(_See the "Daily Chronicle" of August 6._)
Reaction's in the air, and (so to speak)
Its trail is o'er the _Chronicle's_ own pages--
Witness "An Unknown Quantity" this week,
Whose meditative J-pen disengages
_De rebus omnibus_ a keen critique.
Extravagance, and levity, and fads
Have been o'erdone, it seems, since Eighteen-eighty
(Or thereabouts); but, our observer adds,
JOHN BULL has this year grown more wise and weighty,
Less "new," less yellow--and has chucked the Rads.
Reaction's the reverse of retrograde,
If we recede from decadent excesses,
And beat retreat from novelists who trade
On "Sex," from artists whose _chef-d'[oe]uvres_ are messes--
'Tis time indeed such minor plagues were stayed!
Then here's for cricket in this year of GRACE,
Fair-play all round, straight hitting and straight dealing
In letters, morals, art, and commonplace
Reversion unto type in deed and feeling--
A path of true Reaction to retrace!
* * * * *
CAUGHT WITH A "CATCH."--The idiotic catch-line of a Parisian
Café-Concert ditty--"_En voulez-vous des z'homards?_" has been taken
up by the citizens of the gay French capital with as much avidity
as characterized their seizure upon shares in the Russian loan. The
Comtesse Y., in sportive mood, twitted her butler--a very ancient
retainer of the family--upon his antiquated, out-of-date manners, and
chaffingly suggested that he should attempt to be more _fin-de-siècle_.
The veteran _maître-d'hôtel_ assured Madame la Comtesse that he would
give her no further cause for complaint. Accordingly, on the same
evening, while handing round wine at the dinner-party, he promptly
bellowed forth "_En voulez-vous du Pommard?_"
* * * * *