Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/504
"Is there?" I asked. "I can't see what it is."
"As curiosities," he explained. "We're curiosities, we are, and that's our only chance when it isn't raining at eleven o'clock at night. People take to us the same as they_go to Madame Tussaud's or the British Museum. Country people, I mean; and people from Australia. 'Let's have a hansom ride,' they say, 'while we can. Just to say we've had one.' Then there's people who want their children to do what they used to do when they were children themselves. And I had a gent the other day who wanted to be driven all over the place, just, as he called it, to renew the past. But I think he was a bit up the pole. What do you think?"
"Undoubtedly," I replied.
And then I said good-night, and he drove off; and when I was inside the house I found that in some mysterious way I had given him the second half-crown as well as the first.
Perhaps that is how it is that they can still keep going.
Jack (just turned fifteen). "Mother, are you positive you haven't made a mistake about my age? You know how casual you are about dates."
IN PRAISE OF THE TAPE.
And study the tape instead;
'Tis the only way at this time of day
To steady and keep one's head;
The tape is bad for the eyes, I own,
And it sometimes runs amok;
But its negative virtues fully atone
For the tricks that are played by Puck.
At the club, that reels out slips
Of the width of garters, with names of starters
And winners, and racing tips;
No, this yields volumes in type-script columns
Of war-news, great and small,
Which the porter tears off and duly bears off
To pin them up in the hall.
But it never raves or squeals;
It has no novelist critic on tap
And you can't peruse it at meals;
It gives the official news without
Superfluous gloss or frills,
And it hangs no headline horrors out
Like the yellow newspapers' bills.
Embroider each War-scribe's screed,
And the tape hitherto has contrived to eschew
The worst of this baleful breed;
(If any one here is not quite clear
And for information begs,
I allude to the making of omelettes and breaking
Of antecedent eggs).
Instead of pulling our legs
I'd lay a ban on each newspaper man
Who wrote of omelettes and eggs;
And if I were Kitchener I'd deport,
To the land of the Tosks and Ghegs,
The novelist corps who exploit the War
And deluge the Press with their dregs.
Editorial Candour.
"Beyond that all is rumour, and we trust and believe unfounded rumour."—The Times.