Games/Humor Books

BLANCHE'S LETTERS. SOCIETY "WAR-WORKERS." DEAREST DAPHNE,—The scarcity of paper isn't altogether an unmixed misfortune, as far as one's correspondence is concerned. Letters that don't matter, letters from the insignificant and the boresome, simply aren't answered. For small spur-of-the-moment notes to one's intimes who're not too far off, there's quite... more...

ROBERT'S AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCE. My akwaintance among eminent selebraties seems to be rapidly encreasing. Within what Amlet calls a week, a little week, after my larst intervue with the emenent young Swell as amost lost his art to the pretty Bridesmade, I have been onored with the most cordial notice of a werry emenent Amerrycane, who cums to Lundon wunce ewery year, and makes a good long stay, and... more...

LETTERS TO PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW. (No answers required, thank you.) To Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, Head of the German Peace Delegation. The enthralling volume, entitled Preliminary Terms of Peace, on which your attention is being engrossed at the present moment, is said to be of the same length as A Tale of Two Cities. In other respects there is little resemblance traceable between the two works. A... more...

STRAY THOUGHTS ON PLAY-WRITING. From the Common-place Book of The O'Wilde.—The play? Oh, the play be zephyr'd! The play is not the thing. In other words, the play is nothing. Point is to prepare immense assortment of entirely irrelevant epigrams. "Epigram, my dear Duke, is the refuge of the dullard, who imagines that he obtains truth by inverting a truism." That sounds well; must... more...

FIRST AID TO TOMMY ATKINS. Sir,—I visited the Military Exhibition the other day according to your instructions, my bosom glowing with patriotic ardour. If anything besides your instructions and the general appropriateness of the occasion had been necessary to make my bosom glow thus, it would have been found in the fact that I formerly served my country in a Yeomanry Regiment. I shall never forget... more...

THE MUD LARKS. THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately. I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the... more...

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD: AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XVI. AVUNCULAR DEVOTIO Having literally fallen asleep from his chair to the rug, J. BUMSTEAD, Esquire, was found to have reached such an extraordinary depth in slumber, that Mr. and Mrs. SMYTHE, his landlord and landlady, who were promptly called in by Mr. DIBBLE, had at first some fear that they should never be able to drag him... more...

THE UMBRELLA. A VIEW OF THE SHADY SIDE OF LIFE. A ripe pippin falling upon the head of Sir ISAAC NEWTON (a clear case of hard cider on the brain) suggested the laws of gravitation. An elderly countryman passing my window this clear bright day, attended by his faithful umbrella, suggested the following reflections. The term Umbrella comes from the Latin umbra, a shade—the whole signifying "keep... more...

EVICTED. (A common scandal, inviting the attention of the Government.) I was amazed the other day to hear that my landlord had called to see me. Hitherto our intercourse had been by letter and we had had heated differences on the subject of repairs. His standpoint seemed to be that landlords were responsible for repairs only to lightning conductors and weathercocks. My house possesses neither of these... more...

A COUP FOR "THE DAILY TRAIL." We all knew at the office that Micklebrown had gone to Cocklesea for his holiday. If anyone had offered him a free pass to the Italian lakes or any other delectable spot Micklebrown would have declined it and taken his third return to Cocklesea. Like Sir Walter Raleigh when he started for South America to find a gold-mine, Micklebrown had an object in view. He... more...