"That auspicious day when the velvet glove will be stripped for
ever from the cloven hoof of the German Eagle."--_London Opinion_.
* * * * *
"The fact that a few girls earn abnormal wages has obscured in the
public mind the the Board to accept the gift a Bill is to be
age girl working 48 hours a week earned only 18s. or 19s. a
week."--_Daily Paper_.
This statement should go far to clear up the obscurity in the public
mind.
* * * * *
"Mr. ---- gave one of his popular lectures on 'Alcohol' and its
effects on March the 30th in the Wesleyan school."--_True Blue
Magazine_.
What exactly did happen on March 30th in the Wesleyan school?
* * * * *
"WANTED, Smart Workman, aged 80, and exempt from military
service, as handy man; must be steady; a job for life for careful
man."--_Cambria Daily Leader_.
He must be particularly careful to guard against premature decease.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Waitress_. "WE HAVE A VERY REALISTIC MOCK-POTATO
SOUP."]
* * * * *
=EMILY'S MISSION.=
It was all through Emily that I am to-day the man I am.
We were extraordinarily lucky to get her; there was no doubt about
that. Her testimonials or character or references or whatever it is
that they come to you with were just the last word. Even the head of
the registry-office, a frigid thin-lipped lady of some fifty winters,
with an unemotional cold-mutton eye, was betrayed, in speaking of
Emily, into a momentary lapse from the studied English of her normal
vocabulary.
"Madam," she said to my wife, "I have known many housemaids, but never
one like this. She is, I assure you, Madam, absolutely IT."
So we engaged her; and ere long I came to hate her with a hatred such
as I trust I shall never again cherish for any human being.
In almost every respect she proved perfection. She was honest, she
was quick, she was clean; she loved darning my socks and ironing my
handkerchiefs; she never sulked, she never smashed, her hair never
wisped (a thing I loathe in housemaids). In one point only she failed,
failed more completely than any servant I have ever known. She would
not make my shaving-water really hot.
Cursed by nature with an iron-filings beard and a delicate tender
skin, I was a man for whom it was impossible to shave with comfort in
anything but absolutely boiling water. Yet morning after morning I
sprang from my bed to find the contents of my jug just a little over
or under the tepid mark. There was no question of re-heating the
water on the gas stove, for I never allowed myself more than the very
minimum of time for dressing, swallowing my breakfast and catching my
train. It was torture.
I spoke to Emily about it, mildly at first, more forcibly as the weeks
wore on, passionately at last. She apologised, she sighed, she wrung
her hands. Once she wept--shed hot scalding tears, tears I could
gladly have shaved in had they fallen half-an-hour earlier. But it
made no difference; next morning my water was as chill as ever.
I could not understand it. Every day my wrath grew blacker, my
reproaches more vehement.
Finally an hour came when I said to my wife, "One of two things must
happen. Either that girl goes or I grow a beard."
Mildred shook her head. "We can't possibly part with her. We should
never get another servant like her."
"Very well," I said.
On the morrow I started for my annual holiday, alone. It was late
summer. I journeyed into the wilds of Wiltshire. I took two rooms in
an isolated cottage, and on the first night of my stay, before getting
into bed, I threw my looking-glass out of the window. Next morning
I began. Day by day I tramped the surrounding country, avoiding all
intercourse with humanity, and day by day my beard grew.
I could feel it growing, and the first scrubbiness of it filled me
with rage. But as time slipped by it became softer and more pliable,
and ceased to irritate me. Freed, too, from the agony of shaving, I
soon found myself eating my breakfast in a more equable frame of mind
than I had enjoyed for years. I began also to notice in my walks all
sorts of things that had not struck me at first--the lark a-twitter
in the blue, the good smell of wet earth after rain, the pale gold of
ripening wheat. And at last, before ever I saw it, very gradually I
came to love my beard, to love the warm comfort and cosiness of it,
and to wonder half timidly what it looked like.
When I left, just before my departure for the six-miles-distant
station, I called for a looking-glass. They brought me a piece of the
one I had cast away. It was very small, but it served my purpose. I
gazed and heaved a sigh of rapturous content; a sigh that came from my
very heart. My beard was short and thick, its colour a deep glorious
brown, with golden lights here and there where the sunbeams danced in
some lighter cluster of its curling strands. A beard that a king might
wear.
I have never shaved again. Every morning now, while untold millions
of my suffering fellows are groaning beneath their razors, I steal an
extra fifteen minutes from the day and lie and laugh inside my beard.
"And what of Emily?" you ask.
Almost immediately after my return she left us. She gave no reason.
She was not unhappy, she said. She wished to make a change, that was
all. To this day my wife cannot account for her departure. But I know
why she went. Emily was a patriot with a purpose. A month after she
parted from us I received a letter from her:--
"Dear Sir,--May I ask you to take into consideration the fact that
by having ceased to shave you will in future be effecting a slight
economy in your daily expenditure? Might I also suggest to you
that during the remainder of the War you should make a voluntary
contribution to the national exchequer of every shilling saved under
this head? The total sum will not be large, but everything counts.
Yours is, if I may be allowed to say so, the finest beard I have been
instrumental in producing during my two and a half years' experience
in domestic service. I am now hard at work on my sixth case, which is
approaching its crisis.
Apologising for any temporary inconvenience I may have caused you, I
am,
Yours faithfully, EMILY JOHNSON,
_Foundress and President of the
Housemaids' Society for the
Promotion of Patriotic Beards._"
I never showed the letter to my wife, but I have acted on Emily's
suggestion. I often think of her still, her whole soul afire with her
patriotic mission, flitting, the very flower of housemaids, from home
to home, lingering but a little while in each, in each content for
that little while to be loathed and stormed at by an exasperated
shaver, whom she transforms into a happy bearded contributor to her
fund.
* * * * *
=Another Impending Apology.=
"This terrible fire roused hundreds of people from their beds,
and a great crowd gathered in the adjoining streets; but
Sub-divisional Inspector Stock and Inspector Ping were on the spot
within a few months after receiving the call."--_Westminster and
Pimlico News_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Cowman_ (_to new recruit, Women's Land Army_). "YOU
GET BEHIND THAT THERE WATER-BUTT. MEBBE COWS WON'T COME IN IF THEY SEE
YOU IN THAT THERE RIG."]
* * * * *
=THE FIFTEEN TRIDGES.=
Once upon a time there was a flourishing covey of fifteen: Pa Tridge,
Ma Tridge, and thirteen little Tridges, all brown and speckled and
very chirpy. They had been born in a hollow under some big leaves
beside a hedge, and they now moved about the earth, pushing their way
through the grass, all keeping close together when they could, and
setting up no end of a piping when they couldn't and thought they were
lost.
It was a large family from our point of view, and larger perhaps than
a prudent French partridge would approve, but the world is wide, and
there are no butcher's or baker's or tailor's or dress-maker's bills
to pay for little birds. All that a Pa and Ma Tridge have to do after
fledging is complete is to look out for cats and hawks and foxes, to
beware of the feet of clumsy cattle, and to administer correction and
advice. Above all there are no school bills, made so doubly ridiculous
among ourselves by German measles and other epidemics during which
no learning is imparted, but for which, educationalists being a wily
crew, no rebate is offered.
There being so little to be done for their young, it is no wonder, in
a didactic and over-articulate world, that parent Tridges take almost
too kindly to sententiousness; and young Tridges, being so numerous as
to constitute a public meeting in themselves, are specially liable to
admonishment.
It was therefore that, strolling aimlessly amid the herbage or the
young wheat with their audience all about them, Pa and Ma Tridge got
into a habit of counsel which threatened to become so chronic that
there was a danger of its dulling their sensibility to the approach of
September the first.
"Never," Pa Tridge would say, "criticise anyone or anything on
hearsay. See for yourself and then make up your own mind; but don't
hurry to put it into words."
"Tell the truth as often as possible," Pa Tridge would say. "It is
not only better citizenship to do so, but it makes things easier for
yourself in the long run."
"Always bear in mind," Ma Tridge would say, "that after one has
married one's cook she ceases to cook."
"Never tell anyone," Pa Tridge would say, "who it was you saw in the
spinney with Mr. Jay or Mrs. Woodpecker."
"Indeed," he would add, "you might make a note that the world would
not come to a miserable end if everyone was born dumb"--but he was
very glad not to be dumb himself.
"Even though you should get on intimate terms with a pheasant," Ma
Tridge would say, "don't brag about it."
"Forgive, but don't forget," Pa Tridge would say.
"Remember," Pa Tridge would say, "that, though it may be wiser to say
No, most of the fun and all the adventure of the world have come from
saying Yes."
"Bear in mind," Ma Tridge would say--but that is more than enough of
the tiresome old bores.
And after each piece of advice the little Tridges would all say,
"Right-O!"
And then one night--these being English Tridges in an English early
summer--a terrible frost set in which lasted long enough to kill the
whole covey, partly by cold and partly by starvation, so that all the
good counsels were wasted.
But on the chance that one or two of them may be applicable to human
life I have jotted them down here. One never knows which is grain and
which chaff until afterwards.
* * * * *
=OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.=
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
We have had many studies of the War, in various aspects, from our
own army. Now in _My ·75_ (HEINEMANN) there comes a record of the
impressions of a French gunner during the first year of fighting. It
is a book of which I should find it difficult to speak too highly.
PAUL LINTIER, the writer, had, it is clear, a gift for recording
things seen with quite unusual sharpness of effect. His word-pictures
of the mobilisation, the departure for the Front, and the fighting
from the Marne to the Aisne (where he was wounded and sent home) carry
one along with a suspense and interest and quite personal emotion that
are a tribute to their artistry. His death (the short preface tells us
that, having returned to the Front, he was killed in action in March,
1916) has certainly robbed France of one who should have made a
notable figure in her literature. The style, very distinctive, shows
poetic feeling and a rare and beautiful tenderness of thought, mingled
with an acceptance of the brutality of life and war that is seen in
the vivid descriptions of incidents that our own gentler writers would
have left untold. The horror of some of these passages makes the book
(I should warn you) not one for shaken nerves. But there can be no
question of its very unusual interest, nor of the skill with which its
translator, who should surely be acknowledged upon the title-page, has
preserved the vitality and appeal of the original.
[Illustration: _Tommy_ (_who has made a find in a German dug-out_).
"_NOW_, ALBERT, AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU CAME? WHY, THESE CIGARS IN LONDON
WOULD COST YOU CLOSE ON A TANNER APIECE."]
* * * * *
The author of _Helen of Four Gates_ (JENKINS) has chosen to hide her
identity and call herself simply "An Ex-Mill Girl." I am sufficiently
sorry for this to hope that, if the story meets with the success that
I should certainly predict for it, a lady of such unusual gifts may
allow us to know her name. Of these gifts I have no doubt whatever. As
a tale _Helen of Four Gates_ is crude, unnatural, melodramatic; but
the power (brutality, if you prefer) of its telling takes away the
critical breath. Whether in real life anyone could have nursed a
lifelong hatred as old _Mason_ did (personally I cherish the belief
that hatred is too evanescent an emotion for a life-tenancy of the
human mind; but I may be wrong); whether he would have bribed a casual
tramp to marry and torment the reputed daughter who was the object of
his loathing, or whether _Day_ and _Helen_ herself would actually so
have played into his hands, are all rather questionable problems.
Far more real, human and moving is the wild passion of _Helen_ for
_Martin_, whom (again questionably as to truth) her enemies frighten
away from her. A grim story, you begin to observe, but one altogether
worth reading. To compare things small (as yet) with great, I might
call it a lineal descendant of _Wuthering Heights_, both in setting
and treatment. There is indeed more than a hint of the BRONTË touch
about the Ex-Mill Girl. For that and other things I send her (whoever
she is) my felicitations and good wishes.
* * * * *
I wonder if Mr. (or Mrs. or Miss) E.K. WEEKES would understand me if I
put my verdict upon _The Massareen Affair_ (ARNOLD) into the form of
a suggestion that in future its author would be well advised to keep
quiet. Not with any meaning that he or she should desist from the
pursuit of fiction; on the contrary, there are aspects of _The
Massareen Affair_ that are more than promising--vigorous and
unconventional characters, a gift of lively talk, and so on. But all
this only operates so long as the tale remains in the calm waters of
the ordinary; later, when it puts forth upon the sea of melodrama, I
am sorry to record that this promising vessel comes as near shipwreck
as makes no difference. To drop metaphor, the group of persons
surrounding the unhappily-wedded _Anthony Massareen_--_Claudia_, who
attempts to rescue him and his two boys, the boys themselves, and the
clerical family whose fortunes are affected by their proximity to
the _Massareens_--all these are well and credibly drawn. But when
we arrive at the fanatic wife of _Anthony_, in her Welsh castle,
surrounded by rocks and blow-holes, and finally to that last great
scene, where (if I followed events accurately) she trusses her
ex-husband like a fowl, and trundles him in a wheel-barrow to the pyre
of sacrifice, not the best will in the world could keep me convinced
or even decorously thrilled. So I will content myself with repeating
my advice to a clever writer in future to ride imagination on the
curb, and leave you to endorse this or not as taste suggests.
* * * * *
I am seriously thinking of chaining _Grand Fleet Days_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON) to my bookcase, for it is written by the author of _In
the Northern Mists_, a book which has destroyed the morality of my
friends. Be assured that I am not formulating any grave charge against
the anonymous Chaplain of the Fleet who has provided us with these
two delightful volumes; I merely wish to say that nothing can prevent
people from purloining the first, and that drastic measures will have
to be taken if I am to retain the second. In these dialogues and
sketches I do not find quite so much spontaneity as in the first
volume; once or twice it is even possible to imagine that the author,
after taking pen in hand, was a little perplexed to find a subject to
write about. But that is the beginning and the end of my complaint.
Once again we have a broad-minded humour and the revelation of a most
attractive personality. Above all we see our Grand Fleet as it is;
and, if the grumblers would only read and soundly digest what our
Chaplain has to say their question would be, "What is our Navy _not_
doing?"
* * * * *
"The sight was wonderful. From the grand lodge entrance to the
lake-side quite 3,000 blue-breeched khaki-coated men and nurses
lined one side of the long drive."--_Manchester Evening News_.
It must indeed have been a wonderful sight. Nevertheless we hope that
nurses generally will stick to their traditional uniform.
* * * * *