Vanity Fair (UK), October 13, 1904
[See attribution note on Vanity Fair menu page]
 

In the Stocks.
 

THE Rhodes scholars have given yet another sign that they are to be treated with respect. They now refer to themselves as the “American Students who are taking advantage of the legacy of the late Mr. Cecil Rhodes to complete their International training at Oxford.”

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One of the best features of the law which allows prisoners to give evidence is that you can get a certain amount of your own back in the matter of the detectives who have caused the trouble. Mademoiselle Keiro, having declared in the box that one of the female detectives who caused her to be arrested was “a wretched little object,” and the other “clearly no lady,” probably feels no further interest in the trial.

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A correspondent in a contemporary asks where he can get a Brazilian dinner in London. He signs himself “Nuneaton.” A very fitting reply to his letter.

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The Rev. R. J. Campbell’s denunciation of British working men as drunken has been warmly resented by them. They say they have often been sober for hours and hours at a stretch.

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Some useful abbreviations for every day life are quoted by the Chronicle from a Kentucky paper. At a recent dinner party at Louisville, the host was heard to shout down the table the mystic letters, “F.H.B.O.C.” It turned out that they stood for “Family hold back on cucumbers,” of which succulent vegetable he feared there would not be enough to go round. Fortunately a gentle “M.I.K.” from his wife assured him that there were more in the kitchen, and the incident terminated with a genial “H.Y.A.P.I.D.” from the host. Which, being interpreted, signifies, “Help yourself and pass it down.”

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THE CHAPERONE.


After you’ve drunk to your country’s King,
 After you’ve drunk to the Forces,
And pledged your Queen, and your love—same thing!—
 And the best of your hunting horses;
Fill up your glasses again, my boys,
 Here is a toast of my own;
Drink to the giver of half your joys—
 A Health to the Chaperone!

We that have followed the light Love-Game,
 Flirting as Fortune allowed us,
How shall we thank her, this generous dame,
 Who never would corner or crowd us?
Fill up your glasses again, young bloods,
 Kneel at the steps of her throne,
Down with the wine in red roseate floods,
 To the Health of the Chaperone!

Hand the old lady the mayonnaise,
 Claret and champagne-cup her,
Then you may wander your own sweet ways,
 Knowing she’s safe at supper!
Fill up your glasses again, I say,
 To the tact that is bred in the bone!
To the lady who knows how long to stay!
 To the thoughtful old Chaperone!

E’en Mistress Grundy, with doubts to spare,
 Has never been known to doubt her;
It is our fault if we sit on the stair
 Or the terrace outside without her!
So fill up your glasses, good boys all,
 And for some of your sins atone
By pledging the woman who sits by the wall—
 Long life to the Chaperone!

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Thaxted, in Essex, is the place for sport. Life there is always tense, always exciting. The other day there occurred what, for Thaxted, was simply a trivial episode, though in our less strenuous lives it would have marked an epoch. Thus. A ferret attacked a rat. A dog attacked the ferret. William Hedges, bachelor, of the parish, attacked the dog. At this point an anonymous sportsman with a gun arrives on the scene. He watched the combatants for a while, and then decided to help the ferret. He took aim and fired. The next moment the bellicose William was hopping round in circles with twenty-six small shot in his left leg. The rat escaped. It’s a way they have at Thaxted.

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An inhabitant of Missouri has committed suicide because his name was Septimus Aloysius Nicodemus O’Rafferty. It was a little unkind of his friends to carve the name in full on his tombstone.

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.