Further and final particulars of the drawings from the Lucky Bag at
the Purple City are replete with illustrations of the extraordinary
congruity between the prizes and the age, sex and station of the
recipients.
Mrs. Sarah Boakes, who received the colossal equestrian bronze statue
of Lord THANET, weighing three hundred tons and valued at five
thousand guineas, told our representative that the idea of getting one
of the big prizes never entered into her head, and added, "I did not
sleep a wink last night; the statue was in my mind the whole time."
Mrs. Boakes, an attractive elderly lady of some seventy-five summers,
is engaged at a laundry at East Putney. The haulage of the statue to
her home at 129, Arabella Road, S.W. 15, is likely to be a costly
affair; but Mrs. Boakes has made an application for a grant-in-aid to
the Ministry of Health and has received a sympathetic reply from Dr.
ADDISON. The cost of reconstructing her house to enable the statue to
be set up in her parlour is estimated at about L4,500.
Mr. Jolyon Forsyth, who won the African elephant, is a stoker on the
South Western Railway and lives at Worplesdon. He applied to the
Company for a day's leave in order to ride his prize home; but his
request was most unwarrantably refused, and the matter is receiving
the earnest attention of the N.U.R. Mr. Forsyth informed our
representative that his wife keeps a small poultry run, and hopes that
she will be able to make room for the new visitor without seriously
incommoding her fowls. Failing that, he thinks that employment may be
found for the elephant on the Worplesdon Links, either in rolling the
greens or irrigating them with its trunk. The claims of the animal to
an unemployment allowance are being considered by Dr. MACNAMARA.
Gladys Gilkes, a bright-eyed child of six, living with her parents
at 345, Beaverbrook Avenue, Harringay, who received a Sandringham
opera-hat, is enduring her felicity with fortitude. "I have never been
to the opera yet," she naively remarked to our representative, "but my
brother Bert plays beautifully on the concertina."
Great interest has been excited in the neighbourhood of Tulse Hill
by the success of Mr. Enoch Pegler, the winner of the three-manual
electric cathedral organ with sixty-four stops, the most sonorous
instrument of its type yet constructed by Messrs. Waghorn and Fogg,
the famous organ-builders of Penge. A special piquancy is lent to the
episode by the fact that Mr. Pegler, who is seventy-nine years of age
and has long been a martyr to rheumatoid arthritis in both hands,
belongs to the sect of the Silentiary Tolstoyans, who discountenance
all music, whether sacred or profane. Mr. Pegler, it should be
explained, authorised his grandniece, Miss Hester Wigglesworth, to put
in for the Lucky Bag in his name, but, on the advice of the family
physician, Dr. Parry Gorwick, the result has not yet been broken to
him. Meanwhile, thanks to the tactful intervention of Sir ERIC GEDDES,
the instrument has been temporarily housed in the Zoological Gardens,
where daily recitals are given at meal-times by Dr. CHALMERS MITCHELL
and other powerful executants. Unfortunately the organ was not yet
installed at the time of the recent encounter between a lion and a
tigress, otherwise the fatality would, in the opinion of Sir FREDERICK
BRIDGE, have almost certainly been avoided.
* * * * *
When that my Judith sticks her slender nose
In things whereon a lass doth ill to trench,
An ever-widening breach my fancy shows,
For this is but the thin end of the wench.
* * * * *
[Illustration: LABOR OMNIA VINCIT.
"TURN HIM TO ANY CAUSE OF POLICY, THE GORDIAN KNOT OF IT HE WILL
UNLOOSE, FAMILIAR AS HIS GARTER."
_HENRY V._, I. i. 46.]
[Illustration: _The Girl._ "I DON'T THINK YOUR FRIEND CAN BE MUCH
CLASS."
_The Boy._ "WHY? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HIM?"
_The Girl_ "WELL, WHEN I INTRODUCED HIM TO MY FRIEND, SHE, OF COURSE,
SAID, 'PLEASED TO MEET YOU,' AND HE SAID, 'GRANTED.'"]