CHARIVARIA.
The mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel is now explained. They preferred death to another speech from the KAISER.
A Constantinople poet has translated the plays of SHAKSPEARE into Turkish. The rendering is said to be faithful to the text, and it is assumed that a keen appreciation of Turkey's military necessities alone accounts for his reference to the "Swan of Avon" as the "Bulbul of Potsdam."
The use of flour as an ingredient of sausages is now forbidden. Young sausages which have hitherto been fed on bread and milk must either be broken to bones or killed for the table.
An optimist writes to express the hope that by this elimination of flour the dreadful secret of the sausage may be at last revealed.
The German Government has created a Pulp Commission. We have always said they would be reduced to it in time.
The King of SIAM'S royal yacht has been turned into a cargo boat. Reports that the Sacred White Elephant has been commandeered for use as a floating dock are still unconfirmed.
For giving corn to pheasants a fine of ten pounds has been inflicted on a merchant of New York (Lincs.) The removal en bloc of this village from the mouth of the Hudson river to its present site should finally convince the sceptics of the magnitude of America's war effort.
The Vacant Land Cultivation Society offers a prize of ten shillings for the heaviest potato. Some of our most notorious potato-tellers are expected to compete.
The provision of steel helmets for the Metropolitan Police is all right so far as it goes, but the Force is still asking why it cannot be furnished with some protection for its other extremities.
From China it is reported that an aboriginal priest now claiming the Throne has been accustomed to eat the flesh of tigers, wolves, leopards, &c., also the human heart. It is, however, only fair to our own restaurateurs to state that, though China is alleged to be on the eve of war, there is as yet no food-control in that country.
An unusual scarcity of wasps is reported from various parts of the country. Nothing is being done about it.
A calf has been sold for two thousand seven hundred guineas in Aberdeenshire. The plucky purchaser is understood to have had for some time past a craving for a veal cutlet.
A new form of frightfulness is evidently being practised upon their guards by our interned Huns. "Some of them," says a contemporary, "purchase a hundred cigars with a portion of the one pound a day which is the miserable maximum they may spend on luxuries."
"People who speak of suicide seldom do anything desperate," says a well-known mental expert. So that the KAISER'S threat to fight England to the death may be taken for what it is worth.
An extraordinary meeting of German Reichstag Members has arrived at the decision that the Germans cannot hope for victory in the field. We see nothing extraordinary in this.
Professor BERGEN was once described as "the well-known inventor and philanthropist." He still invents (his latest is a gas-thrower, reported by the Berliner Tageblatt to be "a veritable monster of destruction"), but has dropped the other job.
A swallow-tail butterfly which escaped from the Zoo has been re-captured at Eastbourne. When caught it gave the policeman to understand that it would go quietly.
Two men, we read, took twenty-two hours to chisel a hole through the three-foot flint concrete roof of the London Opera House. The report that they did this to avoid the Entertainment Tax has now been contradicted.
"The American Winston Churchill," says The Daily Express, "has to plod through life without a middle name." We all have our little cross to bear. Even the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS has to plod through life with the knowledge that there is another Winston Churchill loose about the world.
It is proposed that Parliament shall sit from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., instead of from 3 to 11 P.M. We do not care for this crude attempt to mix business with politics.
The Boundary Commission Report advocates the creation of thirty-one new M.P.'s. It will be a bitter disappointment for those who were sanguine enough to hope that Redistribution would spell Reform.
The Government has commandeered all stocks of rum. The rigours of war, it seems, must be suffered even by our little tots.
The Wit. "AH, NOW YOU'RE FOR IT, ALBERT?"
Tractor-Driver. "WOT'S THE MATTER?"
The Wit. "WHY, YOU'VE BEEN AND GONE AND COME ON PARADE WITHOUT YOUR SPURS."
"The bridegroom, 6 ft. 35 ins. in height, was wearing the full-dress uniform of a captain in the Army."—Great Yarmouth Independent.
He would need it all.
Headline to a description of a recent push:—
"VONDERFUL RESULTS."—Evening Paper.
The "Hidden Hand" in the composing-room?