Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, March 17, 1920

Excerpt

FAIR WEAR AND TEAR.

In a short time now we shall have to return this flat to its proper tenants and arrive at some assessment of the damage done to their effects. With regard to the other rooms, even the room which Richard and Priscilla condescend to use as a nursery, I shall accept the owners' estimate cheerfully enough, I think; but the case of the drawing-room furniture is different. About the nursery I have only heard vague rumours, but in the drawing-room I have been an eye-witness of the facts.

The proper tenant is a bachelor who lived here with his sister; he will scarcely realise, therefore, what happens at 5 P.M. every day, when there comes, as the satiric poet, Longfellow, has so finely sung—

"A pause in the day's occupations,

Which is known as the children's hour."

Drawing-room furniture indeed! When one considers the buildings and munition dumps, the live and rolling stock, the jungles and forests in that half-charted territory; when one considers that even the mere wastepaper basket by the writing-desk (and it does look a bit battered, that wastepaper basket) is sometimes the tin helmet under which Richard defies the frightfulness of Lars Porsena, and sometimes a necessary stage property for Priscilla's two favourite dramatic recitations

"He plunged with a delighted scweam

Into a bowl of clotted cweam,"

and

"This is Mr. Piggy Wee,

With tail so pink and curly,

And when I say, 'Good mornin', pig,'

He answers vewwy surly,

Oomph! Oomph!'"

and sometimes the hutch that harbours a cotton-wool creation supposed to be a white rabbit, and stated by the owner to be "munsin' and munsin' and munsin' a carrot"—when, I say, I consider all these things I anticipate that the proceedings of the Reparation Commission will be something like this:—

He (looking a little ruefully at the round music-stool). I suppose your wife plays the piano a good deal?

I (brightly). If you mean the detachable steering-wheel, it is only fair to remember that a part interchangeable between the motor-omnibus and the steam-roller—

He. I don't understand.

I. Permit me to reassemble the mechanism.

He. You mean that when you put that armchair at the end of the sofa and the music-stool in front of it—

I. I mean that the motor-omnibus driver, sitting as he does in front of his vehicle and manipulating his steering-wheel like this, can do little or no harm to the apparatus. On the other hand, the steam-roller mechanic, standing inside the body of the vehicle, and having the steering-wheel in this position—

He. On the sofa?

I. Naturally. Well, supposing he happens to have a slight difference of opinion with his mate as to which of them ought to do the driving, the wheel is quite likely to be pushed off on to the macadam, where it gets a trifle frayed round the edges.

He. I see. How awfully stupid of me! And this pouffe, or whatever they call it?

I. Week in and week out, boy and girl, I have seen that dromedary ridden over more miles of desert than I can tell you, and never once have I known it under-fed or under-watered, or struck with anything harder than the human fist....