UNIVERSAL "TRAINING."
The Great Eastern have inaugurated a new plan for helping food-producers. They are sending out an instructional train, manned by experts and full of live stock—poultry and rabbits and goats—which is to traverse their system for two months. The contents will be on view and lectures will be given to cottagers, artisans, clerks—to all in fact who are interested in the breeding of the lesser live-stock, apple-growing, etc. The plan is so excellent that we feel sure it is bound to lead to further developments in regard to the industries and pursuits that really matter.
The rural districts, it may be safely assumed, already know something about agriculture. But many areas are still in a state of benighted ignorance about the results of intensive culture applied to the arts. There are parts of the Cornish Riviera, for example, in which you may travel for miles and miles without hearing a syncopated orchestra. Here is the opportunity of the Great Western—to equip and despatch a train band or band train, with a personnel carefully selected from the best negro performers (of whom there are now several thousands in London), with the view of brightening and enlightening the existence of those unfortunate villagers hitherto beyond the range of the beneficent dominion of din. As an antidote to agricultural discontent we can conceive nothing more salutary.
Again, there are portions of the Black Country where the very names of the leading Georgian poets are unknown. A troupe of poets, personally conducted by Mr. Edward March or Mr. Edmund Gosse, or both, should without delay be organized and sent forth by the North-Western and Midland Railways to give recitations over every portion of both systems. The effect on the output would be instantaneous. London should not be allowed to monopolize this stimulant to activity. Minstrelsy should be mobilized. It is true that a small group are interested in rotary motion, but we want to see all the Georgian poets on "Wheels." If we cannot have a free breakfast-table, at least we ought to be in a position to indulge without any control the appetite of our people for free verse.
Lastly, the plan of the instructional train might be applied with the most beneficial results to spreading the taste for the Russian Ballet. We do not hope to detach such bright particular stars as Pavlova or Karsavina from the London stage, but at the present moment, according to the latest statistical returns, there are several hundred Russian premières danseuses and thousands of coryphées of all grades congregated in the Metropolis, many of them without engagements, and reduced to giving dancing lessons to the daughters of profiteers, Crypto-Semites and other unpropitious persons. The organisation of a Russian Ballet train would therefore serve the double purpose of freeing these gifted performers from an ignoble use of their talents and at the same time initiating the provinces in the poetry of motion.
"I've just 'eard, Mrs. 'Uxtable, as 'ow my Ned is behavin' so well that 'is sentence is bein' redooced by six months."
"You don't say so! Well, reelly, Mrs. 'Arris, wot a comfort it must be to you to 'ave a son what does you so much credit."
"Oxford University.—First Innings. R. H. Bettington, dun out ... 12."
Daily Paper.
The batsman himself, we understand, expressed the opinion that he had been "done in."