Punch, or the London Charivari | Page 8

tackled me at the Chattertons' the other afternoon.
"Of course you've been to Burlington House?" she began, and she was in such a hurry to get first innings that she didn't give me time to say that I hadn't yet, but that I meant to go on my first free day that wasn't foggy.
"Don't you love those quaint 'El Grecos'?" she went on. "He's quite a discovery, don't you think? My daughter Muriel, who hopes to get into the Slade School soon now, says she doesn't see how anybody can see people differently from the way 'El Greco' saw people. And yet I don't know that I quite like the idea of Muriel seeing me like that, although she's so clever...."
I could not help thinking that in Mrs. Bletherwood's case the "El Greco" treatment would be an admirable corrective to a certain lateral expansion.
"Besides," she continued in a confidential tone, "I've heard or read somewhere that there's just a doubt whether he distorted people on purpose or because there was something wrong with his eyes. If I thought it was astigmatism I would insist on taking Muriel to an oculist. I wonder what you think."
I raised my teacup suggestively.
Mrs. Bletherwood gasped. "You don't mean that he----"
"Like a fish," I said.
"Oh, how too disgraceful!" she exclaimed. "Fancy their having his pictures there at all. Such religious subjects too. I shall warn Muriel at once. I'm so thankful you told me...."
Have I done a wrong to Se?or DOMENICO THEOTOCOPULI ("El Greco")? Perhaps; but I hope it has prevented Miss Muriel Bletherwood from doing him a greater.
* * * * *
"Sun Sets This Morning 8.8 Sun Sets To-night 3.56"
Liverpool Paper.
Just as in London last Wednesday.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Vicar's Wife. "THE VICAR WAS ASKING ONLY THIS MORNING WHY YOU WEREN'T IN THE HABIT OF ATTENDING CHURCH."
Latest Inhabitant. "WELL, YOU SEE, IT DOES SO CUT INTO ONE'S SUNDAYS."]
* * * * *
CURES FOR INSOMNIA.
The following correspondence, clearly intended for the Editor of The Daily Ailment, has found its way into our letter-box. Another example of post-office inefficiency.
SIR,--As a regular reader of your valuable journal I am always deeply interested in the views of your readers as expressed in its columns. The recent letters on the cure of insomnia have interested me particularly. Although I have read your paper for many years, always eaten standard bread, study most diligently each morning my lesson on Government wobble and waste, grow sweet peas, keep fowls, take my holidays early (in Thanet) and read the feuilleton, in short perform all the duties of an enthusiastic loyal Englishman, I cannot sleep. Yesterday I decided to try the remedies suggested by your readers.
After inviting sleep with "a dish of boiled onions" I found that I must go to bed "without having eaten anything for five hours or so." This meant sitting up very late, but I found the time useful for taking "deep long breaths." Meanwhile I ran through the names of my friends alphabetically and emptied the feathers from my pillow, replacing them with hops. Sometimes a hop got mixed up in a "deep long breath," which was rather pleasant.
Every few minutes I left my friends' names to say to myself, "I am terribly sleepy," or "I am falling asleep;" this was wrong, as the boiled onions had not had nearly five hours. "Relaxing all my muscles" was rather awkward, as one hand was filling the pillow with hops and the other was "holding a wet sponge," which would drip water on the sheets. Another difficulty was "wafting myself in an imaginary aeroplane" to bring about "a state of oblivion and coma," which I might perhaps have done more easily by putting the hops to another use.
I had to cut out the "recital of the Litany," partly because my friends' names had only got as far as George (Lloyd), and also because, being a Nonconformist, I don't know it. (I must learn it now the feuilleton is finishing.)
But the most annoying part of the business was to find that, after all this elaborate preparation for sleep, I was to "take a brisk walk for half-an-hour" (whatever the weather conditions). Even this did not work, for by that time the milkmen and newsboys were heralding the dawn and kept my brain too alert.
As a final effort, do you think you could produce a nightcap model of the Sandringham, or is it quite impossible for one who reads your paper to be anything but wideawake?
* * * * *
THE PERFECT PARTNER.
There are, my Mabel, men who vow The perfect wife is theirs Because she smoothes the ruffled brow And drives away their cares; While there are others hold the view That she is best who'll pay Some trivial attention to Her promise to obey.
Well, let each babble in his turn About