[It is proposed to form a "Trust for the Preservation of Beautiful
or Historical Places."]
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever!"
Nay KEATS, sweet bard, earnest you were, and clever;
But "Things of Beauty" will not long be "joys"
If left to jerry-builders, cads, and boys;
And 'ARRY'S knife, and the fern-digger's trowel,
Used to disfigure and to disembowel
Art's masterpieces and dear Nature's charms,
Will work on Beauty's world destructive harms.
Sacred to silence, that the still monk's sandal
Brake only, spots there are the vulgar Vandal
And trampling Cockney Goth would quickly mar
More than the devastating tread of war.
Such to preserve, with all their winning beauties,
Is surely Civilisation's first of duties,--
Preserve from ravage of the rash cheap-tripper,
Or wanton blade of 'ARRY the cheek-chipper
And nose-disfigurer, with his POLL or 'TILDER,
Or wreckage of the Speculative Builder.
So _Punch_, the beauty-loving, thoughtful, just,
Wishes success to the new Beauty Trust!
* * * * *
[Illustration: ENHANCED VALUE.
_'Arry._ "WHAT SORT OF A JOB'S THAT YOU'VE GOT AT BABEL BUILDINGS, ALF?"
_Alf._ "JOLLY 'ARD; ALL THE MESSAGES AND PARCELS FROM THE TOP OF THE
'OUSE TO THE BASEMENT GO THROUGH ME; AND I'M ONLY GETTING THIRTY BOB A
WEEK!"
_'Arry._ "TELL YER WHAT, OLD MAN, YOU'D COMMAND DOUBLE THE MONEY IF YOU
WAS FITTED UP WITH A LIFT AND A SPEAKIN'TUBE!"]
* * * * *
"LOST RINGS."
SIR,--I have seen some letters in the _Daily Graphic_ on the above
subject. A much more curious thing happened to me on April 1, 1887, at
twenty-five minutes past ten in the morning. I dropped a pin about four
yards from the south-western corner of the Marble Arch. It is almost
incredible that exactly three years later I picked up a pin, at 4.17 in
the afternoon, three yards and seven and a quarter inches to the
south-east of the Humane Society's Receiving House. I have studied
carefully the levels of the ground, the flow of the surface water, and
the direction of the prevailing air currents, and I am reluctantly
forced to the conclusion that it was _not_ the same pin. Had it been, I
should have found it five and a half inches further north. The question
now is, whose pin was it?--Your obedient servant,