Punch, or the London Charivari | Page 6

bullet, and not a 45 millimetre shell, was meant.
As regards the jam question, Jerry, the fault of the jam is that it is never jam, but always marmalade. I feel too sore on the question to write much, but I may just hint that we have heard that Brother Bulgar sometimes gets real strawberry. It is just possible, therefore, that you may hear of a raid soon.
Yours ever, PETER.
* * * * *
THE CONVERT.
["One striking result of the War has been its humanising effect on woman."--Daily Paper.]
The barbed shaft of Love hath pierced thy heart, Fair Annabelle; distracting is thy lot; Long hast thou thought thyself a deal too smart To be ensnared in Cupid's toils--eh, what?
The ways of other maids, less intricate, Filled thee with pity to the very core; Kisses were unhygienic, out of date, And man a most unutterable bore.
But now with young Lieutenant Smith, V.C., Thou roamest, gazing shyly in his face; Nay, did I not surprise thee after tea Defying Hygiene in a close embrace?
Shall I recall that old sartorial jest, The mannish coat which never seemed to fit, The bifurcated skirt and all the rest, Not half so pretty as thy nursing kit?
All no! Thine happiness I will not vex, For thou art Woman once again I find; And Woman, though she cannot change her sex, Has always had the right to change her mind.
* * * * *
THE PRIMROSE PATH FOR FLAPPERS.
"WANTED, Two experi. MAKERS-UP (Females); also a few Girls to learn; good wages paid."--Evening Paper.
* * * * *
ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.
From an obituary notice:--
"In civil life he was employed as an attendant on those inflicted with weak minds. He joined the regiment at ---- Camp and was at once employed as Colonel ----'s servant."--Burma Paper.
* * * * *
"Mars is the name of a star so far off it would take a million years to walk there in an express train."
"A miracle is anything that someone does that can't be done."
"People who have always used tooth-brushes and who know the thing to do never use any but their own."
"The Pagans were a contented race until the Christians came among them."--Hawaii Educational Review.
If The Review can maintain this form the consciously comic journals of the American Empire will have to look to their laurels.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE RECRUIT WHO TOOK TO IT KINDLY.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Super-Boy_. "BUT, FATHER, IF WE HAVE ALREADY CONQUERED, WHY DOES THE WAR GO ON?"
_Super-Man_. "BE SILENT AND EAT YOUR HINDENBERG ROCK."]
* * * * *
WAR'S SURPRISES.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF "TAY PAY."
[The Daily Chronicle alludes to a recent article by Mr. T.P. O'CONNOR, M.P., as "a frigid survey of the situation."]
The War has done many astonishing things; It has doubled the traffic in trinkets and rings; It has reconciled us to margarine And made many fat men healthily lean. It has answered the critics of Public Schools And proved the redemption of family fools. It has turned golf links to potato patches And made us less lavish in using matches. It has latterly paralysed the jaw Of the hitherto insuppressible SHAW. It has made old Tories acclaim LLOYD GEORGE, Whose very name once stuck in their gorge. It has turned a number of novelists Into amateur armchair strategists. It has raised the lowly and humbled the wise And forced us in dozens of ways to revise The hasty opinions we formed of our neighbours In view of their lives and deaths and labours. It has cured many freaks of their futile hobbies, It has made us acquainted with female bobbies. It has very largely emptied the ranks Of the valetudinarian cranks, By turning their minds to larger questions Than their own insides or their poor digestions. It has changed a First Lord into a Colonel, Then into a scribe on a Sunday-journal, With the possible hope, when scribbling palls, Of doing his hit at the Music Halls. It has proved the means of BIRRELL'S confounding And given Lord WIMBORNE a chance of re-bounding. But--quite the most wonderful thing of all The things that astonish, amaze or appal-- As though a jelly turned suddenly rigid, It has made "TAY PAY" grow suddenly frigid! When rivers flow backwards to their founts And tailors refuse to send in accounts; When some benevolent millionaire Makes me his sole and untrammelled heir; When President WILSON finds no more Obscurity in "the roots of the War"; When Mr. PONSONBY stops belittling His country and WELLS abandons _Britling_: When the Ethiopian changes his hue To a vivid pink or a Reckitty blue-- In fine, when the Earth has lost its solidity, Then I shall believe in "TAY PAY'S" frigidity.
* * * * *
DURATION OF THE WAR.
"If the bid does not come early in 19717 the evidences of Germany's clamorous needs are strangely false."--Evening