TRAVEL WITHOUT TRAINS.
(Suggested by some recent remarks in "The Observer" on eccentric place names.)
Now that the rise in railway fares
(At which no patriot cavils)
Has chained us elders to our chairs
And circumscribed our travels,
I love to play the festive game
Of astral gravitation
To any neighbourhood whose name
Is fraught with fascination.
I've never sampled in the flesh
The varied charms of Bootle,
But mentally I find them fresh
And redolent of footle;
And, though my steps to that resort
I never up till now bent,
Imagination can transport
My spirit into Chowbent.
Always alert upon the track
Of rich and strange emotion,
To Pudsey and to Wibsey Slack
I pay my fond devotion;
My heart is in the Highlands oft,
Though age its glow enfeebles,
And soars triumphantly aloft
At the mere sound of Peebles.
The nightingale in leafy June,
I own, divinely warbles,
But equal magic fills the tune-
ful name of Scotia's Gorbals;
And if you ever should desire
A subject to wax funny on,
What theme more fitly can inspire
The Muse than Ballybunnion?
Some places on my astral rounds
I'm strong upon tabooing,
On anti-alcoholic grounds
Grogport and Rum eschewing;
But no such painful stigma robs
Proud Potto of its lustre,
Or rules out Crank and Smeeth and Stobs,
A memorable cluster.
The pictures rising in my brain
Are strange; sometimes I muddle 'em,
Confounding Pleck with Plodder Lane,
Titley with Tillietudlem;
In short, it's not a game of skill,
Else I should scarce essay at;
But it is harmless, costs me nil;
And nobody need play it.
The plan is simple; choose a spot,
Then focus with decision
Your thoughts upon it till you've got
A clear-cut mental vision;
And though from fact it widely errs,
Remember in conclusion
Only the man of prose prefers
Eyewitness to illusion.
From the Back of the Front.
Extract from a soldier's letter:—
"DEAR MOTHER,—I am thoroughly run down, and have grown so thin that when I get a pain in my middle I cannot tell whether it is a backache or a stomachache."
"The choristers and I.C.U. enlivened each station along the route by rending sacred songs and solos as The Kano Express drew in." —Lagos Weekly Record.
"That's torn it," said the conductor.
"Britons never shall be slaves if they will only remember the solemn warning of the author of the words—'To thine own self be true, and then thou canst be false to any man.'"—Letter in Scotch Paper.
One recognises the note of liberty, but we fear the writer must have got hold of a German edition of "Unser Shakspeare."