THE MUD LARKS.
Only a few months ago our William and his trusty troop swooped upon a couple of Bosch field batteries floundering in a soft patch on the far side of Tournai. William afflicted their gun teams with his little Hotchkiss gadget, then prepared to gallop them. He had unshipped his knife and was offering his sergeant long odds on scoring first "pink," when our two squadron trumpeters trotted out from a near-by coppice and solemnly puffed "Cease Fire"—for all the world as if it was the end of a field-day on the Plain and time to trot home to tea. William was furious.
"There y'are," he snorted. "Just because I happened to have a full troop out for once, all my horses fit, no wire or trenches in the way, the burst of the season ahead and the only chance I've had in four and a-half years of doing a really artistic bit of carving they must go and stop the ruddy War. Poo! ain't that the bally Army all over? Bah! I've done with it."
So he filled in the bare patches in every Demobilisation Form Z 15 he could lay pen to.
Taking the proud motto of the MOND dynasty—"Make yourself necessary"—for guide, he became something different every day in his quest after an "Essential Trade." He was in turn a one-man-business, a railway-porter, a coal-miner, a farmer, a NORTHCLIFFE leader-writer, a taxi-baron, a jazz-professor and a non-union barber. At one moment he was single, an orphan alone and unloved; at another he had a drunken wife, ten consumptive young children and several paralytic old parents to support. All to no avail; nobody would believe him.
Then one day he heard from a friend who by the simple expedient of posing as a schoolmaster for a few minutes was now in "civvies" and getting three days' hunting and four days' golf a week.
William grabbed up yet another A.F. Z 15, and dedicated his life to the intellectual uplift of the young.
This time he drew a reply and by return.
Corps H.Q. held the view that he, William, was the very fellow they had been looking for, longing for, praying for. They had him appointed Regimental Educational Officer (without increase of rank, pay or allowances) on the spot, and would he get on with it, please, and indent through them for any materials required in the furtherance of the good work?
William was furious. Confound the Staff! What did the blighted red-tape-worms take him for? A blithering pedagogue in cap, gown and horn spectacles? He kicked the only sound chair in the Mess to splinters, cursed for two hours and sulked for twenty-four. After which childish display he pulled himself together and indented on Corps Educational Branch for four hundred treatises on elementary Arabic, Arabic being the sole respectable subject in which he was even remotely competent to instruct.
Corps H.Q. tore up his indent. It was absurd, they said, to suppose that the entire regiment intended emigrating to Arabia on demobilisation. William must get in touch with the men and find out what practical everyday trades they were anxious to take up.
William was furious. "Isn't that the rotten Staff all over?" he fumed. "Make an earnest and conscientious effort to give the poor soldiers a leg-up with a vital, throbbing, commercial and classical patois and the brass-bound perishers choke you off! Poo-bah! Na poo!"
Then he pulled himself together again and indented on Corps Educational Branch once more, this time for "Lions; menagerie; one." Corps came down on William like St. Paul's Cathedral falling down Ludgate Hill. What the thunder did he mean by it? Trying to be funny with them, was he? He must explain himself instantly—Grrrr!
William was very calm. Couldn't understand what all this unseemly, uproar was about, he wrote. Everything was in order. Obeying their esteemed instructions to the letter he had made inquiries among the men as to what practical everyday trades they were wishful to learn, and, finding one stout fellow who was very anxious to enter public life as a lion-tamer, he had indented for a lion for the chap to practise on. What could be more natural? Furthermore, while on the subject, when they forwarded the lion, would they be so good as to include a muzzle in the parcel, as he thought it would be as well to have some check on the creature during the preliminary lessons.
Corps H.Q.'s reply to this was brief and witty. They instructed the Adjutant to cast William under arrest.
William was furious. PATLANDER.
From a speech at a St. Andrew's Day dinner:—
"The Navy have but recently had a partial reward in the unparralleled spectacle of the surrender of the bulk of the German fleet which run lies swigly in Scotish waters, which now lies snugly, as is meet and fittinf, in Scottish for ever. Loud cheers."—South American Paper.
It is inferred that the printer was at the dinner.