The Books of To-day and the Books of To-morrow, February 1906
 

PERSONAL REMARKS ABOUT
THE PROMINENT.

(With apologies to certain contemporaries).

MR. A. J. BALFOUR was one of the only Conservative Ex-Prime Ministers defeated at the recent election.

A PRETTY LITTLE STORY, illustrative of Mr. Balfour’s love of golf, has reached us. Wishing to inform a friend that he had failed to retain his seat, owing to the Chinese Labour agitation of the Liberals, he wired, ‘Have failed to hole out, owing to bad lie.’

IT IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN that Mr. John Burns has turned out in his spare time some pleasant lyrics of the Kailyard School, the best known, perhaps, being concerned with the feats of a member of the last Australian Eleven. It is entitled The Cotter’s Saturday Night.

MR. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, one of the most prominent of Birmingham’s representatives, is known among his intimates as ‘Joe.’

MR. CHAMBERLAIN’S FAVOURITE AUTHOR is Mr. George Meredith. He likes his novels, and has said that he simply cannot have enough of his letters.

ADMIRERS OF MR. ST. JOHN BRODRICK will be glad to hear that he is not to be long out of employment. It is rumoured that Messrs. Lincoln & Bennett have secured his services at a high figure as a designer of caps.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR’S defeat at the election is explained by a daily paper. It seems that there were too few Unionist voters in his constituency.

IN PREPARATION for his duties as Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey is busily engaged in learning French. The usual difficulties are bestrewing his path. He has spent several sleepless nights trying to discover the French for ‘Entente Cordiale,’ and ‘R.S.V.P.’

LIEUTENANT SHACKLETON, of the Discovery, who contested Dundee, has confided to an interviewer that this Poll was a considerably warmer one than the last he visited.

SUCH IS THE SHRINKING MODESTY of Mr. Winston Churchill that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could be persuaded to say a word at Manchester in praise of his own views. His friends, however, hope that as he grows older he will gain self-confidence.

SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN attributes his success at Stirling to the fact that while his opponent was struggling through his name in his speeches the attention of the audience invariably wandered before he could get through it, so that the point of his strictures became lost.

 

 

Printed unsigned; entered by Wodehouse in Money Received for Literary Work.