And if it holds too much water it is certain to sink.
MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN.
Irishman (discussing "roarer" recently purchased by P.-W.S.). "Very well known, she was, wid the Ward Union Stag Hounds. The boys used to call her 'the widda,' for why they said ye could always hear her sobbin' afther the deer departed."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Undeniably Mr. Caradoc Evans is the bold boy. No doubt you remember (since they are so difficult to forget) the two volumes in which he dealt faithfully (and a bit over) with the manners of his countrymen in the land of their fathers. I have heard, and can well believe, that some of Mr. Evans' own people were moved by this tribute even to the extent of threatening its author with personal violence. And now he has turned from Welsh Wales to English London, and gives us in My Neighbours (Melrose) a further collection of sketches pleasantly calculated to prove that the general detestability of his compatriots remains unchanged by their migration from a whitewashed cottage to a villa in Suburbia. Whatever you may think of Mr. Evans' work, whether it attracts or violently repels, there can be no question of its devastating skill. His sketches, no more than a few pages in length, contain never an idle word, and the phrases bite like vitriol. Moreover he employs an idiom that is (I conjecture) a direct transcription from native speech, which adds enormously to the effect. Understand me, not for worlds would I commend these volumes haphazard to the fastidious; I only say they are clever, arresting and violently individual. Also that, if you have not so far met the work of Mr. Evans, here is your opportunity, in a volume that shows it at its best, or worst. Half-an-hour's reading will give you an excellent idea of it. At the end of that time you will probably send either to the chemist for a restorative or to the bookseller for the two previous volumes. Meanwhile, if I were the writer, I should purchase a bulldog.