The Great Eastern have inaugurated a new plan for helping
food-producers. They are sending out an instructional train, manned by
experts and full of live stock--poultry and rabbits and goats--which
is to traverse their system for two months. The contents will be on
view and lectures will be given to cottagers, artisans, clerks--to all
in fact who are interested in the breeding of the lesser live-stock,
apple-growing, etc. The plan is so excellent that we feel sure it is
bound to lead to further developments in regard to the industries and
pursuits that really matter.
The rural districts, it may be safely assumed, already know something
about agriculture. But many areas are still in a state of benighted
ignorance about the results of intensive culture applied to the arts.
There are parts of the Cornish Riviera, for example, in which you may
travel for miles and miles without hearing a syncopated orchestra.
Here is the opportunity of the Great Western--to equip and despatch a
train band or band train, with a _personnel_ carefully selected from
the best negro performers (of whom there are now several thousands in
London), with the view of brightening and enlightening the existence
of those unfortunate villagers hitherto beyond the range of the
beneficent dominion of din. As an antidote to agricultural discontent
we can conceive nothing more salutary.
Again, there are portions of the Black Country where the very names of
the leading Georgian poets are unknown. A troupe of poets, personally
conducted by Mr. EDWARD MARCH or Mr. EDMUND GOSSE, or both, should
without delay be organized and sent forth by the North-Western and
Midland Railways to give recitations over every portion of both
systems. The effect on the output would be instantaneous. London
should not be allowed to monopolize this stimulant to activity.
Minstrelsy should be mobilized. It is true that a small group are
interested in rotary motion, but we want to see all the Georgian poets
on "Wheels." If we cannot have a free breakfast-table, at least we
ought to be in a position to indulge without any control the appetite
of our people for free verse.
Lastly, the plan of the instructional train might be applied with the
most beneficial results to spreading the taste for the Russian Ballet.
We do not hope to detach such bright particular stars as PAVLOVA or
KARSAVINA from the London stage, but at the present moment, according
to the latest statistical returns, there are several hundred Russian
_premieres danseuses_ and thousands of _coryphees_ of all grades
congregated in the Metropolis, many of them without engagements, and
reduced to giving dancing lessons to the daughters of profiteers,
Crypto-Semites and other unpropitious persons. The organisation of
a Russian Ballet train would therefore serve the double purpose of
freeing these gifted performers from an ignoble use of their talents
and at the same time initiating the provinces in the poetry of motion.
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[Illustration: "I'VE JUST 'EARD, MRS. 'UXTABLE, AS 'OW MY NED IS
BEHAVIN' SO WELL THAT 'IS SENTENCE IS BEIN' REDOOCED BY SIX MONTHS."
"YOU DON'T SAY SO! WELL, REELLY, MRS. 'ARRIS, WOT A COMFORT IT MUST BE
TO YOU TO 'AVE A SON WHAT DOES YOU SO MUCH CREDIT."]
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"OXFORD UNIVERSITY.--First Innings. R. H. Bettington, dun out
... 12."
_Daily Paper._
The batsman himself, we understand, expressed the opinion that he had
been "done in."
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