Page:Punch Vol CXXII.djvu/734
THE BRITISH ASS SPEAKS OUT.
[At the opening Congress of the British Association, Professor Dewar in his Presidential speech attributed the commercial decline of England to a scandalous economy in technical education. It should be said that the Professor is not to be confused with the Sir Thomas Dewar who collaborated with Mr. Dan Leno in arranging a Comic Charity Cricket Match, played on the mine date, at the Oval.]
The world has fixed its eye on
The portent of the "British Ass"
Assembled in a solid mass
To coach the British Lion.
How pertinent, how true are
The homilies he utters there—
Greatest (but one) of all who wear
The honoured name of Dewar.
The points that most concern us;
Naming the faults we ought to cure
If we would stay our swift but sure
Descent to sheer Avernus.
The genii of epidemics;
And scathingly exposed the cue
To Britain's fall : the thing is due
To disregard of chemics!
Of alkali and acid
He found our training sadly crude,
But, worse than this, our attitude
Was criminally placid.
With undisturbed emotions
To what a scientific pitch
The Germans raise its use, so rich
In dyes and smells and potions?
As fast as we invent 'em;
Our total skill in chemic lore
Compared with theirs is little more
Than thirty-three per centum!
To-day and many morrows;
Carnegie's Institute sustains
A system for "collecting brains"
Like butterflies or Corots.
On secular researches
Largesse enough almost to keep
(Bought by the gross you get them cheap)
Our infant schools in birches!
Knee-deep in mere stagnation,
Still haggling over wordy views—
Lloyd-George's and the Lord Knows Hugh's—
On cleric "Education."
O. S.
We learn from the Sunderland Daily Echo that "the publishing firm of Wormser, of Amsterdam, announces that it will publish General de Wet's boot in a few months' time." We shall still hope to have the other boot published eventually, so as to be on the same footing as our troops to whom he so constantly showed a clean pair of heels
AN UNFINISHED COLLECTION.
A silence had fallen upon the smoking-room. The warrior just back from the front had enquired after George Vanderpoop, and we, who knew that George's gentle spirit had, to use a metaphor after his own heart, long since been withdrawn from circulation, were feeling uncomfortable and wondering how to break the news.
Smithson is our specialist in tact, and we looked to him to be spokesman.
"George," said Smithson at last, "the late George Vanderpoop———"
"Late!" exclaimed the warrior; "is he dead?"
"As any doornail," replied Smithson sadly. "Perhaps you would care to hear the story. It is sad, but interesting. You may recollect that, when you sailed, he was starting his journalistic career. For a young writer he had done remarkably well. The Daily Telephone had printed two of his contributions to their correspondence column, and a bright pen picture of his, describing how Lee's Lozenges for the Liver had snatched him from almost certain death, had quite a vogue. Lee, I believe, actually commissioned him to do a series on the subject."
"Well?" said the warrior.
"Well, he was, as I say, prospering very fairly, when in an unlucky moment he began to make a collection of editorial rejection forms. He had always been a somewhat easy prey to scourges of that description. But when he had passed safely through a sharp attack of Philatelism and a rather nasty bout of Autographomania, everyone hoped and believed that he had turned the corner. The progress of his last illness was very rapid. Within a year he wanted but one specimen to make the complete set. This was the one published from the offices of the Scrutinizer. All the rest he had obtained with the greatest ease. I remember his telling me that a single short story of his, called The Vengeance of Vera Dalrymple, had been instrumental in securing no less than thirty perfect specimens. Poor George! I was with him when he made, his first attempt on the Scrutinizer. He had baited his hook with an essay on Evolution. He read me one or two passages from it. I stopped him at the third paragraph, and congratulated him in advance, little thinking that it was sympathy rather than congratulations that he needed. When I saw him a week afterwards he was looking haggard. I questioned him, and by slow degrees drew out the story. The article on Evolution had been printed.
"'Never say die, George,' I said. 'Send them Vera Dalrymple. No paper can take that.'
"He sent it. The Scrutinizer, which had been running for nearly a century without publishing a line of fiction, took it and asked for more. It was as if there were an editorial conspiracy against him."
"Well?" said the man of war.
"Then," said Smithson, "George pulled himself together. He wrote a parody of 'The Minstrel Boy.' I have seen a good many parodies, but never such a parody as that. By return of post came a long envelope bearing the crest of the Scrutinizer. 'At last,' he said, as he tore it open.
"'George, old man,' I said, ' your hand.'
"He looked at me a full minute. Then with a horrible, mirthless laugh he fell to the ground, and expired almost instantly. You will readily guess what killed him. The poem had been returned, but without a rejection form!"
Mr. Davitt has condemned the naming of potatoes after Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, and other Generals by the Irish Agricultural Department. Quite so; the potato is a pomme, not a pom-pom, de terre. The right people to call the "tubers" after are Messrs. Yerkes and Perks.