Page:Punch (Volume 147).pdf/109

July 29, 1914.



"And now," I said, while the waiter was bringing the bill, "where would you like to go?"

"I don't mind," he said. "What about a music-hall? I haven't seen one for twenty years. There's a cinema about five miles from my place, but it's too dear. Only the millionaires can use it."

"Very well, then," I said, "we'll go to a music-hall; but you'll find that they've changed a bit."

"I don't mind," he said, "so long as there's something good. There's so much variety in a music-hall, one turn after another, don't you know, that you can't go far wrong."

My spirits sank. East Africa had kept his youth in camphor, and he had no knowledge of the wonderful advances that we have been making. Turns indeed!

"I'll do the best I can for you," I said, "but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

"Oh, no," he assured me stoutly, "not in a music-hall. I've been wanting to see one again for years. I suppose Jimmy Fawn isn't still going?'

My spirits fell lower.

We went to one of the regular places, and, as I had feared, found a revue in full blast. Topic talk, scenery and American songs interminably. Every time a new person came on the stage my friend eagerly perked up and lost his depression, hoping that at last it might be one of his old delights—a juggler or knockabout or something like that—but always he was disappointed.

"I say, where are we?" he asked. "This isn't a music-hall, is it?"

"One of the best," I replied.

He looked round in dismay.

"But where are the waiters?" he asked.

"Not allowed among the audience any more," I told him: "in fact, some music-halls don't even have licences."

He stared at me in astonishment and sank into apathy. Coming up again he said, "Do you remember those two fellows with enormous stomachs and hooked sticks? They were funny, if you like. Don't you have that sort of thing any more?"

"No," I said.

"Do you remember that act," he said—"I believe it was called the Risley act—where a man lay on his back, with his legs up in the air, and flung his family about with his feet? That was jolly clever. Don't you have that any more?"

"No," I said.

"And the Sisters something or other," he said, "dashed pretty girls, who did everything at the same time—are they gone for ever?"

"For ever," I said.

"And no comic songs either?" he asked.

"You've heard a lot of comic songs this evening," I replied.

"Oh, those," he said. "I don't call those comic. They're not comic songs, they're comic-opera songs. Don't you have the others any more?"

"Not at this kind of hall," I said. "I daresay there may be a singer or so left somewhere, with too big a coat and too small a hat, but not here."

"Then what are all the old performers doing?" he asked.

"I believe they're starving," I said.

 "'' Yorkshire Post."

Some of them certainly want a bit of doctoring.