THE WITTY GIRL.
"She is pretty to walk with,
And witty to talk with,
And pleasant, too, to think on."
First let us understand each other.
By the witty girl is not here meant the girl--if such a girl
exists--whose conversation has the high brilliancy which characterises
the conversation of certain men and women.
No. The thing here meant is nothing more than the common domestic
wit-snapper, generally, say her enemies, more of a snapper than a wit,
concerning which statement it is perhaps not unpermissible to say that
he who makes it shows himself to be less a wit than a snapper.
While all but invariably of a character that loses much by the process
of retailing, the wit of the girl here in view will sometimes bear
being brought to book. The samples of it given in this paper are all
authentic and heretofore unpublished. They do not, perhaps, reach a
high standard of excellence, but they who know girls will concede that
they are good girl-wit of the middle order.
Take a case like this: "My name is May. I feel I am reaching the age
when I should be called Hawthorn."
Or take this: "Your mother will miss you when you marry."
"No--then she'll 'Mrs.' me."
Such jests are the _bric-à-brac_ of home conversation, and make it
pretty.
He who listens to the talk between girls and their brothers will
sometimes hear a thing worth noting, in compensation for the many
things not worth noting which--if the truth is to be told--he will also
hear.
The following does not show young Ethel at her best, but it also does
not show her at her worst.
"D'you know, Jim," she said, "that two-year-old babies can marry on
Jupiter?"
"Don't talk bosh, Ethel!"
"But they can. It's this way. A year on Jupiter is eleven years and ten
months of our time, so the two-year-old babies are grown up. Ee--you
didn't know that!"
[Illustration: A runaway match on Jupiter the bride being under age]
Jim said nothing. But when young Ethel exploited her astronomy with
Bob, she found her overmatch. This is precisely what was said by them--
_Bob:_ "One can hear your voice ten miles off, Ethel."
_Y. E.:_ "Make it nine, Bob?"
_Bob:_ "Why?"
_Y. E.:_ "Nine miles is the greatest distance at which thunder can be
heard."
_Bob:_ "TIT-BITS."
The fact is that young Ethel is less an astronomer than a student of
current periodical literature. What matters it, after all, however,
whence she gleans her general information, if her reading enables her
to say--as I once heard her say--with veritable wit, to a girl who was
wearing a primrose brooch--
"Blossom and leaves of the primrose are ---- Radical."
There are funny men in Parliament who have never said anything much
more funny than that.
In her captious mood the witty girl is very terrible. A North Briton
has been thus described by her: "A big, lumpy, pale-faced, red-haired,
freckled Scotchman," and it was a witty, but captious, girl who said of
a certain pianist, a concert given by whom she had attended, "His feet
obscured the platform."
[Illustration: A pianist's great feet]
The literary appreciations of the witty girl are few. She is apt, in
appraising poets, to take them at their weakest rather than at their
strongest. She judges Wordsworth by his "Idiot Boy," and she would be
capable of passing sentence on Cowper as having cut in his door three
holes of different sizes for his tom-cat, his tabby cat and his kitten.
[Illustration: She thinks him a victim of heredity
WORDSWORTH'S IDIOT BOY]
Yet another tendency of the witty girl which must be strongly
deprecated, is to harp on phrases which may have once had a faintly
comical ring, but which have long lost it; such phrases as, "Where
does this live?" applied to inanimate objects, or, "Hang on to this,"
used in reference to objects held in the hand. It would be interesting
to know who first evolved these mild witticisms destined to win such
enduring popularity.
The singular phraseology of girls not minded to confine themselves to
English of the academies has of late been made the subject of much
comment. There follow here some specimens of it in which the facetious
was aimed at, and in some cases not unsuccessfully.
Wordsworth was, by a Scotch Annie, described as a "baa-lamby;" a Welsh
Beatrice described "a most wizened farewell concert;" her impressions
of Holland were summed up by an English Madge in the words "flobby
bread and flobby wall-paper," and an Irish Constance, writing to her
home in Ireland from a school in France attended by her with her
sister Ethel, penned this anomalous statement, "We are here six Irish,
counting Ethel, and six English, counting me."
[Illustration: Wordsworth looking sheepish]
Both these girls were the daughters of an Irishman and an Englishwoman.
She who was accounted of the six English had been born in her mother's
country, while she who was accounted of the six Irish had been born in
that of her father. In drawing the fine line of distinction which made
her English and her sister Irish, the young maid Constance aimed not at
precision but at wit, and, as behoved her father's daughter, she did
not aim at wit in vain. Her letter was read with laughter.
In almost all girls' letters there is a marked quality of phrasing
which, even when not witty, is mirth-provoking. Take the following:
"Papa has just come back from London, and has brought me a very
thin umbrella, with a steel stick running through it, just simply
frightfully elegant; also a pair of shoes, fawn antelope, embroidered
with gold beads. You needn't sniff."
Sniff, indeed? Perish the thought!
"Tinpot" used as an adjective does not spoil the following curious bit
of description penned by a London girl during a stay in Ryde:
"I am enjoying myself very much in a quiet, non-dissipated, tinpot
way--walking on the sea-wall and the pier, reading Carlyle and Marion
Crawford, and making little vests for Kilburn orphans."
[Illustration: A dissipated tinpot]
Only a girl could have written that, and of its kind it is admirable.
An idea largely held by girls, in common with women and men who have a
witty tendency, is that appreciation is a form of ignorance. It was, be
it here called to remembrance, to correct this notion, that Wordsworth
wrote, "True knowledge leads to love," and that Browning wrote,
"Admiration grows as knowledge grows."
[Illustration: Appreciation a form of ignorance]
It is doubtless the circumstance that unkindness is so often confounded
with wit that has led to the fact that of all good gifts the good gift
of wit is the one held in least liking by the majority of persons.
The truth would seem to be that, with wit, as with everything else
not intrinsically bad, the thing of main importance is that it be
handled carefully. Like gunpowder, it has its uses to him who knows how
to avail himself of them. He who does not, would do well to do what
certain savages once did. Having come into the possession of a bag
of gunpowder, they carefully preserved it till the spring, when they
planted it as they did their corn. It did not burst forth when the corn
burst forth; so much the better for the sowers. That gunpowder was very
safely deposited, and much wit might with equal advantage be held over
till the next planting season.
[Illustration: PURE HONEY
BEST BALM]
Another thing. The wit-snapper should always carry about with him a
little balm and a little honey. That was a good sword that Cambuscan
had; it could heal the wounds it gave. Only the wit-snapper who carries
a little balm and a little honey will be as well equipped as was the
knight whose story Chaucer "left half-told."
A further point which calls for passing comment is this. Wit and
merriment do not always go hand in hand; indeed, they are often
sundered wide. Thus, of the world's famous humorists, it is well known
that they were mostly melancholy at the home-fireside. Something
very similar holds good in the case of girls--and there are many
such--who, while witty in society, are deplorably glum in the family
circle, in this unlike a girl of girls whom her father called
"Minnehaha"--laughing water--so merry was she in her home, beyond which
her influence was to be shed so far that she is known to-day from Indus
to the Pole as the friend of Indian women.
[Illustration: Nell Witty]
If they be right who consider, in opposition to Juliet, that something
is in a name, then those among us who hold that such a name as
Juliet tends to annihilate wit in the possessor of it are not mere
fancy-mongers, and we are entitled to a courteous hearing when we
submit that on the other hand the name Nelly, and still more the
variant of it by which it becomes Nell, almost announces the owner of
it to be a wit. This circumstance is quite independent of the fact that
Scott has said, in just so many words, in reference to a particular
case, "Mistress Nelly, wit she has," and if any explanation of it may
be hazarded, the one which will probably satisfy most is that persons
named Nelly or Nell--and the number of such is, happily, legion--are
hardly ever found lacking in whimsicality. In the few cases in which
they are deficient in this quality they should be called--and, as a
matter of fact, they are generally called--Nella, the name Nella being
that form of Nelly or Nell by which all the sparkle is taken out of it.
In conclusion, a word on wits under their physiognomical aspect. That a
certain type of face in general denotes a witty person may be allowed.
"The slightly tossed nose," says one of Thomas Moore's biographers,
"confirmed the fun of the expression."
"The slightly tossed nose" for what the French call "nez retroussé" is
happy wording. Girl-readers of this who have "tossed" noses are, by
their faces, wits. Let this console them, if it so hap that they want
consolation. On the other part, girls with short upper lips have a part
of beauty, but lack a part of wit. Wherefore, if they be vain, let
there be a curb put on their vanity, and let girls with long upper lips
hold up their heads, for a long upper lip denotes wit.
OUR PUZZLE POEM REPORT: "TO A GIRL GOLFER."
SOLUTION.
TO A GIRL GOLFER.
Take a helpless little ball,
Drive it into space;
If perchance you see it fall,
Try to find the place.
And, as it is very small,
Hit again that hapless ball
With a savage grace.
If your strength and courage stand
Such unwonted strain,
By-and-by your ball will land
On a little plain,
Near a hole--you understand--
Into which you putt it and
Then begin again.
PRIZE WINNERS.
_Seven Shillings and Sixpence Each._
Edith Ashworth, The Mount, Knutsford.
Dr. R. Swan Coulthard, Coventry.
Mrs. Deane, Lismoyle, Ballymoney, co. Antrim.
Edith E. Grundy, 105, London Road, Leicester.
Edward St. G. Hodson, Twyford, Athlone, Ireland.
G. Honeyburne, 16, Hawkshead Street, Southport, Lancs.
Louise M. McCready, Howth, co. Dublin.
Annie Manderson, Waterfoot, Crumlin, co. Antrim.
F. M. Morgan, The Library, Armagh.
May Robson, Garry Lodge, Perth, N.B.
W. Shattock, Hillmorton Villa, Sneyd Park, near Bristol.
Mrs. Isabel Snell, 51, Mere Road, Leicester.
Alice Woodhead, Tickhill, Rotheram, Yorkshire.
Elizabeth Yarwood, 59, Beech Road, Cale Green, Stockport.
_Very Highly Commended._
Florence Ashwin, Rev. S. Bell, Nanette Bewley, M. J. Champneys, Edith
Collins, Nellie R. Hasmer, Helen Lapage, Annie Roberson, A. C. Sharp.
_Highly Commended._
Eliza Acworth, A. A. Campbell, N. Campbell, Rev. F. T. Chamberlain,
Rev. J. Chambers, Mary I. Chislett, N. Chute, Nina Coote, Mrs. Cumming,
R. D. Davis, Wm. Fraser, Percy H. Horne, J. Hunt, Alice E. Johnson,
Mildred E. Lockyear, Winifred Lockyear, Annie G. Luck, Mrs. T. Maxwell,
F. Miller, E. C. Milne, E. Nerve, Edward Roqulski, Gertrude Saffery, S.
Southall, C. E. Thurgar, Aileen Tyler.
_Honourable Mention._
Mrs. Acheson, Elizabeth M. Caple, Annie J. Cather, J. A. Center, Mrs.
Crossman, Ellie Crossman, Winifred Eady, A. S. K. Ellson, Phyllis
M. Fulford, Agnes Glen, Alice Goakes, Beatrice E. Hackforth, Sadie
Harbison, M. Hooppell, Rose A. Hooppell, Mima How, A. J. Knight, E.
M. Le Mottée, Carlina V. M. Leggett, May Lethbridge, E. E. Lockyear,
E. Lord, E. Macalister, Margaret A. Macalister, Nellie Meikle, C.
A. Murton, Jas. D. Musgrave, Mrs. Nicholls, Henrietta M. Oldfield,
Hannah E. Powell, Ellen M. Price, F. C. Redgrave, Ada Rickards, James
Scott, Violet Shoberl, Mildred M. Skrine, Marriott T. Smiley, Annie E.
Starritt, Ellen C. Tarrant, S. Taylor, Mrs. Walker, W. Fitzjames White,
Florence Whitlock, Emily Wilkinson, Edith Mary Younge, Helen B. Younger.
EXAMINERS' REPORT.
Hitherto we have been in the habit of associating all that was best
concerning the game of golf with the Scottish Nation. In the future
we shall have to remember that out of fourteen golf puzzle prizes,
five went to Ireland and only one to Scotland, and modify our view
accordingly. Of England's share we find it difficult to speak with
becoming modesty.
If the north of the Tweed had been honoured by our earliest presence
we should have found no difficulty in explaining away the National
failure--for how else can it be regarded?--in connection with this
puzzle. "A poem with such a title," we should have said, "must surely
contain advice about our noble game. As we have played it with
considerable success for at least four hundred and fifty years, we can
need no advice, and therefore we will not trouble to solve your puzzle."
But our birthplace was many miles south of the Tweed, and such an
explanation would not appeal to us with any force. The simple fact
remains: Ireland receives one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence,
Scotland, only seven shillings and sixpence, and England--well, modesty
forbids us to say how much!
Not long ago golf was regarded as an occupation for elderly gentlemen
whose time and energies were at the service of any respectable game.
With much impressiveness they used to traverse the links decked in red
coats, the brilliancy of which signified the extremity of the danger to
which the unwary onlooker was exposed.
But a few years have changed all that. Now for one elderly, impressive,
red-coated gentleman to be found, there are many young men who cannot
afford red coats and maidens in plenty who wouldn't wear them if they
could. To this last class our puzzle poem was addressed, not by way of
advice but as a sympathetic intimation that we know all about the game
in which they so freely indulge.
Naturally enough the title was frequently rendered "To a golfer," and
after much serious consideration we decided to accept it. This being
so, some who did not receive prizes will possibly wonder why. The
explanation is simple enough: our ruling left us with so many claimants
for the five guineas that we set aside those who did not trouble to
indent the lines properly.
We wonder how many of the solvers who wrote "helpless" in the first
line really discovered that the p was less than the other letters.
It is also to be observed that the ball in the same line was much
smaller than the others in the puzzle and therefore was intended to be
designated "little." Hence the rhythm required the word "very" in the
fifth line--s--_very small_. So many solvers failed to notice these
points that it is necessary to call attention to them.
It was not even right to leave out the "little" _and_ the "very,"
because then the rhythm of the first verse would not coincide with that
of the second.
Authorities differ as to the spelling of by-and-bye; apparently the
more modern ones prefer it without the e, and of course we accepted
both ways as correct.
The statement in line thirteen does not seem to have been universally
understood. When you are playing golf you do not "put" the ball into
the hole--unless no one is looking!--but you putt it in, which is a
very different matter. Curiously enough, not one solver who wrote "put"
pointed out that the reading involved a mistake in the line.
If any of our readers would like a puzzle on any particular subject or
subjects, let them mention it. Their wishes shall certainly receive
consideration and very possibly fulfilment.
"OUR HERO."
A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.
BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of "Sun, Moon and Stars," "The Girl at the
Dower House," etc.