VOL. 153, SEPT. 12, 1917***


E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Punch, or the London Charivari, Sandra
Brown, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team



PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 153.

SEPTEMBER 12TH, 1917.







CHARIVARIA.

The _Cologne Gazette_ is of the opinion that the American troops, when
they arrive in France, will be hampered by their ignorance of the
various languages. But we understand that the Americans can shoot in any
language.

       ***

A weekly periodical is giving away a bicycle every other week. Meanwhile
_The Daily Telegraph_ continues to give away a Kaiser every day.

       ***

"I decline to have anything to do with the War," said a Conscientious
Objector to a North of England magistrate, "and I resent this
interference with my liberty." Indeed he is said to be so much annoyed
that he intends sending the War Office a jolly snappy letter about it.

       ***

CHARLIE CHAPLIN says a gossip writer is coming to England in the Autumn.
This disposes of the suggestion that arrangements were being made for
England to be taken over to him.

       ***

_Incidentally_ we notice that CHARLIE CHAPLIN has become a naturalised
American, with, we presume, permission to use the rank of Honorary
Britisher.

       ***

Before a Northern Tribunal an applicant stated that he was engaged in
the completion of an invention which would enable dumb people to speak
or signal with perfection. He was advised, however, to concentrate for a
while on making certain Germans say "Kamerad."

       ***

An Isle of Wight man has succeeded in growing a vegetable marrow which
weighs forty-three pounds. To avoid its being mistaken for the island he
has scratched his name and address on it.

       ***

Those in search of a tactless present will bear in mind that Mr. MARK
HAMBOURG has written a book entitled "How to Play the Piano."

       ***

The great flagstaff at Kew Gardens, which weighs 18 tons and is 215 feet
long, is not to be erected until after the War. This has come as a great
consolation to certain people who had feared the two events would clash.

       ***

In Mid Cheshire there is a scarcity of partridges, but there is plenty
of other game in Derbyshire. The Mid-Cheshire birds are of the opinion
that this cannot be too strongly advertised.

       ***

Thirteen years after it was posted at Watford a postcard has just
reached an Ealing lady inviting her to tea, and of course she rightly
protested that the tea was cold.

       ***

An estate near Goole has been purchased for L118,000, the purchaser
having decided not to carry out his first intention of investing that
amount in a couple of boxes of matches.

       ***

Herr Erzberger is known among his friends as "The Singing Socialist." We
are afraid however that if he wants peace he will have to whistle for it.
       ***

The Provisional Government in Russia, according to _The Evening News,_
has "always regarded an international debate on the questions of war and
pease as useful." But our Government, not being exactly provisional,
prefers to go on giving the enemy beans.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: COMFORTING THOUGHT

When there are no taxis on your return from your holidays:

"OUR TRUE STRENGTH IS TO KNOW OUR OWN WEAKNESS."--_CHARLES KINGSLEY_.]

       *       *       *       *       *

THE END OF AN EPISODE.

I write this in the beginning of a minor tragedy; if indeed the
severance of any long, helpful and sympathetic association can ever be
so lightly named. For that is precisely what our intercourse has been
these many weeks past; one of nervous and quickly roused irritation on
my part, of swift and gentle ministration on his.

At least once a day we have met during that period (and occasionally,
though rarely, more often), usually in those before-breakfast hours when
the temper of normal man is most exacting and uncertain. But his temper
never varied; the perfection of it was indeed among his finest
qualities. Morning after morning, throughout a time that, as it chanced,
has been full of distress and disappointment, would his soothing and
infinitely gentle touch recall me to content. That stroking caress of
his was a thing indescribable; one before which the black shadows left
by the hours of night seemed literally to dissolve and vanish.

And now the long expected, long dreaded has begun to happen. He, too, is
turning against me, as so many others of his fellows have done in the
past. Who knows the reason? What continued roughness on my part has at
last worn out even him? But for some days now there has been no
misreading the fatal symptoms--increasing irritability on the one side,
harshness turning to blunt indifference on the other. And this morning
came the unforgivable offence, the cut direct.

That settles it; to-morrow, with a still smarting regret, I unwrap a new
razor-blade.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE WHOLE HOG.

    ["Victorian love-making was at best a sloppy business... modern
    maidens have little use for half measures.... Primitive ideas
    are beginning to assert themselves."--_Daily Paper._]

  Betty, when you were in your teens
    And shielded from sensation,
  Despite a lack of ways and means
  In various appropriate scenes
    I sighed my adoration.
  You did not smile upon my suit;
    Pallid I grew and pensive;
  My disappointment was acute,
  Life seemed a worthless thing and mute.
  I moped, then tuned my laggard lute
    And launched a new offensive.

  Thus you were wooed in former days
    When maids were won by waiting;
  The modern lover finds it pays
  To imitate the forceful ways
    Of prehistoric mating.
  Man is more primitive (a snub
    Has no effect), so if you
  Should still refuse a certain "sub."
  He will not pine or spurn his grub,
  But, seizing the ancestral club,
    Into submission biff you.

       *       *       *       *       *

MAKING THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.

    "As honorary organist at ---- Wesleyan Church he has established
    a sound and compact business as wholesale grocer and Italian
    warehouseman."--_Provincial Paper._

       *       *       *       *       *

    "Maid (superior) wanted for lady, gentleman, small flat, strong
    girl, able to assist lady with rheumatism."--_Glasgow Herald._

If we hear of a small flat girl we will send her along; but this shaped
figure is rather out of fashion just now.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SUPER-PIPE.

When Jackson first joined the jolly old B.E.F. he smoked a pipe. He
carried it anyhow. Loose in his pocket, mind you. A pipe-bowl at his
pocket's brim a simple pipe-bowl was to him, and it was nothing more. Of
course no decent B.E.F. mess could stand that. Jackson was told that a
pipe was _anathema maranatha_, which is Greek for _no bon._

"What will I smoke then?" said Jackson, who was no Englishman. We waited
for the Intelligence Officer to reply. We knew him. The Intelligence
Officer said nothing. He drew something from his pocket. It was a parcel
wrapped in cloth-of-gold. He removed the cloth-of-gold and there was
discovered a casket, which he unlocked with a key attached to his
identity disc. Inside the casket was a padlocked box, which he opened
with a key attached by gold wire to his advance pay-book. Inside the box
was a roll of silk. To cut it all short, he unwound puttee after puttee
of careful wrapping till he reached a chamois-leather chrysalis, which
he handled with extreme reverence, and from this he drew something with
gentle fingers, and set it on the table-cloth before the goggle-eyed
Jackson.

"A pipe," said Jackson.

There was a shriek of horror. The Intelligence Officer fainted. Here was
wanton sacrilege.

"Man," said the iron-nerved Bombing Officer, "it's a Brownhill."

"What's a Brownhill?" asked Jackson.

We gasped. How could we begin to tell him of that West End shrine from
which issue these lacquered symbols of a New Religion?

The Intelligence Officer was reviving. We looked to him.

"The prophet Brownhill," he said, "was once a tobacconist--an ordinary
tobacconist who sold pipes."

We shuddered.

"He discovered one day that man wants more than mere pipes. He wants
a--a super-pipe, something to reverence and--er--look after, you know,
as well as to smoke. So he invented the Brownhill. It is an _affaire de
coeur_--an affair of art," translated the I.O. proudly. "It is as glossy
as a chestnut in its native setting, and you can buy furniture polish
from the prophet Brownhill which will keep it always so. It has its
year, like a famous vintage, it has a silver wind-pipe, and it costs
anything up to fifty guineas."

"D