THE TRUMP SUIT.
Those who wield Britannia's power
Have decreed a blissful hour,
When the mellow bugle-note
Sounds in every ship afloat,
And you see the forrard decks
Littered up with leathernecks,
Seamen sprawling on the hatches,
Darning socks and fitting patches,
Cleaning jumpers, sewing, smoking,
Writing, fighting, sleeping, joking,
Baiting foe and twitting friend—
Sailors call it "Make and Mend."
In this jolly throng each day
Gunner 'Erbert, R.M.A.,
Sat and smoked serenely bored,
So that I must needs record
When that precious hour was ended
He had neither made nor mended.
'Erbert was a crumpled rose
In the beds of N.C.O.'s,
And a blot on the escutcheon
Which they pride themselves so much on;
For, in spite of threat and curse,
Cells and badges lost, or worse,
Captain's frown or sergeants' oaths,
'Erbert wouldn't mend his clothes.
In a distant Eastern land
Certain tribes got out of hand,
And, to comfort little Mary,
Sought to stew the missionary.
Our Marines were duly sent
To apportion chastisement,
And they snatched him from the larder,
But alas! pursuing harder
Than was wise in such a scrap,
They were landed in a trap.
For the wily natives got
All around and copped the lot,
Stripping off them every stitch
Of the clothes they stood in, which,
I am sure you'll all agree,
Was a great indignity.
Copped the lot? No, there was one
Absent when the deed was done.
'Erb, with his accustomed push,
Was advancing when the bush
Dragged the last remaining stitches
From the bag he called his breeches,
Leaving nothing but the dregs
Of the red stripe down his legs.
'Erbert paused; though not a prude,
He had never liked the nude.
Seated in a distant clearing.
He remarked the natives cheering,
And, directed by the din,
Saw the plight his mates were in.
When he thought the time was ripe,
Clad in little but his stripe
'Erbert charged.... The tribes in wonder
Promptly bolted with the plunder.
'Erbert with averted head
Quickly gathered every shred
Of his late-lamented kit,
Saying, as he handed it
To the Major, "I infer
You have lost your breeches, Sir."
With his glasses in his hands
On his deck the Captain stands,
Watching with surprise and fear
His detachment reappear—
First the Major, garbed in dirt
And the tail of 'Erbert's shirt;
Then the Sergeant, better dressed
In the sleeves of 'Erbert's vest;
Then the rest in fragments torn
From the jumper he had worn.
Last comes 'Erbert, proud as NELSON,
With a smile and nothing else on.
Is it Fortune's final stroke,
Or the Skipper's little joke?
As the ladder they ascend
Comes the bugle "Make and Mend."
"A flotilla of Portuguese warships is actively maintaining the blockade between the mouth of the Volga and that of the Minho."
Daily Paper.
The report that the Bolshevists have borrowed a "Big Bertha" and are meditating a bombardment of Lisbon by way of reprisal is as yet unconfirmed.
"Mr. W.A. Appleton, secretary of the Feedration of Trade Unions, declares that since the Armistice the federation 'has lost no opportunity of endeavouring to smash the controls that meant continued high prices (of food)."—Evening Paper.
More power to the "Feedration" in its self-sacrificing campaign.
