Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 153 December 5 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 239 lines and 16266 words, and 5 pages

O. S.

TO A DACHSHUND.

My faithful Peter, mount upon my knee, And shame me with the patience of your eyes, Till I for divers patriots that be Humbly apologise.

Not for the street-boy--him you had for years And, knowing, make allowance for his ways, If hoots of ignorance and stones and jeers Martyr your latter days;

But for such shoddy patriots as join The street-boy's manners to a petty mind, And dealing little in true-minted coin Tender the baser kind.

For instance, Smith , Who meets you with your mistress all alone, And growls a "German beast" with senseless scorn In a guttural tone.

And Jones, who owes his mansion to the War And loves to drown great luncheons in champagne, But who, to prove he loves his England more, Strikes at you with his cane.

The while Miss Podsnap, who in dogs can brook No name that smacks of Teuton, snatches up, Lest you contaminate it with a look, Her Pomeranian pup.

Forgive them, Pete! We are not all well-bred, Not all so wise, so sensible as you; Not all our sires, for generations dead, To British homes were true.

Yet, prizing steadfast love and fealty, some The gulf of their deficiencies may span, And learn of you the virtues that become An English gentleman.

We wish Russia wouldn't wash her dirty LENIN in public.

MILLIE AND THE "KAYSER."

Millie is a "daily help." Who it is that she helps--whether herself or her employer--I am not in a position to say, for I am only temporarily a lodger in the house where Millie helps, and she doesn't help me much. But to-day I have made her hear and understand one whole sentence. It is the first time during the six days that we have known each other that I have conveyed anything to her except by graphic gesticulation and grimace.

I accepted the fact at the outset that my soft and seductive tones could never penetrate Millie's stone-deafness. Only the loudest and angriest remarks are audible to Millie, so I preserve an attitude of silent facial amiability in all my relations with her.

BALAAM could not have looked more surprised than did Millie this evening when, in the act of clearing away my latest meal, she heard me say, "Leave the matches."

She stopped dead and looked at me over the tray of dirty crockery. Her expression was not unfriendly.

"But I got t' look after myself," she explained; "I'd be all done up if I hadn't they matches in the morning to light the fire and all. You wouldn't get no bath-water."

"I want to smoke," I said obstinately.

She kept her hand over the box of matches. She had not heard. I made intelligent signs illustrative of the lighting of a cigarette. Millie told me, in pure Cornish:

"You can only get a box at a time now, and half-a-pound o' sugar I gets when I shows my card, and they do say we won't get that--only quarter soon. I'd like to get at that KAYSER! I'd smash him up, I would!" She said this in the kindest, most benign way, with a smile as nearly caressing as a smile without front teeth can be. "He'd come short off if I got to him! And he deserves it, I'm sure," she concluded, as she departed--with the matches....

A long walk over the Cornish cliffs in the gusty North wind from the Atlantic had made me drowsy, and as I sat before the fire my thoughts wandered from Russian politics and the Italian situation to Millie--and the "KAYSER": Millie, who was short of stature and round-backed, who showed her fifty-odd years unflinchingly to the world; Millie with her felt slippers and her overall and coarse hands; Millie, the possessor of a sugar-card--and the mighty War Lord, stern and implacable, trying to subdue the world to his will. And Millie only wished she could get near him to smash him up--"the KAYSER would come short off."...

I knew without thought that this was the private room of WILHELM of Prussia. He himself, standing with his back to the roaring log fire in the deep grate, was too like the cartoons in the English papers to be mistaken. The iron-grey hair and upturned moustache, the cold eyes and sardonic mouth were all there "as per invoice." He was even wearing an aggressively Prussian uniform, and kept his spiked helmet on his head and his sword hanging at his side.

The CROWN PRINCE was in evidence, disguised as a Death's Head Hussar, and HINDENBURG was easily recognisable as he bristled with the nails which the admiring populace had hammered into him; the rest of the company were unknown to me. They were all engaged in a heated discussion when suddenly there came a knock at the door, a knock which, to me, was curiously familiar.

During the silence that ensued Millie walked into the room. She was still wearing her overall and felt slippers, and she had not waited to put on a hat or even to straighten her hair. She came forward unhesitatingly, with her short, shuffling steps and, disregarding the furious demand of a Bavarian General as to who she was and how she dared to enter there, she addressed herself to the KAISER himself. She spoke in her normal tones, but to me there seemed something sinister about them at this moment, and I noticed that in her right hand she carried a coal-hammer.

Now above all things Millie hated breaking coal and filling scuttles, and I knew that she would not be carrying a coal-hammer without a very special reason. Her words revealed it.

With this she lifted her coal-hammer and brought it down with all her force on the KAISER'S head. Involuntarily I flinched; it was a terrible blow.

Several Generals, their iron crosses jingling, rushed forward and seized Millie, uttering guttural sounds of horror and indignation. But the KAISER stood unmoved--yes, unmoved. Millie gaped at him. He ordered his satellites to release her and, as they reluctantly did so, Millie nodded her head at them.

"You leave me where I'm to! He can take up his own part," she told them.

The KAISER addressed her sternly.

"Presumptuous woman," he said, "it is not written that you shall be the cause of my death. There is something much higher in store for me. You deserve worse than death at my hands; but since you are from England I will squeeze from you all the information I require and bend you to my uses."

All this was obviously wasted on Millie, who heard nothing. Having waited politely until his lips stopped moving in speech, she again cracked him on the head with the coal-hammer.

The KAISER ignored this uncivil retort and spoke again.

"You shall go back to your matchless country and tell them there that we have plenty of matches in Germany; that we have kept on good terms with Stockholm, and our matches are made in Sweden. We have all we need to kindle every fire in hell. Now are you convinced that you are beaten?"

He was interrupted by another blow from the coal-hammer, which made him bite his tongue, for Millie was becoming exasperated and put all her strength into the stroke. The KAISER stepped back.

But even as he uttered the lying boast he tottered and fell back unconscious into the arms of LITTLE WILLIE.

The Generals and Statesmen gathered round their stricken master, gabbling purest Prussian.

Millie appeared satisfied at last, although the CROWN PRINCE had scarcely glanced at her, for she was not his type. She took advantage of the commotion to procure two boxes of matches which had been thrown carelessly on the table. These she bestowed mysteriously beneath her overall.

"He deserved it too!" she muttered contentedly as she hobbled to the door; "and I don't believe so much about all his matches either. You can only get two boxes at a time even here." With this reflection she unostentatiously departed.

Again that familiar knock....

I was back in my little sitting-room in Cornwall and Millie entered with my candle, which she put down on the table rather noisily. I gave her the usual grin and nod of acknowledgment, and she wished me good-night and went.

In the tray of the candlestick there was a box of matches. I picked it up and turned it over curiously. Could my dream have been true? Or was it only a coincidence that in blatant red letters on that match-box were the words:--

"MADE IN SWEDEN."

"Spokane , Monday.

Unfortunately in such cases half-measures are rarely successful.

"THE AUTUMN MEETING of the WISBECH LOCAL PEACE ASSOCIATION will be held on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28th, 1917.

The Gothas would see that it was a peace-meeting and leave it alone.

That is not what the Germans called it.

"IF CAMBRIA FALLS--

No wonder Mr. LLOYD GEORGE hurried off to France.

Of course Canada is before everything an agricultural country, and we feel sure that BROWNING would be the last man to object to any adaptation of his lines which would make them more suited to the needs of the people and the times.

THEATRICAL CORRESPONDENCE

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet