Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/564
"Are you a millionaire, father?"
"No, my boy; I wish I was."
"How much money do you get, father?"
"Oh well—sometimes I make as much as a hundred pounds in a month."
"A hundred pounds a month!"—(slowly, after a pause) "and he gives me tuppence a week!"
MR. PUNCH APPEALS.
There is urgent and ceaseless need for more of those sand-bags which have been the means of protecting the lives of so many at the Front. Men are dying daily for need of this protection, and one can imagine no more useful work for those who want to be of practical service to our troops. No possible limit can be put to the number required. Mr. Punch earnestly hopes that his readers may be persuaded to devote some of their time and labour to this simple means of saving life. Communications should be addressed to Miss M. L. Tyler, Linden House, Highgate Road, N.W.
Those whose hearts have been moved by the gallant deeds of our Canadians in France and of our Australian and New Zealand troops in the Dardanelles will be very glad to have an opportunity of doing some little service to the brave soldiers of our Dominions who are training in England or come home to us wounded. F.-M. Lord Grenfell has just opened the Victoria League's Club for Overseas Soldiers at 16, Regent Street, Waterloo Place, and contributions will be very welcome. They should be addressed to the Hon. Treasurer of the Victoria League, at 2, Millbank House, Westminster, S.W.
Mr. Punch begs to acknowledge a donation of £5, collected by two officers at the Front on a water-wagon, for the Children's Country Holidays Fund. He has forwarded this generous gift to the Secretary of the Fund.
False Teeth in Literature.
"A Court of Inquiry will assemble at 11 A.M. to-morrow the 10th inst., to investigate upon the circumstances under which Pte. ——— lost his artificial dentures."
Battalion Orders of the —th Bn. Royal Fusiliers.
To the Munitions Department.
Nunc manibus rapidis, omni nunc arte magistra:
Praecipitate moras.
Virgil, Aeneid, VIII. 441-8.
A FISH STORY.
(Whales sometimes attain an age of five hundred years.)
Until this young and lusty fellow,
The whale who swims the deep to-day,
Has sunk into the sere and yellow,
And talks as only old age can,
A garrulous cetacean,
He'll tell of what a long life's taught him,
His escapades with brother whales,
The times harpooners nearly caught him,
And how he oft contrived to dish
The predatory devil-fish.
And, leaving fishes' feats for men's, he
Should tell of deeds beneath the wave
That marked the days of German frenzy,
Swift will each great-great-grandchild cry:—
"By Neptune, how these old fish lie!"