CHARIVARIA.
Lord Riddell, in giving his impression of President Wilson, says that his trousers and boots were not in keeping with the smartness of his appearance above the table. This is where the trained habits of journalistic observation come in.
In answer to many inquiries we are unable to obtain confirmation of a rumour that Mr. Charlie Chaplin's contemplated retirement is connected with an invitation from Mr. Horatio Bottomley to enter the arena of British politics.
According to an evening paper the lady who has just become Duchess of Westminster has "one son, a boy." On the other hand the Duke himself has two daughters, both girls.
Over two million Chinese pigtails have been imported into the United States, where they will be used for straining soup, declares a Washington correspondent. The wartime curtailment of the moustache, it appears, has done away with the old custom of straining the soup after it comes to table.
A police magistrate of Louisville, Kentucky, has been called upon to decide whether a man may marry his divorced wife's mother. In our view the real question is whether, with a view to securing the sanctity of the marriage tie, it should not be made compulsory.
"This morning," says a recent issue of a Dublin paper, "police visited Young Ireland office and placed arretssssshrrr rr rr r h bfad mb shs under arrest." Suspicion was apparently aroused by his giving his name in the Erse tongue.
Enormous damage, says a cable, has been done by a water-spout which struck Tangier, Morocco, on Saturday. We note with satisfaction, on the other hand, that the water-spout which recently struck Scotland had no ill effects.
Every hotel in London taken over by the Government has now been given up. The idea of keeping one as a memento was suggested, but Sir Alfred Mond decided to throw in his hand.
Asked his profession last week a man is reported to have answered, "Daily Mail Reader."
While a fire was being extinguished at Boston, Mass., recently the hose burst into flames. A country where that sort of thing occurs can afford to take Prohibition lying down.
A Constantinople message states that a Turk named Zorn Mehmed is one hundred and forty-six years of age. This is said to be due to the fact that for the last century or so he has kept a pet thyroid which he takes about on a chain.
We have no wish to cast any reflection on the courage of the Prohibitionists, but we can draw our own conclusions from the fact that we haven't noticed them rushing to Ireland.
A Denver newspaper points out that the "Wild West bandit" has died out. Our own impression was that he had got a job as a waiter in London.
Things are settling down in America. A news report states that Willard Mack, the actor, has only been divorced three times.
"We have an innate modesty about advertising ourselves," said Sir Robert Horne at the International Advertising Exhibition. A certain colleague of his in the Ministry is reported to have said that Sir Robert can speak for himself in future.
We understand that the idea of producing a filmed version of Mrs. Asquith's Diary has been shelved for the present, owing to the difficulty of procuring actors for the more dangerously acrobatic incidents.
An old lady writes to us with reference to wild-cat taxation that she has always advocated it, but that she has understood that the difficulty was to determine the ownership of these unfortunate vagrants.
The new houses when ready, says a North of England Town Clerk, will only be let to those people who are married. We have felt all along that there was some catch about Dr. Addison's housing scheme.
To a discreditable alien source has been traced the scandalous rumour that the disappearance of the summit of Mont Blanc is due to certain admirers of Mr. Lloyd George, who wished to present their hero with something in the nature of a permanent peroration.
As a partial remedy for the overcrowding at Oxford, it is suggested that the University should come into line with Battersea by making a rule that lost causes will not be kept longer than three days before being destroyed.
"I was the anonymous person who walked down Harley Street and counted the number of open windows," confesses Sir St. Clair Thomson, M.D. So now we can concentrate on Junius and the Man in the Iron Mask.
Motorists are becoming much more polite, we read. They now catch pedestrians sideways, instead of full on.
According to an official of the R.S.P.C.A., as Punch informed us last week, dogs do not possess suicidal tendencies. Yet the other day we saw an over-fed poodle deliberately loitering outside a sausage factory.
"The number of curates who seem to be able to find plenty of time for golf is most surprising," writes a correspondent. We suppose the majority of them employ vicars.
Spanish toreadors are on strike for a higher wage. There is talk, we understand, of a six bull week.
"What is your little brother crying about?"
"Oh, 'im—'e's a reg'lar pessimist, 'e is."
THE DARK AGES.
(Being reflections on the pre-press period.)
[In The Times of December 2nd Lord Northcliffe traces the history of the English Press from the appearance of the first newspaper uttered in English—"A Corrant out of Germany," imprinted at Amsterdam, December 2nd, 1620—and finds some difficulty in understanding how civilisation got on as well as it did through all those preceding centuries.]
To-day (December 2) we keep, with cheers,
The Tercentenary of the Press!
Probing the darkness of the previous years
I try, but try in vain, to guess
How anybody lived before the birth
Of this the Very Greatest Thing on Earth.
You'd say it must have been a savage life.
Men were content to eat and drink
And spend the intervals in carnal strife
With none to teach them how to think;
They had no Vision and their minds were dense,
Largely for lack of True "Intelligence."
When a volcano burst or floods occurred
No correspondent flashed the news;
It came by rumour or a little bird,
Devoid of editorial views;
No leader let them know to what extent
The blame should lie upon the Government.
And yet, when no one knew in those dumb days
Exactly what was going on,
Without reporters they contrived to raise
The Pyramids and Parthenon;
Confucius preached the Truth, and so did Paul,
Though neither of them got in print at all.
It sounds incredible that, when in Greece
The poets sang to lyre or pipe,
When Homer (say) threw off his little piece,
Nobody put the thing in type;
Even in days less barbarously rude
Virgil, it seems, was never interviewed.
And how did Dante manage to indite
His admirable tale of Hell,
Or Buonarroti sculp his sombre "Night"
Without the kodak's magic spell—
No Press-photographer, a dream of tact,
To snap the artist in the very act?
Poor primitives, who groped amid the gloom
And perished ere the dawn of day,
Ere yet Publicity, with piercing boom,
Had shown the world a better way;
Before the age—so good for him that climbs—
Now culminating in the Northcliffe times.
O. S.