HUMOUR'S LABOUR LOST.
Lochtermachty, N.B.
May 29th, 1919.DEAR MR. PUNCH,—My father and I have fallen out over the question of your literary judgment and sense of humour. If I weren't a filial daughter I'd say that he's a ——; but I am, so I won't call him names.
The fact is that, before he became a professional Padre, he didn't know that such things as senses of humour existed. All that mattered in his life were Latin and Greek and Hebrew and the other pursuits of the classical scholar. However, during his wanderings with the Army he has somehow managed to acquire what he calls "an appreciation of the laughable." And that is the cause of our divided house.
This morning at breakfast, while he was reading out the account of the proceedings of the General Assemblies, he came upon the interesting statement—volunteered by an eminent Edinburgh divine—that all the ministers of the Kirk have lost a stone in weight during the War, and that this works out at a loss of five tons of ministerial flesh to the United Free Church of Scotland. Then, after he had tested the accuracy of the statistics, which he found quite incorrect, and I had meditated upon the bulk of matter encircled by the parental Sam Browne, we were both seized with an idea, and said "Punch!" at the same instant.
It took us some time to get rid of the accumulation of marmalade, margarine and bacon fat which we amassed in our attempts to link fingers across the table; but about 10.30 or so we got settled down to work on your behalf.
Until lunch-time we were fully occupied in giving each other ideas and then explaining why they wouldn't work. After lunch the Padre retired to his study to work out, he said, a satire—after ARISTOPHANES—which would afford him an opportunity of introducing the Archbishop of CANTERBURY'S speech, and making some whimsical allusions to the legend of the strayed lamb come back to tell his lean Scotch brethren of the green meadows and luscious feeding to be had across the Borders.
My own ambitions were slighter. I would do a conversation perhaps between the shades of JOHNSON and his BOZZY, or a Limerick, or even just an original witty remark, or, failing all of these, I would select an "apt quotation." About tea-time I retired to the garden with a notebook, a pencil and a book of quotations. By 6.30 I had a list of one hundred and two, and was wavering over the final choice of a parody on "Some hae meat wha canna eat," and an adaptation of "Be sooople, Davie, in things immaterial," when my parent came out to the lawn, flushed and excited, with his last three hairs triumphantly erect, and brandished a document in my face.
It was an ode, Mr. Punch—an ode five (foolscap) pages long, written in Greek!
I gave him best at once, and then very gently suggested that his composition might not in its present unmitigated form be quite suited to your tastes and requirements.
I shall spare you the details of the ensuing controversy, but I want you to know that I have spared you much else, and in so doing have forfeited not only my father's affection but a projected advance on my next quarter-but-three's dress allowance.
I hope you need no further proof of my devotion.
Yours, etc.,
A DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE.
P.S.—I was forgetting to say that you will find the bit about the ministers near the bottom of the third column of the tenth page of Thursday's Scotsman. Perhaps you can think of a funny treatment yourself.
SONGS OF SIMLA.
III.—THE FURRIER.
Akbar the furrier squats on the floor
Sucking an Eastern pipe,
Thumbing the lakhs that he's made of yore,
Lakhs which creep to the long-dreamed crore