What is Master WINSTON doing?
What new paths is he pursuing?
What strange broth can he be brewing?
Is he painting, by commission,
Portraits of the Coalition
For the R.A. exhibition?
Is he Jacky-obin or anti?
Is he likely to "go Fanti,"
Or becoming shrewd and canty?
Is he in disguise at Kovel,
Living in a moujik's hovel,
Making a tremendous novel?
Does he run a photo-play show?
Or in _sæva indignatio_
Is he writing for HORATIO?
Fired by the divine afflatus
Does he weekly lacerate us,
Like a Juvenal _renatus?_
As the great financial purist,
Will he smite the sinecurist
Or emerge as a Futurist?
Is he regularly sending
HAIG and BEATTY screeds unending,
Good advice with censure blending?
Is he ploughing, is he hoeing?
Is he planting beet, or going
In for early 'tato-growing?
Is he writing verse or prosing,
Or intent upon disclosing
Gifts for musical composing?
Is he lecturing to flappers?
Is he tunnelling with sappers?
Has he joined the U-boat trappers?
Or, to petrify recorders
Of events within our borders,
_Has he taken Holy Orders?_
Is he well or ill or middling?
Is he fighting, is he fiddling?--
He can't only be thumb-twiddling.
These are merely dim surmises,
But experience advises
Us to look for weird surprises,
Somersaults, and strange disguises.
* * * * *
Thus we summed the situation
When Sir HEDWORTH MEUX' oration
Brought about a transformation.
Lo! the Blenheim Boanerges
On a sudden re-emerges
And, to calm the naval _gurges_,
FISHER'S restoration urges.
* * * * *
A Work of Supererogation.
"At an interval in the evening some carols were sung by members of our
G.F.S., and a collection was taken on behalf of a fund for providing
Huns for our soldiers."--_Parish Magazine_.
* * * * *