Outlook Odes

by T. W. H. Crosland

TO AN HOTEL KEEPER

My dear Sir,—
Oft in the stilly night
My thoughts fly
In your direction,
For oft in the stilly night
It is my unfortunate habit
To have uncomfortable dreams,
And the worst of them
Runs to bankruptcy.
I have a horror of bankruptcy,
At any rate in my dreams.
I sometimes lie
Between the blankets
In a cold sweat
And for public examination as it were,
And the presiding genius of the court
Says to me, sepulchrally,
"To what do you attribute your financial rottenness?"
I fall into a colder sweat
And remark,
With a humility
Which becomes my unfortunate position,
"Sir, if you please,
I have been living at an hotel."
At this juncture of course
I come in for every sympathy:
The Court is with me,
The Court has been there itself;
There is not a dry eye about the place,
Every man present knows what I mean,
And his heart is touched accordingly.
Sir,
My dear Sir,
You also know what I mean;
In other words, you know
That I am the victim of a convention,
And that, when all is said that can be said,
You are the author of that convention.
As to the nature of that convention
We will put it this way:
One pound of steak
To the actual consumer
Should cost, say, 1s. 2d.
Trimmings
In the way of potatoes and peas might cost, say, 6d.,
Bread, 1d.,
Pepper, salt, and mustard, 1d.
(You will notice that I put a princely price on everything),
Total, 1s. 10d.
Fifty per cent. profit for you, let us say,
Would bring us up to 2s. 9d.
Really you ought to let one off for 2s. 9d.,
But what do you do?
Well,
So far as I can gather from your bills,
You lie awake at night
Debating with yourself
Whether you should charge one 3s. 6d. or 4s. 6d.
And you usually come to the conclusion
That it will be best
For all parties concerned
To charge one 5s.
If one expostulates,
You remark
With hauteur
That you thought you were dealing with a gentleman.
You are quite correct in this surmise.
But—
One pays,
And you pocket the difference.
Then, again, on one's bill
You put
Bed, 7s. 6d.
Which is cheap;
And I do not murmur;
But you also put
Attendance, 2s. 6d.;
Coffee in bedroom before rising, 1s.;
Bath, 1s. 6d.;
This is just 5s. too much,
Especially in view of the fact
That the attendance wears dirty shirts,
That the bath
Is lukewarm if you order it cold
And lukewarm if you order it hot;
And that the coffee before rising
Doesn't cost you a farthing.
I am aware, of course,
That all this is very mean
And low down
On my part,
But frankly
Your rapacity
Matters not so much to me
As to yourself.
People come once to your establishment,
They read your bill,
Pay your prices
And tip your dirty-shirted waiters,
And go away
And forget to come back.
Hence
You are bound to charge
The next man that comes along
As much extra as he will stand,
And by slow degrees
Your establishment
Is becoming
A by-word
And a warning.
My dear Sir,
Have a shilling bottle of wine
(For which you charge me 3s. 6d.)
At your own expense,
Consult with your wife,
And make up your mind
Never to charge
More than 2s.
For 9d. worth of goods.
Honesty is its own reward—
It is really.

TO THE MAN WITH A GUN

My dear Sir,—
I suppose you are having an excellent time just now.
There are a large number of counties
In England and Scotland,
And I am not acquainted with one of them
Wherein your bang-bang
And puffs of smoke
And red-faced men with dogs
Are not to be encountered.
You like it;
It is very nice;
And really, when you come to think of it,
It is what the counties were made for.
In the history books
They were wont to say
Of a certain Norman monarch,
That he loved the red deer
As if he were their brother.
Of you it may safely be said
That you love the red grouse
And the brown partridge.
As if you were a poulterer.
You are a sportsman.
The man who first went out with a gun
To shoot game
Probably did it on the sly.
Had he been caught
He would no doubt have been regarded
By the sportsmen of his day
With the same contempt
That you yourself indulge
For the unprincipled blackguard, Sir,
Who shoots foxes.
But time and the gunsmiths
Have changed all that;
And now you are a sportsman,
A shooter of birds
For the London market.
You are also a gunner,
And you kill things.
Oh! why do you not go
And live at Gunners-bury?
Bad joke?
Well, I know it is.
But I assure you, my dear Sir,
That it is not half so bad as I can make them
When I try.
To come now to the region
Of practical politics,
Let me explain to you right off
That, despite all that has been said against you
By people who are mad about the Land
And the Game-laws,
And the feathered kingdom
And so forth,
I,
Who am always on the side of wisdom,
Have discovered a justification for you.
It is this:
There has been a great demand of late
For really competent shots.
In response to that demand
Mr. Kipling has started a village rifle club.
I understand that the members thereof
Are, let us say, five hundred in number.
Now, I put it to you, Sir,
How many sportsmen are there
Shooting in this beautiful country and Scotland
To-day?
Well, we will not compute;
It is dangerous.
But you could make a fairly big rifle club out of them.
They are all good men,
And of course all beautiful shots.
Some day
(When the war is over)
England may want them.
Will they answer to the call?
My dear Sir,
You have your uses.
Go in peace.

TO THE STOCK EXCHANGE

(On its Centenary)

My dear Stock Exchange,—
I am given to understand
That to-day you are a hundred years old,
And that to-day therefore
You will celebrate
What nine men out of every ten of you
Call your "Centeenary"
By taking a whole holiday instead of a half one.
It would be easy for me, my dear Stock Exchange,
To present you
With a sort of illuminated address on this occasion;
But I refrain.
One short year ago
I tumbled into a little money;
It was "not enough to live upon,"
But it was a nice sum.
A man introduced me to a member of the Stock Exchange,
The member of the Stock Exchange introduced me to a little game of "in and out,"
And my five hundred pounds folded its tents like the Arabs—
That is to say, it silently stole away.
It was not the member of the Stock Exchange's fault;
Certainly it was not my fault;
And I will not say that it was the fault of the Stock Exchange.
But I am not giving the Stock Exchange
Any illuminated addresses
At present.
On the other hand, let me assure you
That I believe the Stock Exchange
To be a highly respectable,
Honourable,
And useful institution.
It leaves the court without a stain upon its character.
I say these latter things advisedly,
Because some time back
A friend of mine who writes articles on food supply
Having delivered himself of the opinion
That London's milk was largely water,
Was sued for slander
By the Amalgamated Society of Dairymen's Daughters,
And had to climb down and apologise.
So that on the whole I repeat that, in my humble opinion,
If you want to find
Really sound, white men,
Men of spotless character and impregnable probity,
You cannot do better
Than wend your way to Gorgonzola Hall.
And joking apart, my dear Stock Exchange,
You really are a blessing.
If it were not for you
People with a lot of money,
And people with only a little,
Would simply not lose it.
It would lie in banks and old stockings and kindred receptacles
Till it went mouldy.
You keep things going.
You are the heart of the monetary world,
You pump in the gold,
You pump out all that you don't happen to want.
And you go and live in Maida Vale,
Keep a butler,
Drive two horses,
And change your name from Manassah to Howard.
This "Centeenary" holiday of yours
Gives me much pause.
Supposing, instead of taking a day,
You were to take a year,
What would happen to England?
SHE—WOULD—BE—RUINED!
Yeth, indeed.