PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

(An Unfinished Romance.)

SOMETHING like the following series of advertisements in the Agony columns of the Mayfair Post has been going on at intervals for many months past, and things seem no nearer solution.

DUMB ADORER.-Though I look at you, and you must not speak to me, I feel that you are the person who stood by the pillar-box on the opposite side of the road last Wednesday. SHY BEAUTY.

SHY BEAUTY. Your last sweet message gives me hope. I shall stand by the pillar-box in all weathers all day long for the future in case you may see my reflection when you look the other way. DUMB ADORER.

You can have no DUMB ADORER. reflection or you would not do anything so foolish. I have given up looking at anything or anybody now. SHY BEAUTY.

SHY BEAUTY. Yet you have a mirror, and it must tell you what you are. Why so heartless? You are the only woman in the world. I shall never speak until you deign to cast a glance at me.--DUMB ADORER."

DUMB ADORER. You misunderstand me. I did not want you to be getting into difficulties with the police. They will suspect you of having designs on the contents of the pillar-box.-SHY BEAUTY.

SHY BEAUTY. Then you do care for me? I am taking a house in your street so as to be nearer my divinity, on the strength of this last dear intimation. Perhaps in time you will lift one eye-lash in my direction.--DUMB ADORER.

DUMB ADORER. It is useless. I have forgotten what I felt you were like, and I do not now know whom to avoid. Please give up the house and leave the neighbourhood. Otherwise I shall be avoiding all the wrong persons.-SHY BEAUTY.

I shall obtain SHY BEAUTY.-Joy! some recognition at last, if it is only that of avoidance. Did you really cut me in the Park yesterday? Say it is true, that I may feel that I am not utterly forgotten!-DUMB ADORER.

DUMB ADORER.-No, I did not mean to cut you, because I did not see you. Perhaps fortune will favour you next time.-SHY BEAUTY.

SHY BEAUTY.-Your kind and gracious
reply has sent me into the seventh heaven
of delight.
Were you not at Chg. X

"THE MISSIONER OF EMPIRE" AND THE "ROTTEN COTTON" TRADE.
"OH, MY DE-AR FRIENDS, LET ME INDUCE YOU TO SEE THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS! LET ME

EXHORT YOU, MY DE-AR B-RETHREN, TO LEAD A MORE PROFITABLE LIFE."

[Mr. Chamberlain addresses a mass meeting at Preston on January 11. For men only.] this morning, when you caught a fleeting there once more, glimpse at me, and then rushed off to may pass you by. catch your train?-DUMB ADORER.

SHY BEAUTY.

and a second time I Farewell till then.

SHY BEAUTY. May every blessing DUMB ADORER.-I thought you were somebody else, otherwise should not attend you through the New Year, and have risked even that fleeting glimpse. until that happy, fateful day, when you Do not break confidence, but keep this have plighted me your troth to shed a a sacred secret.- passing glance. I'll win it yet, I swear it, while waiting years my love enhance unfortunate incident we share a--I've ventured to declare it. You'll SHY BEAUTY. know me then, I'm sure you will. And while I live, I shall be still your DUMB ADORER.

SHY BEAUTY.-At last!
secret! It shall be ever sacred. You
have, for one beatific second, flashed those
glorious orbs upon my countenance. I
wait, even for twenty years, for its
recurrence, and am meanwhile, until you
bid me speak, your DUMB ADORER.

At this interesting stage of the correis obviously sincere, but an awful thought spondence we have to leave them. He DUMB ADORER. Take courage. In 1925, suggests itself can the SHY BEAUTY'S if all is well, I hope to be rushing to communications be, after all, the concatch a train at Chg. X. again. Be coction of some wicked Fleet Street wag

?

QUEEN SYLVIA.

CHAPTER VIII.

Peace or War.

show an average speed of half a mile an hour. The railway companies in Hinterland are high-spirited concerns, and this annihilation of their time-tables was more than they could bear with patience. They had protested, and their protests had been made the basis of diplomatic representations by the Foreign Minister of Hinterland.

most

SYLVIA had great fun after the events narrated in the last chapter. The new Ministers were appointed and kissed Now it would not have been thought that such a question hands, and almost immediately afterwards there was a general as this could have lent itself as fuel to the flames of popular election which resulted in their return to power by a thump- passion. Undoubtedly, however, it had become a ing majority. Then she had to open the Legislative Assembly perilous matter. The leading newspaper of Eisenblut had in state and deliver a speech which had a great many long stated that "those who might attempt in defiance of the words in it and meant very little. The proceedings were independent rights of our nation to impose their effete systems rendered memorable by Rollo, who forced his way into the on a State which had been bold enough to burst the shackles House (nobody daring to stop the Queen's own St. Bernard of an absurd convention would find that the ancient might of dog) and took his seat beside the throne. He showed a the Eisenbluters had lost none of its vigour. We hurl back sagacious interest in all that went on, only barked once when with contempt," it continued, "the miserable insults to which the cheering became very loud, and was fed upon biscuits our beloved King is daily exposed from a hireling Press." which the Chamberlain had, in contravention of the rules, To this the Banner of Hinterland had very properly replied brought in for his own lunch. Rollo, however, nosed them that, if King OTHо wished to taste the bitterness of defeat, out and gave the Chamberlain no peace until the biscuits that luxury could be supplied to him by the armies of Hinterwere produced and offered to him. There was a very sarcastic land. It then proceeded to hint that the King was a raving article on the subject in a Society paper conducted by a lady lunatic, while his Ministers were merely drivelling idiots, and who had failed to obtain from the Chamberlain an admis- wound up by declaring that, not for the first time in their sion to the Royal enclosure at a recent race-meeting. history, it might be the duty of Hinterlanders, who never Shortly after this things began to go on pretty much as they pushed their almost fanatical love of peace to the length of had been going before. The only difference appeared to craven compliance with tyranny, to chastise and repress the be that those who had formerly been dissatisfied now pro- overweening insolence of the blood-thirsty population of fessed themselves highly pleased, while those who before had Eisenblut. been entirely contented now began to declare that patriotism In the meantime King OTHо began to review his troops, a had disappeared, and that the country could not possibly be proceeding to which SYLVIA made the only possible reply by saved from the dogs to which it was inevitably going. calling up her reserves. King OTHO next added five hundred men each to forty of his regiments, and SYLVIA retorted by embodying her Militia. Both parties finally issued loans of a very considerable amount, called upon their Archbishops to frame special prayers, and prepared for the worst.

One passage in the Queen's speech had, however, given rise to some uneasiness. She had been made to say that her relations with all foreign Powers continued to be friendly. "A slight difference of opinion," she had continued, "which has arisen between my Government and the Government of H.M. the King of EISENBLUT with regard to the time-tables of the train service between our respective countries is in process of amicable adjustment by the usual diplomatic methods."

Now this question was in reality a very simple and silly one, but a considerable amount of diplomatic and journalistic discussion had made it difficult and complicated, not to say dangerous. The reigning sovereign of Eisenblut was at this time, as everyone will remember, ОTно III., a young man of twenty-two, very dreamy, very romantic, highly unpractical, and most impulsive. It had recently occurred to him that the orthodox system of fixing the time was too monotonous to be tolerated by an autocratic monarch, and after consulting his Astronomer Royal, a man whose scientific attainments were equalled if not surpassed by his patriotism and his deference, he had decided on a fundamental change.

The result of this was that nobody in Eisenblut knew at any particular moment what was the time of day. Banquets, for instance, which had been arranged to take place at 7 o'clock P.M. (for 7.30), might be seen beginning sometimes at daybreak, sometimes at what would in other countries have been the middle of the day; and even lovers who had agreed to meet for a walk in the evening might find themselves compelled under severe penalties to postpone their little excursion to the less amatory and convenient hour of 6 o'clock A.M.

To the Eisenbluters all this was really a small matter, for they had been trained to unquestioning obedience for many generations, but the effects on the neighbouring country of Hinterland (and Eisenblut had no other neighbours), especially on those of its inhabitants who were engaged in foreign trade and railway transport, were immeasurably inconvenient. Contracts were brought to nothing, and railway trains which Fad started from Hinterland were often made ridiculous by iving at their destination in Eisenblut either long before had begun their journey or so long afterwards as to

It is not to be supposed that at this crisis in the fortunes of his country the Poet Laureate was silent. Far from it. His poem, "The Time-Snatcher," issued in popular form at the modest and barely remunerative price of one shilling a copy, will remain for all time one of the noblest and most inspiring efforts of a patriot's muse. In an impassioned exordium he described (of course in popular language) how this earth revolved round the sun without ceasing for a moment to revolve methodically on its own axis. Having briefly alluded to GALILEO, TYCHO BRAHE, COPERNICUS, and Professor Sir NORMAN LOCKYER, he then showed how Hinterland had profited beyond all other nations from the teachings of astronomy, and how it became her people, "free but submissive to divine decree," to bring to naught the dark schemes of one who,

Striving to hurl Jove's thunderbolts, would find
He grasped the idle wind.

Nought can avail to stay the fearful shock
Of myriad legions battling for the right.
Soon shall the foeman's helpless kingdom rock
Under the onset of our armoured might;
And time that he despised shall once again
Make the poor schemer and his schemings vain.

The poem ended with a glowing picture of the return of peace after the armed forces of Hinterland should have laid

waste the whole country of Eisenblut and "left no single had been sung in various theatres it was felt that war hung male To tell in future years the miserable tale." After this indeed upon a hair. What actually took place I must reserve for another chapter.

SPORTING CYNICISM.-"The hounds soon got on good terms with their fox" is a phrase constantly used by sporting writers. How disgusted the fox must feel with this hypocritical description.

BURKE UP TO DATE. [By the courtesy of Mr. HARRY FREDERICKSON, the genial Comparative Philosopher, we are enabled to present our readers with some of the most striking passages from his article on "Britain's Débâcle," which will appear in the next number of the Fortnightly Review.]

gances of the sterner sex. The language And as with adults so is it with the of the modern boudoir would not be rising generation. The brutalisation of tolerated in the fo'c's'le of a whaler. the Briton begins in the bassinette, and The gentle matrons portrayed by LEECH is completed before he is short-coated. have been replaced by ferocious Amazons, A gifted writer in the Monthly Review past mistresses in the art of ornamental records an instance of infantile depravity objurgation, who devote all the time which I cannot forbear to quote: "What . . . BUT this putrefaction of the they can spare from the neglect of their do you mean to be?' asked a little boy of national fibre is unhappily not confined nurseries to the pursuit of brutalising a little girl not long ago. When I grow to politicians and place-hunters, bosses pastimes. up,' was BRIDGET'S proud reply, 'I mean and "hustlers." The criminal cyni- Literature also is ruined by the preva- to be a Bridge-player like mamma." cism of the Prime Minister, who slinks lent craze for vulgarity, ostentation, and Could anything be more eloquent of away from the post of danger to seek "smartness," and even our staidest and our social putrescence than this demost honoured writers have not escaped liberate foredooming of an innocent the infection. Even philosophers have child to a gambler's career by the to resort to Billingsgate to gain a hear- choice of the name BRIDGET! Nomen ing and desecrate the talents designed omen, and it is of sinister augury that for loftier themes by the composition of more male children are now started in

shelter in the unmentionable bunkers of
North Berwick, has its counterpart in
every walk of life, every stratum of our
eviscerated society. Bishops, instead of
tending their neglected flocks, spend
their days and nights playing un-
limited "Bridge," or gadding about
in motor-cars, maiming dogs, and
mutilating innocent children. The
public schools are honeycombed
with the fetish-worship of athletics,
and, instead of partaking of the
simple diet which helped us to win
the battle of Waterloo, lads of twelve
and thirteen batten nightly on cham-
pagne, Devonshire cream and pâté
de foie gras. And alongside of all
this wanton and odious extravagance
we find evidences of the most degrad-
ing cruelty rampant in our midst.
Our sandwichnen, for example,
perhaps the finest, the most un-
selfish, the most picturesque body
of citizens that we have, are warned
off the foot-walk like so many Kaffirs,
and compelled to wear a metal ap-
paratus compared with which the
chains of the galley-slave are a mere
luxury. Cockfighting is, I am
assured on the best authority,
extensively if clandestinely patro-
nised in the heart of mid-Mayfair,
and it is credibly reported that Mr.

Mr. Freggie. "WELL, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE EVER BEIT is about to erect a private bull- CEEN LIFTED BY A CRANE!" ring in the gardens of his Park

life under the names of GEORGE NATHANIEL, JOSEPH, and ALFRED than under any other. Wherever we turn we are met by the trail of Tammany, the curse of Khaki, the ban of BEIT. The Parliamentary system is honeycombed and rotten beyond recovery. The Bar is corrupt to the core. The Bench can always be squared. The City is steeped to the lips in villainy. Art is dead. Music is mummified. All our great men are gone or going. I myself do not feel very well. . . .

SLAUGHTER PRICES.

"I WANT a new skirt," said Miss MENTOR, my old governess, poking her bony chin round the door of my self-contained flat one January morning. As she had worn her present garment for the last three years I was somewhat astonished at her sudden discovery. Then I noticed a sale catalogue in her hand.

"This pamphlet," she said, "I have received this morning. Now what," she continued, regarding me sternly, "is meant by slaughter prices'? Are they in any way connected with the sweating system?"

Lane palace. Of the ineffable orgies novels extolling the meretricious splen- | which attend the periodical meetings dours of the Byzantine Empire. Poetry of the Tariff Committee I cannot is dead, for how can that noble name be bring myself to speak, beyond bare applied to the Banjo Byronics of the "Oh no," I explained, "it only means mention of the fact that they are pseudo-Imperialists? Belles Lettres is that everything 's very cheap." invariably attended with human sacri- another ruined industry. History is "That," she said, a gleam creeping fices, victims being usually kid- replaced by the scurrilous gossip of the into her scholastic eye, "I should not napped from the Cobden Club. The backstairs. Psychology is paralysed by object to. I notice some garments here extraordinary facial resemblance to the sinister miasma which exhales from quoted as 'Job Lot-usual price 45/6, TIBERIUS that Lord MILNER has deve- the Kaffir market. Hundreds, nay, my price 16/9.' It is possible one of loped in the past few years cannot thousands, of homes are destitute of these may answer my purpose. Will escape the notice of any impartial ob- books of any sort whatever. Our very you come with me and assist me in the server, while, by way of a significant con- furniture is suffering from the devastat- choice?" trast, the approximation of my style to ing influence of the decadence. The I consented willingly, and an hour that of EDMUND BURKE cannot fail to cummerbund threatens to displace the later we stood on the threshold of WEARimpress every true lover of his country. grand old English waistcoat. Sloe gin ING's costume department. The sale Nor is any consolation afforded us by is habitually drunk at five o'clock tea by was in full swing, and glancing from the contemplation of the latest develop- persons of all ages. Ping-pong, which the struggle round the counter and the ments of the Ewig Weibliche. On all bade fair to rescue our youth from the knee-deep litter on the floor to the austere sides we are confronted with formidable reproach of indolence and brace up the face of my companion I sighed hopenational fibre to its pristine standard, is, lessly. alas! relegated to the limbo of the obsolete.

gos who in their reckless thirst for iety emulate all the worst extrava

"We can't get anything here," I said.

'We'd better try SMARTER AND CHICK's." ceased so unexpectedly that we were woman calmly. "Here, Miss, make me But to my surprise I found her sniffing nearly precipitated on the floor-and out a bill for this blouse, please." the breeze like an old war-horse.

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Can't!" she exclaimed severely, "how often have I told you there is no such word in the English language." But before she could utter another word we were caught by an ugly rush from behind and swept into the surging mass that swayed to and fro before the skirt counter. I was pinned flat against a large bale of mercerised éoliens, but I could follow my companion's career by various passages of arms that reached my ear through the hubbub.

"Pray get off my train, Madam," screamed a high-pitched resentful voice. "I am not on your train, Madam," replied Miss MENTOR'S Voice in its severest tones; "and if I were it would be a lesson to you not to wear one." "But you are-and if you don't take your foot away I'll speak to the shop-walker!"

"Madam, that is not my foot-it is a roll of cloth," replied Miss MENTOR with very proper dignity.

Immediately afterwards. another skirmish attracted my attention.

"Do not push me, Madam," exclaimed a wheezy, hysterical voice belonging to a stout lady with a violet toque perched on her golden hair. You're digging your umbrella handle into the middle of my back. You mustn't do it!"

66

"Madam, I have no umbrella," replied Miss MENTOR; "you are alluding to my elbow, which is forced into a painfully unnatural posi

there emerged from the crowd, like a Miss MENTOR'S face suddenly darkened.
cork from a champagne bottle, the skirt "My good woman," she began-
certainly, but a lady inside it: the large "What!" cried the other with an
lady with the violet toque and the golden indignant snort, "how dare you insult
hair.
me!" and looking round she whimpered,
"Come away, come away!" I whis-"People who come to sales might at
pered, terror-stricken-and managed to least use common civility."
sweep my companion into the Blouse Heedless of the murmur of sympathy
Department before our victim had time the remark evoked, Miss MENTOR seized
to turn round and discover what had the garment under discussion, the meagre
dragged her back so mysteriously from woman in an equally determined' attitude
her well-won place by the counter. retained her hold, and for a few moments
It was among the ferment of the as they swayed together the issue was
bargain blouses that Miss MENTOR got uncertain. Unfortunately for Miss
entirely beyond my control, burrowing MENTOR, at a moment when victory
and rummaging among the crumpled seemed in her grasp, her hat became
heaps, and trampling under foot the inextricably entangled in the meagre
delicate finery of the ones she rejected
as if she had been at it all her life.
"Where can I try this on?" she cried,

woman's hat-pins. Her hands flew up
instinctively to guard her headgear-
but too late to save it from being twitched

off and carried away like a
victor's crown on the top of
the chiffon hat of her antago-
nist as the two combatants
were parted by a skirmishing
party from the Baby Linen
Department.
I saw Miss
MENTOR'S hat being kicked
like a crushed football before
the feet of the invaders, and
I rushed frantically to the

rescue.

"Is this your string bag?" said a good-natured girl who had picked it up, and I said it was and thanked her, and brought it back in triumph to Miss MENTOR. Her expression terrified me. Her face was purple, the veins were swelling in her temples, and

Puss (who has wandered into the Tapir's cage at the Zoo). "WELL, her features worked strangely.

tion by the person behind, THAT'S THE BIGGEST MOUSE I'VE EVER SEEN." who--"

But I heard no more, for at this moment a general swirl landed me high and dry in an open space, where I presently saw my companion approaching.

There is a skirt on this side of the counter," she said, "which is the very garment I require-but try as I will I cannot reach it." Her eyes glowed passionately behind her spectacles, and there was a solemn frenzy in her voice.

"You must dive low," I replied, still panting myself; "stretch out your arm -grip the little bit you can see, and pull for all you 're worth.'

She obeyed, and taking a deep breath once more plunged into the mêlée. Presently she reappeared, stooping sideways, evidently dragging the object of her search behind her.

"Put your back into it," I cried, sharing her enthusiasm, and seizing her hand I added my strength to hers, but without avail, till suddenly the resistance

"Where's that woman?" she hissed.

flourishing a grim-looking black viyella. "Here--this way," I replied promptly,
"Anywhere, Madam, anywhere," re- and seizing her arm I hurried her
plied an exhausted attendant who through the departments in imaginary
hurried by.
pursuit, nor did I stop till I seated her
"What!" cried Miss MENTOR, turning at a marble-topped table of the tea shop
to me, "have they lost all sense of next door. To my intense relief her
decency-look, child, there's a man!" face gradually resumed its natural tint
And indeed a middle-aged gentleman as she sipped her tea with closed eyes.
could be seen in the next department,
helping his daughter in the choice of a
hat.

"All right, Miss MENTOR-he's only her father," I said reassuringly.

"Is he all of our fathers?" she exclaimed wrathfully; but at that moment a rush from behind made her lose her hold on the blouse, which was immediately pounced upon by a meagre little woman in a black chiffon hat bristling with hat pins, who had been eying it greedily.

"That is mine, Madam," cried Miss MENTOR.

"Nothing of the sort," said the meagre

"After all, dear," I said, "it will be best for them to send you two or three skirts, on appro." And Miss MENTOR buttered her scone in silence--the silence of resignation.

THE MILITARY MAN FOR BIRMINGHAM.Mr. CHAMBERLAIN's Shakespearian advice to his constituents, after the visit of the Guards, is "List, List, O List!"

COSMOPOLITAN hospitality is suggested by the name of Lord ZETLAND's place, Aske Hall."

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