Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 153 November 14 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 193 lines and 16439 words, and 4 pages

VOL. 153.

NOVEMBER 14, 1917.

CHARIVARIA.

People are asking, "Can there be a hidden brain in the Foreign Office?"

A German posing as a Swiss, and stated by the police to be "a spy and a dangerous character," has been sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The matter will be further investigated pending his escape.

Three men were charged at Old Street last week with attempting the "pot of tea" trick. The trick apparently consists in finding a man with a pot of tea and giving him a sovereign to go round the corner and buy a ham sandwich, the thief meanwhile offering to hold the pot of tea. When the owner returns the tea has, of course, vanished.

The increased consumption of bread, says Sir ARTHUR YAPP, is due to the 9d. loaf. It would just serve us right if bread cost 2s. 6d. a pound and there wasn't any, like everything else.

Seventy tons of blackberries for the soldiers have been gathered by school-children in Buckinghamshire. Arrangements have been made for converting this fruit into plum-and-apple jam.

"Home Ruler" was the occupation given by a Chertsey woman on her sugar-card application. The FOOD CONTROLLER states that although this form of intimidation may work with the Government it has no terrors for him.

The Russian Minister of Finance anticipates getting a revenue of forty million pounds from a monopoly of tea. It is thought that he must have once been a grocer.

The Law Courts are to be made available as an air-raid shelter by day and night, and some of our revue proprietors are already complaining of unfair competition.

Two survivors of the battle of Inkerman have been discovered at Brighton. Their inactivity in the present crisis is most unfavourably commented on by many of the week-end visitors.

A dolphin nearly eight feet in length has been landed by a boy who was fishing at Southwold. Its last words were that it hoped the public would understand that it had only heard of the food shortage that morning.

Captain OTTO SVERDRUP, the Arctic explorer, has returned his German decorations. Upon hearing this the KAISER at once gave orders for the North Pole to be folded up and put away.

A certain number of cold storage eggs at sixpence each are being released in Berlin and buyers are urged to "fetch them promptly." In this connection several Iron Crosses have already been awarded for acts of distinguished bravery by civilians.

One of the new toys for Christmas is a cat which will swim about in a bath. If only the household cat could learn to swim it might be the means of saving several of its lives.

We are asked to deny the rumour that Mr. JUSTICE DARLING, who last week cracked a joke which was not understood by some American soldiers, has decided to do it all over again.

The power of music! An enterprising firm of manufacturers offers pensions to women who become widows after the purchase of a piano on the instalment plan.

We understand that a Member of Parliament will shortly ask for a day to be set aside to inquire into the conduct of Mr. PHILIP SNOWDEN, who is reported to have recently shown marked pro-British tendencies.

A customer, we are told, may take his own buns into a public eating-house, but the proprietor must register them. In view of the growing habit of pinching food, the pre-war custom of chaining them to the umbrella-stand is no longer regarded as safe.

INDIA MOVES.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,--The following is taken from a letter from the Quartermaster-General in India to the General Officers Commanding Divisions and Independent Brigades:--

"I am directed to point out that at present there appears to be considerable diversity of opinion regarding the number of buttons, and the method of placing the same on mattresses in use in hospitals.

"I am therefore to request that in future all hospital mattresses should be made up with fifty-three buttons placed in fifteen rows of four and three alternately."

This should convince your readers that even India has at last grasped the idea of the War and is getting a move on.

If the case is correctly reported--which we doubt--it was very confiding of Mr. THORNE to go to him again.

MORE SORROWS OF THE SULTAN.

Yes, things are looking rather blue, Just as in Mesopotamy; My life-blood trickles in the sand; My veins run dry; I cannot stand Much more of this phlebotomy.

In vain for WILLIAM'S help I cry, Sick as a mule with glanders; Too busy--selfish swine--is he With winning ground in Italy And losing it in Flanders.

His missives urge me not to fly But use the utmost fury To hold these Christian dogs at bay And for his sake to block the way To his belov?d Jewry.

"My feet," he wired, "have trod those scenes; Within the walls of Salem My sacred presence deigned to dwell, And I should hate these hounds of hell To be allowed to scale 'em.

"So do your best to give them beans , And at a less congested date I will arrive and consecrate Another German mission."

That's how he wires, alternate days, But sends no troops to trammel The foe that follows as I bump Across Judaea on the hump Of my indifferent camel.

Well, I have tried all means and ways, But seldom fail to foozle 'em; And now if WILLIAM makes no sign The giaours can have Jerusalem.

O.S.

THE SUGAR FIEND.

"I will have a cup of tea," I said to the waitress, "China if possible; and please don't forget the sugar."

"Yes, and what will you eat with I it?" she asked.

"What you please," I replied; "it is all horrible."

I do not take kindly to war-time teas. My idea of a tea is several cups of the best China, with three large lumps of sugar in each, and half-a-dozen fancy-cakes with icing sugar all over them and cream in the middle, and just a few cucumber sandwiches for the finish. .

The loss of the cakes I could bear stoically enough if they would leave my tea alone, or rather if they would allow me a reasonable amount of sugar for it. However, we are an adaptable people and there are ways in which even the sugar paper-dish menace can be met. My own plan, here offered freely to all my fellow-sufferers, provides an admirable epitome of War and Peace. The sugar allowance being about half what it ought to be, I take half of the cup unsweetened, thus tasting the bitterness of war, and then I put in the sugar and bask in the sunshine of peace.

On this particular occasion peace was on the point of being declared when I found my attention irresistibly compelled by the man sitting opposite to me, the only other occupant of my table. At first I thought of asking him not to stare at me so rudely, and then I found that he was not looking at me but over my shoulder at some object at the end of the room. I can resist the appeal of three hundred people gazing into the sky at the same moment, but the intense concentration of this man was too much for me. I turned round. Seeing nothing unusual I turned back again, but it was too late. My sugar had gone! No trace of it anywhere, except in the bubbles that winked suspiciously on the surface of the miscreant's tea.

His face did not belong to any of the known criminal types. It was a pale, dreamy, garden-suburb sort of face--a face you couldn't possibly give in charge, except, perhaps, under the Military Service Acts.

"Do you know," I said to him, "that you have just committed one of the most terrible offences open to civilised mankind--a crime even worse than trampling on an allotment?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he replied, waking from his dream. "Did you want that sugar? You know, you seemed to be getting on very well without it."

As I could not believe him to be beyond the reach of pity, I explained my method to him, describing as harrowingly as I could the joy of those first few moments after the declaration of peace. I suggested to him that he might sometimes find it useful himself, if ever he should be compelled to sit at an unoccupied table. . "And now," I concluded, "as I have told you my system, perhaps you will tell me yours--not for imitation, but for avoidance."

"But if you only take from the willing," I inquired, "why do you not ask their permission?"

"I suppose I have given you the right to ask me that question," he replied with much dignity, "but it is painful to me to have to answer it. I have not yet sunk so low that I have to beg people for their cast-off sugar. I may come to it in the end, perhaps. At present the 'earnest gaze' trick is generally sufficient, or, where it fails, a kick on the shin. But I hate cruelty."

"Physical cruelty," I suggested.

"No, any kind of cruelty. I have said that in your case I made a mistake. If I could repair it I would."

"Well," I said, "here's something you can do towards it, although it's little enough." And I handed him the ticket the waitress had written out for me. "And now I'll go and get a cup of tea somewhere."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet