CHARIVARIA.
According to a contemporary, a regiment quartered at Pembroke Dockyard had lost two thousand blankets "by pilfering." We shudder to think what a real Pembroke burglar would get away with.
"I am a looker for things," said a man at Willesden tribunal last week when asked what his occupation was. The nation, which is paying £5,000,000 a day for the privilege of pursuing the same occupation, would be interested to compare notes with him on the question of whether anything ever turns up.
"A Saxon pot, quite perfect, has been found at St. Martha's Hill, near Guildford," says a morning paper. Here is striking evidence in support of the charge, which has more than once been levelled, that influential alien enemies are still at large with the connivance of the authorities.
First Public School Man. "Great Scott, Reggie! How on earth did you get that job?"
Second ditto (kitchen fatigue). "Oh, influence, dear boy—influence."
"The life-blood of England to-day is sulphuric acid," said a Professor at University College the other day. That is certainly the impression one gets from reading the more vitriolic section of our Press.
The London County Council is teaching Esperanto. The innovation is intended to meet the needs of the lady tram-conductors, to whom convention denies the right to "suffer and be strong" in words of general currency.
A soldier who lost his speech at the battle of Loos has recovered it as the result of an operation for appendicitis. He has the added satisfaction of knowing that greater soldiers than he have been compelled by the exigencies of the present War to swallow their words.
At Willesden a conscientious objector has eaten a £1 note in preference to giving it up in part payment of his fine of forty shillings. It would probably work out cheaper in the end to swallow the Compulsion Bill.
While the Ealing Inspector of Shops is serving in the Army his official duties are to be carried on by his wife. It is no doubt in anticipation of other positions of this sort being thrown open to the female sex that so many women can nowadays be seen familiarising themselves with this class of war work in Regent Street and its neighbourhood.
In a recent appeal case a man who had received sentences amounting to twenty-six years begged to be put under chloroform, as he had heard that people under the influence of this drug always told the truth when they were asked questions. As a fact, however, the most that the medical profession have ever claimed for it in this way is that it often enables them to get a little inside information.
A Belfast man who was fined for groaning at Mr. Asquith is understood to have informed a sympathetic friend that if he'd known that ten shillings was all he would be fined, begorra, he'd have had thirty-shillings' worth, so he would.
"To get and keep an upright carriage," says a woman-writer in The Daily Mail, "stand with the feet eighteen inches apart and the hands clasped above the head. Now, as if chopping wood, swing the hands down between the parted feet, then bring them up over the head again, and repeat the movement twenty times or so." Personally, as we consider it bad form to keep any sort of carriage just now, we shall remain faithful to the less spectacular custom of whistling for a taxi.
From the Personal column of The Times:—"Airman will bring down Zeppelins. Ladies, Gentlemen." An excellent idea in the present condition of our own Air Service. As in the well-known case of the male and female gondolas, one of each gender to breed from would do for a beginning.
As a war economy the London County Council have disposed of the major part of the waterfowl that used to adorn the London Parks. A few ornamental geese however are still to be seen in the neighbourhood of the War Office.
We feel bound to take exception to the levity of a contemporary, which recently introduced an account of a suicide with the heading: "A Riverside Scream."
A well-known opera-singer is now hauling cabbages on a farm. The ruling passion strong in War. Bouquets all the time.