SIR,--In view of the correspondence with regard to the present
condition of our popular seaside resorts, it will, I feel sure,
interest your readers to learn that an examination of the air of
Whitecliffe lately made by a local analyst, reveals the fact that
it contains _fifty-five per cent. more ozone than is to be found on
the top of Mont Blanc!_ I publish this piece of intelligence purely
in the interests of science, and as I am writing I may perhaps take
the opportunity to mention that apartments here are both good and
reasonable, and the bathing first-rate. The same analyst incidentally
discovered that the air at Chorkstone is largely laden with poisonous
bacteria.
Yours truly, THE MAYOR OF WHITECLIFFE.
SIR,--At this time of year, when our glorious Lees are in the full
radiance of their summer beauty, it becomes a mere act of Christian
duty to warn intending holiday-makers to avoid Whitecliffe, and to
select Chorkstone as their place of sojourn instead. An eminent local
medical man asserts that morbiferous germs exist to a very dangerous
degree in the Whitecliffe atmosphere, and that the Whitecliffe water
is rendered almost solid by the multitude of bacilli it contains.
Another Chorkstone resident, who lately visited Whitecliffe, found
the air so relaxing that he fainted away, and had it not been for the
kindness of the landlord of a certain hotel, who had him carried out
of his bar and driven off in a trap to his own home, he believes he
would have succumbed! Comment is needless.
Yours impartially, THE MAYOR OF CHORKSTONE.
SIR,--There is not the slightest foundation for the ridiculous
_canard_ as to the inhabitants of this picturesque and abnormally
fashionable town being "in a state of complete panic, owing to the
fact that all the convicts recently confined at Shortland have broken
out, and are indulging in frightful excesses in the neighbourhood."
The convicts have _not_ broken out; but an epidemic of gratuitous
mendacity has done so, it appears.
Yours indignantly, THE MAYOR OF CURDSMOUTH.
P.S.--Have you heard about the sanitary state of Shutmouth? Shocking!
SIR,--As I hear that it is rumoured that M. PASTEUR has discovered an
entirely new and most dangerous kind of bacillus in the neighbourhood
of pine-trees, perhaps I may mention, in order to reassure our myriads
of intending summer visitors, that the death-rate at this town is
one in ten thousand, and that we should have had _no death-rate at
all last week_, if the one person referred to had not met with an
unfortunate accident. All the Shutmouth doctors are starving.
Yours, THE MAYOR OF SHUTMOUTH.
P.S.--Ought not something to be done to check the mortality at
Curdsmouth? It is disgraceful!
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