Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/399

Mrs. Brown (to Mrs. Jones, who has also been to see a son off in troopship). "Well, I'm sure they'll be starting soon, because both funnels are smoking; and, you see, my dear, they couldn't want both funnels just for lunch."

Tr-r-r-r-r-r-ing!

It was the alarum clock in the far corner.

Some people place alarum clocks close by the side of their beds. This is a foolish and expensive plan, since by merely reaching forth an arm it is possible, with practice, to hurl the diabolical instrument through the window in one's sleep, and then to subside again beneath the blankets. On the other hand, if you really have to get out of bed, you really have to wake up, unless of course you are a somnambulist, in which case you ought to sleep in a cage.

As I dragged myself slowly from my dreams I realised (1) that I was a Special Constable due for duty from two till six A.M.; (2) that I had ordered Jessica, our general, to set the clock for 1.15; (3) that it was raining; (4) that I had a slight cold and a touch of dyspepsia; (5) that as the gas-stove in the back kitchen was out of action I could not brew myself a cup of tea. I cursed the Special Constabulary and all their works of darkness, dressed very quickly and crept downstairs. I then cut myself some bread and cheese, which was all I could find in the pantry.

As I sat eating this in the kitchen I felt my spirits sink lower and lower. I thought bitterly of the Kaiser, the man responsible for all my woes. What was it to him that I was at present laying the seeds of indigestion beside an extinct kitchen fire, and should shortly be wandering for interminable hours through interminable lanes with a companion as dejected as myself, our only solace a couple of police whistles, from which it was impossible to extract the faintest resemblance to a tune? Nothing. Perhaps he had not even been informed that I was a Special Constable at all. I thought despairingly of the price of coal, and wondered how long it would be before I was reduced to felling our only apple-tree for fuel, and whether I should be able to do it with a table-knife or should be compelled to purchase an axe; and, if so, what was the price of axes. I thought regretfully of my golf handicap of eighteen, the fruit of years of untiring devotion to the game. By the time the war was over (if it ever was over) I should probably have sunk to an indifferent twenty, and my niblick and I would meet almost as strangers. Why, I asked myself, did Heaven permit these things?

At length, my bread and cheese disposed of for the time being, I rose and prepared to face the elements. As I did so my eye fell on the clock on the mantelpiece. It showed the hour as twenty minutes past six. Jessica had placed the alarum in my room, but had inadvertently set it as if for her own usual hour of rising.

In the crises of life a man will often mechanically seek relief from the stress of overpowering emotion in the performance of some apparently trivial_act. I stooped and unlaced my boots. Then I crept upstairs again.

Manchester and Salford Councils decided yesterday to advance the price of gas 6d. per cubic foot, largely owing to the advance in coal prices."—Daily Mirror.

With gas advanced by £25 per 1,000 ft., Manchester and Salford householders may be advised to try electricity."

"Things our men at the Front will appreciate.
———'s Backache Pellets."

Advt. in "Birmingham Gazette."

We do not like the innuendo. It is unjust, though, no doubt, undesigned.

"I venture to say that if I stopped you in the street, or even in the next street, and asked you what the calibre is of the guns latterly employed in puncturing the Dardanelles, your answer would be an unhesitating 'No.'"

And a very good answer, too, for this kind of bore.

"Wanted, Lads for Bottling."

Advt. in "Lancashire Daily Post."

This advertisement is obviously belated. Nobody asks nowadays for "a bottle of the boy."