be getting on with my journey."</p>
+
+<p>Throwing precaution to the winds, the President wrote out the real
+messages in full and handed them to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, come," said he, "you must be more careful than that," and
+he told him what he ought to do to make sure. He did it.</p>
+
+<p>My friend then proceeded to the frontier, where, by arrangement, he was
+arrested. In the inside pocket of his inside coat a bundle of messages
+were found. The police nodded at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," they said, "here are the messages all right. We don't know that
+they help much, but we suppose that we mustn't blame you."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, come," said my friend, "if you doubt me, search me." They
+did so, and, written on linen and sewn into the lining of his coat, they
+found some more messages, which really did help them. Yours ever, <span class="sc">Henry</span>.</p>
+
+<center>(<i>To be continued.</i>)</center>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/309.png">
+<img src="images/309.png" width="100%" alt="we&#39;ll have to drink the
+fizz out of port glasses" /></a>
+<p><i>Profiteer Host</i>. "<span class="sc">I'm afraid we'll have to drink the
+fizz out of port glasses</span>."</p>
+<p><i>Profiteer Guest</i>. "<span class="sc">Oh, we don't mind roughin' it; we're all sportsmen,
+I take it</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>Relatives without Antecedents</h3>.
+
+<blockquote>"<span class="sc">Youthful Hostesses</span>.&mdash;A few years ago when a bachelor entertained he
+invited his aunt or his mother to act as hostess for him. Now he
+asks his grand-daughter."&mdash;<i>Daily Paper</i>.</blockquote>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Ostensibly &pound;it was a move to check the ever-rising cost of living,
+&pound;and in a way not fully realised by the public &pound;it was a method of
+riveting control on the industry."</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Evening Paper</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With money flung about like this the cost of living is bound to go up
+again.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/310.png">
+<img src="images/310.png" width="100%" alt="SINISTER SIGNS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON" /></a>
+<h3>SINISTER SIGNS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON.</h3>
+<p><i>Alarmed House Agent.</i> "<span class="sc">Madam, what have you done to my partner?</span>"</p>
+<p><i>Client.</i> "I was just giving particulars of my flat, which I am anxious
+to let, and when I said, 'No premium required,' he crumpled up as if
+he'd been shot."</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2><i>SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT.</i></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[The taking of finger-prints of all new-born babies is advocated.
+These will be useful for identification at trials, inquests, etc.,
+since the pattern of the print does not change from the cradle to
+the grave.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">With paternal pride I used to glow</p>
+<p class="i2">When the neighbours dropped their pleasant hints</p>
+<p class="i0">How like Daddy Reginald would grow,</p>
+<p class="i2">But to-day they took his finger-prints;</p>
+<p class="i4">Now I am convinced they spoke in haste&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Such expressions show a lack of taste.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Operator was a kindly man,</p>
+<p class="i2">Formerly a sergeant of police;</p>
+<p class="i0">Dipped our Reggie's digits in a pan</p>
+<p class="i2">Filled with printers' ink and oil and grease,</p>
+<p class="i4">pressed them on a card and soothed his moans,</p>
+<p class="i4">Saying "Diddums" in official tones.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Mother stood and gazed upon the thing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Lovingly as doting mothers do;</p>
+<p class="i0">Asked, "Does Reggie's hieroglyphic bring</p>
+<p class="i2">Memories of famous men to you&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Men who, having made their lives sublime,</p>
+<p class="i4">Left their thumb-prints on the sands of time?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">"Will it be his destiny to write</p>
+<p class="i2">Or to earn a living with his brains?</p>
+<p class="i0">Will he share a 'loop' with <span class="sc">Grahame White</span>?</p>
+<p class="i2">Do his 'arches' pair with those of <span class="sc">Baines</span>?</p>
+<p class="i4">Is there similarity between</p>
+<p class="i4">Reggie's 'whorls' and those of <span class="sc">M. Massine</span>?"</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Operator coughed behind his hand,</p>
+<p class="i2">Moved his feet and shook his hoary head,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thrust his fingers in his bellyband,</p>
+<p class="i2">Then at last reluctantly he said,</p>
+<p class="i4">"I've encountered in the course of biz</p>
+<p class="i4">Many prints that much resembled his.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">"One, I mind me, such impressions made;</p>
+<p class="i2">P'r'aps you never heard of Ginger Hicks,</p>
+<p class="i0">Him what done in uncle with a spade</p>
+<p class="i2">Down in Canning Town in ninety-six?</p>
+<p class="i4">Ginger was a wrong 'un from the fust;</p>
+<p class="i4">As a child he bellowed fit to bust.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">"Then there was another, something like,</p>
+<p class="i2">Got a lifer seven years ago;</p>
+<p class="i0">Surely you remember Mealy Mike,</p>
+<p class="i2">Robbery with violence at Bow?</p>
+<p class="i4">Michael's thumb-print, though of larger size,</p>
+<p class="i4">Was the spit of Reggie's otherwise.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">"Then again his lines could be compared&mdash;"</p>
+<p class="i2">Mother snatched her precious up and fled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pausing once to ask him how he dared</p>
+<p class="i2">Put such notions in um's little head.</p>
+<p class="i4">Her departure mid a storm of kissing</p>
+<p class="i4">Put the lid on further reminiscing.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%">
+<a href="images/311.png">
+<img src="images/311.png" width="100%" alt="ALADDIN AND THE MINER&#39;S LAMP." /></a>
+<h3>ALADDIN AND THE MINER'S LAMP.</h3>
+<p><span class="sc">The Genie.</span> "I AM THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP. I THINK YOU SUMMONED ME."</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Mr. Smillie.</span> "YES, I KNOW. BUT I DIDN'T REALISE YOU'D BE SO UGLY."</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/313.png">
+<img src="images/313.png" width="100%" alt="a nice little bus." /></a>
+<p>"<span class="sc">Yes, a nice little bus. But I say, old top, the
+footboards are deucedly low. If you ran over anyone you might be
+capsized&mdash;what?</span>"</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY SHOCKER.</h2>
+
+<p>John Antony Grunch was one of the mildest, most innocent men I ever
+knew. He had a wife to whom he was devoted with a dog-like devotion; he
+went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position
+in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul,
+and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off&mdash;and that is
+seldom&mdash;he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and
+excitement by writing sensational novels. One of these was recently
+published, and John Antony is now dead. The novel did it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was a very mild sort of "shocker," about a very ordinary murder.
+The villain simply slew one of his typists in the counting-house with a
+sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting her in a pillar-box.
+But it had "power," and it was very favourably reviewed. One critic said
+that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular
+delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our
+great industrial centres." Another said that the book was "a brilliant
+burlesque of the fashionable type of detective fiction." Another wrote
+that "it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing phase of
+agricultural life." John thought that must refer to the page where he
+had described the allotments at Shepherd's Bush. But he was pleased and
+surprised by what they said.</p>
+
+<p>What he did <i>not</i> like was the interpretation offered by his family and
+his friends, who at once decided that the work was the autobiography of
+John Antony. You see, the scene was laid in London, and John lived in
+London; the murdered girl was a typist, and there were two typists in
+John's office; and, to crown all, the villain in the book had a
+boar-hound, and John himself had a Skye-terrier. The thing was as plain
+as could be. Men he met in the City said, "How's that boar-hound of
+yours?" or "I like that bit where you hit the policeman. When did you do
+that?" "<i>You</i>," mark you. Old friends took him aside and whispered,
+"Very sorry to hear you don't hit it off with Mrs. Grunch; I always
+thought you were such a happy couple." His wife's family said, "Poor
+Gladys! what a life she must have had!" His own family said, "Poor John!
+what a life she must have led him to make him go off with that
+adventuress!" Several people identified the adventuress as Miss Crook,
+the Secretary of the local Mothers' Welfare League, of which John was a
+vice-president.</p>
+
+<p>The fog of suspicion swelled and spread and penetrated into every cranny
+and level of society. No servants would come near the house, or if they
+did they soon stumbled on a copy of the shocker while doing the
+drawing-room, read it voraciously and rushed screaming out of the
+front-door. When he took a parcel of washing to the post-office the
+officials refused to accept it until he had opened it and shown that
+there were no bodies in it.</p>
+
+<p>The animal kingdom is very sensitive to the suspicion of guilt. John
+noticed that dogs avoided him, horses neighed at him, earwigs fled from
+him in horror, caterpillars madly spun themselves into cocoons as he
+approached, owls hooted, snakes hissed. Only Mrs. Grunch remained
+faithful.</p>
+
+<p>But one morning at breakfast Mrs. Grunch said, "Pass the salt, please,
+John." John didn't hear. He was reading a letter. Mrs. Grunch said
+again, "Pass the salt, please, John." John was still engrossed. Mrs.
+Grunch wanted the salt pretty badly, so she got up and fetched it. As
+she did so she noticed that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> the handwriting of the letter was the
+handwriting of A Woman. Worse, it was written on the embossed paper of
+the Mothers' Welfare League. It must be from Miss Crook. <i>And it was.</i>
+It was about the annual outing. "Ah, ha!" said Mrs. Grunch. (I am afraid
+that "Ah, ha!" doesn't really convey to you the sort of sound she made,
+but you must just imagine.) "Ah, ha! So <i>that</i>'s why you couldn't pass
+the salt!"</p>
+
+<p>Mad with rage, hatred, fear, chagrin, pique, jealousy and indigestion,
+John rushed out of the house and went to the office. At the door of the
+office he met one of the typists. He held the door open for her. She
+simpered and refused to go in front of him. Being still mad with rage,
+hatred, chagrin and all those other things, John made a cross gesture
+with his umbrella. With a shrill, shuddering shriek of "Murder!" the
+girl cantered violently down Ludgate Hill and was never seen again.
+Entering the office, John found two detectives waiting to ask him a few
+questions in connection with the Newcastle Pig-sty Murder, which had
+been done with some pointed instrument, probably an umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>After that <i>The Daily Horror</i> rang up and asked if he would contribute
+an article to their series on "Is Bigamy Worth While?"</p>
+
+<p>Having had enough rushing for one day John walked slowly out into the
+street, trying to remember the various ways in which his characters had
+committed suicide. He threw himself over the Embankment wall into the
+river, but fell in a dinghy which he had not noticed; he bought some
+poison, but the chemist recognised his face from a photograph in the
+Literary Column of <i>The Druggist</i> and gave him ipecacuanha (none of you
+can spell that); he thought of cutting his throat, but broke his
+thumb-nail trying to open the big blade, and gave it up. Desperate, he
+decided to go home. At Victoria he was hustled along the platform on the
+pretence that there is more room in the rear of trains. Finally he was
+hustled on to the line and electrocuted.</p>
+
+<p>And everybody said, "So it <i>was</i> true."</p>
+
+<p class="author">A. P. H.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/314.png">
+<img src="images/314.png" width="100%" alt="There be Mrs. Rouse&#39;s" /></a><br /><br />
+<p>"<span class="sc">There be Mrs. Rouse's, over agin the church. I believe
+she do put up with lodgers.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>Commercial Candour.</h3>
+
+<center>From an Indian trade-circular:&mdash;</center>
+
+<blockquote>"We believe in making a Small Profit and selling Everybody rather
+than making a Big Profit and selling only a Few."</blockquote>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Wanted for Tea Estate, Nilgiris, good climate
+Superintendent."</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Indian Paper.</i></p>
+
+<p>We could do with one here, too.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" /><br /><br />
+
+<h4>"<span class="sc">The Wandering Jew,</span></h4>
+<center><span class="sc">E. Temple Thurston's Wanderful Play."</span></center>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Advt. in Daily Paper.</i></p>
+
+<p>And still the wander grew.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"When the Prime Minister, accompanied by Mr. Lloyd George, appeared
+a magnificent ovation was accorded them."&mdash;<i>Welsh Paper.</i></blockquote>
+
+<p>This tends to confirm the statements in the anti-Coalition Press that
+the <span class="sc">Prime Minister</span> was beside himself.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>From an examination-paper at a girls' school:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><i>Question.</i> Why are the days in summer longer than those in winter?<br />
+
+<i>Answer.</i> Because they are warmer and therefore expand.</blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50%">
+<a href="images/315.png">
+<img src="images/315.png" width="100%" alt="Lucky to find a hairdresser" /></a>
+<p><i>Visitor.</i> "<span class="sc">Lucky to find a hairdresser in a small
+village like this.</span>"</p>
+<p><i>Native.</i> "<span class="sc">Well, be rights it's my son's business and 'e's away; but
+I've done a wunnerful deal of 'orse-clippin'.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>ERNEST EXPERIMENTS.</h2>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that Ernest was to blame. I know, of course, that he
+meant well. But a passion for fresh air, unless it is checked in time,
+is bound to lead one into all sorts of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>You see, Ernest suffers so from theories. He has theories about eating,
+sleeping and waking, talking and thinking; but those on fresh air are
+the worst (or perhaps I ought to say the best) of all. Not that we, who
+constitute his family, would object to his theories if he didn't get us
+involved in them as well; but that is exactly what does happen. There
+was, for example, the camping-out proposition.</p>
+
+<p>It began with Mother sitting at a table one evening in the early autumn
+and jotting down figures. Her brow was troubled. "We really can't afford
+a holiday this year, girls," she said, "though I suppose we shall <i>have</i>
+to. What with the price of everything just now and&mdash;" She then went on
+to speak with hostility of things like the Government and Sir <span class="sc">Eric
+Geddes</span>, though she is a peaceable woman as a rule.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Ernest, who was at the open window engaged in a little quiet
+biceps-training (we won't allow him to do the more rowdy muscular
+exercises in the living-room), remarked, "But why should we be subjected
+to these eternal trammels of civilisation? Isn't the open country man's
+rightful heritage?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see the prices have gone up at the select boarding-house where we
+stayed last year and met such nice people," went on Mother, ignoring
+Ernest. "It's five guineas a week each now."</p>
+
+<p>"Monstrous," put in Ernest again. "Five guineas a week just to breathe
+the pure air of Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they give you more than that," said Mother, "though I suspect the
+meat isn't English."</p>
+
+<p>Ernest laughed sardonically. "Now let me tell you of my plan," he said,
+taking a newspaper cutting from his pocket. "Here is my solution to the
+holiday problem, and it certainly doesn't cost five guineas a week. Why
+not adopt it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's an umbrella," commented Mother, feeling for her glasses. "But
+surely you don't expect it to rain all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is not an umbrella, it is an illustration of a portable tent,"
+explained Ernest. "The canvas folds up and can be carried in the pocket,
+while the pole also folds and is convertible into a walking-stick by
+day. Thus you are able to camp where you will; throw off the shackles of
+convention&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It may be all right for throwing off the shackles of convention,"
+remarked Mother, "but nothing would induce me to undress in a thing like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"But when it's erected it's perfectly solid&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So am I," said Mother, "and I like room to turn round. No, Ernest, I am
+as fond of fresh air as anyone&mdash;you know I always have my bedroom window
+open at least two inches at night&mdash;but air is not everything. Give me a
+comfortable bed and good catering if I am to go on holiday and enjoy it.
+<i>You</i> can please yourself."</p>
+
+<p>That is the mistake Mother made. Ernest ought not to be allowed to
+please himself. He doesn't know what is good for him. And, when he
+departed on his walking tour accompanied by his tent, his sponge-bag, a
+copy of <span class="sc">Omar Kh&aacute;yy&aacute;m</span>, but very little else, Mother felt uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"What will happen if you get your feet wet?" she asked. "I'm sure you
+ought to take more things with you, Ernest."</p>
+
+<p>"What more do I want?" he demanded, "'A loaf of bread beneath the
+bough&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"A loaf of bread indeed!" echoed Mother. "Fiddlesticks! Mind you get at
+least three good meals a day." She then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> gave him the address of the
+boarding-house where we had finally decided to spend our holidays and
+told him to send her a wire at once if he got a cold in the head.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It was the hour of dinner at the Select Boarding Establishment (sep.
+tables, 3 mins. sea, elec. lt., mod.) where we had spent ten days of our
+entirely select holiday. Everyone was assembled in the lounge hall
+waiting for the gong to announce the meal. Mother, basking her soul in
+the atmosphere of gentility, was chatting with the half-sister of a
+bishop, who was just remarking that Mother must call on her in town,
+when a strange <i>fracas</i> was heard at the back of the hall; a moment
+later a strange figure thrust itself in our midst and looked wildly
+round.</p>
+
+<p>"Ernest!" murmured Mother faintly. She was a wise woman to know her own
+child under the circumstances. Perhaps she identified the tent-pole to
+which he was still clinging. Otherwise he was scarcely recognisable. His
+hair was wild and unkempt, his clothing torn and damaged. His boots
+clung to his feet by the uppers only and were held together by fragments
+of a sponge-bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" said Ernest, singling her out from amongst the gay throng. The
+moment was dramatic.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I was arrested," went on Ernest. He spoke in a purely conversational
+tone, but it's surprising how far the human voice will carry at times.
+Everybody about the place, including the lift-boy and the Belgian
+waiter, seemed to hear that remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrested?" whispered Mother in reverberating tone-waves.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. How was I to know that I had pitched my tent on private property
+and was unwittingly trespassing? They would have prosecuted me if I
+hadn't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You had better come up to my room and explain there," interposed
+Mother; and we followed her, a broken woman, to the lift. People fell
+aside to make a passage for us.</p>
+
+<p>Mother held up until she got to her own room. Then she sat down and
+cried. "Why did you disgrace us like this?" she asked at last of Ernest.
+"Was it necessary for you to come <i>here</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had to," said Ernest apologetically. "You see I hadn't any money."</p>
+
+<p>Mother looked up quickly. "But what of the extra ten pounds I insisted
+on your taking with you in case of emergency?"</p>
+
+<p>Ernest appeared slightly shame-faced. "Well, when those fatuous asses
+hauled me up for trespassing they left me in the charge of a gamekeeper
+while they 'phoned for the police. I induced the chap to let me go, and
+I had to square him with a tenner."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause. Mother's mind seemed to be working at some
+abstruse calculation. Then she dried her eyes and looked up with the
+triumphant smile of the woman who gets the last word and wins her point.</p>
+
+<p>"And so, Ernest," she said, "it <i>did</i> cost you five guineas a week to
+'breathe the pure air of Heaven' after all."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50%">
+<a href="images/316.png">
+<img src="images/316.png" width="100%" alt="Sorry to hear your husband is laid up again" /></a><br /><br />
+<p>"<span class="sc">Sorry to hear your husband is laid up again, Mrs.
+Griggs.</span>"</p>
+<p>"<span class="sc">Yes. The trouble is he be an old man, and he <i>will</i> turn a deaf ear to
+the writin' on the wall.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>PRAWLING'S THEORY.</h2>
+
+<center>(<i>By a Student of Jargon.</i>)</center>
+
+<p>By the courtesy of Professor Prawling, F. R. S., who has supplied us
+with the MS. of his recent lecture before the Psycho-Economical Society,
+we are in a position to give our readers a full account of that masterly
+and epoch-making address, of which, strange to say, no adequate notice
+has so far appeared in any newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Prawling's credentials, we may premise, are of a nature to
+inspire the utmost confidence. His father, Theodore Prawling, was the
+inventor of the speedle, that remarkable implement, fully described by
+<i>Punch</i> in the early seventies, which rendered possible the
+emulsification of all gelatinoid substances and revolutionised the
+marmalade industry. He is duly commemorated by the fine statue which is
+one of the principal features of Dundee. His son, however, has even
+greater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> claims on our respect and admiration. Educated at the High
+School, Crieff, and the Universities of Glasgow, Upsala, the Sorbonne
+and Princeton, he is generally recognised in the United States as the
+foremost authority on P&aelig;dological Gongorism and the cognate science of
+Mendelian Economics.</p>
+
+<p>The problem with which he grapples in his latest contribution to these
+fascinating studies may be tersely summed up in a single sentence: Can a
+healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing
+symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?</p>
+
+<p>Professor Prawling is of opinion that it <i>can</i>, but only if and when the
+evils of co-partnership and co-operation have been neutralized by a
+diastolic synthesis. To compute exactly the extent to which these evils
+have been developed he has devised a syncretic abacus, in which, on the
+principle of the spectroscope, the aplanatic foci are arranged in
+fluorescent nodules each equidistant from the metacentre. With a
+frankness that cannot be too highly commended, Professor Prawling admits
+that this instrument is founded on <span class="sc">Bentham's</span> Panopticon. But the
+deviations from <span class="sc">Bentham</span> and the expansions of his machine are far more
+remarkable than the resemblances to it. Prawling&mdash;if he will allow us
+the familiarity&mdash;is not a utilitarian. His aim is to re-establish our
+textile pre-eminence by reconciling monistic individualism with the
+fullest solidarity of the social complex. He is meticulously careful in
+stressing the point that the demarcations arrived at by the use of his
+abacus are not absolute, but conditioned by <span class="sc">Einstein's</span> theory of
+relativity. The ancillary industries, each moving in its orbit, whether
+jurassic or botulistic, must be placed on a contractual basis with
+liberty of preferential retaliation. Thus the whole industrial polyphony
+is linked up by enharmonic modulations, and thrombosis&mdash;or, at any rate,
+conglucination&mdash;of the central ganglia of commerce is reduced to
+negligible dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture it is well to point out in the interests of clarity
+that regurgitation can only be avoided by a rigorous adhesion to the
+canon of <span class="sc">Crittenden</span>&mdash;that the unit of nutrition must vary inversely with
+the square of dilution.</p>
+
+<p>It will thus be seen that by the logical application of a few simple and
+easily apprehended principles Professor Prawling has built up a great
+edifice of practical economics, which, whether we regard it in its
+subliminal or its pragmatic aspects, cannot fail to have influence on
+the dynamics of International Industrialism.</p>
+
+<p>One word more. The conglucination theory appeals with especial force to
+<i>Punch</i>, because it reminds him of the kindred and remarkable
+speculation on Snooling discussed by him many years ago. The new theory,
+like the old, deserves to be treated "in no spirit of sedentary
+sentimentalism, but in its largest and most oleaginous entirety. It is
+no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating
+neuralgia with treacle." How true and appropriate this is. <i>Mutatis
+mutandis</i> we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and
+tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The
+corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest
+achievement of which the present generation is capable.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/317.png">
+<img src="images/317.png" width="100%" alt="I trust you&#39;ll excuse me mentioning it" /></a>
+
+<p>"<span class="sc">I trust you'll excuse me mentioning it, my good fellow,
+but that is the right entrance&mdash;on the opposite side of the road.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>More Impending Apologies.</h3>
+
+<blockquote>"Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Rouen, has been translated, as most
+of us expected, to the Archbishopric in Paris. Being a very
+distinguished man of letters, the Acad&eacute;mie Fran&ccedil;aise would like to
+include him among the Immorals, but, alas! they are 'full inside.'"</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Evening Paper.</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+
+<h2>HEADLINING.</h2>
+
+<p>The thrilling incident of the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely
+to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which
+do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is
+the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would
+otherwise skip.</p>
+
+<p>The affair began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that
+Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper
+lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow
+she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the
+wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat which had appeared&mdash;merely appeared.</p>
+
+<p>As she told me, she softly exclaimed, "A cat!" (right first time); then,
+because it looked so wistful, she directed the maid to set before the
+creature a saucer of milk. In fact&mdash;</p>
+
+<center>HOMELESS BLACK-AND-TAN.<br />
+LUCKY CHANCE CALL.<br />
+TOOTING GOOD SAMARITAN.</center>
+
+<p>When I arrived home, Marjorie ran into the hall to give me one of her
+smooth evening kisses. I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my
+stubbly ones when&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"</p>
+
+<p>"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You
+really might have been more careful."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the
+teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a
+sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first
+outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or,
+as the headlines would have it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<center>NEAR BREAKING-POINT.<br />
+STRAIN OF BUSINESS LIFE.<br />
+ORIGIN OF THE DRUG HABIT.</center>
+
+<p>After a bath and a change I felt better, and came down to dinner humming
+a sentimental ballad in Marjorie's honour. But the word "love" died on
+my lips when I saw that in the lap of Marjorie's pretty pink gown
+reposed the stray cat. The colour-clash and the misapplication of
+caresses which should have been my monopoly threw me back with a jerk to
+a state of bearishness.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you're not going to keep that animal?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am, as long as she likes to stay," said Marjorie. "She's
+very fond of me, aren't you, pussy? Fonder than my husband, I 'spect."</p>
+
+<p>"I know these stray cats," I said. "Stiff with microbes. Tribes of mangy
+lovers prowling round the house. A nest of kittens in my top-hat. I
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor li'l pussy," cooed Marjorie. "Don'tum listen to the big coarse
+man."</p>
+
+<p>"Coarse be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In other (and more suitable) words&mdash;</p>
+
+<center>HUSBAND'S PROFANITY.<br />
+MASK OFF AFTER TWO YEARS.<br />
+PEEVISH ABOUT WIFE'S PET.</center>
+
+<p>Marjorie said coldly that she didn't know I had such a temper. I said
+hotly that I didn't know she could be so infantile.</p>
+
+<p>We went on discovering things we hadn't known about each other:&mdash;</p>
+
+<center>THE TESTING TIME<br />
+IN CONJUGAL FELICITY,<br />
+IS IT THE THIRD YEAR?</center>
+
+<p>Dinner was an ordeal. I felt miles apart from Marjorie. A great gulf
+filled with black-and-yellow cat lay between us. Once only the topic of
+the beast arose (on the subject of fish-bones) and just as I was
+becoming big and coarse again the maid entered with the joint. She must
+have heard what I said.</p>
+
+<center>SHOULD SERVANTS TELL?<br />
+BACKDOOR SCANDAL.</center>
+
+<p>Still, the meal itself was a cheering one, and, after Marjorie had
+risen, the sentimental ballad mood gained on me again. After all, what
+was a stray cat compared with one's marriage vows? If the dear girl
+wanted to keep the thing we would have it vetted, definitely named, and
+warned as to followers.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's voice interrupted my amiable planning. "Puss, puss," she
+called. I joined her and stated my decision to relent.</p>
+
+<p>"But she's vanished," said Marjorie. She had. And she has never come
+back. Ah! those stray cats.</p>
+
+<center>NINE LIVES SPENT WHERE?<br />
+FOUR-FOOTED NOMADS.<br />
+FICKLE FELINE FRIENDSHIPS.</center>
+
+<p>"Look here, old girl," I said, "I take back all I said about your little
+friend. I'm with you that she was the dearest, most hygienic, most moral
+cat that ever strafed a mouse."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's all for the best that she's gone," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>The dear girl inclined her head towards my shoulder. Well, well.</p>
+
+<center>WHAT EVERY WOMAN WANTS<br />
+TO KNOW.<br />
+IS KISSING DYING OUT?<br />
+PRACTICIANS SAY "NO."</center><br />
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>More Precocity</h3>.
+
+<blockquote>"Unfurnished Rooms wanted (two or three), with attendance; one
+child, 4&frac12; years; at business all day."</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Provincial Paper</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>LOVE'S HANDICAP.</h2>
+
+<p>[A daily paper points out that many girls find their sweethearts in
+print, and expresses the hope that when "a real man comes along he may
+be as brave and tender, as cheery and clean-living," as these heroes of
+fiction.]</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Dear lady, put down for a minute</p>
+<p class="i2">That book which you eagerly scan,</p>
+<p class="i0">Intent upon finding within it</p>
+<p class="i2">Your perfect ideal of a man;</p>
+<p class="i0">Its pages reflectively closing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Consider a moment the strain</p>
+<p class="i0">Your standard may soon be imposing</p>
+<p class="i2">Upon some susceptible swain.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Those heroes whose fortunes you follow</p>
+<p class="i2">I've noticed are able to show</p>
+<p class="i0">The unparalleled charms of Apollo,</p>
+<p class="i2">The muscles of <span class="sc">Samson</span> and Co.;</p>
+<p class="i0">But he who comes seeking to win you</p>
+<p class="i2">May have, for supporting his plea,</p>
+<p class="i0">A palpable shortage of sinew</p>
+<p class="i2">And beauty distinctly C 3.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And, unprepossessing in mien, he</p>
+<p class="i2">May also lack some of the art</p>
+<p class="i0">With which Saccharissa the Tweeny</p>
+<p class="i2">Was wooed by Sir Marmaduke, Bart.;</p>
+<p class="i0">His tongue may (conceivably) stammer,</p>
+<p class="i2">His heart (not impossibly) quake,</p>
+<p class="i0">And in stress of emotion his grammar</p>
+<p class="i2">May even develop a shake.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But pause ere you "spurn his addresses;"</p>
+<p class="i2">His merits may still be as high</p>
+<p class="i0">As the sort that your hero possesses,</p>
+<p class="i2">Though they leap not so quick to the eye;</p>
+<p class="i0">At the least, you've the comfort of knowing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Since his heart at <i>your</i> feet he has placed,</p>
+<p class="i0">That in one thing at least he is showing</p>
+<p class="i2">A wholly impeccable taste.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3>How Some Advertisers "Tell the Tale."</h3>
+
+<center>"We spin the yarn ourselves."</center>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Advt. in Daily Paper</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h3>"'FULL TERM.'"</h3>
+
+<center><span class="sc">An Impression at Cambridge</span>.</center>
+
+<blockquote>I watch the faces of the 'men,' boys in so many cases, jumping from
+their trains; from the north, the south, the east, the west they
+come, and they come not alone but <i>dona ferentes</i>&mdash;they carry
+tennis-racquets, golf-sticks, cycles, sidecars, kitbags,
+gladstone-bags, trunks, hold-alls."</blockquote>
+<p class="author"><i>Evening Paper</i>.</p>
+<p>Hefty chaps, these post-war undergraduates.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Question.&mdash;How much has the time for crossing the ocean been
+shortened since the day of Columbus?</blockquote>
+<p class="author">T. E. C.</p>
+
+<p>Answer.&mdash;Idaho is a North American Indian word meaning 'Gem of the
+Mountains' or 'Sunrise Mountains.'"</p>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Boston (Massachusetts) Herald</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We hope that T. E. C. isn't going to be put off with such a simple
+device as this.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<a href="images/319.png">
+<img src="images/319.png" width="100%" alt="Injured Party." /></a><br /><br />
+<p><i>Injured Party.</i> "<span class="sc">It's all very well, Passon, for you to
+say wot 'orrible langwidge, but 'appen your missis ain't such a good
+shot with a flat-iron as mine is.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.</h2>
+
+<center>(<i>By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.</i>)</center>
+
+<p>There is certainly this to be said of Mr. <span class="sc">Hugh Walpole</span>&mdash;that, having
+devised a tale of gloom, he allows no weak consideration for his
+readers' feelings to deter him from making the worst of it. I write,
+having but now emerged, blinking a little at the familiar sunlight (yet
+oddly invigorated too), from a perusal of the four-hundred-and-seventy
+pages of his <i>Captives</i> (<span class="sc">Macmillan</span>). Of course I have nothing like space
+to detail for you its plot. Summarised, it tells the life of a young
+woman, <i>Maggie Cardinal</i>, whom one may briefly call the bemused victim
+of religions&mdash;and relations. You never knew any well-intentioned heroine
+who had such abysmal luck with both. Her clergyman father, a bad hat,
+who spared us his acquaintance by expiring on the first page; her
+semi-moribund aunts in their detestable London home; the circle of the
+Inner Saints, with their intrigues that centred in the ugly little
+meeting-house; the seaside parish with its spiritually-dead atmosphere,
+in which <i>Maggie's</i> hopeless married life is spent&mdash;all these and more
+are realised with an art that is almost devastating in its unforced
+effect. Sometimes I hoped that such universal drabness was too bad to be
+true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor
+<i>Captives</i> seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the
+wires of Mr. <span class="sc">Walpole</span>. The queer result was that I found myself believing
+in his compellingly human characters, but protesting that such unbroken
+misfortune could not, or need not, have encompassed them. To take an
+example, when <i>Maggie's</i> "tipsy" uncle was shown into the Vicarage
+drawing-room on her "At Home day," no other guests had yet arrived.
+Surely therefore (save for peremptory orders from Mr. <span class="sc">Walpole</span>) she might
+somehow have removed the culprit to another room, or at least denied
+herself to subsequent callers, who included (of course) the most
+influential and scandal-mongering of the parish ladies. That is the kind
+of rather piled-up agony that made me suspect Mr. <span class="sc">Walpole</span> of letting his
+fortitude get at times the better of his commonsense. But he has written
+a big book.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="sc">E. F. Benson</span>, of whom it might justly be said that he produces not
+books but libraries (and the quality of his output under these
+circumstances remains for me amongst the literary wonders of the age),
+has been at it again. Hardly have I finished laughing over <i>Queen
+Lucia</i>, when I find him claiming a wholly different interest with a
+volume of personal recollections called <i>Our Family Affairs</i> (<span class="sc">Cassell</span>).
+By its theme and treatment this is work standing naturally a little
+outside criticism; but I can say at once that Mr. <span class="sc">Benson</span> has never
+written with a more sympathetic charm than in these pictures of the
+childhood of himself and his sister and brothers; of the various
+scholastic and ecclesiastical homes to which the increasing dignities of
+that rather alarming parent, the Archbishop, transported his family; and
+(quite the best and most attractive portrait in the collection) of the
+mother whom all of them united to adore. There is an actual photograph
+of her here, taken at the age of twenty, which goes far to explain how
+she came to be the heroine of the story; the lurking gaiety and laughter
+of it quaintly foretelling the great ecclesiastical lady who, on one
+occasion when the Archbishop was absent, could announce
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> to her
+enraptured children that family prayers should be remitted, "as a
+treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the
+Georgian <i>r&eacute;gime</i> in Athens, and (what will interest many readers most
+of all) the history of the origin of that famous lady, <i>Dodo</i>&mdash;these are
+but a selection from the contents of a volume that should find hosts of
+friends.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><i>The Girl in Fancy Dress</i> (<span class="sc">Hodder and Stoughton</span>) was so very much
+disguised in one way and another that <i>Anthony</i>, the hero, when he asked
+her to marry him, even for the second time, was taking considerable
+risks. The speed of the affair must also have been bewildering.
+<i>Cynthia</i>, the heiress, arrives on a Thursday to stay with his people,
+but, having tumbled out of a motor-car into a wet ditch on her way, she
+is dressed, rather like a stage coster-girl, in garments borrowed from a
+cottager. Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more
+likely than an heiress to look like that, <i>Anthony's</i> people mistake her
+for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and <i>Cynthia</i>,
+discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend
+the heiress to marry <i>Anthony</i> and, worse than that, that he has called
+her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her
+best to pay them all out. She leaves on the following Tuesday, but
+before that <i>Anthony</i> has taken her to one dance as a peasant girl and
+she has talked to him at another disguised as a green domino, and he has
+proposed to her as his cousin and withdrawn his declaration when he
+finds she isn't. Next he sees her as <i>Lady Teazle</i> in amateur
+theatricals, and then comes his final meeting with her in her proper
+person, which brings about a satisfactory ending for everyone but
+<i>Cynthia's</i> other lover. I don't say that all these things couldn't have
+happened; I only say that as a rule they don't. Apart from that, the
+bright bustling action of Mrs. <span class="sc">J. E. Buckrose's</span> story has a cheerful
+charm of its own, and <i>Cynthia</i>, as poor relation of one of the
+anxiously best families in a little country town, provides some amusing
+situations&mdash;for the reader.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>If the shade of <span class="sc">Robert Louis Stevenson</span> is jealous of its rights and its
+copyrights, Mr. <span class="sc">Jeffrey Farnol</span> may look to be hauled up before the
+Recording Angel, on his arrival, in the matter of his <i>Black Bartlemy's
+Treasure</i> (<span class="sc">Sampson Low</span>), which he might just as well have called <i>Black
+Bartlemy's Treasure Island</i> and have done. Never was such frank adoption
+of ideas; and yet no God-fearing, adventure-loving Englishman will
+regret it. For all my devotion to R. L. S. I heartily enjoyed this
+elaboration of his idea, split me (to quote the thorough-going language
+of it)&mdash;split me crosswise else! There are forty-seven chapters and a
+bloody fight in every one of them, save in the dozen set apart for an
+interval of refreshment and romance in the middle. Nay, but was not the
+primitive romance a gentler combat, itself, between <i>Martin Conisby</i> and
+<i>Lady Joan Brandon</i>, marooned, solitary, upon the Island where they did
+find (and lose) a treasure even greater than <i>Black Bartlemy's</i>? After
+having "consorted with pirates and like rogues" and having "endured much
+of harms and dangers, as battle, shipwreck, prison and solitude," it
+seemed we had sighted happiness at last. But even at the very end things
+took an ill turn and our <i>Martin</i>, our dear <i>Martin</i>, is left stranded
+and in sorry plight. Yet must there be a sequel to this. Had he been
+left to die on the Island he could not have told us his story thus far;
+moreover his last word is that the tale is yet to finish. May I be there
+to hear!</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>I rather think that the lady who elects to write under the name of <span class="sc">O.
+Douglas</span> did less than justice to the peculiar quality of her own gifts
+in calling her last story <i>Penny Plain</i> (<span class="sc">Hodder and Stoughton</span>). Because
+really such confectionery as this, covered inches deep with the sweetest
+and smoothest and pinkest of sugar, could never in these days be bought
+for many pennies, while as for "plain" ...! Most of the plot (which
+really isn't at all the right word for such caramel-stuff) takes place
+in a small Scottish town, where lives a family of book-children,
+mothered by an elder sister named <i>Jean</i>, all of them rich in char-r-rm
+but poor in cash. To this town comes, first, a pleasant single lady with
+a lord for her brother; secondly an aged man full of money; and, because
+the family (and the tale) is what it is, <i>Jean</i>, in fewer chapters than
+you would easily credit, has clasped the young lord to her breast and is
+saying the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man
+concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have
+it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as
+suggests itself; for "<span class="sc">O. Douglas</span>" has apparently discovered that, in a
+world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are
+not only cheerful to cook but likely to prove highly remunerative.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%">
+<img src="images/320.png" width="100%" alt="TACT IN TIME." />
+<a href="images/320.png"></a>
+<h3>TACT IN TIME.</h3>
+<p><i>King Alfred</i> (<i>to shopman</i>). "<span class="sc">Ah! I see you stock my patent
+candle-clocks. How are they selling?</span>"</p>
+<p><i>Shopman.</i> "<span class="sc">They're selling like hot&mdash;I mean there's quite a run on
+them, Your Majesty.</span>"</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h3>A Confession.</h3>
+
+<blockquote>"The&mdash;&mdash; Manufacturing Co. (The Profiteering Stranglers)."</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Advt. in Provincial Paper.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>"Wanted, 1,000 pairs running shoes for local expeditionary force
+about to be organised."</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>North China Daily News.</i></p>
+
+<p>The wise commander always prepares for a retreat.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<blockquote>The limits of age for entrance to the [Royal Air Force] college will
+be from 157&frac12; to 1 years."</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Daily Paper.</i></p>
+
+<blockquote>"Percy &mdash;&mdash; has recently joined the R. A. F. He is only 199 years of
+age."</blockquote>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Local Paper.</i></p>
+
+<p>We are sorry for <span class="sc">Percy</span>, who will probably get the "push" as soon as the
+authorities find out that he has exceeded their very liberal age-limit.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October
+20, 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,2181 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October 10,
+1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Owen Seaman
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2008 [EBook #27421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Neville Allen, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
+
+  Vol. 159.
+
+  October 20, 1920.
+
+
+  CHARIVARIA.
+
+"Whenever I am in London," writes an American journalist, "I never miss
+the House of Commons." Nor do we, during the Recess.
+
+       * * *
+
+"If Lord KENYON wishes, I am prepared to fight him with any weapon he
+chooses to name at any time," announced Sir CLAUDE CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY
+recently to a representative of _The Star_. In sporting circles it is
+thought that, in spite of his recent declaration, Mr. C. B. COCHRAN may
+consent to stage the encounter.
+
+       * * *
+
+At the Air Conference last week Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON, M. P.,
+said the Government should appoint experts to control the weather. It
+looks as if _The Daily Mail_ was not going to have things all its own
+way.
+
+       * * *
+
+"The object of Poland," says M. DOMBSKI, "is peace, hard work and
+production." These were at one time the object of England, and she still
+hopes to get peace.
+
+       * * *
+
+Mr. PUSSYFOOT JOHNSON has told a Glasgow audience that he is no
+kill-joy, but smokes cigars. It is also said that he has been seen going
+the pace playing dominoes.
+
+       * * *
+
+"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." We can only add that the price
+of apples is enough to keep anybody away.
+
+       * * *
+
+"What is a Penny Roll?" asks a headline. The answer is "Three
+half-pence."
+
+       * * *
+
+The average boarding-house, says a gossip writer, is not what it seems.
+No, unfortunately it is what it is.
+
+       * * *
+
+We understand that the world's record fast has been accomplished by a
+Scotsman, who has succeeded in remaining in Prohibition America for
+seven months and three days.
+
+       * * *
+
+South Sea Islanders, when greeting friends, says _Tit Bits_, fling a jar
+of water over them. Cats on night duty are now putting a kindlier
+interpretation on the treatment they receive.
+
+       * * *
+
+An employee at a coal-mine in Ohio is reported to have died from
+overwork. There is consolation in the fact that this could not possibly
+happen in England.
+
+       * * *
+
+Three Glasgow workmen have started on a walk to London. With the
+possibility of a vote in favour of a dry Scotland we suppose they
+started early to avoid the rush.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is still very doubtful whether JACK DEMPSEY can meet JESS WILLARD,
+says a sporting paper. A dear old lady thinks he might get over the
+difficulty by dropping him a letter.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is reported that the captain of a village fire brigade recently
+declined to call his men out to a fire because it was raining.
+Unfortunately the owner of the fire was too busy to keep it going till
+the first fine day.
+
+       * * *
+
+A clerk employed behind the counter at a post-office in the South of
+England recently rescued a young girl from drowning. In order to show
+their appreciation of the young man's bravery, local residents have now
+decided to purchase their stamps at his post-office.
+
+       * * *
+
+"Life is uncertain and often full of trouble," bewails a writer in the
+"Picture" Press. Still, in our opinion it's the only thing worth living.
+
+       * * *
+
+On two separate occasions last week a cat entered one of the largest
+churches in Yorkshire whilst a wedding was in progress. This supports
+our belief that feline society is contemplating the introduction of more
+ceremony into their own marriage system.
+
+       * * *
+
+Ex-sailors on the reserve need not be alarmed by the repeated rumours
+that a surprise mobilisation of the Fleet may be ordered very shortly,
+as we now have it on good authority that, in order to ensure its
+complete success, plenty of notice will be given to them beforehand.
+
+       * * *
+
+Women are said to be fonder than men are of morbid stage plays. Weddings
+also have a greater fascination for them.
+
+       * * *
+
+Mr. T. A. EDISON is reported to have invented a machine to record
+communication with the other world. As a final experiment an attempt is
+to be made to get into touch with the POET LAUREATE.
+
+       * * *
+
+The motor-car of polished steel and no paint-work is the latest
+innovation. It is said that this will do away with the objection of
+pedestrians that under present conditions one cannot be knocked down
+without soiling one's clothing.
+
+       * * *
+
+"Water," says an official of the Metropolitan Water Board, "costs far
+too much to waste to-day." Adulterated with whisky, we believe it costs
+about eightpence a time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: DIPLOMACY.
+
+_Mistress._ "NORAH, WILL YOU TRY TO HAVE THE STEAK A LITTLE MORE
+UNDERDONE?"
+
+_Norah_ (_bristling up_). "IS IT FINDING FAULT YE ARE?"
+
+_Mistress._ "OH, NO, NO! I MERELY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICER FOR YOU NOT
+TO REMAIN OVER THE FIRE SO LONG."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The Music of the Future.
+
+    "MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
+
+    For Sale, one small Economic Roller, 1 Brown's triple action Roller,
+    2 Eastern Produce Roll Breakers, 1 Updraft Sirocco Dryer--all the
+    above in good order and can be seen working. 1 Saw Mill, good order.
+    1 Souter's roll Breaker, fair order."--_Ceylon Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Mr. ---- won L400,000 at Aix-les-Bains. The lucky player, _who was
+    educated at Harrow_...."--_Daily Paper._
+
+The italics are Mr. Punch's. Are our public schools beginning to
+advertise?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FALLING PRICES.
+
+(_With grateful acknowledgments to the Commercial Statistician of "The
+Times."_)
+
+  Sad is the sight, but not so strange,
+    When the dead leaf to earth declines:
+  I have observed this annual change
+    As one of Autumn's surest signs;
+      But oh, how very odd it is
+  To mark the falling prices of commodities.
+
+  One had supposed the boom of War
+    (Still raging with the desperate Turk),
+  Whose closure seemed past praying for,
+    Would carry on its hideous work
+      And swell for years and years
+  The bulging waistcoats of our profiteers.
+
+  But lo! a lot of useful wares
+    Within my modest range have come;
+  Trousers, I hear, are sold (in pairs)
+    At three-fifteen--a paltry sum;
+      And you can even get
+  Dittos as low as thirteen pounds the set.
+
+  I can afford a further lump
+    Of sugar in my cocoa--yes,
+  And cocoa too is on the slump,
+    Its "second grade" now costs me less;
+      And green peas (marrowfat)
+  Are down to fourpence. I can run to that.
+
+  And, though my coffers, sadly thinned,
+    May not command a home-killed ham,
+  And though the fees for pilchards (tinned)
+    And eggs (to eat) and strawberry-jam
+      Are still beyond my means
+  (The same remark applies to butter-beans);
+
+  Yet milk (condensed) and salmon ("pink"),
+    And arrowroot and pines (preserved)--
+  All "easier," I am glad to think--
+    These, and a soul not yet unnerved,
+      Shall keep me going strong,
+  Now that the price of boots is not so long.
+
+    O. S.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GONE AWAY!
+
+It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I
+believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn"
+by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering
+morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village
+we hunt the 8.52. Morning after morning, if you watch from a high place,
+you can see our bowlers and squash hats just above the hedgerows bobbing
+down to the covert side. That one bobbing last is me.
+
+As we trudge homeward under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes
+are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging
+of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find
+again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early at the meet in the
+morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the
+platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to
+be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to
+the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season
+ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put
+trains into the feminine gender. This is a slight compensation for
+having to pay again when they are challenged and can only pull out a
+complimentary pass to the Chrysanthemum Show.
+
+As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I
+am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle
+about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry
+that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his
+marmalade.
+
+In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid
+certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the
+sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is
+hardly playing the game. Of the stout-hearted fellows who follow on
+foot, both Enderby and Jackson pass in front of my house and may be
+discerned dimly through a gap in the hedge, which was probably made for
+that purpose by the previous tenant. Or it may have been because the
+gate-latch sticks and he did not jump well. Enderby asserts that my
+house is nine minutes from the station, and Jackson says it is six, and
+therein lies the whole difference between optimism and pessimism. All I
+know is that, if I gather my hat, coat, _Times_, stick, pipe, tobacco
+and matches and put as many as possible of them in appropriate places
+just after Enderby has passed the gap, I catch the 8.52 nicely. If I do
+these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just
+about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should
+encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them
+twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do
+this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have
+pointed out that a "View halloo" from Enderby, followed by a stirring
+
+    "Tantivvy, Tantivvy, Tantivvy;
+      Tra-la, Tra-la, Tra-la"
+
+from Jackson, will, if any power on earth can do it, bring me from my
+toast in time for my train in the morning.
+
+I have explained to them that nothing can be pleasanter or more
+beautiful for the baker, the butcher and the grocer to look at every
+morning than Enderby and Jackson dressed in pink, with a despatch-case
+in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other. There must be other
+sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little
+lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they
+all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.
+
+I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye
+to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of
+the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes
+through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." I
+have replied that I cannot hear express trains when I am eating toast,
+and that the only warner I recognise is PLUM WARNER, who cannot by any
+stretch of language be called an express train. There the matter rests
+at present, and I suppose in a few days I shall miss the 8.52 again.
+
+Happily I have now found out what to do when this occurs. Enderby and
+Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their
+narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes
+after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting
+from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on
+the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy
+good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted
+along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at
+home, the half-drunk stirrup-cup of coffee standing tepid and forlorn.
+But, as I say, the 9.5 is a perfectly sound train. It is quite true that
+it goes to Brighton, but the weather has been very warm of late. I hate
+these splits in the local Hunt, but there it is.
+
+    EVOE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "THE RESOURCES OF CIVILISATION."
+
+MR. LLOYD GEORGE. "STICK TO IT, BONAR. POOR OLD SISYPHUS NEVER HAD AN
+IMPLEMENT LIKE THIS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: HIGH LIFE ON THE UNDERGROUND.
+
+_Lady (to tiresome individual)._ "I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU--HAMMERSMITH IS
+THE NEXT BUT ONE. THE NEXT IS BARON'S COURT. THAT'S MY STATION, NOT
+YOURS."
+
+_The Individual._ "AHEM! THE BARONESS, I PRESOOM?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE DINING GLADIATOR;
+
+OR, WAR TO THE KNIFE (AND FORK).
+
+(_Being further Extracts from a certain Diary_).
+
+_August 4th, 1914._--Declaration of War. I hereby take a solemn oath not
+to relax my efforts to win this struggle for England, even if it costs
+me my last drop of ink.
+
+Began my series of powerful articles by calling for KITCHENER, of whom I
+now, if guardedly, approve. Lunched at the Carlton and dined at the Ritz
+to let all the world see that I am not downhearted.
+
+       * * *
+
+Spent the morning at the War Office, showing everyone how the work there
+ought to be done. Then to Downing Street to put things right there.
+
+Lunched at Claridge's with six Leading Ladies, all of them cheery souls.
+
+       * * *
+
+Week-ended at Melton. Some good tennis and bridge. Fear that none of our
+generals really knows his job.
+
+       * * *
+
+I have been wondering to-day if any other military journalist could
+possibly know such a lot of the Smart Set, and so intimately as I do. I
+am extraordinary lucky in having all these nice people to fall back on
+when I am worn out with War-winning and Tribunal duties.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote a wonderful article on the importance of dressing up some one to
+look like HINDENBURG and dropping him at night by parachute from an
+aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be
+a biggish man who can speak German well--Mr. CHESTERTON perhaps, but I
+have never met Mr. CHESTERTON, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the
+Ritz; or even Lord HALDANE. Once safely landed (my article goes on to
+explain) he would make his way to German H. Q., being mistaken for the
+real HINDENBURG, kill him and then issue orders to the Army which would
+quickly put the Germans in our power. Strange that no one else has
+thought of this.
+
+       * * *
+
+It is very awkward to be the only man in London who has the truth in
+him. Relieved some of my embarrassment by a glass or two of remarkable
+1794 brandy.
+
+       * * *
+
+WINSTON came to Carryon Hall to dine and we discussed his future. I
+mapped out the next six months for him very carefully, and he promised
+to follow my counsel; but I am afraid that Lady RANDOLPH may interfere.
+
+       * * *
+
+My HINDENBURG article not in _The Times_ yet. Cannot think what is
+coming to journalism. And NORTHCLIFFE calls himself a hustler.
+
+Sent for the PRIME MINISTER and gave him a piece of my mind. He ought to
+be more careful in future.
+
+       * * *
+
+Lunched at the Carlton with GEORGE GRAVES and had some valuable War
+talk.
+
+In the afternoon to the Tribunal, where all excuses were disregarded and
+everyone packed off to the recruiting officer.
+
+In the evening to a first-class revue at the Palace.
+
+       * * *
+
+Had gratifying visit from ANATOLE FRANCE'S friend, M. PUTOIS, who told
+me that the French look to me as the only Englishman capable of winning
+the War. My articles are read everywhere, and some have been set to
+music.
+
+       * * *
+
+More men must be obtained, and therefore wrote a capital article calling
+on all criminals to cease their labours during the War, in order to
+release the police for the army. After this effort, which was very
+tiring, lunched at the Ritz with ETHEL LEVEY, LAVERY and SOVERAL. Some
+good riddles were asked. A discussion followed on ladies' boots, and
+whether toes should be pointed or square. From this we passed to
+stockings and then to lingerie. Tore myself away to attend to my
+Tribunal duties.
+
+       * * *
+
+Met the GLOOMY DEAN in the Mall and walked with him to the Rag., where
+he left me. A most diverting man. He told me a capital story about a
+curate and an egg.
+
+       * * *
+
+Finished a rattling good article on a way to make our army look more
+impressive to the foe, namely by fitting each man with a dummy man on
+either side of him. Bosch aeroplane observers would imagine then that we
+were three times as strong as we are, and some very desirable results
+might follow.
+
+       * * *
+
+Sent for NORTHCLIFFE and told him that unless my articles are treated
+with more respect I cannot go on and the War will be lost. He seemed to
+be impressed, but you never know.
+
+Lunched at Claridge's with Lady CUNARD, Lady DIANA MANNERS and GEORGE
+ROBEY. We were all very witty.
+
+In the afternoon saw ROBERTSON at the W.O. and told him of my dummy
+soldier idea. He roared with delight.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of either L. G.
+learning French or CLEMENCEAU learning English. Very depressed all day;
+have lost my appetite.
+
+       * * *
+
+Dined at the Ritz. A large party, including Lady CUNARD and Lady DIANA
+MANNERS. The Princess of X. was present and I found her intelligent.
+Afterwards to Lady Y.'s for bridge. The cards were mad, but we had some
+wonderful rubbers, the four best players in London being concerned.
+
+       * * *
+
+Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of eating and drinking
+and being merry during great national crises. Urged among other things
+the addition of restaurant cars to all trains, even those on the Tubes.
+It is madness to encourage seriousness, as _The Times_ is doing.
+
+       * * *
+
+My eating article not printed. Practice, however, is more than precept,
+and I shall continue to do my bite.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+    E. V. L.
+
+Illustration: THE END OF AN IMPERFECT DAY.
+
+"ONE OF THOSE TINS OF SALMON, PLEASE."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another Sex-Problem.
+
+    "SALE OF LIVE AND DEAD FARM STOCK.
+    6 Steers in milk and in Calf."
+
+    _Local Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "In the second part of the programme Miss ---- was associated with
+    Mr. ---- in 'It was a Lover and His Last.'"--_Australian Paper._
+
+Let us hope she will remain so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Rejoicing in a measure of freedom after the harassing restrictions
+    of the war, Scotsmen are not eager to thrust their necks into the
+    nose again."--_Daily Paper._
+
+They prefer, we imagine, to thrust the nose of the bottle into their
+necks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Every British voter on the sea coast is at heart a sailor."--_Daily
+    Chronicle._
+
+At heart, no doubt. But how many have found to their cost that it is in
+fact another organ which affords the ultimate test of sailorship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHECK BY THE QUEEN.
+
+I had never before seen the Fairy Queen in such an agitated condition.
+She came dashing in, her cheeks glowing, her eyes aflame, her tiny form
+positively quivering with indignation and excitement.
+
+In her hand she held a small scrap of paper, which she waved about in a
+frantic manner just in front of my nose.
+
+"Look," she said, "look! My Press Agency sent it me this morning. Did
+you ever hear of such a thing? It's outrageous, it's incredible,
+it's.... Oh, don't sit staring there as if it didn't matter. Can't you
+say something--suggest something?"
+
+"Your Majesty," I said humbly, for one has to be a little careful when
+dealing with incensed Royalty, "I haven't been able to read it yet."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with quick contrition; "I'm afraid I'm apt
+to get a little carried away when I'm upset. But surely this is more
+than anybody could be expected to stand, mortal or immortal."
+
+She settled down on the desk in front of me, spreading out the crumpled
+bit of paper on the blotter and holding the ends down with her little
+hands.
+
+"There," she said--"read it." And this is what I read:--
+
+    "M----'s FAIRY RING DESTROYER.
+
+    After prolonged experiments we have succeeded in producing a
+    preparation which checks the growth of unsightly rings on Lawns, &c.
+    Two pounds of the Destroyer per square pole is sufficient for a
+    single dressing. Full particulars with each consignment."
+
+"'Unsightly'!" said the Queen in a trembling voice. "Do you see that?"
+and she pointed to the offending word with a tiny forefinger.
+"'Prolonged experiments' too. Do you know, I remember now that I _have_
+had complaints from some of our Garden Settlements about discomfort; but
+of course I never dreamed of anyone doing it on purpose. Do you
+think--oh, do you think"--she looked at me with tears in her bright
+eyes--"that it's really true that human beings are beginning to get
+tired of us? That we're"--she dropped her voice and I saw that she could
+hardly get out the next words--"out-of-date?"
+
+Her falling tears made tiny marks on the blotting-paper.
+
+"Of course not," I said stoutly. "On the contrary, you're coming in
+stronger than ever. Why, one might almost look upon you as one of the
+newest fashionable crazes, like motor-scooters and cinema stars and
+indiscreet memoirs." I hardly knew what I was saying, it was so dreadful
+to see her cry.
+
+"Oh, I hope not," she said, half-laughing and hastily dabbing her nose
+with a ridiculous atom of swansdown which she produced from a minute
+reticule.
+
+"As to these gentlemen," I continued, pointing contemptuously to the
+announcement, "we'll very soon settle them." I seized a sheet of paper
+and began scribbling away as hard as I could go.
+
+The Queen amused herself meanwhile by balancing on the letter-scales.
+She seemed almost happy. I heard her murmur to herself, "Dear me. Two
+ounces. I shall have to start dieting. No more honey----"
+
+"There," I said presently, "send them that, and we shall see what we
+shall see."
+
+This is what I had written:--
+
+"We, Titania, Queen of Fairyland, Empress of the Kingdom of Dreams,
+Grand Dame of the Order of Absolute Darlings, etc., etc., beg to draw
+the attention of Messrs. M---- to the enclosed paragraph, impinging
+gravely on the ancient and indisputable rights and prerogatives of
+ourselves and our loyal subjects, which appeared in their recent seed
+catalogue. We feel that the inclusion of the aforesaid paragraph must be
+due to some oversight, since Messrs. M---- can hardly be unaware of the
+fact that it is only owing to the co-operation of ourselves and our
+subjects that they are able to carry on their business with success. We
+are unwilling to resort to extreme measures, but unless the paragraph is
+immediately withdrawn we shall be obliged to take steps accordingly, in
+which case Messrs. M---- are warned that the whole of next year's flower
+crop may prove an utter and complete failure. Given under our Royal Hand
+and Seal. TITANIA R."
+
+The Queen seemed very pleased when I read it over to her.
+
+"It's perfectly splendid," she said, clapping her hands. "How silly of
+me not to have thought of it; but I was so distracted. Won't it make
+them sit up? And of course we could do it easily, though it would be
+rather dreadful, wouldn't it? I shall have it copied out the minute I
+get home and sent off to-night. By the way" (a little anxiously) "there
+aren't any split infinitives in it, are there? My chamberlain's rather
+peculiar about them--they make him ill. Extraordinary, isn't it?
+But--don't tell anyone--I never quite understand myself what they are or
+where they split, though it certainly does sound very uncomfortable."
+
+I reassured her on that point.
+
+"Oh, then _that_'s all right," she said; "and I don't think even he
+would ever have thought of 'impinging'; it's lovely, isn't it? Thank you
+very much indeed," she added, as she folded up the paper and slipped it
+under her girdle. "You are a most helpful person. I really think I
+must--" I felt a touch on my cheek, lighter than the caress of a
+butterfly's wing, softer than the tip of a baby's finger, sweeter than
+the perfume of jessamine at night. For a moment the Queen continued to
+flutter close about me, radiant and shining. I shut my dazzled eyes for
+an instant. When I opened them she was gone.
+
+I can't help wondering what Messrs. M---- will do. They'll be rather
+rash if they persist. And yet it does seem a little----Well, doesn't it?
+
+    R. F.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.
+
+THE BEE.
+
+  I never, never could admit
+    The virtues of the bee;
+      I thought she seemed a dreadful prig
+      When I was small, and now I'm big
+  I see she is a hypocrite,
+    And so, of course, are we.
+
+  It's true she rushes to and fro
+    With business promptitude,
+      But what about the busy ant?
+      Oh, let us clear our minds of cant--
+  Why _is_ it that we love her so?
+    _She manufactures food._
+
+  But not for us. If it were shown
+    She organised the feast
+      For _us_ to eat, one might agree
+      About her virtue; but, you see,
+  She does it for herself alone,
+    The greedy little beast!
+
+  So grasping is the little dear
+    That every now and then
+      She readjusts the ration scales
+      By simply murdering the males,
+  With many a base, malicious jeer
+    At "idle gentlemen."
+
+  Nor does a man of us cry "Shame!"
+    Though every man would own
+      If there is one high hope for which
+      He labours on at fever-pitch
+  It is not honour, wealth or fame--
+    He wants to be a drone.
+
+  Why is it, then, we don't abhor
+    This horrid little prude?
+      Why don't we cast the foullest slur
+      On such a Prussian character?
+  Because, as I remarked before,
+    _She manufactures food_.
+
+  The world is full of beasts, my son,
+    And I know two or three
+      That any parent might employ
+      To be a model for their boy,
+  But take my word, we've overdone
+    The insufferable bee.
+
+    A. P. H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: THE NEW POOR.
+
+"I REMEMBER THE TIME--
+
+--WHEN I THOUGHT--
+
+--I NEVER SHOULD RIDE IN A BUS--
+
+--AND NOW--
+
+--I AM ALMOST CERTAIN--
+
+--I NEVER SHALL."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: CURE FOR INSOMNIA. MESMERISE YOURSELF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE CONSPIRATORS
+
+IV.
+
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--The other evening I was sitting at an open-air cafe
+whose coffee is better than its social reputation. To be exact it is a
+low haunt. I always go there and have a cup of coffee in a glass when I
+am wondering what to do next and feeling it is about time something was
+happening. One of my acquaintances came and sat down at my table. To
+confess the truth he has once been a pickpocket, the sort of
+professional who followed the trade in the old dull days of peace for
+the excitement it furnished. He has since served in the Foreign Legion,
+and says that now he cannot bring himself to return to his normal work,
+since by contrast it is so very tame. For a time he was stranded, but
+now the international conspiracy business provides him with just the
+sport he was looking for.
+
+After a little conversation about pocket-picking, as it used to be in
+the good old days, he asked me if I was interested in communist plots. I
+said I was interested in anything. He looked round the cafe to see that
+all was well, leant across the table and asked me if I was not
+_particularly_ interested in communist plots. "Yes," I whispered, "as
+long as it's a plot I'm interested in it, even though it is a communist
+one."
+
+He grew suspicious; why was I so interested? There is always a lot of
+whispering and mutual suspicion about on these occasions. I told him of
+these letters I was writing to you on the subject. This made him more
+than suspicious; positively hostile. Who was this Charles? he wanted to
+know. I told him all about you; explained that you were a good friend of
+mine; quite all right--one of us.
+
+He rather took to the description of you, dropped all signs of doubt or
+anxiety and wondered if we couldn't get hold of you to come and take
+coffee with us one evening? You may rest assured, Charles, that there is
+now one cafe in Central Europe where you are regarded as a first-class
+fellow, even though your acquaintance has yet to be made; _bon
+camarade_; not above picking a pocket or two yourself in a moment of
+enthusiasm. You must come here and show yourself one day. You need have
+no fear. We never pick each others' pockets; it isn't considered
+etiquette.
+
+"I am now a Young Socialist," said my friend with great pride. The Young
+Socialists are the worst communists there are.
+
+"Really?" said I; "the last time we had a chat you were an ardent German
+Monarchist."
+
+He produced his Matriculation card; it wasn't in his proper name, but,
+as he explained, one name is as good as another and he has had so many
+from time to time that now he cannot rightly say which is his own. I
+asked him to elaborate the Young Socialists' programme of murder and
+sudden death, a subject which, as a proposed victim, had a morbid
+fascination for me. He said he knew nothing about that; their
+everlasting talk bored him and he never attended the public meetings. It
+was the committee work which interested him.
+
+He told me about the first committee meeting he attended. He wasn't a
+member of the committee at the time, a fact which put difficulties in
+the way of his attending the meeting, as it was held behind closed
+doors. All the doors were closed and locked, including the cupboard
+door. He was in the cupboard. I wondered what they would have done to
+him if they had found him there. He told me he had had plenty of time to
+wonder that himself when he had once got himself locked in.
+
+"Begin at the beginning," said I.
+
+It was a question, first, of getting round the door-keeper. He made
+friends with that door-keeper, took him out to supper, gave him a kirsch
+with his coffee and a cigar with his kirsch. He told the door-keeper
+that he was the most distinguished door-keeper he had ever met. He
+encouraged him to go through his ailments and his grievances and was
+visibly distressed by the recital. He got in the habit of sitting with
+the door-keeper while he was keeping the door for the committee
+assembled inside. And, when he thought the friendship was sufficiently
+advanced, he poured forth his inmost heart to that door-keeper. He said
+that Young Socialism was to him the breath of life, and the tragedy was
+that he was always kept on the outskirts of it. He said he would give
+anything to take part in a committee meeting, or anyhow to hear the
+great ones at it; and, to make this sound plausible, he expounded a
+scheme of Young Socialism of his own, which was far more drastic and
+bloodthirsty than anything that had yet occurred to any committee.
+
+The door-keeper didn't believe there could be anybody who really cared
+all that much for communism; for his part he kept the door because there
+was money to be made easily that way. At the next committee meeting he
+made more money and made it more easily, and my friend was safely locked
+up in the cupboard before the committee arrived. What with the heat
+inside, the thought that the door-keeper might be more cunning than had
+appeared and a persistent desire to sneeze, he questioned all the time
+whether he was the right man in the right place. The committee meanwhile
+did little more than vote its own salaries from the central fund and
+quarrel amongst itself who should be treasurer.
+
+Later proceedings of the committee, as noted in the cupboard, were more
+interesting. When the question turned on finding someone trustworthy and
+competent to take secret instructions to comrades in France and England,
+my friend very nearly burst forth from his shelf to say to them, "I'm
+your man!" He restrained himself, however, and thought out a more
+elaborate scheme than that.
+
+He secured a front seat at the next public meeting of the section,
+applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more
+briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after
+the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services
+to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was
+quite a practical man and, though he didn't use these words, he
+indicated to my friend as follows: "If you are a genuine blackguard the
+police won't let you go; if you are not a genuine blackguard you are not
+really one of us."
+
+My friend said that that would be all right, and they agreed to meet
+later on. He then went to the police and explained that he was about to
+be entrusted with important letters to carry over the frontier, if they
+would afford the necessary facilities. The police also were practical
+and, without wishing in any way to hurt his feelings, raised the
+question of his being genuine. Genuine was, of course, the very last
+thing he was claiming to be, but he understood what they meant, said
+that that would be all right and arranged a later appointment. He then
+called on the President and found him duly suspicious.
+
+"I've had a talk with the police," said my friend, "and I've told them
+all about you and your messages, and they are going to give me the
+facilities and I am going to give them the messages."
+
+This was the first occasion on which the President had had to handle the
+plain truth, and he didn't know what to do or say next.
+
+"Give me some dud messages, of course," said my friend, and the
+President, thinking what a bright young Socialist this was, complied.
+
+He then went back to the police. "I've had a talk with the President,"
+said he, "and I've told them all about you and your interest in the
+messages, and here the messages are; and you needn't worry to read them
+because they are dud."
+
+The police had also got so unused to the truth from such quarters that
+they were taken aback when they met it.
+
+"And now have I your full confidence?" said he, and they said that he
+might take it that he had. He then went back to the President.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. President," said he. "I have given your messages to
+the police and told them they are dud messages, so that now I have their
+full confidence and can move about as I like. Give me the real messages
+and I'll be getting on with my journey."
+
+Throwing precaution to the winds, the President wrote out the real
+messages in full and handed them to him.
+
+"Come, come, come," said he, "you must be more careful than that," and
+he told him what he ought to do to make sure. He did it.
+
+My friend then proceeded to the frontier, where, by arrangement, he was
+arrested. In the inside pocket of his inside coat a bundle of messages
+were found. The police nodded at him.
+
+"Yes," they said, "here are the messages all right. We don't know that
+they help much, but we suppose that we mustn't blame you."
+
+"Come, come, come," said my friend, "if you doubt me, search me." They
+did so, and, written on linen and sewn into the lining of his coat, they
+found some more messages, which really did help them. Yours ever, HENRY.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Profiteer Host._ "I'M AFRAID WE'LL HAVE TO DRINK THE
+FIZZ OUT OF PORT GLASSES."
+
+_Profiteer Guest._ "OH, WE DON'T MIND ROUGHIN' IT; WE'RE ALL SPORTSMEN,
+I TAKE IT."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RELATIVES WITHOUT ANTECEDENTS.
+
+    "YOUTHFUL HOSTESSES.--A few years ago when a bachelor entertained he
+    invited his aunt or his mother to act as hostess for him. Now he
+    asks his grand-daughter."--_Daily Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Ostensibly Lit was a move to check the ever-rising cost of living,
+    Land in a way not fully realised by the public Lit was a method of
+    riveting control on the industry."
+
+_Evening Paper._
+
+With money flung about like this the cost of living is bound to go up
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: SINISTER SIGNS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON.
+
+_Alarmed House Agent._ "MADAM, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PARTNER?"
+
+_Client._ "I was just giving particulars of my flat, which I am anxious
+to let, and when I said, 'No premium required,' he crumpled up as if
+he'd been shot."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT._
+
+    [The taking of finger-prints of all new-born babies is advocated.
+    These will be useful for identification at trials, inquests, etc.,
+    since the pattern of the print does not change from the cradle to
+    the grave.]
+
+  With paternal pride I used to glow
+    When the neighbours dropped their pleasant hints
+  How like Daddy Reginald would grow,
+    But to-day they took his finger-prints;
+      Now I am convinced they spoke in haste--
+      Such expressions show a lack of taste.
+
+  Operator was a kindly man,
+    Formerly a sergeant of police;
+  Dipped our Reggie's digits in a pan
+    Filled with printers' ink and oil and grease,
+      Pressed them on a card and soothed his moans,
+      Saying "Diddums" in official tones.
+
+  Mother stood and gazed upon the thing,
+    Lovingly as doting mothers do;
+  Asked, "Does Reggie's hieroglyphic bring
+    Memories of famous men to you--
+      Men who, having made their lives sublime,
+      Left their thumb-prints on the sands of time?
+
+  "Will it be his destiny to write
+    Or to earn a living with his brains?
+  Will he share a 'loop' with GRAHAME WHITE?
+    Do his 'arches' pair with those of BAINES?
+      Is there similarity between
+      Reggie's 'whorls' and those of M. MASSINE?"
+
+  Operator coughed behind his hand,
+    Moved his feet and shook his hoary head,
+  Thrust his fingers in his bellyband,
+    Then at last reluctantly he said,
+      "I've encountered in the course of biz
+      Many prints that much resembled his.
+
+  "One, I mind me, such impressions made;
+    P'r'aps you never heard of Ginger Hicks,
+  Him what done in uncle with a spade
+    Down in Canning Town in ninety-six?
+      Ginger was a wrong 'un from the fust;
+      As a child he bellowed fit to bust.
+
+  "Then there was another, something like,
+    Got a lifer seven years ago;
+  Surely you remember Mealy Mike,
+    Robbery with violence at Bow?
+      Michael's thumb-print, though of larger size,
+      Was the spit of Reggie's otherwise.
+
+  "Then again his lines could be compared--"
+    Mother snatched her precious up and fled,
+  Pausing once to ask him how he dared
+    Put such notions in um's little head.
+      Her departure mid a storm of kissing
+      Put the lid on further reminiscing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: ALADDIN AND THE MINER'S LAMP.
+
+THE GENIE. "I AM THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP. I THINK YOU SUMMONED ME."
+
+MR. SMILLIE. "YES, I KNOW. BUT I DIDN'T REALISE YOU'D BE SO UGLY."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "YES, A NICE LITTLE BUS. BUT I SAY, OLD TOP, THE
+FOOTBOARDS ARE DEUCEDLY LOW. IF YOU RAN OVER ANYONE YOU MIGHT BE
+CAPSIZED--WHAT?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY SHOCKER.
+
+John Antony Grunch was one of the mildest, most innocent men I ever
+knew. He had a wife to whom he was devoted with a dog-like devotion; he
+went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position
+in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul,
+and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off--and that is
+seldom--he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and
+excitement by writing sensational novels. One of these was recently
+published, and John Antony is now dead. The novel did it.
+
+Yet it was a very mild sort of "shocker," about a very ordinary murder.
+The villain simply slew one of his typists in the counting-house with a
+sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting her in a pillar-box.
+But it had "power," and it was very favourably reviewed. One critic said
+that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular
+delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our
+great industrial centres." Another said that the book was "a brilliant
+burlesque of the fashionable type of detective fiction." Another wrote
+that "it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing phase of
+agricultural life." John thought that must refer to the page where he
+had described the allotments at Shepherd's Bush. But he was pleased and
+surprised by what they said.
+
+What he did _not_ like was the interpretation offered by his family and
+his friends, who at once decided that the work was the autobiography of
+John Antony. You see, the scene was laid in London, and John lived in
+London; the murdered girl was a typist, and there were two typists in
+John's office; and, to crown all, the villain in the book had a
+boar-hound, and John himself had a Skye-terrier. The thing was as plain
+as could be. Men he met in the City said, "How's that boar-hound of
+yours?" or "I like that bit where you hit the policeman. When did you do
+that?" "_You_," mark you. Old friends took him aside and whispered,
+"Very sorry to hear you don't hit it off with Mrs. Grunch; I always
+thought you were such a happy couple." His wife's family said, "Poor
+Gladys! what a life she must have had!" His own family said, "Poor John!
+what a life she must have led him to make him go off with that
+adventuress!" Several people identified the adventuress as Miss Crook,
+the Secretary of the local Mothers' Welfare League, of which John was a
+vice-president.
+
+The fog of suspicion swelled and spread and penetrated into every cranny
+and level of society. No servants would come near the house, or if they
+did they soon stumbled on a copy of the shocker while doing the
+drawing-room, read it voraciously and rushed screaming out of the
+front-door. When he took a parcel of washing to the post-office the
+officials refused to accept it until he had opened it and shown that
+there were no bodies in it.
+
+The animal kingdom is very sensitive to the suspicion of guilt. John
+noticed that dogs avoided him, horses neighed at him, earwigs fled from
+him in horror, caterpillars madly spun themselves into cocoons as he
+approached, owls hooted, snakes hissed. Only Mrs. Grunch remained
+faithful.
+
+But one morning at breakfast Mrs. Grunch said, "Pass the salt, please,
+John." John didn't hear. He was reading a letter. Mrs. Grunch said
+again, "Pass the salt, please, John." John was still engrossed. Mrs.
+Grunch wanted the salt pretty badly, so she got up and fetched it. As
+she did so she noticed that the handwriting of the letter was the
+handwriting of A Woman. Worse, it was written on the embossed paper of
+the Mothers' Welfare League. It must be from Miss Crook. _And it was._
+It was about the annual outing. "Ah, ha!" said Mrs. Grunch. (I am afraid
+that "Ah, ha!" doesn't really convey to you the sort of sound she made,
+but you must just imagine.) "Ah, ha! So _that_'s why you couldn't pass
+the salt!"
+
+Mad with rage, hatred, fear, chagrin, pique, jealousy and indigestion,
+John rushed out of the house and went to the office. At the door of the
+office he met one of the typists. He held the door open for her. She
+simpered and refused to go in front of him. Being still mad with rage,
+hatred, chagrin and all those other things, John made a cross gesture
+with his umbrella. With a shrill, shuddering shriek of "Murder!" the
+girl cantered violently down Ludgate Hill and was never seen again.
+Entering the office, John found two detectives waiting to ask him a few
+questions in connection with the Newcastle Pig-sty Murder, which had
+been done with some pointed instrument, probably an umbrella.
+
+After that _The Daily Horror_ rang up and asked if he would contribute
+an article to their series on "Is Bigamy Worth While?"
+
+Having had enough rushing for one day John walked slowly out into the
+street, trying to remember the various ways in which his characters had
+committed suicide. He threw himself over the Embankment wall into the
+river, but fell in a dinghy which he had not noticed; he bought some
+poison, but the chemist recognised his face from a photograph in the
+Literary Column of _The Druggist_ and gave him ipecacuanha (none of you
+can spell that); he thought of cutting his throat, but broke his
+thumb-nail trying to open the big blade, and gave it up. Desperate, he
+decided to go home. At Victoria he was hustled along the platform on the
+pretence that there is more room in the rear of trains. Finally he was
+hustled on to the line and electrocuted.
+
+And everybody said, "So it _was_ true."
+
+    A. P. H.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "THERE BE MRS. ROUSE'S, OVER AGIN THE CHURCH. I BELIEVE
+SHE DO PUT UP WITH LODGERS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Commercial Candour.
+
+From an Indian trade-circular:--
+
+    "We believe in making a Small Profit and selling Everybody rather
+    than making a Big Profit and selling only a Few."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wanted for Tea Estate, Nilgiris, good climate
+    Superintendent."--_Indian Paper._
+
+We could do with one here, too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "THE WANDERING JEW,
+    E. TEMPLE THURSTON'S WANDERFUL PLAY."
+
+_Advt. in Daily Paper._
+
+And still the wander grew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "When the Prime Minister, accompanied by Mr. Lloyd George, appeared
+    a magnificent ovation was accorded them."--_Welsh Paper._
+
+This tends to confirm the statements in the anti-Coalition Press that
+the PRIME MINISTER was beside himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From an examination-paper at a girls' school:--
+
+_Question._ Why are the days in summer longer than those in winter?
+
+_Answer._ Because they are warmer and therefore expand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Visitor._ "LUCKY TO FIND A HAIRDRESSER IN A SMALL
+VILLAGE LIKE THIS."
+
+_Native._ "WELL, BE RIGHTS IT'S MY SON'S BUSINESS AND 'E'S AWAY; BUT
+I'VE DONE A WUNNERFUL DEAL OF 'ORSE-CLIPPIN'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ERNEST EXPERIMENTS.
+
+There is no doubt that Ernest was to blame. I know, of course, that he
+meant well. But a passion for fresh air, unless it is checked in time,
+is bound to lead one into all sorts of trouble.
+
+You see, Ernest suffers so from theories. He has theories about eating,
+sleeping and waking, talking and thinking; but those on fresh air are
+the worst (or perhaps I ought to say the best) of all. Not that we, who
+constitute his family, would object to his theories if he didn't get us
+involved in them as well; but that is exactly what does happen. There
+was, for example, the camping-out proposition.
+
+It began with Mother sitting at a table one evening in the early autumn
+and jotting down figures. Her brow was troubled. "We really can't afford
+a holiday this year, girls," she said, "though I suppose we shall _have_
+to. What with the price of everything just now and--" She then went on
+to speak with hostility of things like the Government and Sir ERIC
+GEDDES, though she is a peaceable woman as a rule.
+
+Whereupon Ernest, who was at the open window engaged in a little quiet
+biceps-training (we won't allow him to do the more rowdy muscular
+exercises in the living-room), remarked, "But why should we be subjected
+to these eternal trammels of civilisation? Isn't the open country man's
+rightful heritage?"
+
+"I see the prices have gone up at the select boarding-house where we
+stayed last year and met such nice people," went on Mother, ignoring
+Ernest. "It's five guineas a week each now."
+
+"Monstrous," put in Ernest again. "Five guineas a week just to breathe
+the pure air of Heaven."
+
+"Oh, they give you more than that," said Mother, "though I suspect the
+meat isn't English."
+
+Ernest laughed sardonically. "Now let me tell you of my plan," he said,
+taking a newspaper cutting from his pocket. "Here is my solution to the
+holiday problem, and it certainly doesn't cost five guineas a week. Why
+not adopt it?"
+
+"Why, it's an umbrella," commented Mother, feeling for her glasses. "But
+surely you don't expect it to rain all the time?"
+
+"That is not an umbrella, it is an illustration of a portable tent,"
+explained Ernest. "The canvas folds up and can be carried in the pocket,
+while the pole also folds and is convertible into a walking-stick by
+day. Thus you are able to camp where you will; throw off the shackles of
+convention----"
+
+"It may be all right for throwing off the shackles of convention,"
+remarked Mother, "but nothing would induce me to undress in a thing like
+that."
+
+"But when it's erected it's perfectly solid----"
+
+"So am I," said Mother, "and I like room to turn round. No, Ernest, I am
+as fond of fresh air as anyone--you know I always have my bedroom window
+open at least two inches at night--but air is not everything. Give me a
+comfortable bed and good catering if I am to go on holiday and enjoy it.
+_You_ can please yourself."
+
+That is the mistake Mother made. Ernest ought not to be allowed to
+please himself. He doesn't know what is good for him. And, when he
+departed on his walking tour accompanied by his tent, his sponge-bag, a
+copy of OMAR KHAYYAM, but very little else, Mother felt uneasy.
+
+"What will happen if you get your feet wet?" she asked. "I'm sure you
+ought to take more things with you, Ernest."
+
+"What more do I want?" he demanded, "'A loaf of bread beneath the
+bough----'"
+
+"A loaf of bread indeed!" echoed Mother. "Fiddlesticks! Mind you get at
+least three good meals a day." She then gave him the address of the
+boarding-house where we had finally decided to spend our holidays and
+told him to send her a wire at once if he got a cold in the head.
+
+       * * *
+
+It was the hour of dinner at the Select Boarding Establishment (sep.
+tables, 3 mins. sea, elec. lt., mod.) where we had spent ten days of our
+entirely select holiday. Everyone was assembled in the lounge hall
+waiting for the gong to announce the meal. Mother, basking her soul in
+the atmosphere of gentility, was chatting with the half-sister of a
+bishop, who was just remarking that Mother must call on her in town,
+when a strange _fracas_ was heard at the back of the hall; a moment
+later a strange figure thrust itself in our midst and looked wildly
+round.
+
+"Ernest!" murmured Mother faintly. She was a wise woman to know her own
+child under the circumstances. Perhaps she identified the tent-pole to
+which he was still clinging. Otherwise he was scarcely recognisable. His
+hair was wild and unkempt, his clothing torn and damaged. His boots
+clung to his feet by the uppers only and were held together by fragments
+of a sponge-bag.
+
+"Mother!" said Ernest, singling her out from amongst the gay throng. The
+moment was dramatic.
+
+"I--I was arrested," went on Ernest. He spoke in a purely conversational
+tone, but it's surprising how far the human voice will carry at times.
+Everybody about the place, including the lift-boy and the Belgian
+waiter, seemed to hear that remark.
+
+"Arrested?" whispered Mother in reverberating tone-waves.
+
+"Yes. How was I to know that I had pitched my tent on private property
+and was unwittingly trespassing? They would have prosecuted me if I
+hadn't----"
+
+"You had better come up to my room and explain there," interposed
+Mother; and we followed her, a broken woman, to the lift. People fell
+aside to make a passage for us.
+
+Mother held up until she got to her own room. Then she sat down and
+cried. "Why did you disgrace us like this?" she asked at last of Ernest.
+"Was it necessary for you to come _here_?"
+
+"I had to," said Ernest apologetically. "You see I hadn't any money."
+
+Mother looked up quickly. "But what of the extra ten pounds I insisted
+on your taking with you in case of emergency?"
+
+Ernest appeared slightly shame-faced. "Well, when those fatuous asses
+hauled me up for trespassing they left me in the charge of a gamekeeper
+while they 'phoned for the police. I induced the chap to let me go, and
+I had to square him with a tenner."
+
+There was a long pause. Mother's mind seemed to be working at some
+abstruse calculation. Then she dried her eyes and looked up with the
+triumphant smile of the woman who gets the last word and wins her point.
+
+"And so, Ernest," she said, "it _did_ cost you five guineas a week to
+'breathe the pure air of Heaven' after all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "SORRY TO HEAR YOUR HUSBAND IS LAID UP AGAIN, MRS.
+GRIGGS."
+
+"YES. THE TROUBLE IS HE BE AN OLD MAN, AND HE _WILL_ TURN A DEAF EAR TO
+THE WRITIN' ON THE WALL."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRAWLING'S THEORY.
+
+(_By a Student of Jargon._)
+
+By the courtesy of Professor Prawling, F. R. S., who has supplied us
+with the MS. of his recent lecture before the Psycho-Economical Society,
+we are in a position to give our readers a full account of that masterly
+and epoch-making address, of which, strange to say, no adequate notice
+has so far appeared in any newspaper.
+
+Professor Prawling's credentials, we may premise, are of a nature to
+inspire the utmost confidence. His father, Theodore Prawling, was the
+inventor of the speedle, that remarkable implement, fully described by
+_Punch_ in the early seventies, which rendered possible the
+emulsification of all gelatinoid substances and revolutionised the
+marmalade industry. He is duly commemorated by the fine statue which is
+one of the principal features of Dundee. His son, however, has even
+greater claims on our respect and admiration. Educated at the High
+School, Crieff, and the Universities of Glasgow, Upsala, the Sorbonne
+and Princeton, he is generally recognised in the United States as the
+foremost authority on Paedological Gongorism and the cognate science of
+Mendelian Economics.
+
+The problem with which he grapples in his latest contribution to these
+fascinating studies may be tersely summed up in a single sentence: Can a
+healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing
+symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?
+
+Professor Prawling is of opinion that it _can_, but only if and when the
+evils of co-partnership and co-operation have been neutralized by a
+diastolic synthesis. To compute exactly the extent to which these evils
+have been developed he has devised a syncretic abacus, in which, on the
+principle of the spectroscope, the aplanatic foci are arranged in
+fluorescent nodules each equidistant from the metacentre. With a
+frankness that cannot be too highly commended, Professor Prawling admits
+that this instrument is founded on BENTHAM'S Panopticon. But the
+deviations from BENTHAM and the expansions of his machine are far more
+remarkable than the resemblances to it. Prawling--if he will allow us
+the familiarity--is not a utilitarian. His aim is to re-establish our
+textile pre-eminence by reconciling monistic individualism with the
+fullest solidarity of the social complex. He is meticulously careful in
+stressing the point that the demarcations arrived at by the use of his
+abacus are not absolute, but conditioned by EINSTEIN'S theory of
+relativity. The ancillary industries, each moving in its orbit, whether
+jurassic or botulistic, must be placed on a contractual basis with
+liberty of preferential retaliation. Thus the whole industrial polyphony
+is linked up by enharmonic modulations, and thrombosis--or, at any rate,
+conglucination--of the central ganglia of commerce is reduced to
+negligible dimensions.
+
+At this juncture it is well to point out in the interests of clarity
+that regurgitation can only be avoided by a rigorous adhesion to the
+canon of CRITTENDEN--that the unit of nutrition must vary inversely with
+the square of dilution.
+
+It will thus be seen that by the logical application of a few simple and
+easily apprehended principles Professor Prawling has built up a great
+edifice of practical economics, which, whether we regard it in its
+subliminal or its pragmatic aspects, cannot fail to have influence on
+the dynamics of International Industrialism.
+
+One word more. The conglucination theory appeals with especial force to
+_Punch_, because it reminds him of the kindred and remarkable
+speculation on Snooling discussed by him many years ago. The new theory,
+like the old, deserves to be treated "in no spirit of sedentary
+sentimentalism, but in its largest and most oleaginous entirety. It is
+no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating
+neuralgia with treacle." How true and appropriate this is. _Mutatis
+mutandis_ we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and
+tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The
+corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest
+achievement of which the present generation is capable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: "I TRUST YOU'LL EXCUSE ME MENTIONING IT, MY GOOD FELLOW,
+BUT THAT IS THE RIGHT ENTRANCE--ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More Impending Apologies.
+
+    "Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Rouen, has been translated, as most
+    of us expected, to the Archbishopric in Paris. Being a very
+    distinguished man of letters, the Academie Francaise would like to
+    include him among the Immorals, but, alas! they are 'full inside.'"
+
+    _Evening Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HEADLINING.
+
+The thrilling incident of the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely
+to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which
+do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is
+the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would
+otherwise skip.
+
+The affair began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that
+Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper
+lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow
+she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the
+wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat which had appeared--merely appeared.
+
+As she told me, she softly exclaimed, "A cat!" (right first time); then,
+because it looked so wistful, she directed the maid to set before the
+creature a saucer of milk. In fact--
+
+    HOMELESS BLACK-AND-TAN.
+    LUCKY CHANCE CALL.
+    TOOTING GOOD SAMARITAN.
+
+When I arrived home, Marjorie ran into the hall to give me one of her
+smooth evening kisses. I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my
+stubbly ones when--
+
+"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"
+
+"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"
+
+"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You
+really might have been more careful."
+
+"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the
+teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a
+sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first
+outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or,
+as the headlines would have it:--
+
+    NEAR BREAKING-POINT.
+    STRAIN OF BUSINESS LIFE.
+    ORIGIN OF THE DRUG HABIT.
+
+After a bath and a change I felt better, and came down to dinner humming
+a sentimental ballad in Marjorie's honour. But the word "love" died on
+my lips when I saw that in the lap of Marjorie's pretty pink gown
+reposed the stray cat. The colour-clash and the misapplication of
+caresses which should have been my monopoly threw me back with a jerk to
+a state of bearishness.
+
+"Surely you're not going to keep that animal?" I asked.
+
+"Of course I am, as long as she likes to stay," said Marjorie. "She's
+very fond of me, aren't you, pussy? Fonder than my husband, I 'spect."
+
+"I know these stray cats," I said. "Stiff with microbes. Tribes of mangy
+lovers prowling round the house. A nest of kittens in my top-hat. I
+know."
+
+"Poor li'l pussy," cooed Marjorie. "Don'tum listen to the big coarse
+man."
+
+"Coarse be----"
+
+In other (and more suitable) words--
+
+    HUSBAND'S PROFANITY.
+    MASK OFF AFTER TWO YEARS.
+    PEEVISH ABOUT WIFE'S PET.
+
+Marjorie said coldly that she didn't know I had such a temper. I said
+hotly that I didn't know she could be so infantile.
+
+We went on discovering things we hadn't known about each other:--
+
+    THE TESTING TIME
+    IN CONJUGAL FELICITY,
+    IS IT THE THIRD YEAR?
+
+Dinner was an ordeal. I felt miles apart from Marjorie. A great gulf
+filled with black-and-yellow cat lay between us. Once only the topic of
+the beast arose (on the subject of fish-bones) and just as I was
+becoming big and coarse again the maid entered with the joint. She must
+have heard what I said.
+
+    SHOULD SERVANTS TELL?
+    BACKDOOR SCANDAL.
+
+Still, the meal itself was a cheering one, and, after Marjorie had
+risen, the sentimental ballad mood gained on me again. After all, what
+was a stray cat compared with one's marriage vows? If the dear girl
+wanted to keep the thing we would have it vetted, definitely named, and
+warned as to followers.
+
+Marjorie's voice interrupted my amiable planning. "Puss, puss," she
+called. I joined her and stated my decision to relent.
+
+"But she's vanished," said Marjorie. She had. And she has never come
+back. Ah! those stray cats.
+
+    NINE LIVES SPENT WHERE?
+    FOUR-FOOTED NOMADS.
+    FICKLE FELINE FRIENDSHIPS.
+
+"Look here, old girl," I said, "I take back all I said about your little
+friend. I'm with you that she was the dearest, most hygienic, most moral
+cat that ever strafed a mouse."
+
+"Perhaps it's all for the best that she's gone," said Marjorie.
+
+The dear girl inclined her head towards my shoulder. Well, well.
+
+    WHAT EVERY WOMAN WANTS
+    TO KNOW.
+    IS KISSING DYING OUT?
+    PRACTICIANS SAY "NO."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More Precocity.
+
+    "Unfurnished Rooms wanted (two or three), with attendance; one
+    child, 4-1/2 years; at business all day."--_Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LOVE'S HANDICAP.
+
+[A daily paper points out that many girls find their sweethearts in
+print, and expresses the hope that when "a real man comes along he may
+be as brave and tender, as cheery and clean-living," as these heroes of
+fiction.]
+
+  Dear lady, put down for a minute
+    That book which you eagerly scan,
+  Intent upon finding within it
+    Your perfect ideal of a man;
+  Its pages reflectively closing,
+    Consider a moment the strain
+  Your standard may soon be imposing
+    Upon some susceptible swain.
+
+  Those heroes whose fortunes you follow
+    I've noticed are able to show
+  The unparalleled charms of Apollo,
+    The muscles of SAMSON and Co.;
+  But he who comes seeking to win you
+    May have, for supporting his plea,
+  A palpable shortage of sinew
+    And beauty distinctly C 3.
+
+  And, unprepossessing in mien, he
+    May also lack some of the art
+  With which Saccharissa the Tweeny
+    Was wooed by Sir Marmaduke, Bart.;
+  His tongue may (conceivably) stammer,
+    His heart (not impossibly) quake,
+  And in stress of emotion his grammar
+    May even develop a shake.
+
+  But pause ere you "spurn his addresses;"
+    His merits may still be as high
+  As the sort that your hero possesses,
+    Though they leap not so quick to the eye;
+  At the least, you've the comfort of knowing,
+    Since his heart at _your_ feet he has placed,
+  That in one thing at least he is showing
+    A wholly impeccable taste.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How Some Advertisers "Tell the Tale."
+
+    "We spin the yarn ourselves."
+
+    _Advt. in Daily Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'FULL TERM.'"
+
+AN IMPRESSION AT CAMBRIDGE.
+
+    I watch the faces of the 'men,' boys in so many cases, jumping from
+    their trains; from the north, the south, the east, the west they
+    come, and they come not alone but _dona ferentes_--they carry
+    tennis-racquets, golf-sticks, cycles, sidecars, kitbags,
+    gladstone-bags, trunks, hold-alls."--_Evening Paper._
+
+Hefty chaps, these post-war undergraduates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Question.--How much has the time for crossing the ocean been
+    shortened since the day of Columbus?
+
+    T. E. C.
+
+    Answer.--Idaho is a North American Indian word meaning 'Gem of the
+    Mountains' or 'Sunrise Mountains.'"
+
+    _Boston (Massachusetts) Herald._
+
+We hope that T. E. C. isn't going to be put off with such a simple
+device as this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: _Injured Party._ "IT'S ALL VERY WELL, PASSON, FOR YOU TO
+SAY WOT 'ORRIBLE LANGWIDGE, BUT 'APPEN YOUR MISSIS AIN'T SUCH A GOOD
+SHOT WITH A FLAT-IRON AS MINE IS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
+
+(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
+
+There is certainly this to be said of Mr. HUGH WALPOLE--that, having
+devised a tale of gloom, he allows no weak consideration for his
+readers' feelings to deter him from making the worst of it. I write,
+having but now emerged, blinking a little at the familiar sunlight (yet
+oddly invigorated too), from a perusal of the four-hundred-and-seventy
+pages of his _Captives_ (MACMILLAN). Of course I have nothing like space
+to detail for you its plot. Summarised, it tells the life of a young
+woman, _Maggie Cardinal_, whom one may briefly call the bemused victim
+of religions--and relations. You never knew any well-intentioned heroine
+who had such abysmal luck with both. Her clergyman father, a bad hat,
+who spared us his acquaintance by expiring on the first page; her
+semi-moribund aunts in their detestable London home; the circle of the
+Inner Saints, with their intrigues that centred in the ugly little
+meeting-house; the seaside parish with its spiritually-dead atmosphere,
+in which _Maggie's_ hopeless married life is spent--all these and more
+are realised with an art that is almost devastating in its unforced
+effect. Sometimes I hoped that such universal drabness was too bad to be
+true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor
+_Captives_ seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the
+wires of Mr. WALPOLE. The queer result was that I found myself believing
+in his compellingly human characters, but protesting that such unbroken
+misfortune could not, or need not, have encompassed them. To take an
+example, when _Maggie's_ "tipsy" uncle was shown into the Vicarage
+drawing-room on her "At Home day," no other guests had yet arrived.
+Surely therefore (save for peremptory orders from Mr. WALPOLE) she might
+somehow have removed the culprit to another room, or at least denied
+herself to subsequent callers, who included (of course) the most
+influential and scandal-mongering of the parish ladies. That is the kind
+of rather piled-up agony that made me suspect Mr. WALPOLE of letting his
+fortitude get at times the better of his commonsense. But he has written
+a big book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. E. F. BENSON, of whom it might justly be said that he produces not
+books but libraries (and the quality of his output under these
+circumstances remains for me amongst the literary wonders of the age),
+has been at it again. Hardly have I finished laughing over _Queen
+Lucia_, when I find him claiming a wholly different interest with a
+volume of personal recollections called _Our Family Affairs_ (CASSELL).
+By its theme and treatment this is work standing naturally a little
+outside criticism; but I can say at once that Mr. BENSON has never
+written with a more sympathetic charm than in these pictures of the
+childhood of himself and his sister and brothers; of the various
+scholastic and ecclesiastical homes to which the increasing dignities of
+that rather alarming parent, the Archbishop, transported his family; and
+(quite the best and most attractive portrait in the collection) of the
+mother whom all of them united to adore. There is an actual photograph
+of her here, taken at the age of twenty, which goes far to explain how
+she came to be the heroine of the story; the lurking gaiety and laughter
+of it quaintly foretelling the great ecclesiastical lady who, on one
+occasion when the Archbishop was absent, could announce to her
+enraptured children that family prayers should be remitted, "as a
+treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the
+Georgian _regime_ in Athens, and (what will interest many readers most
+of all) the history of the origin of that famous lady, _Dodo_--these are
+but a selection from the contents of a volume that should find hosts of
+friends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Girl in Fancy Dress_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) was so very much
+disguised in one way and another that _Anthony_, the hero, when he asked
+her to marry him, even for the second time, was taking considerable
+risks. The speed of the affair must also have been bewildering.
+_Cynthia_, the heiress, arrives on a Thursday to stay with his people,
+but, having tumbled out of a motor-car into a wet ditch on her way, she
+is dressed, rather like a stage coster-girl, in garments borrowed from a
+cottager. Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more
+likely than an heiress to look like that, _Anthony's_ people mistake her
+for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and _Cynthia_,
+discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend
+the heiress to marry _Anthony_ and, worse than that, that he has called
+her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her
+best to pay them all out. She leaves on the following Tuesday, but
+before that _Anthony_ has taken her to one dance as a peasant girl and
+she has talked to him at another disguised as a green domino, and he has
+proposed to her as his cousin and withdrawn his declaration when he
+finds she isn't. Next he sees her as _Lady Teazle_ in amateur
+theatricals, and then comes his final meeting with her in her proper
+person, which brings about a satisfactory ending for everyone but
+_Cynthia's_ other lover. I don't say that all these things couldn't have
+happened; I only say that as a rule they don't. Apart from that, the
+bright bustling action of Mrs. J. E. BUCKROSE'S story has a cheerful
+charm of its own, and _Cynthia_, as poor relation of one of the
+anxiously best families in a little country town, provides some amusing
+situations--for the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If the shade of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON is jealous of its rights and its
+copyrights, Mr. JEFFREY FARNOL may look to be hauled up before the
+Recording Angel, on his arrival, in the matter of his _Black Bartlemy's
+Treasure_ (SAMPSON LOW), which he might just as well have called _Black
+Bartlemy's Treasure Island_ and have done. Never was such frank adoption
+of ideas; and yet no God-fearing, adventure-loving Englishman will
+regret it. For all my devotion to R. L. S. I heartily enjoyed this
+elaboration of his idea, split me (to quote the thorough-going language
+of it)--split me crosswise else! There are forty-seven chapters and a
+bloody fight in every one of them, save in the dozen set apart for an
+interval of refreshment and romance in the middle. Nay, but was not the
+primitive romance a gentler combat, itself, between _Martin Conisby_ and
+_Lady Joan Brandon_, marooned, solitary, upon the Island where they did
+find (and lose) a treasure even greater than _Black Bartlemy's_? After
+having "consorted with pirates and like rogues" and having "endured much
+of harms and dangers, as battle, shipwreck, prison and solitude," it
+seemed we had sighted happiness at last. But even at the very end things
+took an ill turn and our _Martin_, our dear _Martin_, is left stranded
+and in sorry plight. Yet must there be a sequel to this. Had he been
+left to die on the Island he could not have told us his story thus far;
+moreover his last word is that the tale is yet to finish. May I be there
+to hear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I rather think that the lady who elects to write under the name of O.
+DOUGLAS did less than justice to the peculiar quality of her own gifts
+in calling her last story _Penny Plain_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Because
+really such confectionery as this, covered inches deep with the sweetest
+and smoothest and pinkest of sugar, could never in these days be bought
+for many pennies, while as for "plain"...! Most of the plot (which
+really isn't at all the right word for such caramel-stuff) takes place
+in a small Scottish town, where lives a family of book-children,
+mothered by an elder sister named _Jean_, all of them rich in char-r-rm
+but poor in cash. To this town comes, first, a pleasant single lady with
+a lord for her brother; secondly an aged man full of money; and, because
+the family (and the tale) is what it is, _Jean_, in fewer chapters than
+you would easily credit, has clasped the young lord to her breast and is
+saying the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man
+concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have
+it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as
+suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a
+world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are
+not only cheerful to cook but likely to prove highly remunerative.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Illustration: TACT IN TIME.
+
+_King Alfred_ (_to shopman_). "AH! I SEE YOU STOCK MY PATENT
+CANDLE-CLOCKS. HOW ARE THEY SELLING?"
+
+_Shopman._ "THEY'RE SELLING LIKE HOT----I MEAN THERE'S QUITE A RUN ON
+THEM, YOUR MAJESTY."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Confession.
+
+    "The ---- Manufacturing Co. (The Profiteering Stranglers)." _Advt. in
+    Provincial Paper._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wanted, 1,000 pairs running shoes for local expeditionary force
+    about to be organised."--_North China Daily News._
+
+The wise commander always prepares for a retreat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The limits of age for entrance to the [Royal Air Force] college will
+    be from 157-1/2 to 1 years."--_Daily Paper._
+
+    "Percy ---- has recently joined the R. A. F. He is only 199 years of
+    age."--_Local Paper._
+
+We are sorry for PERCY, who will probably get the "push" as soon as the
+authorities find out that he has exceeded their very liberal age-limit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, October
+20, 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH, CHARIVARI, OCT 20, 1920 ***
+
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