Games/Humor Books

June 9, 1920. Owing to heavy storms the other day one thousand London telephones were thrown out of order. Very few subscribers noticed the difference. A camera capable of photographing the most rapid moving objects in the world is the latest invention of an American. There is some talk of his trying to photograph a bricklayer whizzing along at his work. "Perjury is now rampant in all our Courts... more...

"'The Humours of the Town!' Archaic phrase, Breathing of Brummel and the dandy days Of curly hats and gaiters! 'Humours' seem rarer now, at least by night, In this strange world of gilt and garish light, And bibulous wits and waiters." So I. The Shadow smiled. "There's food for mirth In every nook of the sun-circling earth That human foot hath trodden. Man, the... more...

MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION, BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. Judge SWEENEY, with a certain supercilious consciousness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, does not allow the fact that late... more...

CHARIVARIA. According to The Evening News, lambs have already put in an appearance in Dorset. People who expect the Poet Laureate to rush to the spot will be bitterly disappointed. "What was a golden eagle doing in Lincolnshire?" asks "L.G.M." in The Daily Mail. We never answer these personal questions. The Public Libraries Committee of West Ham has declined to purchase The... more...

A DAY-DREAM AT MY UNCLE’S. The result of a serious conversation between the authors of my being ended in the resolution that it was high time for me to begin the world, and do something for myself. The only difficult problem left for them to solve was, in what way I had better commence. One would have thought the world had nothing in its whole construction but futile beginnings and most... more...

July 22, 1914. Those who deny that Mr. Lloyd George is ruining land-owners will perhaps be impressed by the following advertisement in The Bazaar, Exchange and Mart:— "To be sold, small holding, well stocked with fruit trees, good double tenement house on good road and close to station, good outer buildings. Price, Four Marks, Alton, Hunts." The fact that the price should be translated into... more...

OPERATIC CONFUSION. I went on Saturday to hear the three operatic novelties so liberally provided for us on the same night by Messrs. Mapleson, Lago and Harris. I do not mix my liquors, and I endeavour, as a rule, to keep to the same lyrical drama throughout the evening; nor is it my fault if a good dose of strong Beethoven, sweetened with Gounod and flavoured with Meyerbeer had, on the occasion in... more...

THE MINISTRY OF ANCESTRY. "As you are aware," said a prominent official of the Ministry of Ancestry, "although our department has only been in existence for a few months the profits have enabled the Government to take twopence off the income-tax and to provide employment for thousands of deserving clerks dismissed, in deference to public opinion, from other Government offices."... more...

A CRICKET MANNERISM. A writer commented recently in an article in Punch on the advantage to a cricketer of some harmless mannerism, giving as an instance Mr. P.F. Warner's habit of hitching up the left side of his trousers and patting the ground seven times with his bat. This homely touch reminded me irresistibly of Rankin. Not that Rankin resembles Mr. Warner even remotely in any other way. But... more...

THE WIFE-CATCHERS. A LEGEND OF MY UNCLE’S BOOTS. In Four Chapters. The conversation now subsided into “private and confidential” whispers, from which I could learn that Miss O’Brannigan had consented to quit her father’s halls with Terence that very night, and, before the priest, to become his true and lawful wife. It had been previously understood that those of the guests who lived at a... more...