Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsVanity Fair (UK), July 28, 1904
[See attribution note on Vanity Fair menu page]
In the Stocks.
THE defendant in a recent case of assault, was a Mr. Robert Jury. He was arrested for striking a friend at the close of a game of billiards. The whole case, as, the learned Judge would have remarked if he had thought of it, resolved itself into the question, “Why did the Jury box?” Being unable to answer this poser, defendant has to pay £5 and costs.
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In view of the present hot weather there is something sinister in this headline from a daily paper: —
Cliff Adventure.
Barking Man’s Forty
Feet Fall.
We hope hydrophobia will not spread beyond this case.
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One of the evening papers has a column filled solely by its readers. It is headed “Paragraphs that do not get into other papers.” It is not every editor who would so frankly admit that he fattens on the rejections of his rivals.
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Juries in Texas err, if anything, on the side of moderation. A negro was recently sentenced in that State to one thousand years’ imprisonment. The jury added, however, that in consideration of good behaviour, two hundred years of his sentence may be remitted.
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The Peckham Fat Boy, who is putting on weight down at Yarmouth at the rate of one and a half pounds a day, is stated to have decided on his profession when be grows up. He wants to be a jockey.
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THE IMMORTALS.
The gods of chance and circumstance
Encumber men and mice.
We find the further we advance
The prize not worth the price.
So year by year the farce survives
To entertain the gods,
We live our funny little lives;
We die—and what’s the odds?
Die, no—we but retire to let
A better take our place;
To god-like heights the stream is set
That wears a human face.
Ambrosia at length we’ll quaff
While gods sit round aghast,
And man will have the longest laugh
Because he’ll laugh the last.
• • • • •
If he can possibly avoid it, the careful householder of Erfurt, which is in Germany, does not set his house on fire. The spirit of the local fire brigade is dangerously casual. The other day, just at the critical moment of a conflagration, the members of the brigade began to quarrel with their chief, and switching off the water, began to use the hose on him by way of a bludgeon. When they had leisure to attend to their professional duties, half the village was burnt to the ground. They attribute the accident to the niggardliness of the authorities. If the knuckle-duster and sand bags had been served out, this would not have happened.
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A wine firm of Schiltenheim, in Germany, has just constructed a barrel with a capacity of 43,800 gallons, and intends to celebrate the happy occasion by giving a banquet in the interior. The guests will, it is stated, enter through the bung-hole, “which is large enough to admit the passage of a moderately stout man.” It remains to be seen whether the moderately stout man referred to will be able to make his exit in the same manner at the conclusion of the meal, which, we hear, is to be on the most lavish scale.
• • • • •
Artists should be careful what they say. Not long ago a great painter stated that it was our duty to develop beauty as much as we possibly could. Mark the sequel. A month later a police constable—of all people—was sent to prison for stealing lip-salve.
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The suggestion that Members of Parliament and other big guns should go and live in the East End has met with warm approval from the aforesaid heavy artillery. Each of them has said that he considers it a thoroughly excellent idea, and he wonders some of the other fellows don’t go and do it.
Rasper.
Printed unsigned in Vanity Fair; entered by Wodehouse as “In the Stocks” for this date in Money Received for Literary Work. It is possible that not all individual items are by Wodehouse.