“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a kind of a description of—you don’t understand these things, Maria, but we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I thought—that is, we thought—a few of us thought, you know—a whole lot of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand—to—to avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”
“Oh, you consulted, then?”
“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we decided on a whole lot of things.”
“What time did you decide on breaking up?”
“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish financiers—Baron Rothschild, and—and the rest of the Rothschilds, and the chief rabbis—and—and—and—all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve been working the oracle—and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining matters as lucidly as was necessary.
“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the almshouse before you die, at the rate—the poor rate—you’re going on. What else?”
“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things have gone so far that, that—”
“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled ‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin, the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat down in the coal scuttle, and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning; and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin, you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in a quiet kitchen in South Boston.
AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.
HEIGHO for the morning, murky and dark,
When, heedless of threatening cloud,
I ventured to visit the green College park,
And mingled along with the crowd.
I am almost now on insanity’s brink,
And this I attribute to
Either a fairy attired in pink
Or an angel whose robe was blue.