Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914

Excerpt

CHARIVARIA.

"When the King and Queen visit Nottinghamshire as the guests of the Duke and Duchess of Portland at Welbeck, three representative colliery owners and four working miners will," we read, "be presented to their Majesties at Forest Town." A most embarrassing gift, we should say, and one which cannot, without hurting susceptibilities, be passed on to the Zoological Society.

Are the French, we wonder, losing that valuable quality of tact for which they have so long enjoyed a reputation? Amongst the Ministers introduced at Paris to King Christian of Denmark, who enjoys his designation of "The tall King," was M. Maginol, who is an inch taller than His Majesty. He should surely have been told to stay at home.

In the Bow County Court, last week, a woman litigant carried with her, for luck, an ornamental horse-shoe, measuring at least a foot in length, and won her case. Magistrates trust that this idea, pretty as it is, may not spread to Suffragettes of acknowledged markmanship.

Extract from an account in The Daily Chronicle of the Silver King disturbance:—"The officers held her down, and, with the ready aid of members of the audience, managed to keep her fairly quiet, though she bit those who tried to hold their hands over her mouth. A stage hand was sent for ..." If we are left to assume that she did not like the taste of that, we regard it as an insult to a deserving profession.

"Do people read as much as they used to?" is a question which is often asked nowadays. There are signs that they are, anyhow, getting more particular as to what they read. Even the House of Commons is becoming fastidious. It refused, the other day, to read the Weekly Rest Day Bill a second time, and the Third Reading of the Home Rule Bill was regarded as a waste of time and intelligence.

The superstitions of great men are always interesting, and we hear that, after his experience at Ipswich and on the Stock Exchange, Mr. Lloyd George is now firmly convinced that it is unlucky for him to have anything to do with anyone whose name ends in "oni."

Professor Metchnikoff, the great authority on the prevention of senile decay, will shortly celebrate his seventieth birthday, and a project is on foot to congratulate him on his good fortune in living so long.

The Central Telephone Exchange is now prepared to wake up subscribers at any hour for threepence a call, and it is forming an "Early Risers' List." So many persons are anxious to take a rise out of the Telephone Service that the success of the innovation is assured.

By crossing the Channel in a biplane, the Princess Loewenstein-Wertheim has earned the right to be addressed as "Your Altitude."

We see from an advertisement that we now have in our midst an "Institute of Hand Development." This should prove most useful to parents who own troublesome children. No doubt after a short course of instruction the spanking power of the hand may be doubled.

Reading that two houses in King Street, Cheapside, were sold last week "for a price equal to nearly £13 10s....