Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920

Excerpt

CHARIVARIA.

Bohemia has decided to have a Coalition Government. Several London morning papers are prepared to offer them one in good going condition, providing they pay cost of transit.

According to a contemporary, "rabbits are worth less when they are skinned by the shopkeeper." So is the customer.

"It is of greater advantage to know the Welsh language," says Professor Trow, "than to know French." That is, of course, if you wish to use it for defensive purposes.

Sir Gordon Hewart has declined to "make any attempt to consider what is to happen after the next election." The fact of the matter is that The Daily Mail itself has not yet decided.

It is reported that an opposition League of Nations is to be started among countries addicted to war. The League will take cognisance of all outbreaks of peace.

A peculiar incident is reported from a large town in the South of England. It appears that one day last week a bricklayer lost count of the number of bricks he had laid, with the result that a recount had to be made to enable him to ascertain whether he had finished for the day or not.

The Post Office Workers' Union Conference at Morecambe declared last week that the Government was "without capacity, courage or principle." Apart from these defects they have no fault to find with it.

Sir Jagadiz Chunder Bose, lecturing at Westminster School, said that plants, like human beings, are sensitive to pain. Some of the war-time allotment marrows we heard so much of must have suffered badly from obesity.

Most actors, in the opinion of an official of the Actors' Association, are better off than they used to be. But what we want to see is an improvement when they are on.

American shipping circles deny the rumour that they are building a liner measuring thirteen hundred feet in length. We felt at the time that this vessel must have been a Canarder.

Although a heavy safe was bodily removed from a small house in Wolverhampton during the night, not one of the four persons sleeping in the next room was awakened by the burglars. Such thoughtfulness on the part of the intruders deserves the greatest credit.

"A single greenfly," declared a speaker at a meeting of the R.S.P.C.A., "may have fifteen thousand descendants in a week." This almost equals the record of the Chicago millionaire who recently died intestate.

A motor-cyclist who was thrown from his machine as a result of colliding with a car near Birmingham was asked by the occupants of the latter why he did not look where he was going. This in our opinion is a most difficult thing to do, as one's destination is so uncertain until the actual landing takes place.

On being sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a London Police Court last week a burglar threw his boot at the magistrate and used insulting language towards him. We understand that in future only law-abiding criminals will be allowed inside the court.

A Hackney boy has dug up a Queen Anne shilling. We understand that, on hearing the price of sugar, the shilling asked to be put back again.