Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCHARIVARIA.
Punch, March 26, 1913
It has been laid down in court that hecklers may not be ejected from meetings. “The proper course,” said the magistrate, “is to take such a person’s name and address and apply for a summons.” The process seems very swift and effective, but strikes us as rather too rough.
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On the occasion of the bursting of a vat of porter at a Cork brewery, one of the workmen had to swim through the escaping liquid to save himself from drowning—thus in all probability realising the dream of a lifetime.
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Salmon taken from the Tyne are alleged by the Conservancy Board of that river to taste like tar and smell like petrol. If the striking taxi-drivers are thinking of giving a little dinner to celebrate their recent victory, they need look no further for the fish-course.
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The Boat-Race is ancient history now, but it will never be forgotten. It was the only one of the series which a daily paper described as “The Struggle of the Sixteen,” instead of “The Battle of the Blues.”
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We live quickly nowadays. Twelve hours before the production of Bought and Paid For, at the New Theatre, The Daily Sketch, unable to wait any longer, mentioned what a great success the opening performance had been.
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New careers seem to be flung open to our youngsters daily. A Harlesden butcher’s shop is exhibiting the notice, “Wanted, a boy for sausages.”
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About your uninvited guest at a party there is, as a rule, a something unobtrusive, something perhaps a little furtive. He is content to slide in and remain, like some violet on its mossy bank, glued to the refreshments table. They breed stouter hearts in Cardiff, where, the other day, a citizen not only attended a wedding-breakfast without an invitation, but rounded off his day’s pleasure by assaulting the host with a poker.
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Life’s Little Ironies. Mr. Cyril Maude had to pay twopence on the letter containing the threat to kill him.
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“I never remember one day what has taken place the day before,” says an eminent magistrate. Despite this assurance, however, his clerk intends to take no risks, and will laugh as usual.
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A good deal of advertisement is being given just now to a hen in Pennsylvania which lays rectangular eggs, thus facilitating enormously the task of the packers. It is a kindly thought, but obviously inspired by the habits of the Dixie hens, who, if we recall the song correctly, lay their eggs ready scrambled.
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Precautions are being taken by the Board of Agriculture to prevent the introduction of the potato moth from France. Channel steamers are being closely watched.
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After twenty-three years’ absence from London, a returned native makes the statement that all young men in the Metropolis seem to him to be dressed exactly alike. It is tactless speeches of this kind that shake the nut to his kernel.
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Married at Doncaster last week, a man arrived in London alone. Asked by interested parties where his wife was, he said, “I lost her on the train.” To the absent-minded the luggage rack, for all its convenience, is a great snare.
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A severe earthquake was recorded by Mr. J. J. Shaw at West Bromwich, at 9 a.m. on the 14th inst. When the Militants learn that these tactics are only damaging their cause?
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The March of Civilization. Representative Hay, of Butler County, Mo., U.S.A., has introduced a Bill prohibiting women from wearing dresses that button up the back.
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The writer in the evening paper who referred to The Quintessence of Ibsenism as “one of the best of Mr. Shaw’s earlier works,” has not yet received the snub which we had anticipated for implying that there are degrees in perfection.
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Immediately after winning an action for heavy damages on the ground that a taxi-cab accident had ruined his chances in the ring, Mr. Harry Lewis, the American pugilist, knocked out Jack Harrison, the English middle-weight champion, in less than three rounds. Mr. Harrison would be well advised to wait for a return match till this mere wreck of a man has been run over by one or two motor-omnibuses.
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London music-hall managers, always on the look-out for novel turns, have doubtless already made overtures to the Turkish general who, after the surrender of Janina, “walked slowly,” according to a daily paper, “with his head bowed to the ground.”
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“You cannot get hold of a woman by the scruff of the neck: she has no scruff,” said Mr. Symmons of the Metropolitan Bench in court recently. Scruffs for Women!
Unsigned column as printed; credited to P. G. Wodehouse in the Index to Vol. 144 of Punch. Wodehouse wrote seven columns in early 1913, taking over temporarily from Walter Emanuel, the longtime author of the “Charivaria” column.