Punch, or the London Charivari | Page 5

It's pretty rough, after making all arrangements for spending a cheerful Christmas in Algiers, to have it changed to cold porridge in Parkhurst or Princetown. Of the two I hope it'll be Parkhurst, for Princetown, so habitués tell me, is no place for a growing lad when the wintry winds do blow.
Thine, de profundis PATLANDER.
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[Illustration: Mistress. "WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO OUT THIS AFTERNOON, MABEL?"
Mabel. "I AM GOING OUT."]
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Rhymes of Unrest.
There was a young miner of Ayr Who gave himself up to despair; For he said, "If we're paid On our 'get,' I'm afraid That I canna ca' canny no mair."
"Strike while the iron is hot," Said the wise old saw of old; But the miners say, "What rot! Strike while the weather's cold."
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"The art of decoration is alien to painting in this--that you must mix your colours with your brains."--Daily Paper.
We await a reply from the intellectuals of Chelsea.
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"There is one building now being erected, within a few miles of Manchester as the cock crows."--Provincial Paper.
We are unfamiliar with this method of mensuration.
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ABOUT CONFERENCES.
WE may not have coal, but we can have conferences. A conference is the most typically English thing that there is. The old Anglo-Saxons had them and called them moots. Why they called them a silly name like that, when "conferences" would have done just as well, one can't imagine; but they had their notions and stuck to them. They would have called Parliament a moot; in fact they did. They called it a moot of wise men. Sarcastic beggars, these Anglo-Saxons!
The advantages of having a conference about everything are almost too numerous to explain. For one thing, suppose Smith is coming to see you at 2.30 P.M. "It's no use his waiting now," you say. "I've got a conference at 3. Tell him to come back at 5.30." And when he comes back at 5.30 of course the conference is still going on, so you don't have to see him at all.
There is nothing again that makes you feel so deliciously important as being at a conference. You may be a leader of quite an insignificant body of workers, like the Nutcracker-Teeth Makers' Union, but you rub shoulders at a conference with men whose names are a household word throughout the whole of Great Britain, amongst those who have houses. The distinguished and the undistinguished lay their heads together; the spat-wearing get their feet mixed with the non-spat-wearing; though there is rather a fake, mind you, about this spat-wearing business, for it may simply mean that the uppers are very badly worn, or that only that very bright pink pair of socks came home from the wash this week, or even that there are no socks underneath at all.
But anyhow, at a conference, Tom, Dick and Harry hobnob with Bob, James and George, and all are equal, except perhaps the chairman, who has two more pens in front of him and a much larger ash-tray. Mr. BEVIN and Sir ERIC GEDDES smile affably across at each other, and the PRIME MINISTER and Mr. CRAMP find out how much they have in common, such as love of poetry and pelargoniums. The mine-owner offers the miners' representative a cigarette, and the miners' representative says to the mine-owner, "Many thanks, old boy; but I'll have one of my own." And after it is over they all go out and stand arm-in-arm in a long row to be photographed for the papers, and are read next morning from left to right. It is the ambition of every properly constituted Englishman to wake up some morning and find that his portrait is being read from left to right; but how few succeed.
The total output of conferences in this country during one year has never been computed yet, but it is supposed to exceed that of any country in the world, except Red India. If there were to be a strike of conferents or conferees, whatever they are called, in England, it is impossible to say what would happen. But it might be possible to lay down a datum line--a shilling extra for the first million words above two hundred and fifty million per shift, and two shillings more for every million words above that. Fortunately this will never be necessary, for people who confer are so fond of conferences that they will never down chairs.
And no wonder. Only a very strong man can hew coal, and only a very reckless one can make a speech, but almost anyone can confer if he has a large enough ash-tray; and there seems no reason why more people shouldn't confer. Everybody is interested in conferences, whatever they are about, and the British public