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Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 158 March 17 1920 by Various
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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI
VOL. 158
MARCH 17, 1920
CHARIVARIA.
PRINCE ALBERT JOACHIM, it appears, did not take part in the attack on a French officer at the Hotel Adlon, but only gave the signal. Always the little Hohenzollern!
It seems that at the last moment Mr. C. B. COCHRAN broke off negotiations for the exclusive right to organise the CARPENTIER wedding.
A new method of stopping an omnibus by a foot-lever has been patented. This is much better than the old plan of shaking one's umbrella at them.
It is rumoured that the Government will construct an experimental tunnel between England and the United States in order to cement Anglo-American friendship, and to ascertain if the Channel Tunnel is practicable.
Dr. C.W. COLBY, head of the Department of History, has taken Sir AUCLAND GEDDES' place as Principal of McGill University. The report that Sir AUCKLAND will reciprocate by taking a place in history awaits confirmation.
"It is quite usual nowadays," a well-known auctioneer states, "for mill hands to keep a few orchids." We understand that by way of a counter-stroke a number of noblemen are threatening to go in for runner ducks.
A Rotherham couple who have just celebrated their diamond wedding have never tasted medicine. We ourselves have always maintained that the taste is an acquired one.
A Greenland falcon has been shot in the Orkneys. The view is widely taken that the wretched bird, which must have known it wasn't in Greenland, brought the trouble on itself.
An alleged anarchist arrested in Munich was identified as a poet and found Not Guilty--not guilty, that is to say, of being an anarchist.
With reference to the pending retirement of Mr. ROBERT SMILLIE from the Presidency of the Miners' Federation, it appears that there is talk of arranging a farewell strike.
We understand that Mr. Justice DARLING'S weekly denial of the reports of his retirement will in future be issued on Tuesdays, instead of Wednesdays, as hitherto.
When hit by a bullet a tiger roars until dead, says a weekly paper, but a tigress dies quietly. Nervous people who suffer from headaches should therefore only shoot tigresses.
Two out of ten houses being built at Guildford are now complete. Builders in other parts of the country are asking who gave the word "Go."
"Marvellous to relate," says a Sunday paper, "a horse has just died at Ingatestone at the age of thirty-six." Surely it is more marvellous that it did not die before.
It is said that the Paris Peace Conference cost two million pounds. The latest suggestion is that, before the next war starts, tenders for a Peace Conference shall be asked for and the lowest estimate accepted.
A Walsall carter has summoned a fellow-worker because during a quarrel he stepped on his face. It was not so much that he had stepped on his face, we understand, as the fact that he had loitered about on it.
A painful mistake is reported from North London. It appears that a young lady who went to a fancy-dress ball as "The Silent Wife" was awarded the first prize for her clever impersonation of a telephone girl.
We are glad to learn that the thoughtless tradesman who, in spite of the notice, "Please ring the bell," deliberately knocked at the front-door of a wooden house, has now had to pay the full cost of rebuilding.
After reading in her morning paper that bumping races were held recently at Cambridge, a dear old lady expressed sorrow that the disgraceful scenes witnessed in many dance-rooms in London had spread to one of our older universities.
Tyrolese hats have reappeared in London after an interval of nearly five years. We understand that the yodel waistcoat will also be heard this spring.
A Welshman was fined fifteen pounds last week for fishing for salmon with a lamp. Defendant's plea, that he was merely investigating the scientific question of whether salmon yawn in their sleep, was not accepted.
MORE BOAT-RACE "INTELLIGENCE."
But will they catch Cambridge at Barnes?
"The Cambridge people have elected to use a scull with a tubular shank or 'loom.'
We have a silly old-fashioned preference for the use of oars in this competition.
Lest they should suffer from swelled head?
THE "NEW" WORLD.
In these, the young Millennium's years, Whereof they loudly boomed the birth, Promising by the lips of seers New Heavens and a brand-new Earth, We find the advertised attraction In point of novelty is small, And argument by force of action Would seem the oldest wheeze of all.
When Prehistoric Man desired Communion with his maid elect, And arts of suasion left him tired, He took to action more direct; Scaring her with a savage whoop or Putting his club across her head, He bore her in a state of stupor Home to his stony bridal bed.
In ages rather more refined, Gentlemen of the King's highway, Whose democratic tastes inclined To easy hours and ample pay, Would hardly ever hold their victim Engaged in academic strife, But raised their blunderbuss and ticked him Off with "Your money or your life."
So when your miners, swift to scout The use of reason's slow appeal, Threaten to starve our children out And bring the country in to heel, There's nothing, as I understand it, So very new in this to show; The cave-man and the cross-roads bandit Were there before them long ago.
O.S.
FAIR WEAR AND TEAR.
In a short time now we shall have to return this flat to its proper tenants and arrive at some assessment of the damage done to their effects. With regard to the other rooms, even the room which Richard and Priscilla condescend to use as a nursery, I shall accept the owners' estimate cheerfully enough, I think; but the case of the drawing-room furniture is different. About the nursery I have only heard vague rumours, but in the drawing-room I have been an eye-witness of the facts.
The proper tenant is a bachelor who lived here with his sister; he will scarcely realise, therefore, what happens at 5 P.M. every day, when there comes, as the satiric poet, LONGFELLOW, has so finely sung--
"A pause in the day's occupations, Which is known as the children's hour."
Drawing-room furniture indeed! When one considers the buildings and munition dumps, the live and rolling stock, the jungles and forests in that half-charted territory; when one considers that even the mere wastepaper basket by the writing-desk is sometimes the tin helmet under which Richard defies the frightfulness of LARS PORSENA, and sometimes a necessary stage property for Priscilla's two favourite dramatic recitations
and
and sometimes the hutch that harbours a cotton-wool creation supposed to be a white rabbit, and stated by the owner to be "munsin' and munsin' and munsin' a carrot"--when, I say, I consider all these things I anticipate that the proceedings of the Reparation Commission will be something like this:--
Finally, I imagine he will see how reasonable my attitude is and how little he has to complain of. He will recognise that one cannot deal with complicated properties of this sort without a certain amount of inevitable dilapidation and loss.
As a matter of fact I have an even stronger line of argument if I choose to take it. I can put in a counter-claim. One of the principal attractions of old furniture, after all, is historic association. There is the armchair, you know, that Dr. JOHNSON sat in, and the inkpot, or whatever it was, that MARY, Queen of Scots, threw at JOHN BUNYAN or somebody, and I have also seen garden-seats carved out of famous battleships. And then again, if you go to Euston, or it may be Darlington, you will find on the platform the original tea-kettle out of which GEORGE WASHINGTON constructed the first steam-engine. The drawing-room furniture that we are relinquishing combines the interest of all these things. If I like I can put a placard on the sofa, before I take its owner to see it, worded something like this:--
"Puffing Billy, the original steam-roller out of which this elegant piece was carved, held the 1920 record for fourteen trips to Brighton and back within half-an-hour." And after he has seen that I can lead him gently on to Roaring Rupert, the arm-chair. Really, therefore, when one comes to consider it, the man owes me a considerable sum of money for the enhanced sentimental value that has been given to his commonplace property.
Mind you, I have no wish to be too hard on him. I shall be content with a quite moderate claim, or even with no claim at all. Possibly, now I come to think of it; I shall simply say,
"You know what it is to have a couple of bally kids about the place. What shall I give you to call it square?"
And he will name a sum and offer me a cigarette, and we shall talk a little about putting or politics.
But it doesn't much matter. Whatever he asks he can only put it down in the receipts' column of his account-book under the heading of "Depreciation of Furniture," whereas in my expenses it will stand as "Richard and Priscilla: for Adventures, Travel and Romance."
EVOE.
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