CHARIVARIA.

Punch, April 2, 1913

 

Too much has been made by newspaper humorists of the Suffragist who threw a pot of paint at the Home Office and missed it. She hit Whitehall—which, in our opinion, is very fair marksmanship for a woman.

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We have read a great deal about these lightning waiters’ strikes. Now let us see some of these lightning waiters.

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Fined for disorderly conduct in the street, two young men pleaded that they were ratepayers and had a right to sing and dance. That they should have had the cheerfulness to do so, with rates as high as they are, is a sign that the bull-dog breed has not yet died out.

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Ever since the prisoner at Bow Street asked to be allowed to go to Pentonville prison instead of to Brixton, on the ground that the former institution’s cells were healthier and airier, the conceit of the Pentonville warders has become, according to our local correspondent, perfectly insufferable.

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The notion that Chinese plays are of tremendous length, lasting for several weeks, is ridiculed by an authority at the British museum. Some Chinese curtain-raisers, we believe, barely last into the third day.

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The Rush of Life in the North. Two reporters were the only persons present at a recent vestry meeting at Huddersfield.

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A patent asphyxiating revolver has been invented by the Paris police for use in moments of emergency. It emits “a thick and acrid smoke, which causes those in its neighborhood to sneeze and weep, half-suffocated.” We fancy we know the identical cigar which first gave the inventor his idea.

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Only one point remains to be cleared up in the matter of that Hampstead water. A resident of Belsize Park described it as smelling like a geranium; while a denizen of Greencroft Gardens says, “It smelt like paraffin.” Has Hampstead succeeded in growing a special paraffin-perfumed geranium?

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Hampstead, however, is not to have it all its own way. It is stated that the water supplied by the Coggeshall and Kelvedon Waterworks, of Braintree, has a milky appearance, is slightly effervescent, cures rheumatism and kills plants. Water nowadays can do practically everything except talk.

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According to a Vienna paper, the chief duties of an officer’s soldier-servant are, in time of peace, to wash dogs; and, in time of war, to kill flies and mosquitoes. Peace hath her victories no less than war.

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Burglars in Chelsea last week visited a house in Camera Square and removed a fumed oak dining-room suite, a pink silk and rosewood drawing-room suite, a bedroom suite, a piano, a sideboard, a table and some chairs, pictures, china, linen, clothing, and silver. They then, says the report, left the house. They did leave that.

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“European civilisation,” says Mr. Sethanatha Venkataramani, in an article on the Coromandel fishermen, “has as yet made little or no mark on these humble men.” Coromandel fishermen are writing to enquire how Mr. Venkataramani squares this statement with the remark later on in the article that they are “awful drunkards.”

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At a recent company meeting, proceeding broke up in confusion owing to those present calling each other cads and liars. This sort of thing is all very well in Parliament, but intolerable in a real business concern.

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The Irish day by day. At Guildford a man has been offering his services as honorary secretary at a salary of £26 a year; and in Nashville, Tennessee, when the judge, following the annual custom, released all Irish prisoners on St. Patrick’s day, several negroes put in a claim for liberty on the ground that they were Irish.

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Porridge, says a contemporary, is disappearing in Scotland. We have noticed it do so, especially at the breakfast-hour.

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For posting a bill advertising the Suffragettes’ Self-Denial Week on a pillar-box, a woman at West Ham has denied herself twenty shillings and four shillings costs.

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Mexico may have its little troubles, but it has still one claim to be considered as an earthly paradise. It contains a town of 10,000 inhabitants where there is no moving-picture palace.

 

 

                               

 

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.