Part 2

How do the Water Rates come to my door? 'Twould furnish a subject for some brand-new SOUTHEY. Your dunning Demand Notes are always a bore, But when one is grubby, half frozen and drouthy, When cisterns are empty and sinks are unflushed, And staircases sloppy, and queer smells abounding, To be by an useless Aquarius rushed For "immediate payment" is--well, it's astounding.

How _will_ the water come down through the floor When mains are unfrozen and pipes are all "busting"? Why spurting and squirting, with rush and with roar, The wall-papers staining, the fire-irons rusting, And rushing, and gushing, and flashing and splashing, And making a sort of Aix douche of the bedroom, And comfort destroying, and every hope dashing, And leaving one scarce a square yard of dry head-room.

'Twill leak, spirt and trickle, and, oh _such_ a pickle Will make of my dwelling, from garret to basement, Well, that's _after_ thaw. But, by Jove, it _does_ tickle My fancy, and fill me with angry amazement, To see you mere standing ice-cool, and demanding Prompt payment--for what? Why, long waterless worry! Aquarius, we _must_ have a fresh understanding; Till then--"Call again!" and _don't be in a hurry!_

[_Slams door, and retires in dudgeon._

* * * * *

MOTTO FOR STOCKBROKERS.--A mine in the Randt is worth two in the Bush.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DO.

(_She-Note Series._)

The two were seated in an untrammelled Bohemian sort of way on the imperturbable expanse of the South Downs. Beneath them was a carpet of sheep-sorrel, its orbicular perianth being slightly depressed by their healthy weight. In the distance they noticed thankfully the saucer-shaped combes of paludina limestone rising in pleasant strata to the rearing scarp of the Weald. PERUGINO ALLAN was the gentleman's name. He had only met PSEUDONYMIA BAMPTON the day before, but already from mere community of literary instincts they were life-long friends. She had reached the trysting-place first. All true modest women do this.

"PSEUDONYMIA!" said PERUGINO, blushing easily to his finger-tips.

"PERUGINO!" said PSEUDONYMIA, blushing to hers. It was early, of course, for Christian names, but then the Terewth had made them Free-and-Easy.

"PERUGINO!" said PSEUDONYMIA, bringing her eyes back from the infinite to rest without affectation on her simple Greek chiton, "I have often wanted to meet a real man who had written a book with a key to it on the back of the cover. Now tell me frankly some more beautiful things about our present loathsome system of chartered monogamy, so degrading to my sex. Talk straight on, please, pages at a time. Never mind about Probability. Terewth is stranger than Probability; and the Terewth, you know, shall make you Free!"

PERUGINO sank back into the spongy turf, leaning his cheek against an upright spike of summer furze of the genus _Ulex Europæus_. "Some men," he began, "ignoble souls, 'look about' them before they marry. Such are calculating egoists. Pure souls, of finer paste, are, so to speak, _born married_. Others hesitate and delay. The difficulties of teething, a paltry desire to be weaned before the wedding, reluctance to being married in long clothes, the terrors of croup during the honeymoon--these and other excuses, thinly veiling hidden depths of depravity, are employed to defer the divine moment. I have known men to reach the preposterously ripe age of one-and-twenty unwedded, protesting that they dare not risk their prospects at the Bar. These men can never mate like the birds, never be guide-posts to point humanity along the path of Terewth."

"But," interrupted PSEUDONYMIA, rose-red to her quivering finger-tips with shame at the bare mention of marriage; "but I thought you disapproved of the debasing principle of wedlock."

"Do not interrupt," said PERUGINO, kindly; "I will come to that two or three pages later on. To be prudent, I was going to say, is to be vicious and cruel. Of course it is not given to all to be _born_ married. But this natal defect one can easily remedy. I knew a young fellow who did. The indispensable complement crossed his path before it was too late. He was still at his preparatory school; _he married the matron_. True, there was disparity of age, but it was a step in the right direction; though the head-master, a man of common conventional ideas, gave the boy a severe rebuke.

"But to push on at once to contradictions. Marriage, I have said elsewhere, is a degrading system, nurtured under the purple hangings of the tents of iniquity. In _my_ gospel Love, like Terewth, should be Free; ever moving on, moving on. Now, Italy is the home----"

"Ah!" cried PSEUDONYMIA, "Italy! That reminds me of sunburnt Siena. What a wonderful Peruguinesque chapter that was in your book. Like a leaf torn out of the live heart of BAEDEKER!"

"Italy," continued PERUGINO doggedly, "is the home of backgrounds. I would like everyone to have a background--a past; the more pasts the better. Is not that a beautiful thought? Ever moving on to something different!"

"That has been the dream of my childhood," said PSEUDONYMIA, her white Cordelia-like soul thrilled through and through with sacred convictions. A ripe gorse-pod burst in the basking sunlight. ("I never remember seeing sunlight bask before," she thought.) A bumble-bee said something inaudible. "But why," she added, "did you never give this pure sentiment to the world before? You who have written so many many books?"

"My child," replied the artist, "I was compelled to write down to the public taste. One must consider one's prospects. This, you will say, seems to clash with what I said before about calculating egoists. But profession and practice are ever divorced under our depraved system of civilisation. At last, having established myself, I rose superior to sordid avarice, and wrote for once solely to satisfy my own taste and conscience."

"A noble sacrifice!" said PSEUDONYMIA, suppressing her dimples for the moment. "As the physically weaker vessel, I could only have done it under an assumed name. But tell me of one difficulty which you have so cleverly avoided in your book. This question of the family. Will not a confusion arise in another generation when nobody quite knows who and how many his or her half-brothers and half-sisters are?"

"PSEUDONYMIA!" said PERUGINO, and his voice broke in two places, "I am pained. I had thought that you, so pure, so emancipate, would have had a soul above blithering detail. Besides, do you not see that in this way the whole world will eventually become one family? _We_ may not live to see this Millennium, but future Fabians may. What we want is a protomartyr in the cause. SHELLEY promised well, but he ultimately reverted to legal wedlock. As for me, I have been deemed unworthy of the crown. I am, alas! happily married. But you, you are single; why should you not set to all your sister-slaves a high example of that martyrdom of which the glory, as well as the inconvenience, has been denied to me?"

"Ah, dear PERUGINO!" she cried, visibly affected for the third time to her finger-tips, "must it ever be so? Profession, as you say, divorced from practice? Must one more noble name be added to the list of those that shock the world so fearlessly with their books and live such despicably blameless lives? I myself, too, am misleading in print. You judged me by my pseudonymous publications to be single and unscrupulous. But you were wrong. I also am unequal to the weight of that crown. How can I be your martyr in the cause--I who these many years have worshipped the very dust on which my husband deigns to tread? Can you and I ever be forgiven for thus sinning against the light?"

PERUGINO rose to go, indignant, disillusioned. "_Et tu_, PSEUDONYMIA?" he bitterly cried. (She had been at Girton and could follow the original.) "Then I give you up. You are, I grieve to think, _a woman who won't do_." And he made a she-note of it.

* * * * *

"WITH WHAT PORPOISE?"

[A porpoise has been seen gambolling in the Thames at Putney.]

Such a sea on at the North Foreland! Glad to get out of it. Nice river coming down from somewhere. Must explore it.

Near some town. No end of oysters about. Oysters say it's Whitstable. Seem dreadfully depressed. Ask them if the late cold was too much for them? No, it's not that, they say, but injurious stories have been circulated about them by medical men. Been called "typhoidal." Nobody patronises them, and they've "lost their season in town." What do they mean?

Off Southend. Friendly sole advises me not to venture further. "Tempt not the Barking Outfall," he says, and adds that the "water at London will poison me, and I shall be made into boots." London! Always wanted to see it. What's the good of being called "a kind of gregarious whale" by the dictionaries if I avoid society?

Got past Barking safely! Who is it--BROWNING I think--wrote a poem about "Sludge, the Medium." Must have written it near Barking. Arrived off Wanstead Flats. See a respectable man on banks being chivied by a mob. Told (by a sprat) that "it's Mr. HILLS, of the Thames Ironworks, who's been helping the unemployed." Now the unemployed seem helping _him!_ Tower Bridge rather fine.

Westminster. Big building. Curious scent in air. Told it's the Houses of Parliament, and scent is eucalyptus, "because of the influenza." Curious word--wonder what it means.

Up at Putney. See University Boat-Race, if I can stay long enough. Feel sleepy. Must be the amount of bad water I've drunk. Knock up against an ice-floe. Two men in boat try to shoot me. _They_ seem unemployed. Do they want to make me into soup for the poor? Not if I know it. Trundle back seawards. Meet a sea-gull. Says somebody tried to hook him from embankment. Says he "doesn't like London." Rather inclined to agree with him.

Back at sea. Know now what influenza means--because _I've caught it!_ Awful pains in my hide! Must consult a leech.

* * * * *

THE INTROSPECTIVE BARD.

Persistent self-analysis, Perfected more and more, The mirror to my spirit is, Which it performs before. For "progress" let reformers pine, Let merchants toil for pelf-- The study of a soul like mine Is certainly Itself!

For girls who at my shrine will burn An incense delicate, I'll lightly probe the problems stern Of Love, and Life, and Fate; And as their darkness I disperse, I mark with interest The diverse chords that girls diverse Awaken in my breast.

Not having known a broken heart, Nor any scathing pain, I can afford, in life and art, The pessimistic vein. In many a literary gem, Polished with care supreme, Mildly, but firmly, I condemn So poor a mundane scheme.

And yet, a modest competence My pensive mood provides, My sentiments--like specimens On microscopic slides-- When I on woven paper fair, In woven words illume, I make a kind of subtle, rare, And Esoteric Boom!

* * * * *

POLICE CHARGE AGAINST EXCITED THROGMORTONIAN JOBBER.--"He jobbed me in the eye."

* * * * *

* * * * *

A BYE-ELECTION LAY.

(_By a disappointed Western Wire-puller._)

After a conflict such as this, Some moralising's due; And we in Bristol of the fight Can take a "bird's-eye" view.

The poll we cannot truly call The pleasantest of pills; It's really rather sad our "won'ts" Should come so near our "WILLS."

Yet there's some comfort in the fact, Some salve for spirits sore, That Bristol nobly has not shrunk From spilling of its "GORE."

* * * * *

A BALFOURIAN QUERY.--"No possibility of any return to the shareholders," was, in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the heading of a report of a meeting of the members of the "Liberator Company." What! no possibility of _any_ return? Yes, surely, the return of JABEZ. But even then--_cui bono?_ or Cui Buenos Ayres? Who of the unfortunate losers would not far rather get back something than get back somebody, and that somebody JABEZ.

* * * * *

THE EARLY BIRD.--Mr. GOSLING, British Minister, has demanded an indemnity from the Nicaraguans of £15,000 for the expulsion of Mr. HATCH, British Vice-Consul at Bluefields. GOSLING is no goose, that's clear. He offers the Nicaragamuffins a Hatch-way out of the difficulty of their own making.

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

"What so interests you?" asked the visitor. Replied the Baron, "_Japhet in Search of a Father_. I have not read it since my school days." "You find it old-fashioned, eh?" "Well," answered the Baron, "the first few chapters are certainly old-fashioned, and recall to my memory the italicised, punning style of THEODORE HOOK and of _Tom and Jerry_. But Captain MARRYAT soon gets away from this sort of thing; and when he has once fairly started his hero and his companion on their adventures, the interest of the story is never allowed to flag for a minute. I may add that I have not enjoyed any modern story of adventure so much as I have this one--always barring the romances of RIDER HAGGARD, STEPHENSON, 'Q.,' SHORTHOUSE, and PARKER--as there is about it an old Georgian-era flavour, with its duels, its gambling-houses, its _Tom-and-Jerry_ episodes, its occasional drop into melodrama, its varied characters of the period, its animal spirits and 'go,' that makes it--to me, at least--thoroughly fascinating." The illustrations, by H. M. BROCK--which are specified as separately the property of Messrs. MACMILLAN--bring vividly before the reader the manners and customs of the time. "In these days of morbid yellow-jaundiced sensationalism, and of 'The New Woman,' I am delighted," quoth the Baron, "to recommend, and strongly, too, this first of the series of Captain MARRYAT'S works, now in course of republication _chez_ MACMILLAN." The visitor thanked his noble friend, and withdrew. Then the Baron finished the novel. "Good!" quoth the Baron, closing the book with regret at parting with a long-forgotten but now recovered friend; "but 'tis odd how one lives and learns. I do not remember having ever heard that _Bottom_ the weaver had been christened 'WILLIAM' by SHAKSPEARE. Nor can I find that bully _Bottom_ was so addressed by his friends. And if I have missed it, how came WILLIAM to be the _prénom_ of the Athenian weaver in the time of _Theseus_ and _Hippolyta_! I should as soon expect to discover that Hercules was known to his companions as Henry Hercules. However, this by the way, and only _à propos_ of a remark as to _William Bottom_, the weaver, made by MARRYAT. I anticipate with pleasure re-making the acquaintance of _Jacob Faithful_ and _Midshipman Easy_."

_The Banishment of Jessop Blythe_, written by JOSEPH HATTON, and published by HUTCHINSON, belongs to the _Yellow Book_ series, only that is as far as the cover is concerned, which is of a startlingly jaundiced tone and does not in the least represent the kindly author's views of life. The story is about the ropemakers by one who clearly "knows the ropes." This industry, as will be gathered from the present romance, is not confined to Ropemaker's Walk, E.C., but was for two centuries carried on by Troglodytes or Cave-dwellers in Derbyshire. The hero _Blythe_ is turned out from the roping community as a thriftless drunkard, emigrates, is poor and wretched, but returns _Blythe_ and gay, with a lot of money to find.... "But here," quoth the Baron, "I must pause, or the surprise will be heavily discounted, and the reader's pleasure spoilt. Thus far, no farther. '_Tolle; lege._'" So recommended the JUDICIOUS BARON DE B.-W.

* * * * *

Shakspeare and the A-br-y B-rdsl-y Yellow "She" Book.

Divine WILLIAMS knew the kind of unwholesome woman above mentioned. In _Love's Labour's Lost_ he makes _Biron_ say--

"A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed, Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard."

Is not this the living picture of the woman who would, or could, but who shouldn't and oughtn't?

* * * * *

CHOOSING THE SPEAKER.--A suggestion was made last week that the competitors for the Speakership should draw lots. Now, if it came to "drawing lots," all in the House and out of the House, having seen "lots" of Sir FRANK BLOOKWOOD'S drawing, would of course place him first. So the drawing lots plan was abandoned.

* * * * *

THE FLIRTGIRL'S REPLY.[1]

_A Poem of Common Sense._

Dear Sir, I've read through your delectable lines-- Though the cap doesn't fit, I will wear it; And hope (though I don't know your private designs) You regret that such verses were e'er writ!

There's flirting _and_ flirting, you don't seem to know, Nor need a young woman be heartless, Who thinks that, by having _five_ strings to her bow, The four she rejects will thus smart less.

Pray how can I help, if my features attract And my sympathy wins each fond lover? Alas, when they're conquered, I own 'tis the fact That their weak points I sadly discover!

It may be, in spite of your captious alarm, I shall yet enjoy bliss hymeneal; If _this_ is my aim, not to jilt, where's the harm In my search for a husband ideal?

[1] See page 141

* * * * *

"ALAS POOR YORICK!"

In "DICK GRAIN" all have lost a "fellow of infinite jest" and a friendly critic who scourged our pleasant vices with such genial criticism that everyone, hearing him, charitably applied the moral to his, or her, neighbour. With Mrs. GERMAN REED, the Miss PRISCILLA HORTON of the stage, and her son "TAFF REED," the old Gallery of Illustration Company comes to an end. CORNEY GRAIN successfully succeeded JOHN PARRY.

"C. G." _Ci gît._

* * * * *

TO ISISTA.

(_A Topical Explanation._)

Your dark blue eyes are doubtless very sweet, And I could hear without the least surprise That connoisseurs declare it hard to beat Your dark blue eyes.

How is it if so much of magic lies In your two "orbs" I deem them incomplete? Why with disdain--I'm going to poetise-- Do I your "heavenly windows" ever treat? The explanation Saturday supplies. I'm Cambridge. That's why I'm so loth to meet Your dark blue eyes.

_Note._--"Dark blue." In view of the coming Boat Race this may be taken as a prophecy, or tip.

* * * * *

APPLIED SCIENCE.

SIR,--The following may be of service to your non-mathematical readers:--

_Q._ "The hands of a clock are between 2 and 3; and in ten minutes' time the minute hand will be as much in front of the hour hand as it is now behind it. What is the time?"

_A._ "Ask Policeman X."

The crass mediævalism of the Oxbridge don, I regret to say, failed to see this solution, and I am again coaching with old DRUMMER.--Yours theoretically and problematically, PRACTICAL Y. Z.

* * * * *

CHANGE OF NAME.--In consequence of recent events crowded into one place, the name of Throgmorton Street shall be changed into Throngmorton Street.

* * * * *

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

_House of Commons, Monday, March 18._--Navy Estimates on again, with the First Lord listening patiently from otherwise empty Peers' Gallery, and ROBERTSON making admirable play from Treasury Bench. Chivalrous soul of Cap'en TOMMY BOWLES moved to admit that, after all, there had been worse First Lords than SPENCER, and more uncivil Lords than ROBERTSON. Private HANBURY thinks this is weakness. If his colleague in charge of the Navy is to talk like that, he (the Private) will be expected, when the Army Estimates came on, to say something nice about CAWMELL-BANNERMAN, to acknowledge WOODALL'S keen grip over the business of his department, and the courtesy with which he discharges his Ministerial duties.

ALLAN o'Gateshead on again with more "Rough Castings." Last time House in Committee on Navy Estimates he spread feeling of genuine alarm by denouncing the British boiler. "Who," he thundered, "is responsible for the engines of the Royal Navy? Where is the _Hornet_ you trumpeted so loudly a year ago? Where," he continued, bending beetling brows on Civil Lord of the Admiralty, "are her boilers?"

"Bust," said GORST, with guilty look. Not that he had had anything to do with the business, but because at this moment ALLAN o'Gateshead chanced to fix a pair of flaming eyes upon his shrinking figure, seated almost immediately opposite at end of Front Bench.

"Where is the _Hornet_ now? Why, lying in Portsmouth Yard, with her boilers out of her, a useless hulk."

ALLAN is so big, so burly, wears so much hair, writes poetry, is understood to be in the boiler business himself, and, withal, addresses the Chairman with such terrific volume of voice, that a panic might have ensued only for JOHN PENN. PENN head of great engineering firm of old standing and high repute. Understood to have engined fleet of five ships with which DRAKE made things hot for Spain along the coasts of Chili and Peru. However that be, PENN now made it hot for ALLAN o'Gateshead. Showed in quite business-like fashion that ALLAN'S poetic fancy had run away with him. Convinced grateful Committee that British boiler, on which safety of State may be said to rest, is all right. A model speech, brief, pointed. A man with something to say, who straightway sits down when he's said it. As the poet (not ALLAN o' Gateshead) says,

He came as a boon and a blessing to men, The modest, the lucid, clear-pointed J. PENN.

_Business done._--Committee voted trifle over four millions as wages for JACK.

_Tuesday._--Alderman COTTON, once Lord Mayor of London, a prominent and popular member of the DISRAELI Parliament, left behind him the memory of one of those things we all would like to say if we could. In the long series of debates on resolutions moved from Front Opposition Bench challenging Jingo policy of the day, the Alderman interposed. "Sir," he said, "this is a solemn moment. Looking towards the East we perceive the crisis so imminent that it requires only a spark to let slip the dogs of war."

That was, and remains, inimitable. But to-night the MACGREGOR came very near its supreme excellence. Stirred to profoundest depths by demands upon Naval Expenditure. Popping up and down like piston in the engine-room of Clyde steamer; wrath grew as MELLOR, failing to see him, called on other speakers. The MACGREGOR knew all about that; a reckless corrupt Government, afraid of hearing the voice of honest criticism, had suborned Chairman of Committees to prevent his speaking. But they didn't know the MACGREGOR. After something like two hours physical exercise in the way of jumping up and down he caught the Chairman's eye, and (in Parliamentary sense, of course) punched it. Then "passing from point to point," as he airily put it, he went for ROBERTSON. Asked the appalled Civil Lord of the Admiralty what he supposed his constituents in Dundee would say when they read his speech, in which bang went millions as if they were saxpences? "What will the worthy citizens say, Mr. MELLOR?" he repeated. "Why they will say, 'Ma conscience!'"