Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Vol. 158 1920-04-28 by Various Seaman Owen Editor

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Editor: Owen Seaman

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

VOL. 158.

April 28, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

GENERAL DENIKIN is now in London. This is the first visit he has paid to this country since his last assassination by the Bolshevists.

New proposals regarding telephone charges are expected as soon as the Select Committee has reported. If the system of charging by time in place of piece-work is adopted it will mean ruination to many business-men.

The Swiss Government has issued orders that ex-monarchs may enter the country without passports. It is required, however, that they should take their places in the queue.

It is reported that a Londonderry man walked up to a Sinn Feiner the other day and said, "Shoot me." We understand that the real reason why the fellow was not accommodated was that he omitted to say "Please." The best Sinn Feiners are very punctilious.

"The drinking of intoxicants," says an American prohibitionist, "causes early death in ninety-five cases out of a hundred." Several Americans, we are informed, have gallantly offered themselves for experimental purposes.

"It is a scandal," says a contemporary, "that the clerks at Llanelly should ask for twelve pounds fifteen shillings a week." But surely there is no harm in asking.

According to a weekly paper not only is CONSTANCE BINNEY a famous screen star, but she is also a first-class ukelele player. The latest reports are that the news has been received quietly.

"If slightly cut before cooking, potatoes slip out of their skins easily," says a home journal. This is better than frightening them out of their skins by jumping out from behind a door and saying "Boo."

Mr. WILLIAM AIRD, the germ-proof man, has been giving demonstrations in London. It is reported that last week a germ snapped at him and broke off two of its teeth.

"In New York the other day," says a contemporary, "the sky kept streaming silver sheen; mistlike lights pulsated in rapid flashes to the apex and piled-up stars could be seen." The fact that New York can still see things like this must be a sorry blow to the Prohibitionists.

"Working men have been hit very hard by the tyrannical Budget," announces a morning paper. We too are in sympathy with those miners who are now faced with only one bottle of champagne a day.

"These cotton boom profits," said the President of the Textile Institute recently, "are abnormal and unhealthy." The Manchester man, however, who recently came out with innumerable spots resembling half-crowns as the result of the boom, declares that no inconvenience is suffered once the dizziness has passed away.

From Bungay in Suffolk comes the news that a water-wagtail has built its nest in a milk-can. We resolutely refrain from comment.

A youth recently arrested in Dublin was found not to have a revolver on him. He is being detained for a medical examination.

Airships under construction, declares Air-Commodore E. M. MAITLAND, will make the passage to Australia in nine and a-half days. In tax-paying circles it is said that the fashionable thing will be to start now and let the airship overtake you if it can.

More than a million Americans, it is stated, are preparing to visit Europe this summer. It is thought that there is at least a sporting chance that some of them will be hoist with their own bacon.

"The man who does not know Latin," says the Dean of DURHAM, "is not really educated." Several uneducated business men are said to have written to the DEAN asking the Latin for what they think of the new Budget.

At a recent wedding in Tyrone young men who had come to wish the bride and bridegroom luck lit a fire against the door, blocked the chimney with straw, broke the windows, threw water and cayenne-pepper on the wedding-party and bombarded the house with stones for two hours. It is just this joyous, care-free nature of the Irish that the stolid Englishman will never learn to appreciate.

We understand that the man who tried to gain admission to the Zoo on Sunday by making a noise like a Fellow of the Zoological Society was detected in the act.

A person who recently attempted to commit suicide by lying down on the Caledonian Railway line was found to have a razor in one pocket and a bottle of laudanum in the other. The Company, we understand, strenuously deny the necessity of these alternatives.

A Callous Crowd.

We gather from the expression, "without the slightest hitch," that not one of the onlookers made any effort to save the lady.

THOUGHTS ON THE BUDGET.

BY A PATRIOT.

THIS twelvemonth at the grindstone I have ground, Toiling to meet the toll of profiteers, And now comes AUSTEN, budgeting around, "Comes the blind Fury with the abhorr?d shears" , and leaves me naked as a poodle, Shorn--to the buff--of my laborious boodle.

I own it irks me little when he goes For fancy weeds and wine of fizzy brands; But I protest at parting through the nose For what the meanest human life demands; Nothing is sacred from his monstrous paw, Not letters, no, nor even usquebaugh.

That beverage, which invites to balmy sleep , is on the upward ramp; My harmless doggerel--in itself so cheap-- Despatched by post will want a larger stamp; Nor have I any wives or children to Abate the mulcting of my revenue.

But if you tell me I am asked to bleed For England; if, by being rudely tapped, My modest increment may help at need To spare some Office which would else be scrapped; If my poor fleece of wool by heavy cropping Can save the Civil Estimates from dropping;--

If I can keep in comfortable ease But one superfluous Staff for one week's play; If from my squalor I may hope to squeeze The wherewithal to check for half a day The untimely razing of a single Hut-- 'Tis well; I will not even murmur "Tut."

O. S.

A TRYING DAY IN MEDIAEVAL TIMES.

THE public torturer hurried home in an irritable frame of mind. The day had been for him one long round of annoyances. When he commenced his duties that morning, already exasperated by the thought that if the drought continued the produce of his tiny patch of ground would be completely ruined, he was aggrieved to find that far more than his fair share of a recently arrived batch of heretics had been allotted to him. During the midday break for refreshments his dreamy assistant had allowed the furnace to go out, bringing upon the torturer's own head a severe censure for the consequent delay. In the afternoon, glancing occasionally through the narrow window, he was mortified to see that the promising rain-clouds, which might yet have saved his cabbages, were dispersing; and then, to crown all, just as he was finishing for the day he had caught hold of a pair of pincers a trifle too near the white-hot end and seared his hand.

As he approached the cottage which was enshrined in his heart by a thousand sacred associations as home, the torturer strove to rise superior to his worries. He whistled bravely as he crossed the threshold and caressed his wife with his usual tenderness. Intuitively she divined the bitterness of the mood which lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of the meal--prepared by her in the way the torturer loved so well--she diverted him with her lively prattle. And at length, when she trod on the dog and caused it to give out a long-drawn howl, she made such a neat allusion to the Chamber and heretics that the torturer laughed till the tears streamed down his cheeks.

After the table was cleared the torturer's little blue-eyed girl came toddling up to him for her usual half-hour's cuddle. It made a beautiful picture--the little mite with her father's merry eyes and her mother's rosebud mouth, sitting on the torturer's knee, her golden hair mingling with his beard. And how her silvery laugh brightened the place as she played her favourite game of stretching her rag doll on a toy model of a rack.

The sound of rain outside brought the torturer and his wife to the door. As they stood side by side watching the downpour the last vestige of the torturer's ill-humour passed away. This rain would mean a record year for his cabbages, and would do wonders for his beans, which were already a long way more forward than those of the executioner.

He realised now that he had allowed the mishaps of the day to worry him unduly. After all, his hand had suffered little more than a scorch and no longer pained him, and, although the censure he had received in the Chamber and the possible consequences had been very disquieting, yet he was now able to assure himself and his wife that if henceforth he kept his assistant from wool-gathering all would be well.

Suddenly he fell back trembling from the threshold, his face blanched with terror. A large rain-drop had splashed on his forehead, reminding him abruptly that before coming home that evening he had neglected to fill the water-dripping apparatus, which might be required at dawn for the more obstinate of the heretics.

TALL TALK.

THE fact that the Bishop-Elect of PRETORIA, the Rev. NEVILLE TALBOT, is no less than six feet six inches high, surpassing his predecessor by two inches, has been freely commented on in the Press. Anxious to ascertain from leaders of public opinion the true significance of the appointment, Mr. Punch has been at pains to collect their views. How divergent and even contradictory they are may be gathered from the following selection:--

Sir MARTIN CONWAY, the Apostle of Altitude, as he has been recently denominated, welcomed the appointment of Bishop TALBOT as a good omen for the campaign which he is so ably conducting. "Nothing," he remarks, "has impressed me so much in the works of TENNYSON as the line, 'We needs must love the highest when we see it.' Mountain or building or man, it is all the same. I never felt so happy in all my travels in South America as when I was in Patagonia, the home of tall men and the giant sloth. At all costs we should recognise and cultivate the human skyscraper."

The Bishop of HEREFORD expressed the hope that the appointment of bishops would not be governed solely by an anthropometric standard. It would be a misfortune if the impression were created that preferment to the episcopal bench was confined to High Churchmen.

Dr. ROBERT BRIDGES writes to say that, having given special study to the hexameter, he was much interested to find that the measure now in vogue amongst bishops was that of six feet and over. He hoped to treat the subject exhaustively in his forthcoming treatise on Ecclesiastical Prosody.

Colonel L. C. AMERY, M.P., strongly deprecated the attempt to identify excessive height with extreme efficiency. In the election to Fellowships at All Souls no height limit was imposed. NAPOLEON and the late Lord ROBERTS were both small men, and he believed that the remarkable elusiveness displayed by Colonel LAWRENCE in the War was greatly facilitated by his diminutive stature. The testimony of literature throughout the ages was almost unanimous in its condemnation of giants. He had never heard of a small ogre. On the subject of SHAKESPEARE'S height he could not speak with assurance, but KEATS was only just over five feet. Jumbomania, or the worship of mammoth dimensions, was a modern disease. Far better was the philosophy crystallised in such immortal sayings as "Love me little, love me long," and "Infinite riches in a little room."

Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY, M.P., observed that, man being an imitative animal and bishops being regarded by many as good examples, there seemed to him a serious danger of an epidemic of what he might call Brobdingnagitis. Fortunately the results would not be immediately apparent, otherwise he would be compelled to raise his tariff for cheap suits. A rise of six inches in the average height of his customers would throw out all his calculations and eat up the modest margin of profit which he now allowed himself.

Of course this happens only very far North.

SAFETY PLAY.

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