Excerpt
May 10, 1916.
CHARIVARIA.
Many graphic tales have been told of the immense loads of plunder carried off during the fighting in Dublin; but there has been looting on a large scale elsewhere, if one may believe the headline of a contemporary:—"Man arrested with Colt in his pocket at Bloomsbury."
Says a writer in The Daily Chronicle: "In one neighbourhood within the Zeppelin zone there are hundreds of partridges who defy the Defence of the Realm Act. Two or three hours before anyone else is aware that the baby-killers are approaching these bold birds go chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, as if there were an army of the more human sort of poachers about." Personally we have always felt that the section of the Defence of the Realm Act which forbids one to go chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, when the Zeppelins are approaching is superfluous as well as in inferior taste.
Dr. Walford Davis, in a lecture on "Songs for Home Singing," recently told his hearers how Major Tom Bridges saved a couple of battalions at the Front with two penny whistles. We feel bound to point out however that any attempt to save the nation with the same exiguous weapons would be too hazardous to be encouraged.
Owing to a lack of the necessary dyes there will soon be no more red tape available for the War Office and elsewhere. It is to be hoped, however, that the familiar and picturesque salutation with which staff officers are in the habit of taking leave of one another, "So long, Old Tape!" will not be allowed to become obsolete.
Attention has recently been drawn to the number of strapping boys who are idling their time away in cinema houses in the absence of their fathers at the Front. Their strapping fathers, of course.
According to the President of the Baptist Union, "you must hit a Londoner at least six times before he smarts." We do not presume to dispute this statement, but what we want to know is, how was the Londoner occupied while the President of the Baptist Union was conducting his extremely interesting experiment?
Owing to the scarcity of tonnage, Denmark shipowners have put into commission two 18th-century sailing vessels. Meanwhile in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat there is, we learn, some talk of organising an expedition for the recovery of the Ark with a view to her utilisation in the cattle-carrying trade.
The Recorder of Pontefract states that in a recent walk he followed for three miles three men who were smoking, and counted sixty-two matches struck by them. It is reported that the gentlemen concerned have since called upon the Recorder to explain that it was in a spirit of war economy that they had dispensed with the services of the torch-bearer who had hitherto attended their movements.
There will be no Bakers' Exhibition this year, it is announced. Many chic models however, both in gáteaux and the new open-work confiserie, will be privately exhibited.
A contributor to The Observer draws our attention to the phenomenally early return of the swifts. But after all there must be something particularly soothing about England these days to a neurotic fowl like a swift.
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