Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 153 October 24 1917 by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 160 lines and 16581 words, and 4 pages

Visitors are earnestly requested to be in time, as space in the Observation Post is limited and late arrivals cause a great deal of discomfort to all. Ladies are respectfully requested to remove their hats.

Special Shelters are erected at cross-roads for visitors to witness the getting-up of guns, ammunition, etc., after the attack. Please don't feed the men as they go by or ask the Gunners questions.

Breakfast in Boschland. Lunch in a Listening Post. Supper in a Saphead.

A Special Narrow-gauge Railway will take Visitors to the newly-acquired forward area . This part of the programme is liable to variation.

Terms, fifty guineas. An Insurance Agent is always in attendance. Casualties up to the present, one Conscientious Objector missing, believed joined up.

Bombardments arranged at the shortest notice. For five pounds you can fire a 15-inch. Write for Free Booklet and apply for all particulars to Pratt's Agency, London, Paris, etc., etc.

VISITORS.

When I was very ill in bed The fairies came to visit me; They danced and played around my head, Though other people couldn't see.

Across the end a railing goes With bars and balls and twisted rings, And there they jiggled on their toes And did the wonderfullest things.

They balanced on the golden balls, They jumped about from bar to bar, And then they fluttered to the walls Where coloured birds and roses are.

I watched them darting in and out, I watched them gaily climb and cling, While all the roses moved about And all the birds began to sing.

And when it was no longer light I felt them up my pillows creep, And there they sat and sang all night-- I heard them singing in my sleep.

R.F.

ANOTHER SEX PROBLEM.

The Russian reply to the ewe-boats, we suppose.

Who said the Germans had no sense of humour?

THE MUD LARKS.

The leave train rolled into Victoria late in the afternoon. Cab touts buzzed about the Babe, but he would have none of them; he would go afoot the better to see the sights of the village--a leisurely sentimental pilgrimage. He had not covered one hundred yards when a ducky little thing pranced up to him, squeaking, "Where are your gloves, Sir?" "I always put 'em in cold storage during summer along with my muff and boa, dear," the Babe replied pleasantly. "Moreover, my mother doesn't like me to talk to strangers in the streets, so ta-ta." The little creature blushed like a tea-rose and stamped its little hoof. "Insolence!" it squeaked. "You--you go back to France by the next boat!" and the Babe perceived to his horror that he had been witty to an Assistant Provost-Marshal! He flung himself down on his knees, licking the A.P.M.'s boots and crying in a loud voice that he would be good and never do it again.

The A.P.M. pardoned the Babe on condition that he immediately purchased a pair of gloves of the official cut and hue. The Babe did so forthwith and continued on his way. He had not continued ten yards when another A.P.M. tripped him up. "That cap is a disgrace, Sir!" he barked. "I know it, Sir," the Babe admitted, "and I'm awfully sorry about it; but that hole in it only arrived last night--shrapnel, you know--and I haven't had time to buy another yet. I don't care for the style they sell in those little French shops--do you?"

The A.P.M. didn't know anything about France or its little shops, and didn't intend to investigate; at any rate not while there was a war on there. "You will return to the Front to-morrow," said he. The Babe grasped his hand from him and shook it warmly. "Thank you--thank you, Sir," he gushed; "I didn't want to come, but they made me. I'm from Fiji; have no friends here, and London is somehow so different from Suva it makes my head ache. I am broke and couldn't afford leave, anyway. Thank you, Sir--thank you."

"Ahem--in that case I will revoke my decision," said the A.P.M. "Buy yourself an officially-sanctioned cap and carry on."

The Babe bought one with alacrity; then, having tasted enough of the dangers of the streets for one afternoon, took a taxi, and, lying in the bottom well out of sight, sped to his old hotel. When he reached his old hotel he found it had changed during his absence, and was now headquarters of the Director of Bones and Dripping. He abused the taxi-driver, who said he was sorry, but there was no telling these days; a hotel was a hotel one moment, and the next it was something entirely different. Motion pictures weren't in it, he said.

Finally they discovered a hotel which was still behaving as such, and the Babe got a room. He remained in that room all the evening, beneath the bed, having his meals pushed in to him under the door. A prowling A.P.M. sniffed at the keyhole but did not investigate further, which was fortunate for the Babe, who had no regulation pyjamas.

That afternoon he ran across a lady friend in Bond Street, "a War Toiler enormously interested in the War" . She had been at Yvonne's trying on her gauze for the Boccaccio Tableaux in aid of the Armenians and needed some relaxation. So she engaged the Babe for the play, to be followed by supper with herself and her civilian husband. The play gave the Babe a fine hunger, but the Commissionaire who does odd jobs outside the Blitz took exception to him. "Can't go in, Sir." "Why not?" the Babe inquired; "my friends have gone in." "Yessir, but no hofficers are allowed to obtain nourishment after 10 p.m. under Defence of the Realm Act, footnote to para. 14004." He leaned forward and whispered behind his glove, "There's a Hay Pee Hem under the portico watching your movements, Sir." The Babe needed no further warning; he dived into his friends' Limousine and burrowed under the rug.

Sometime later the door of the car was opened cautiously and the moon-face of the Major-General inserted itself through the crack. "Hall clear for the moment, Sir; the Hay Pee Hem 'as gorn orf dahn the street, chasin' a young hofficer in low shoes. 'Ere, tyke this; I'm a hold soldier meself." He thrust a damp banana in the Babe's hand and closed the door softly.

Next morning the Babe dug up an old suit of 1914 "civies" and put them on. A woman in the Tube called him "Cuthbert" and informed him gratuitously that her husband, twice the Babe's age, had volunteered the moment Conscription was declared and had been fighting bravely in the Army Clothing Department ever since. Further she supposed the Babe's father was in Parliament and that he was a Conscientious Objector. In Hyde Park one urchin addressed him as "Daddy" and asked him what he was doing in the Great War; another gambolled round and round him making noises like a rabbit. In Knightsbridge a Military Policeman wanted to arrest him as a deserter. The Babe hailed a taxi and, cowering on the floor, fled back to his hotel and changed into uniform again.

That night, strolling homewards in the dark immersed in thought, he inadvertently took a pipe out of his pocket and lit it. An A.P.M. who had been sleuthing him for half-a-mile leapt upon him, snatched the pipe and two or three teeth out of his mouth and returned him to France by the next boat.

His groom, beaming welcome, met him at the railhead with the horses.

"Hello, old thing, cheerio and all the rest of it," Huntsman whinnied lovingly.

Miss Muffet rubbed her velvet muzzle against his pocket. "Brought a lump of sugar for a little girl?" she rumbled.

He mounted her and headed across country, Miss Muffet pig-jumping and capering to show what excellent spirits she enjoyed.

Two brigades of infantry were under canvas in Mud Gully, their cook fires winking like red eyes. The guards clicked to attention and slapped their butts as the Babe went by. A subaltern bobbed out of a tent and shouted to him to stop to tea. "We've got cake," he lured, but the Babe went on.

They had just started feeding up in the regimental lines when he arrived; the excited neighing of five hundred horses was music to his ears. His brother subalterns hailed his return with loud and exuberant noises, made disparaging remarks about the smartness of his clothes, sat on him all over the floor and rumpled him. On sighting the Babe, The O'Murphy went mad and careered round the table wriggling like an Oriental dancer, uttering shrill yelps of delight; presently he bounced out of the window, to enter some minutes later by the same route, and lay the offering of a freshly slain rat at his best beloved's feet.

At this moment the skipper came in plastered thick with the mud of the line, nodded cheerfully to his junior sub and instantaneously fell upon the buttered toast.

"Have a good time, Son?" he mumbled. "How's merrie England?"

"Oh, England's all right, Sir," said the Babe, tickling The O'Murphy's upturned tummy--"quite all right; but it's jolly to be home again among one's ain folk."

PATLANDER.

BEASTS ROYAL.

KING LOUIS' PEACOCK. A.D. 1678.

The paven terrace of Versailles With tub and orange-tree, And Dian's fountain tossed awry, Were planned and made for me; Since no one half so well as I Could grace their symmetry, Nor teach admiring man The genuine pavane.

I know that when King Louis wears A Roman kilt and casque His smile hides many secret tears In ballet and in masque, Since to outshine my pomp appears So desperate a task, And royal robes look pale Beside my noble tail.

With turquoise and with malachite, With bronze and purple pied, I march before him like the night In all its starry pride; LULLI may twang and MOLI?RE write His pastime to provide, But seldom laughs the KING So much as when I sing.

LE BRUN is watching me, I know, His palette on his thumb, To catch the glory and the glow That dazzle as I come; So be it--but let MOLI?RE go, And LULLI crack his drum; They do but waste their time; Minstrel I am, and mime.

Men say the KING is like the sun, And from his wig they spin The golden webs that, one by one, Draw Spain and Flanders in; He will grow proud ere they have done, A most egregious sin, And one to which my mind Has never yet declined.

QUEER CATTLE.

News from the Russian Front: Pop goes the Oesel.

We have often mistaken a taxi-driver for a lord.

PRESENCE OF MIND.

The train came to one of those sudden stops in which the hush caused by the contrast between the rattle of the wheels and their silence is almost painful. During these pauses one is conscious of conversation in neighbouring compartments, without however hearing any distinct words.

There were several of us, strangers to each other, who hitherto had been minding our own business, but under the stress of this untoward thing became companionable.

A man at each window craned his body out, but withdrew it without information.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet