Page:Punch (Volume 147).pdf/12

8 

is not only misfortune that makes strange bedfellows. Both Earl and Sir  appear in the recent Honours List.

By-the-by, it is denied that Sir was in any way responsible for the Government's "Pills for Earthquakes," by which it was hoped to avert the Irish crisis.

A New York cable announces that the Duke of is interesting himself in a cinematograph proposition of a philanthropic nature, and that the company will be known as the "Church and School Social Service Corporation for the Advancement of Moral and Religious Education and Social Uplift Work through the medium of the Higher Art of the Moving Picture." It will of course be possible for the man in a hurry to call it, tout court, the "C. & S. S. S. C. F. T. A. O. M. & R. E. & S. U. W. T. T. M. O. T. H. A. O. T. M. P."

The penny off the income tax came just in time. It enabled several Liberal plutocrats to buy a rose on Alexandra Day.

The balance sheet of the German Company which has been running a Zeppelin airship passenger service has just been issued, and shows a loss of £10,000 on the year's working. This is not surprising. The difficulty which all aircraft experience is to keep their balance.

At the launch of the liner Bismarck last week, the bottle of wine which was thrown by the Countess missed the vessel, whereupon the  hauled back the bottle, and with his proverbial good luck hit the target.

Five shots were fired last week at Baron. At first it was thought that this was done to stop the author of Croesus from writing more plays, but, when it transpired that the assailant was a man who objected to the "Rothschild Cheap Milk Supply," public sympathy veered round in favour of the Baron.

Messrs. were last week defrauded by a well-dressed man, who obtained two dressing-bags with silver fittings by means of a trick without paying for them. This is really abominable. It is bad enough when merely commercial firms are victimised: to best a philanthropic institution in this way is peculiarly base.

"'' Morning Post."

Now perhaps the other civilised Powers will intervene. We have heard of many inhumanities marking the war in Mexico, but this treatment of a rebel is surely the limit.

It is not often, we imagine, that the British Navy is used to enforce a change of diet. H.M.S. Torch has just been ordered on a punitive expedition to Malekula Island, where certain of the natives have been eating some of their compatriots.

An American woman, according to The Express, has a serious complaint about the London policeman. She declares that she walked all the way from Queen's Hall to Piccadilly Circus with three buttons of her blouse undone at the back, and "not a single policeman" offered to do it up for her. No doubt the Force was reluctant to interfere with what might turn out to be the latest fashion. A Boy Scout who offered, the other day, to sew up a split skirt got his ears soundly boxed.

Meanwhile the glad tidings reach us that women's skirts and bodices are to fasten in front instead of at the back. Husbands all over the world who have on occasions been pressed into their wives' service as maids, only to learn that they were clumsy boobies, would like to have the name of the arbiter of fashion who is responsible for this innovation, as there is some thought of erecting a statue to him.

Some distinguished German professors have been discussing the question of the best place in which to keep a baby in summer. It is characteristic, however, of these unpractical persons that not one of them suggests the obvious ice-safe.

"One of the first things the rich should learn," says Dean, "is that money is not put to the best use when it is merely spent on enjoyment." It is hoped that this pronouncement may lead wealthy people to patronise our concert-halls more than they do.

"£1,600," a newspaper tells us, "were found hidden in the cork leg of while he was undergoing treatment in a hospital at Denver." And now, we suspect, friends will always be pulling his leg.

"Have you seen Pelleas and Mèlisande?"

"No. Is it as funny as Potash and Perlmutter?"

 

My dinner partner was a self-made man and not ashamed of it.

"Do you take an interest in china, ma'am?" he asked me.

I felt that if I said "Yes" I should have to buy some. So I said "No," but he didn't wait to hear what I said.

"I think I may say," he continued, "that I have the finest collection of old Dresden china in London."

He went into the figures, explaining the cost price and the difficulty of storage.

"Oh," said I, "if you find it a nuisance, I've a parlour-maid I could recommend to you; just the girl to help you to get rid of it."

At this point I think he had some idea of having the finest collection of parlourmaids in Middlesex, but he made it small dogs instead. Was I interested in these? No, but I supposed I'd have to be if he insisted.

"I don't think I should be far wrong," he began, but I hustled him through to the end of his sentence.

"Finest collection in—?" I asked.

"England," he said.

He went over their points, and in an expansive moment I marvelled. This was imprudent, as it caused him to search his mind for some further spectacular triumph wherewith to amaze and delight.

"That," he said, looking up the table, "is my wife."

"Marvellous," said I.

He took this in the best part. "You refer to her diamonds?" he said.

"Did I?" said I.

"The finest collection in Great Britain," he declared, and spread himself over the subject.

Later, in a mood of concession, he inquired as to my specialities. I had none, at least none that I could think of. Determined to extract something noteworthy, he questioned me on every possibility. Was I not married? That was so, I agreed, but then so many women are.

"You have sons, ma'am?" he persisted, with that implacable optimism to which, among other things, he no doubt owed his success in the world.

I thought of Baby. "Ah yes, of course," I said. "The finest collection in Europe."

 "In Norway,' she says, 'we do not eat one-third the quantity that the English eat; our meals are simpler and shortr. I believe that this is the cause of the enormous amount of indigestion that is suffered by the English. Daily News and Leader."

So our doctor, who attributed our indigestion to lobster mayonnaise, was wrong again.