There is something wrong with Bones. Mark him as he stands there among all those bodies of sheep and oxen, feeling with his thumb the edge of that long sharp knife and gazing wistfully across the way to where the greengrocer's baby lies asleep in its perambulator on the pavement. Observe him start with a sigh from his reverie as you enter his shop. What is the matter with him? Why should a butcher sigh?
I will tell you. He has been thinking about the Kaiser, the Kaiser who is breaking his heart through the medium of the greengrocer's baby.
As all the world knows, between the ages of one and two the best British babies are built up on beef tea and mutton broth; at two or thereabouts they start on small chops. No one can say when the custom arose. Like so many of those unwritten laws on which the greatness of England is really based it has outgrown the memory of its origin. But its force is as universally binding to-day as it was in Plantagenet times. Thus, though numerous households since the War began have temporarily adopted a vegetarian diet, in the majority of cases a line has been drawn at the baby. That is why butchers at present look on babies as their sheet-anchors. It is through them that they keep the toe of their boot inside the family door. The little things they send for them serve as a memento of the old Sunday sirloin, a reminder that while nuts may nourish niggers the Briton's true prerogative is beef.
The greengrocer has given up meat. But he has done more than this. He has done what not even a greengrocer should do. He has broken the tradition of the ages. He is feeding his baby on bananas.
At first the greengrocer's baby did not like bananas and its cries were awful. But after a while it got used to them, and now even when it goes to bed it clutches one in its tiny hand. It is not so rosy as it was, but the greengrocer says red-faced babies are apoplectic and that the reason it twitches so much in its sleep is because it is so full of vitality. He is advising all his customers to feed their babies on bananas. Bones does not care much what happens to the greengrocer's baby, but he says if it lasts much longer he will have to put his shutters up. He is growing very despondent, and I noticed the other day that he had given up chewing suet—a bad sign in a butcher.
It is a duel of endurance between Bones and the greengrocer's baby. I wonder which will win.
"Mr. Buxton was severely heckled at the outset from all parts of the room. Each time he endeavoured to speak he was hailed with a torrent of howls, hoots and kisses."
Provincial Paper.
A notoriously effective way of stopping the mouth.