PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Volume 158, Jan-Jul 1920

June 2, 1920

CHARIVARIA.

Some idea of the heat experienced in
this country last week can be deduced
from the fact that several bricklayers
were distinctly seen to wipe their brows
in their own time.

It is all very well for Lenin to talk
about Great Britain recognising Russia,
while his followers are doing their best
to render the place almost unrecognisable.

Normally, says Dr. Geoffrey Keynes,
a person has fifteen thousand
millions of blood corpuscles
circulating in his body. People
suffering with insomnia
might try counting them in
bed.

According to a scientific
journal, tests recently made
show that microbes cannot live
long on coins. “Middle Class”
writes to say this is nothing
new to him, as no germ could
live on his salary.

The promoters of the Milk
and Dairies Bill hope to ensure
clean milk for the public.
They seem to have thought out
an improvement on the present
system by which certain dairymen
are in the habit of washing
their milk.

It took nature several million
years, says The New York
World, to make a ton of coal.
It looks as if she has arranged
to charge us retrospectively by
the hour for the stuff.

A gold wedding-ring has been
found inside a large doe rabbit
which was shot recently in a
wheat-field near Wilbury. The
question arises, “Do modern rabbits go
through the marriage ceremony?”

The latest fad of the American golfer
is to have a small painting made of
himself in the act of driving. We feel,
however, that it will be some time
before English golfers will place orders
for plaster casts of their language.

Nearly all the extra firemen required
for the London Fire Brigade have been
engaged. Clients are assured that arrears
of fires will now be worked off
with all speed.

According to a daily paper a severe
thunderstorm which recently visited
Luton was not heard by the audience
in a local concert hall. It is rumoured
that a performer was at the time reciting
a chapter of Lord Fisher’s
autobiography.

A strike of incubator-makers is threatened
and many grocers who stock breakfast-eggs
fear that a lot of chicks may
come out in sympathy.

According to an evening paper a
young lady who was chased by a bull
in a provincial meadow ran a quarter
of a mile and jumped a stream sixteen
feet wide before gaining safety. Not
much of a jump, surely, considering the
long run she took.

“Whilst motoring between Baldock
and Grantham one is struck by the
greenness of the growing wheat and
barley,” states a writer in a motor
journal. The regularity with which
these cereal grasses adopt this colour
is certainly worthy of attention.

Our heart goes out to the American
travellers who set foot on our shores
at Southampton one day last week just
five minutes after closing-time.

In their recent match against Sussex
the first four Middlesex batsmen each
scored a century. We understand that
in order to obviate a recurrence of this
sort of thing a movement is on foot
to increase the number of runs in a
century to a hundred and fifty.

We are informed that “a man arrested
by Dutch fishermen in the belief
that it was the Crown Prince making
his escape turned out to be a notorious
jewel thief.” The error seems to have
been excusable.

The case of the dock labourer who
appeared at a County Court in a tail
coat and white waistcoat is now explained.
The man’s valet, who
usually looks after these things
for him, had gone on strike for
more wages.

Charged with taking one
hundred and forty-five pounds
of his employers’ money a
Newcastle office-boy was
stated to have been reading
trashy novels. It was thought
to be only fair to the financial
papers that the public
should know where he got
the idea from.

“I reckon I can drink fifty
pints a day, easy,” a witness
told the Portsmouth magistrates.
He may do it for a
while, but sooner or later his
arm is bound to go back on
him.

“Under British guidance,”
says a contemporary, “Persia’s
future is bright with promise.”
We know nothing of its future,
but its present seems to be
scintillating with performance
under Bolshevik direction.

“Cave exploration,” declares
a writer in The Daily Mail,
“is a most fascinating sport.”
There is always the thrilling possibility
that you may find another Liberal
principle hidden away somewhere.

Owing to the increased cost of living
it is said that burglars will now only
book jewel robberies of two thousand
pounds and over.

CHAGRIN OF MEMBER OF ADVANCED ART GROUP
AT NECESSITY OF MAKING THE LETTERING OF HIS
POSTER INTELLIGIBLE.

“NEW POLICY IN IRELAND.

No Trials Without Arrests.“

Dublin Paper.

A good idea, but it was anticipated in
the matter of jugged hare.

“Register as a regular reader of The Daily ——,
and you at once disqualify for £3 a week
during disablement.”—Daily Paper.

We shall be careful not to register.

ODYSSEUS AT THE DERBY.

[Racing men will not need to be reminded that Polumetis (many-counselled)
is named after a common epithet of the hero of the Odyssey.]

THE SERENE BATSMAN.

It is a common fallacy among cricketing coaches and their
pupils that when the young batsman has mastered all the
strokes that can be imparted to him at the nets his education
is complete. So far from that being the case, it has
barely begun. Under the prevailing system, the psychological
factor, the most important of all, is entirely neglected.
The most trying moment of a cricketer’s life is when he first
steps forth alone from the pavilion of a public ground. In
that moment all that the old pro has taught him of cuts and
drives, forward play and back play, will not prevent his knees
from weakening as he totters to the wicket, whereas the
following hints may enable him to face the occasion with
confidence if not contempt.

Remember that for a public performer a good entrance
is more than half the battle; the first impression on the
spectators is the most lasting.

Nothing looks worse than a batsman hurrying out at a
furtive trot, as if he were going to pawn his bat. When
your turn comes to go in, take care to be just within the
regulation two minutes, but school yourself to emerge from
the pavilion at a leisurely stride with more than a suspicion
of swagger in it. The bat should not be carried as a shy
curate carries a shabby umbrella, but either boldly across
the shoulder, like a rifle, or tucked under the armpit, so that
you may do up your batting-gloves in your progress across
the greensward. An excellent effect will be produced if
you pause half-way and execute a few fancy strokes at an
imaginary ball. Besides, you may not have another opportunity
of displaying your accomplishment.

Having, as it were, reported yourself at the wicket, it is
a good plan to discover that you need a new batting-glove.
This will afford you an excuse for a return journey to the
pavilion, during which your gait will lose nothing in stateliness
if you can manage to adopt the goose-step. On your
return to the wicket you will probably find, if the weather
is mild and the grass dry, that the fieldsmen are reclining
on the ground; it will enhance your reputation for nonchalance
and good-fellowship if you can contrive to give one
of them a playful pat with your bat in passing, especially
if he is a total stranger to you and much your senior.

On your second arrival at the wicket, you might get the
wicket-keeper to take his gloves off and adjust the straps of
your pads. This is one of many subtle ways of demoralising
the fielding side and whetting the interest of the onlookers.

After taking middle with such scrupulous exactitude as
to imply that you suspect the umpire’s eyesight, take one
of the bails and scratch a block deep enough to plant
something in. Then beckon to the square-leg umpire to
come and replace the bail. In this you will be strictly
within the law, and nobody can suspect you of the surreptitious
use of a little cobbler’s wax.

Your next move should be to summon the other batsman
to a whispered conference in the middle of the pitch. It
doesn’t much matter what you say to him; a new funny
story or the plot of a play you saw last week will serve to
make him assume an air of thoughtful attention.

After a chat of about five minutes, you will return slowly
to your crease, there to scrutinise the slip fieldsmen, and
then to gaze all round the ground as if to make sure that
the other side is not playing more than eleven men.

When taking your stance you will do well to give full
effect to some such mannerism as Mr. Warner’s trick of
hitching up the left side of the trousers and tapping the
ground seven times. And just as the bowler is about to
start his run you can disconcert him by suddenly whipping
round to see if they have moved another man over to the
leg side while your back was turned.

As soon as the bowler has covered half his course to the
wicket you should raise your hand to arrest his career.
Then you must stroll about a third of the way up the pitch
and give the ground a good slapping with the face of
your bat.

If you feel so inclined, there is no reason why you should
not repeat this manœuvre. Nothing is more calculated to
upset a highly-strung bowler. And when the ball does
come down the chances are that it will be a wide, in
which case you will have earned one run for your side.
If, on the other hand, it should happen to knock your
middle stump out of the ground, there is nothing more to
be done, but you will have the satisfactory feeling that your
little turn in the limelight has not been utterly inglorious.

Cecil Clay.

We learn with regret of the death of Mr. A. Chantrey
Corbould, whose work as a sporting artist was familiar
to an earlier generation of Punch’s readers.
[pg 423]

ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY.

Prime Minister (to Bolshevist Delegates.) “HAPPY TO SEE YOU,
GENTLEMEN. BUT WOULD
YOU MIND GOING ROUND BY THE TRADESMEN’S ENTRANCE, JUST FOR THE LOOK OF
THE THING?”

Shipwrecked Mariner. “Ahoy, mates! Wot ‘s won t’
Derby?“

THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMATEUR EXAMINER.

The Nabobs is, I suppose, one of the
best girls’ schools in England. Anyhow
it is perhaps the most exclusive
unless you have money enough. But,
as the prospectus says, “it commands
an extensive view of the English
Channel,” and I suppose these things
have to be paid for. At all events there
is no doubt that the principal, Miss
Penn-Cushing, has her heart in her
work and is a splendid disciplinarian,
and so I sent my niece Mollie there to
be finished (her mother being in India).

I have an idea at times that it is
Mollie who will finish Miss Penn-Cushing,
but I try to preserve a benevolent
neutrality combined with a regular
supply of food parcels to my niece.

Miss Penn-Cushing is LL.A. of one
University and LL.B. of another, and,
I think, LL.C. of a third, so that she
ought to be more than a match for six
Mollies.

I have always had the impression
that Miss Penn-Cushing regarded me
as a humble entomological specimen
until the other day when she paid me
a staggering compliment. She herself
teaches all the English literature in
her academy, and each class in turn
goes up to her room to receive its daily
dose. Mollie says that when she grows
up she is going to give up English
literature for ever and read something
interesting.

I am glad that the revered Principal
is never present to hear Mollie’s blasphemies,
at which I as an uncle have
to shudder. Since the publication of
The Cambridge History of English
Literature Miss Penn-Cushing has
been steadily absorbing it, to help her
in her daily task, and has apparently
reached the chapter in which is suitably
acknowledged the debt of English
literature to Punch.

So at least I judge, for she gave the
girls a long serious talk on humour in
literature, how to detect it and what
should be done about it. One rather
sensitive child began to cry, but Mollie,
who has never kept a secret in her life
and in fact loves to drag her uncle’s
skeletons out of cupboards, blurted out,
“Uncle writes for Punch!”

I was somewhat alarmed when I
heard of this, for I did not know how
Miss Penn-Cushing, who keeps all the
girls’ uncles in order, might take it.
My fears were groundless, perhaps
stupid, for the immediate result was an
invitation to examine Mollie’s form in
literature at the forthcoming Christmas
examination. I felt uplifted in
spirit; I felt that people were beginning
to understand me. I even entertained
an hallucination that perhaps Mollie
might now treat my intellect with
respect and stop calling me “Old dear.”
Three inches taller I sat down to my
desk and, thanking Miss Penn-Cushing
for the honour paid me, I promised I
would do my best, although it would
be my first appearance in the rôle.

I determined, however, not to allow
this distinction to make me overbearing
to my inferiors at our next speech-day.
I would be affable to ordinary uncles,
common parents and guardians of the
other girls, but I would lead the conversation
artfully on to other literary
critics and examiners of the past. As
a preparation I read up Matthew
Arnold.

It is not easy to be an examiner, I
found. I would rather write ten leading
articles than one examination-paper.
It appeared that I had to set themes for
essays as well as questions in literature.
We never learnt literature when
I was young and I didn’t know you
could, but I borrowed a text-book from
Mollie and did my best.

The result was a crushing letter
from the lady principal. She said that
“The Ten Points of a good Doll”
seemed a preposterous subject for senior
students of literature to write about,
and “My Favourite Elopement in Fiction”
would be outside the purview of
any of her girls. She would substitute
instead (with my permission), “The
Debt of Literature (as well as Science)
to Darwin” and “My Favourite Piece
of Epic Poetry.” In fine, if I did not
really mind, she would herself set all
the questions and I should examine the
answers. She thought that the more
fructiferous course.

Farmer. “Eh, Lucy, these moving stairs do be vine
things vor saving volk’s time.“

How to mark was my chief difficulty.
How many marks should one give a
darling with brown eyes and a musical
laugh (Mollie has brought her to tea
often) who signs herself “Norah
O’Brien,” and winds up delightful irrelevances
about Darwin and her abhorrence
of reptiles with a personal appeal
to the examiner. I do not know what
other examiners do in such cases. It
was a beautifully worded and most respectful
appeal. I decided to give her
forty for Norah and forty for O’Brien.
Both names have always appealed to
me.

This made it necessary for me to give
eighty marks to her sister Kathleen,
who wrote really an excellent essay on
a subject we had stupidly forgotten to
set. It was an excellent subject, and
she has even browner eyes than Norah,
but as an examiner one must be rigid
and impartial.

Eunice came next. This name recalled
dear memories of the past and of
what might have been. But as an examiner
I could not let old dreams weigh
down my impartial scales, so I refused
to give her more than eighty. Finally,
for they are really charming girls and
know far more about literature than I
do, I gave eighty to everybody except
Mollie, and for being Mollie I gave her
eighty-two.

I forgot. There was one perfectly
horrid little girl called Katie de Pinnock.
She never shared her chocolates
with anyone; the fact was notorious.
She wrote in a copperplate hand sentiments
like these: “Milton awes me;
Shelley thrills me; Blake, the prophet
of self-sacrifice, is ever my consolation
and my guide. I ask for nothing
beyond.” I gave her nineteen.

And now comes the tragedy. Miss
Penn-Cushing’s letter of thanks was
icy. She feared I had been “a thought
nepotic,” and (with my permission) she
would revise my marks.

She dealt me the final blow at our
Speech-Day. “I have decided,” she
gave out, “to award the first prize in
Literature to Miss Katie de Pinnock. I
am sure, though, that you will not be
surprised to hear that Mr. Marcus
O’Reilly, our examiner, was so impressed
with the literary excellence of
all your papers that he has presented
the whole class with consolation prizes.
We tender him our heartiest thanks.”

Commercial Candour.

Extract from a Canadian business-circular:—

“What intelligent car owners have been
looking for is a tire that will give them a minimum
amount of service for a maximum
amount of expenditure. You can get that
tire from us.”

“THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

By the Rt. Hon. C. F. G. Masterman.

‘Die, thou children of stormy dawn,’ cries
the Prime Minister to-day, as he stamps out
the life of his little land taxes.”—Daily News.

According to his critic Mr. Lloyd
George seems to have done great
violence to his syntax as well as to his
little land taxes.

“The bride, a tall brunette, looked a vision
of golden beauty as she advanced up the aisle
on the arm of her father.”—Evening Paper.

We do not think that this was the
right occasion for an exposure of
feminine camouflage.

THE ART OF POETRY.

I.

Many people have said to me, “I
wish I could write poems. I often try,
but——” They mean, I gather, that
the impulse, the creative itch, is in
them, but they don’t know how to
satisfy it. My own position is that I
know how to write poetry, but I can’t
be bothered. I have not got the itch.
The least I can do, however, is to try to
help those who have.

A mistake commonly committed by
novices is to make up their minds what
it is they are going to say before they
begin. This is superfluous effort, tending
to cramp the style. It is permissible,
if not essential, to select a subject—say,
MUD—but any detailed argument
or plan which may restrict the free development
of metre and rhyme (if any)
is to be discouraged.

With that understanding, let us now
write a poem about MUD.

I should begin in this sort of way:—

It will be seen at once that we are
not going to have much rhyme in this
poem; or if we do we shall very soon
be compelled to strike a sinister note,
because almost the only rhymes to
mud are blood and flood; while, as the
authors of our hymns have discovered,
there are very few satisfactory rhymes
to God. They shamefully evaded the
difficulty by using words like road, but
in first-class poetry one cannot do that.
On the whole, therefore, this poem had
better be vers libre. That will take
much less time and be more dramatic,
without plunging us into a flood of
blood or anything drastic like that.
We now go on with a little descriptive
business:—

Now there ought to be a verb. That
is the worst of vers libre; one gets
carried away by beautiful phrases and
is brought up suddenly by a complete
absence of verbs. However at a pinch
one can do without a verb; that is the
best of vers libre:—

We might do a good deal more of
this descriptive business, bringing in
something about dead bodies, mud of
course being full of dead bodies. But
we had better get on. We strike now
the personal note:—

When one is well away with this
part of the poem it is almost impossible
to stop. When you are writing in
metre you come eventually to the
eighth line of the last verse and you
have to stop; but in vers libre you
have no assistance of that kind. This
particular poem is being written for
instructional purposes in a journal of
limited capacity, so it will probably
have to stop fairly soon; but in practice
it would go on for a long time yet. In
any case, however, it would end in the
same way, like this:—

That reasserts, you see, in a striking
manner, the original motif, and somehow
expresses in a few words the poignant
melancholy of the whole poem.
Another advantage in finishing a long
poem, such as this would be, in the same
way as you began it is that it makes it
clear to the reader that he is still reading
the same poem. Sometimes, and
especially in vers libre of an emotional
and digressive character, the reader has
a hideous fear that he has turned over
two pages and got into another poem
altogether. This little trick reassures
him; and if you are writing vers libre
you must not lose any legitimate
opportunity of reassuring the reader.

To treat the same theme in metre
and rhyme will be a much more difficult
matter. The great thing will be
to avoid getting mud at the end of a
line, for the reasons already given. We
had better have long ten-syllable lines,
and we had better have four of them
in each verse. Gray wrote an elegy
in that metre which has given general
satisfaction. We will begin:—

In a serious poem of this kind it is
essential to establish a locality atmosphere
at once; therefore one mentions
a few places by name to show that one
has been there. If the reader has been
there too he will like the poem, and if
he hasn’t no harm is done. The only
thing is that locally Chintonbury is
probably pronounced Chun’bury, in
which case it will not scan. One cannot
be too careful about that sort of
thing. However, as an illustration
Chintonbury will serve.

It is now necessary to show somehow
in this verse that the poem is about
mud; it is also necessary to organise a
rhyme for ‘Hole’ and a rhyme for
‘sea,’ and of the two this is the more
important. I shall do it like this:—

There is a good deal to be said against
these two lines. For one thing I am
not sure that the mud ought to be yellow;
it will remind people of Covent
Garden Tube Station, and no one wants
to be reminded of that. However, it
does suggest the inexpressible biliousness
of the theme.

I think “levels” is a little weak. It
is a good poetical word and doesn’t
mean anything in particular; but we
have too many words of that kind in
this verse. “Deserts” would do, except
that deserts and mud don’t go very well
together. However, that sort of point
must be left to the individual writer.

At first sight the student may think
that “nakedly” is not a good rhyme
for “sea.” Nor is it. If you do that
kind of thing in comic poetry no editor
will give you money. But in serious
poetry it is quite legitimate; in fact it
is rather encouraged. That is why
serious poetry is so much easier than
comic poetry. In my next lecture I
shall deal with comic poetry.

I don’t think I shall finish this poem
now. The fact is, I am not feeling so inspired
as I was. It is very hot. Besides,
I have got hay-fever and keep on sneezing.
Constant sneezing knocks all the
inspiration out of a man. At the same
time a tendency to hay-fever is a sign
of intellect and culture, and all the
great poets were martyrs to it. That
is why none of them grew very lyrical
about hay. Corn excited them a good
deal, and even straw, but hay hardly ever.

So the student must finish this poem
as best he can, and I shall be glad to
consider and criticise what he does,
though I may say at once that there
will be no prize. It ought to go on for
another eight verses or so, though that
is not essential in these days, for if it
simply won’t go on it can just stop in
the middle. Only then it must be
headed “Mud: A Fragment.”

And in any case, in the bottom left-hand
corner, the student must write:
Chintonbury, May 28th, 1920.

A. P. H.

MANNERS AND MODES.

WHAT OUR PROFITEER’S BUTLER (WHO WAS TAKEN ON WITH THE HOUSE AND FURNITURE) HAS
TO
PUT UP WITH:—MASTER’S RELATIONS.

ELIZABETH’S TIP FOR THE DERBY.

“Talkin’ o’ the Derby,” began Elizabeth.

As a matter of fact I was not talking
of the Derby or even thinking of it at
the moment. I had just been telling
Elizabeth that the omelette which she
had served us at dinner was leathery,
and her remark struck me as irrelevant.

“Master thinks the omelettes would
be lighter if you fried them in more
butter,” I continued. Of course Master
had thought nothing of the kind. But
nowadays complaints must be conveyed
to domestics in this indirect way.

Elizabeth ignored the omelette. “I’m
goin’ to win fifty pounds at least,” she
exclaimed, and in her excitement broke
the cup she held—I mean to say the
cup came in two in her hand as she
spoke. “I’ve got a bit on
an ‘orse for the Derby.”

I felt slightly shocked.
It is always surprising to
discover a latent sporting
instinct in one’s domestics,
unless they are highly
placed and dignified domestics
like butlers or
head-footmen; but in a
cook-general it seems peculiarly
low.

“I shouldn’t bet if I
were you,” I advised; “I
think—er—Master thinks,”
I added involuntarily—”that
you might lose
money at it.”

“But I’m goin’ to win
money this time,” announced
Elizabeth triumphantly;
“my young man
ses so, and ‘e knows.”

“Which young man?” I inquired.

Elizabeth, I ought perhaps to explain,
is uncertain about her young men. She
never has any lack of them; but they
are like ships that pass in the night
(her night out as a rule) and one by one
they drift off, never stopping to cast
anchor in her vicinity. You know what
I mean. Elizabeth can’t keep a young
man. Perhaps she lacks the charm
which Barrie describes as “a sort of a
bloom on a woman.” Or if she has any
of that bloom it must be swamped in
the moist oleaginous atmosphere of
washing-up which seems to cling permanently
about her.

“It’s a new young man,” said Elizabeth
in answer to my question, “an’
‘e’s got work in a racin’ stable, so that’s
‘ow ‘e knows wot’s goin’ to win. It’ll
be an outsider, ‘e ses, which makes it
all the better for me.”

“All the better for you?”

“Yes, ‘m. You see, the more you puts
on the more you wins.”

Elizabeth may not have charm but
she certainly has simplicity. “You
don’t mean to say,” I cried, a light
breaking on me, “that you got your
next month’s wages in advance just to
put it all on a horse?”

“That I did,” she replied complacently.
“You see, my young man ses that,
if you put it on some time before’and,
you get a better price, so I thort I’d
give it to ‘im to put on at once. ‘E
promised ‘e wouldn’t waste a minnit
over it.”

“But this is most foolish of you—to
trust your money to an entire stranger,”
I expostulated.

“‘E isn’t a stranger—’e’s my young
man,” corrected Elizabeth, tossing her
head.

For the following few days she was
radiant—but then anybody would be
who was certain of the winner of the
Derby a week before the race. In
addition to this she had got a young
man. Those brief periods when Elizabeth’s
young men are in the incipient
stages of paying her attention are
agreeable to everybody. Elizabeth, feeling
no doubt in her rough untutored
way that God’s in His heaven and all’s
right with the world, sings at her work;
she shows extraordinary activity when
going about her duties. She does unusual
things like remembering to polish
the brasses every week—indeed you
have only to step into the hall and glance
at the stair-rods to discover the exact
stage of her latest “affair.” I remember
that, when one ardent swain “in the flying
corpse” went to the length of offering
her marriage before he flew away,
she cleaned the entire house down in
her enthusiasm, and had actually got
to the cellars before he vanished out
of her life.

The follower from the racing stable
might aptly be described as “The Man
Who Never Came Back.” He romped
out of Elizabeth’s existence on the Sunday
preceding the Derby.

“I waited for ‘im four-an’-an-‘arf ‘ours,
an’ ‘e didn’t turn up,” she informed me
next day.

“Perhaps he was prevented from
keeping the appointment,” I suggested
to comfort her, though I felt the outlook
was gloomy.

She shook her head. “I’ll never see
‘im no more. I know ’em,” she said,
drawing on the depth of her experience
of young men who do the vanishing
trick. “An’ my money gone too. It’s
‘eartbreakin’. But I might ‘ave known
that that there ‘orse was a bad sign.”

“What horse?” I asked, bewildered.

“The one ‘e told me to put my money
on. The name alone ought to have set
me agen it; it was too true to life.”

“And what was the
name of the horse?” I
inquired as she drifted
dismally to the door.

“‘E Goes,” said Elizabeth
mournfully.

“Try ‘im wiv a worm, Guv’nor!“

THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

(By our Lunatic Contributor.)

Our Journalistic Sleuths.

“The circumstances under which the deceased
came by his death are shrouded in
mystery. From the gun shot wounds it is
surmised that he either shot himself or somebody
had shot him.”—Indian Paper.

“Would Persons present in Restaurant in
Shiprow on Saturday Night, when dispute
arose with regard to sixpence, please communicate
with No. 798 Express Office?”

Scotch Paper.

Who heard the bang?

[Week-end hostesses are now giving “Lend-a-hand” parties, at
which every guest is expected to do some household service.]

Wife. “I’m asking Dolly Ditchwater this week-end. Bit dull, but she
doesn’t drop the china.“

Husband. “Don’t forget Bertie Bunt. Bit of a bounder, but he’s an ace
at cleaning boots.“

AMERICA AGAIN.

A situation of extreme international
delicacy has recently arisen. We understand,
with regard to the impending
strike of Italian organ-grinders and ice-cream
merchants in the Metropolis, that
Signori Rimbombo Furioso and Fagiuolo
Antico, representing the Amalgamated
Society of Itinerant Instrumentalists
and the National Union of Refrigerated
Tuck Sellers, have lately been invited to
a conference with Dr. Macnamara, and
their economic grievances are now under
the consideration of the Minister of
Labour. These, briefly, are as follows:

• (1) The high price of sugar.
• (2) Restricted hours and insufficient emoluments.
• (3) Undue interference by the police.
• (4) Inadequate supplies of monkey nuts.

It now appears that in order to make
a bid for the large Italian vote in the
forthcoming Presidential elections in
the U.S.A. a violent anti-British propaganda
campaign is raging on the
other side of the Atlantic, and that an
enormous amount of spurious sympathy
is being manufactured on behalf of the
purveyors of rotary music and frozen
confectionery in Soho. Beautiful Italian
girls are daily besieging the British
Embassy at Washington with placards
bearing such inscriptions as—

SHOULD HOKEY POKEY SUFFER?

ENGLAND COERCES HER TRAVELLING ORGANISTS.

AMERICANS! HELP THE DUMB APE!

The agitation is the more uncalled for
since, as a matter of fact, both Signor
Furioso and Signor Antico, like most of
their compatriots in this country, are
pronounced Irredentists and filled with
aspirations for a larger Italy, so that
they have little or nothing in common
with anti-Imperialistic America. Nevertheless,
so bitter is the feeling which
has been aroused that large subsidies are
being sent overseas and Black Hand
gangs organised to resist the London
police. All over the outer suburbs
organ-grinders are refusing to move on,
and insist on playing well into the
early hours of the morning. Deleterious
substances of an explosive nature
are being mingled with the ice cream,
or else it is being supplied in such a
watery condition that it is impossible for
customers to lick it out of the receptacle
without ruining their shirt fronts and
waistcoats. Monkeys are being trained
to give violent manifestations of ferocity,
and, should the present heat-wave
continue, rabies is anticipated.

The latest development is a rumoured
suggestion from the U.S.A. Government
that a representative should be
sent over to take part in the Conference,
and the names of Mr. Joe Dempsey
and Mr. Charles Chaplin have been
put forward as possible mediators.

V.

“All is not plane sailing yet for the German
in search of foreign markets.”—Evening Paper.

But wait till their flying bagmen get to
work.

Hairdresser in Ancient Assyria. “Don’t go, Sir. I
shall be finished with this nobleman in three or four hours.“

PRACTICAL ZOOLOGY.

There is nothing which distinguishes
your true Briton so much as the systematic
study of the ways of wild animals,
and there is no kind of instruction which
an English child so eagerly accepts.

“The addax or Nubian antelope,”
how frequently one may hear a father
say to his small son in the schoolroom,
“has horns very similar to those of the
Indian antelope, but is a larger animal.”
“Yes, father,” responds the boy brightly,
“it has a tuft of long hair on the forehead
and large broad hoofs, adapted for
treading on fine and loose sands.”

But it is easier perhaps to make
these nice points in natural history in
the comparative calm of the home than
in the more frenzied atmosphere that
reigns in the Zoological Gardens themselves.
It is for that reason that I
have put together the few notes which
follow, hoping that they may assist
the reader to adopt a definite system
in dealing with this great national institution
and educate the young mind
on a reasoned and scientific plan.

Take the order of visiting the cages
first. I do not complain of your natural
wish to begin with the giraffe, because
it has such an absurdly long neck and
may possibly mistake Pamela’s straw-hat
for a bunch of hay and try to eat it,
and because you will be able to see the
hippopotamus on the way. As a matter
of fact you will find that the giraffe is
not standing near the bars at all, but
close to its stable, where it is mincing
and bridling exactly like a lady in a
Victorian novel, and as for the hippopotamus
you cannot see the pretty pink
part of him because he is giving his
famous imitation of a submarine. But
never mind that. Your difficulty now
will be, “What shall we do next?”
and in order to assist you I have constructed
a logical order for visiting the
various cages. Here it is:—

• 1. The lions, because you can hear
  them already roaring most horribly
  fiercely.
• 2. The sea-lions, because they are
  saying “Ock, ock.”
• 3. The lions, because the tiger may
  be roaring too this time.
• 4. The Elephant House. No, Pamela,
  I don’t know why he is swaying about
  like that.
• 5. The lions, because Tony did not
  really see the black panther, which was
  asleep in one corner of its cage.
• 6. The Monkey House. I suppose
  we must.
• 7. The lions, to wait there till they
  are fed.

The only trouble about this order is
that you may not have much time to
visit the Mappin Terraces, and it is of
course very important that you should
go there because of the bears. The
bears by rights should be fed on umbrellas,
because they suck the stick and
the ribs of the frame for all the world
as if they were pieces of asparagus, and
tear the silk part very carefully into
tiny little shreds. But umbrellas are
very expensive just now and the keeper
does not think they are very good for
the bears either. It is better to give
them oranges, but oranges are expensive
too, so you must make quite certain
that you do not waste them on the
grizzlies which are not on the Mappin
Terraces at all. It is no use giving an
orange to a grizzly bear, because it goes
down with one quick motion, like the
red into the right-hand top pocket.
But if you give it to one of the Himalayan
bears he opens it and scoops out
all the inside and guzzles it up and
then sits down and licks his paws exactly
like a Christian, and while he is
doing that the other Himalayan bear
comes up and is so annoyed at not
having an orange too that he lies down
and groans with rage and flaps himself
with his paws. So you have to get
another orange.

Another thing that you have missed
all this time and ought to see if possible is the Antelope House, where the
telephone is. I don’t know why the
antelopes want a telephone more than
all the other animals, but they do. Of
course if they knew how bad the telephone
is they would realise that with
their long legs they could get there and
back again in much quicker time than
it takes to get a call through.

And then there are the Small Birds.
It is not known to everybody, least of
all, I think, to poets, that the nightingale
sings best of all in a cage in broad
daylight and amongst a lot of other
birds, all twittering away like anything.
We should like to take Mr.
Robert Bridges to the Small Birds’
House. We should like to take Mr.
Robert Smillie there too, and introduce
him to the bird just underneath
the nightingale, which is called the
Talking Mynah.

But you are not very much interested
in coal or poetry, and will probably
like the Sugar Birds best, for, if there
is anything more delightful than being
a bird, especially a tiny little bird, blue
or green underneath, it must be living
on sugar and having grapes stuck in
the bars of your cage.

The snakes of course are slimy sort
of creatures and their house is a long
way off, and, though we fully agree
with you that the monkeys were just
like real persons, we think we really
ought to be starting home now.

No, there is no time to see the lions
again….

Evoe.

A DARK HORSE.

Profiteer. “‘ECONOMY’? NEVER HEARD THE NAME. LOOKS AS IF HE MIGHT
SPOIL MY BOOK, THOUGH.”

THE NICETIES OF CLOTHES ECONOMY.

“Good Lord! That fellow’s actually had his overalls patched!“

“Darned little fop.“

THE CAP THAT FITS.

“Gerald, dear,” said my wife the
other evening, “I wish you’d write
and order some more notepaper; we’ve
hardly any left.”

“All right, Margaret. What sort do
you want? The last lot was beastly—too
thick to make into spills and not
large enough for drawing up the fire.”

“Well, here’s a list of the different
kinds they have in stock at Jones and
Robinson’s.”

I took it from her and glanced through
it. “What do you say to ‘Cream Laid,’
Margaret? I like the sound of that.
It will make me feel so nice and cool
in the hot weather to think of the rows
of fresh-faced country girls, in their
spotless white overalls, pouring the
cream delicately over the paper. I
wonder how they get it to stop exactly
at the edge?”

“It wants a very cool head and
steady hand, I expect,” said Margaret;
“they’d all be picked cream-layers, of
course. But how would you like ‘thick
hand-made paper with deckle edges’?
What are deckle edges, I wonder; and
how is paper hand-made?”

“Rather like treading grapes, I fancy,
only that’s done by foot. I mean they
smash up the pulp with a very heavy
pestle in a huge——”

“Mortar!” cried Margaret triumphantly.

“Yes; but am I telling this story or
are you? Well, and then they put it
through a mangle——”

“Wurzel,” said Margaret.

“Wrong—just a mangle, and roll it
out flat, after which they deckle the
edges.”

“But how do they do that, Gerald?”

“Oh, they just call in the edge-deckler
and say, ‘See to ‘t that yon edges
be deckled ere set o’ sun,’ and he sees
to ‘t. His is a most important post, I
believe.”

Margaret came and sat on a tuffet
by my chair.

“Sorry about wurzel,” she said.
“Now tell me all about machine-made
paper, there’s a dear. It will be so
nice to be able to explain all this to
Nat when he’s older.”

“Paper-making by machinery, my
dear,” I said graciously, “is a most
complicated process. I won’t puzzle
you with all the details, but roughly the
idea is to pulp up the—er—rags and
so on in a huge sort of—er—bowl, and
then to roll it out thin in the rolling-out
machine.”

Margaret thought this over. “It
sounds just the same as the hand-made,”
she said.

“Oh, no,” I said quickly; “it’s all
done by machinery, you see. Pistons
and rollers and—er—mechanical edge-decklers
and so on.”

“And what does ‘Linen Wove’ mean?”

“They employ people to thread the
paper with linen threads, my dear. A
very delicate performance; that’s why
Linen Wove is so expensive. Azure
Wove is, of course, done with blue flaxen
threads. Silurian Bond is made by a
fellowship of geologists, and for Chelsea
Bank they have a factory on the bank
of the Thames at Cheyne Walk. That’s
all I need tell you, though I know a
lot more.”

“I never realised before how awfully
interesting paper-making could be,”
said Margaret gratefully. “Write and
order me a good supply of Chelsea
Cream Wove, will you, dear? Oh, and
some other kind for yourself, to write
your stories on. Don’t forget.”

“Very well; Chelsea Cream Wove
for you. And what shall I have?”

Margaret’s mouth twitched a little.

“Foolscap, I think, dear,” she said.

Sandy (viewing doctor’s bill). “But the bill is no
richt, Sir. Ye’ve charged me for seven days instead o’ six. Dinna
ye mind I was deleerious one day an’ was not aweer of your presence?“

ANALGESIA.

(With Mr. Punch’s best wishes for the
speedy recovery of the French President.)

[“President Deschanel … was compelled
to take several analgesia cachets. (Analgesia
is a condition in which there is incapacity of
feeling pain).”]—Evening Paper.

“59 ACCIDENTS IN 5 YEARS.

PROPOSED ROAD WIDENING TO INCLUDE CEMETERY CORNER.”

Evening Paper.

The only alternative would appear to
be to enlarge the cemetery.

AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT AT EPSOM.

I am not attending the Derby this year.
Nor was it my original intention to go
last year, but since my beneficent employers,
unasked, offered me a day off,
Selina insisted we ought to go. It was
a national institution, a sight everyone
should see once in a lifetime, and so
forth. I protested it was an extravagance;
that to be married was really
more than we could afford, let alone
race-meetings. But Selina was firm.
She would pay, if necessary, out of the
house-keeping money. Besides it need
cost nothing. We might win enough
money to cover our expenses.

“So you absented yourself without leave, and went to Epsom.
What have
you got to say?“

“That it was worth it, Sir, even if it do mean the loss of my
pension.“

Thus the idea of betting was introduced.
Gambling in all forms is against
my principles; and how I came to give
in on the point I scarcely know. From
the way Selina argued one might have
supposed that a bet on the Derby was
a prudent investment, something in
the nature of a life-insurance which no
careful husband would neglect to make.
So I yielded, merely stipulating that
our stake was not to exceed one pound:
and this amount fortunately satisfied
Selina’s conception of recklessness.

So upon the appointed day we found
ourselves at the famous Heath, or is it
the Downs? The selection of a horse
to bear our fortunes to victory was not
made without anxious debate, since
Selina’s choice was based upon the
colour scheme of the jockey’s coats,
and mine on the romantic associations
of the animals’ names. In the end we
compromised on a horse called Grand
Parade.

Next, equally momentous, we selected
a bookmaker who was to oblige us by
opposing our fancy at the most advantageous
rate. I was in favour of picking
a man whose abundance of chin and
paunch would, should he default, prevent
his attaining more than four miles
an hour on the flat. I had already discovered
one that answered this description.
He was soliciting clients in a
voice that made one think a vulture
might be rending his liver. Selina, who
pretends to read character from faces,
declared his eyes were too close together
for those of an honest man. She had
singled out a more suitable individual,
and she indicated to me a slender
gentlemanly man dressed in a grey
frock-coat with a tall hat of the same
colour just pathetically beginning to
grow shabby. He also invited custom,
but in a refined, almost confidential
tone which, in comparison with the braying
of his rival, resembled the cooing
of a dove. His features, which to me
denoted weakness of character, Selina
asserted to be those of an honourable
man struggling with adversity. It was
to support an ailing wife, she felt sure,
that he toiled at his uncongenial vocation.
I should have liked to explain,
though I knew it was useless, that our
object in dealing with him was not to
contribute to the support of his wife;
that our success, indeed, might mean
that the unhappy lady would be deprived
for many a week to come of
those little delicacies that are essential
to the comfort of an invalid.

Against my better judgment I gave
in and our little stake was deposited
in his hands. I almost felt inclined
to apologize for its smallness, but his
courtesy in accepting it rendered excuses
unnecessary. Nevertheless I
should have preferred, when taking up
a position to view the race, to have
chosen a spot from which we could
at the same time have kept an eye on
his gentlemanly tall hat. Selina however
poohpoohed the idea. We therefore
walked some little distance to a
point on the hill whence, some ten
minutes later, we had the satisfaction
of seeing Grand Parade gallop home a
winner.

In the moment of triumph I had
almost forgotten my apprehensions as
to our bookmaker. Selina however
had not, for, as we caught sight of his
elegant grey-clad figure on our return,
she could not resist exclaiming, “See
how wrong your suspicions were.”

The crowd, set loose after the tension
of the race, impeded our progress, so
that by the time we reached him he was
alone. Apparently he had paid off all
the other winners, and we were the last
claimants to arrive.

“Ah, I was waiting for you,” he said
in his easy well-bred fashion. “You
will think it very strange, perhaps, but
[pg 436]
for the moment I am unable to pay
you. Most absurd. My losses have
been rather more than I calculated, and
I have unfortunately disbursed all my
available cash. You need be under
no apprehension, however; if you will
kindly give me your address you shall
have a cheque by the first post to-morrow.”

I tried to recall what one did to
welshers. I seemed to remember that
one raised a hue-and-cry, that one
tarred and feathered them, and rode
them on a rail to a pond. I am,
however, constitutionally timid about
making my voice heard in public, and
I was as short of tar and feathers
as he was of ready cash. I had therefore
no alternative but to draw out my
pocket-case and present him with a
card.

“Ah, thanks,” he said, and with a
neat little silver pencil he scribbled on
the back a hieroglyph of some sort,
doubtless to jog his memory. Then he
wished me good-day with many apologies
and, politely taking off his hat to
Selina, sauntered leisurely in the direction
of the railway-station.

I confess that this contretemps somewhat
dashed my spirits. Nor was my
chagrin lessened by observing, during
the remainder of the afternoon, my
corpulent friend, notwithstanding the
closeness of his eyes to each other,
paying off regularly, at the end of each
race, a host of customers with the greatest
good grace, enlivened by coarse
jocularities. I followed the rest of the
sport with little zest, and my cup of
enjoyment was not filled to overflowing
when, possessing first-class return
tickets, we had to stand, Selina as well
as myself, in a crowded third-class
smoker.

Selina however preserved both her
spirits and her confidence. Bookmakers,
she had heard, were, as a class,
most honourable. Their losses could
not be recovered by law, but they regarded
them as debts of honour. There
were exceptions, of course, but the
gentleman in grey was not one of them.
Something told her so. I should see
that she was right.

At breakfast next morning we scanned
our post for a letter in an unfamiliar
handwriting. There was none.

“It was really rather early to expect
one,” said Selina.

On the following morning, however,
amongst others there lay a letter in a
strange writing, addressed moreover in
precisely the same style as the description
of me on my visiting card.

“What did I tell you?” said Selina.

“Well?” she asked, as I tore open
the envelope and read the letter.

“This must be some mistake,” I said.
“It is a demand from the railway for a
first-class fare from Epsom to London.
They state that I was detected travelling
without a ticket. Ridiculous. I
shall pay no attention to it.”

In the evening, however, as I started
home from the City, I thought better.
It would save trouble if I looked in at
London Bridge.

“You have come to pay?” said the
chief clerk, as I showed him the note.

“Indeed I have not,” said I. “On
the contrary the Company should refund
me the difference between first
and third-class fare.”

“Do you deny, then, that you travelled
back from Epsom without a
ticket?”

“Indeed I do.”

“You will not deny, perhaps, that
this is the card you handed the inspector
with a promise to pay?”

I took the proffered card. I could
not deny it, for the card was mine. I
turned it over. There, faintly legible
on the back in pencil, was the hieroglyph
that the bookie had scrawled
on it.

I explained to the clerk. I also explained
to Selina when I got home.
She, however, sticks to her original
contention. She was not deceived.
Fundamentally the man was honest.
Only the expenses of his wife’s long
illness had caused him to deviate from
the path of probity.

METHODIC MADNESS.

(By our Medical Correspondent.)

The newspapers have recently devoted
a certain amount of space to the
American millionaire who, while confined
in a psychopathic ward of a private
lunatic asylum, by his clever financial
manipulations added in the course
of six weeks five hundred thousand
pounds to a fortune “conservatively
estimated at three million pounds.”
In spite of this achievement the misguided
millionaire pleaded earnestly for
his release. But the verdict of the
New York Sheriffs’ Court was adverse.
The expert “alienists” admitted that
he possessed an extraordinary memory
and undoubted genius, but held that he
was none the less insane. Accordingly
he is to remain in the psychopathic
ward to which he was consigned “at
the request of his aged mother.” A
simple sum in addition establishes the
fact that, if the patient maintains his
present average, he will considerably
more than double his fortune in a year.
Yet none of the newspaper commentators
have realised the tremendous
possibilities underlying this achievement.

We are threatened with national insolvency,
and here is an infallible remedy
ready to hand. Lord Fisher’s panacea
for our discontents was to “sack the
lot”—to dismiss all our rulers and administrators.
But he had only a glimmering
of the truth. Our cry should
rather be, “Lock up the lot.” Experience
has taught us that if complete
latitude is given to eccentrics and incompetents,
if, in the words of Professor
Soddy, F.R.S., the destinies of the country
are entrusted to people of archaic
mental outlook, the result is bound to
be disastrous and chaotic. But if you
treat them as lunatics, there is a strong
presumption of their mending their
ways and proving valuable factors in
the economic reconstruction of the
Empire and the world.

Grave evils call for drastic treatment,
and in view of the hectic condition
of the Stock Exchange and the
“vicious circle” round which industrialism
is now unhappily revolving I
cannot but think that the temporary
seclusion of the Ministry in a psychopathic
ward might be fraught with
economic consequences of the utmost
importance. Even if they were only
able to reduce our indebtedness at the
same rate as that attained by the American
millionaire, their combined efforts
would represent a magnificent total.

Perhaps it would be wiser to proceed
tentatively and not commit ourselves
for more than six weeks to start with.
It is just conceivable that the treatment
might stimulate extravagance instead
of economy. Financial thrombosis is
not unknown as one of the obscurer
forms of megalomania. Still, as I have
said, the experiment is worth making.

In other spheres of activity the results
achieved are most encouraging. For
example, an extremely outré Cubist who
was recently consigned to a psychopathic
ward at the instigation of his grandmother,
developed a remarkable talent
for painting in the manner of Marcus
Stone; while a neo-Georgian composer
under similar treatment has produced a
series of études indistinguishable from
the pianoforte music of Sterndale
Bennett, though he had previously far
outstripped the most unbridled and
exacerbated aberrations of Scriabine in
his latest phase.

Commercial Candour.

“YE OLDE TEA HOUSE

(Opposite the Church).

Home-Made Cakes.   Antiques.“

Local Paper.

“TO BE SURE.

‘Why do you call that performing poodle
Sidius?’

‘He’s a dog star, ain’t he now?'”

Canadian Paper.

Still we don’t see it.

THE PROVISION MERCHANT.

“Can we supply you with a car, Sir? Certainly.	This is our 1920 touring model—provisional, of course.	By the way, the body, you see, is only a provisional one.
The engine design is purely provisional, you’ll understand—	and the horsepower is provisionally fixed at 12-78.	Delivery is in eighteen months—quite provisional, that is—
and the price we put provisionally at £1,200.	We shall require, of course, a deposit of £600 before we can provisionally accept the order.	I may add that a guarantee goes with each car—provisional, naturally—
and we will provisionally undertake to inform you of any provisional alterations—	that we may make in our provisional designs if you apply to our provisional works—	—provided——No, Sir, I cannot tell you where you can hire a push-bike!!!”

AT THE PLAY.

“The Mystery of the Yellow Room.“

Gentlemen of the Press having been
tactfully requested not to give away
this awesome mystery, I am barred by
the fastidious sense of honour which
distinguishes our profession from spoiling
your pleasure in this matter—a
course which otherwise I should naturally
have preferred.

Not that I have any too clear idea of
what it was all about or why an innocent
gentleman should be apparently
going to be guillotined for it. For there
was no question of anyone having been
murdered, the only tangible crime before
the Court that I could see being
the abstraction of some scientific papers.
However don’t imagine that this vagueness
will deprive you of the pleasures of
shock. Only don’t go thinking about
it. Remember Rosamund and her Purple
Jar.

I think I am free to tell you that a
young journalist possessing (characteristically)
“fantastic humour and exuberant
gaiety,” a famous amateur detective
to boot, outwits all the official
police, robs the law of its prey and
finds a long-lost mother for himself.

If this doesn’t excite you sufficiently
you can extract fun from subsidiary details.
It is always diverting to the unspoilt
soul when the principal lady goes
to turn up one lamp and the other
promptly glows instead; or when, a
particularly obvious and commonplace
knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims
in tragic accents, “There’s someone at
the door;” or when the detective drags
from the bottom of the lake a pair of
the driest of dry old boots.

Joseph Rouletabille (Mr. Arthur Pusey) to
Frederic Larsan (Mr. Franklin Dyall).
“Father, I am a journalist; I cannot
tell a lie. You did it!“

Or, if you are superior to this kind of
thing, you can amuse yourself by deducing
from the practice before you the
famous Rules for Revolvers, which, mutatis
mutandis, are as old as the Aristotelian
unities and, for all I (or, probably,
you) know to the contrary, were
laid down at the same time by the same
hand.

Rule 1. “All Innocent Characters expecting
murderous assault from Particularly
Desperate Villains will provide
themselves with revolvers. Before retiring
for the tragic night they will,
grasping the revolver firmly in the right
hand, place it carefully (as Professor
Leacock would direct) on the revolver-stand.
The P.D.V. will then know
what to do about it. (Note: P.D.V.’s do
not carry revolvers. They don’t need to.)

Rule 2. “I.C.’s actually attacking
P.D.V.’s will on no account fire, but, advancing
stealthily, will offer their pistol-wrist
to the enemy, who will at once
lock it in a deathly grip. After a brief
struggle, swaying this way and that,
the P.D.V. will, on the word ‘Four,’
put on another beard and have the I.C.
thrown into prison.” And so forth.

I have no serious fault to find with
these tactics. On the contrary. But
I rather think that in the first Act an
incident was introduced (no doubt in
the spirit of the little girl’s explanation
à propos of her riddle, “That was just
put in to make it more difficult”), which
was not quite cricket as it is played
by the best people in these stage
shockers.

But I am on dangerous grounds. Let
me say that Mr. Hannaford Bennett
has been distinctly ingenious in his
adaptation from M. Gaston Leroux’s
hectic feuilleton; that Miss Sybil Thorndike
put in a much finer quality of
work than is usually supplied with this
kind of heroine; that Miss Daisy Markham
as her friend played very gaily and
prettily as long as the situation allowed
it, and that Messrs. Franklin Dyall,
Lewis Casson, Nicholas Hannen,
Arthur Pusey, Major Jones, Colston
Mansell and the Prompter all did
notable work.

T.

Our Erudite Contemporaries.

“No doubt the inhabitants of the seaside
resorts are duly grateful as they turn their
faces to the trippers and the sun. Like Niobe,
they are all smiles.”—Provincial Paper.

“It certainly was a heavy swell, but the
good ship ‘Onward’ had, so to speak, got its
sea legs, and so had the party aboard; and
although we rolled, it was a long steady roll
which in time became almost most enjoyable.”

Isle of Man Weekly Times.

It is on occasions like these that the
Manxman finds his third leg so useful.

CUTCHERY CATS.

[In order to check the depredations of
mice and rats the Government of India have
directed the maintenance of cats in every
public office (“Cutchery”). Rations do not
err on the side of over-abundance, and the
cats in consequence are not always the most
favourable specimens.]

Batsman. “I don’t want none of your under’ands. Bowl
another an’ I takes the bat ‘ome—see?“

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)

Although Madeline of the Desert (Unwin) is published in
the First Novel series, it by no means follows that Mr.
Arthur Weigall can be considered a beginner in authorship,
his various activities already including some volumes
on Egyptology that have made for him a wide circle of
appreciative readers. You will therefore be correct in
guessing that the Desert of the title is Egyptian; also that
the story is one in which the setting and the local colour
are treated with expert knowledge and an infectious
enthusiasm. Of Madeline herself I should say at once
that nothing in her life, as shown here, became her like
the beginning of it. Her entrance into the tale, arriving
out of the desert to consult the recluse, Father Gregory,
whose nephew she afterwards marries, does very strikingly
achieve an effect of personality. Madeline was a product
of Port Said and, when we first meet her, an adventuress
of international reputation, or lack of it. Then Robin
rescues, marries and educates her. It was the last process
that started the trouble. Madeline took to education
more readily than a duck to water; and the worst of it
was that she was by no means willing to keep the results
and her conclusions therefrom to herself; indeed she developed
the lecturing habit to an extent that almost (but not
quite) ruined her charm. Mr. Weigall is so obviously
sincere in all this that, though I cannot exonerate him from
a charge of using Madeline as the mouthpiece of his own
sociological and religious views, I must acknowledge his
good intentions, while deploring what seems to me an
artistic error. But, all said, the book is very far from being
ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of place and
character is of the richest promise for future stories, in
which I hope the author will give us more pictures of the
land he understands so well.

I certainly admit that the publishers of The Strangeness
of Noel Carton (Jenkins) have every justification for
speaking of it as “a new note in a novel.” Indeed that
clever writer, Mr. William Caine, has here sounded as new,
original and (for all its surface humour) horrible a note as
any I have heard in fiction for some time. My trouble is
that I can hardly indicate it without giving away the whole
business. Very briefly the tale is of one Noel Carton, who
has married beneath him for not quite enough money to
gild a detestable union, and, being an unstable egoist and
waster, presently seeks consolation (and pocket money) by
writing a novel founded in part on his own position. One
may note in passing that Mr. Caine seems to have but a
modest idea of the mental equipment required for such a
task. Still I suppose he knows, and anyway that isn’t the
point. The point is that, once Noel has got himself properly
projected into his novel, all sorts of the queerest and most
bogie coincidences begin to occur. Again to quote the puff
preliminary, “as the book develops the reader has a suspicion
which becomes almost a certainty, until the great
and astounding climax is reached;” concerning which you
may justly remark that no reader with a certainty would
regard its verification as “astounding.” But this takes
nothing from the craft with which, on looking back, you see
the climax to have been prepared. I could hardly call the
tale altogether pleasant, but it is undeniably new and
vastly original.

The good Sioux glories in his scalps, and Mr. Isaac F.
Marcosson, of Louisville, must surely be the Great Chief
of interviewers. Interviewing, he tells us, is, after all, only
a form of reporting, and so are history, poetry and romance.
What, he asks, were Mommsen and Gibbon, Wordsworth
and Keats but reporters, and I can only answer, What
indeed? To have been found worthy of tonsure by Mr.
Marcosson it is necessary to be very eminent, and to win
his highest praise it is essential also to be a good “imparter,”
though he has a kind of sneaking admiration for the paleface
who insists on handing him a written statement and
declines to speak. Such a one was Sir Edward Carson.
Hanging to Mr. Marcosson’s girdle are the chevelures of
Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Haig, Marshal Foch, Sir
James
Barrie and Mr. Roosevelt, to name no more. Naturally
Adventures in Interviewing (Lane) is full of side-lights on
the recent war. How could it be otherwise when so many
celebrated brains are laid bare? One quotation I cannot
refrain from giving.
Speaking of Lord Beaverbrook
he says, “He
had come to London a
decade ago, to live ‘the
life of a gentleman,’ but
was drawn irresistibly
into politics.” I challenge
our literature to
produce a more beautiful
“but.”

Miss Edith Dart
has grouped against her
Dartmoor setting in
Sareel (Philip Allan)
just the characters to
act out the well-worn
story of the mutual infatuation
of a young
man of birth and an
ignorant country maid.
But though Sareel, the
little workhouse-reared
servant at the farm,
falls in love in the accepted
fashion with the
best-looking of the three
young men who lodge there on a reading tour, and
though he duly falls in love with her, the innocence of
her soul keeps their passion on the highest plane. What
is more, when Alan, as such young gentlemen in fiction
generally do, changes his mind Miss Dart provides a
happy ending, without even a suicide to spoil it, and without
inconsistency either in her own point of view or in
that of her characters. I don’t really believe that Devonshire
people say that they like things “brave and well”
quite as often as Miss Dart makes hers, and I wish she
had not so great a fondness for the word “such” that she
must invent phrases as weird as “though he had not sought
such” in order to bring it in; but apart from these trifles
Sareel, as something like a feminine version of a book by
Mr. Eden Phillpotts arranged for family reading, will
certainly please a great many people.

If you would like to see a white lady ride on a white
horse to Banbury Cross and elsewhere with a body-guard
of men in tin hats, carrying The Banner (Collins) and
proclaiming
the League of Youth (against war and other evils)
and forcible retirement from all offices of profit or power
under the Crown at the age of forty, get Mr. Hugh F.
Spender’s new and, as it seems to me, rather ingenuous
novel. Love is not neglected, for a peer’s son, deaf and
dumb through shell-shock, so responds to the counter-irritant
of seeing this modern Joan riding through Piccadilly
that he recovers both speech and hearing and promptly
uses them to put her a leading question and understand
her version of “But this is so sudden. However——” There
is a people’s army; a rose-water revolution with the
King accepting it as all in the day’s dull work; a fight or
rather an arming of a few last-ditchers of the old order,
and much else that is not likely to happen outside Ruritania.
Also candid expression of the opinions of (I take it) the
“Wee Frees” concerning Glamorgan Jones.

If Mr. Alan Graham does not unsettle my conviction that
it is easier to begin a story of hidden treasure than it is to
finish it, I can nevertheless promise you a good day with
the sleuth-hounds, should you decide to Follow the Little
Pictures (Blackwood).
For some not too lucid
reason I went to the
meet with a fear in my
heart that the command
in the title referred to
the “movies,” and my
relief was great on discovering
that it was
taken from a cipher
containing the key to
the treasure. The scene
of this hunt is laid in
Scotland, and the most
notable figure among
its followers is a certain
Laird Tanish. The
pecuniary fortunes of
the Tanish clan were
at a low ebb, and in
his determination to
improve them by winning
the prize the Laird
broke all the rules of
the game and gave way
to terrific outbursts of
rage in the manner of
those explosive gentlemen
with whom Miss Ethel Dell has familiarised us.
There is both ingenuity and originality in this story, and I
should be doing the author and his readers a great disservice
if I disclosed the details of the plot. Anyone with a bent
for treasure-hunting will be missing a fine opportunity if he
refuses to have a day (or a night) with Mr. Graham’s hounds.

Mistress. “Norah, do you ever repeat anything you hear
the master and myself say to each other when we have a slight difference of opinion?“

Domestic. “The Saints forbid, Mum!“

A Sympathetic Auditor.

“Dr. R. C. Ghostley, of Edmonton, was in the city last week and
attended Sir Oliver Lodge’s lecture.”—Canadian Paper.

“W. W. ——, the Rugby International forward, won his third
success in four days at Chesham Oddfellows’ and Foresters’ sports
yesterday, when he took first prize in the 10 yards open event, with
7½ yards start, in 9 ²⁄5 sec.“—Daily Paper.

His strong point, we gather, is not speed but staying-power.

À propos of the De Keyser case:—

“Unfortunately, the Dora regulations against free speech and
printing were never taken before the High Court, and our ancestors
will wonder at our timidity.”—Daily Herald.

We understand that Sir A. Conan Doyle has already
received several urgent messages on the subject.