Chapter 3

Whisper runs round Ladies' Gallery that mysterious Strangers are detachment of Ulster volunteers out on drill. As a matter of fact they are solicitors concerned for fate of private measures. With extreme rarity is a Private Bill debated on second reading. As a rule that stage is formally conceded, real work being done in select committees upstairs. One of the archaic absurdities of legislative practice remaining in Commons is that a single Member has autocratic power to delay progress of particular Bills approaching Committee stage by murmuring or shouting a magic dissyllable.

Last Session TIM HEALY, offended at certain course taken by Board of Trade in respect of Private Bill for which he was concerned, held up for a fortnight the whole course of private legislation. At the end of that time Government with a majority still a hundred strong capitulated. It was an exceptionally weary time for solicitors filing in and filing out of the Gallery, day by day passing and their Bill "getting no forrarder."

Fortunately in these cases there are two Bills that run concurrently. One is the legislative measure to which a Member objects; the other the bill of costs in which these daily attendances at the opening of successive sittings, this mounting and descending of unsympathetic stairways, are doubtless duly noted.

_Business done._--Irish Votes in Committee of Supply.

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* * * * *

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL is making heroic efforts to improve the telephone service. According to the current Post Office Circular the name of the "Coed Talon" exchange has been altered to "Pontybodkin."

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ONCE UPON A TIME.

AVIATION.

Once upon a time there was a little primrose who grew all alone on a sunny bank. All around her were primroses in clusters, but she was a solitary flower.

Having no brothers or sisters to talk to and no very near neighbours, she made a confidant of a bee, who would often sit with her for several minutes at a time. He was brusque and opinionated, but he was wise too, and, having wings, knew the world; and she never tired of hearing of his travels.

He told her of gardens where flowers of every kind and sweetness bloomed. "Not like you," he said--"not wild flowers that no one values, but choice, wonderful, aristocratic flowers that are picked out of catalogues and cost money and need attention from a gardener."

"What is a gardener?" the primrose asked.

"A gardener is a man who does nothing but look after flowers," said the bee. "He brings them water and picks off the dead leaves, and all the time he is thinking how to make them more beautiful."

"How splendid!" said the primrose.

And the bee told her of the houses in these gardens, with pleasant sunny rooms, and pictures, and flowers in vases to cheer the eyes of the rich people who lived there.

"How splendid!" said the primrose again. "I wish I could see it all. I should love to be in a vase in a beautiful room and be admired by rich people."

"You're too simple," said the bee. "You haven't a chance. You've got to stay where you are till you die."

"Why shouldn't I have wings like you?" said the primrose.

"How absurd!" replied the bee as he flew away.

But the next day the primrose looked up and saw a most wonderful thing. A primrose that really had wings! A flying primrose! A primrose that could go anywhere just like the bee. It darted hither and thither so gaily, alighting where it wished and then soaring up again right into the blue sky above the earth.

The solitary primrose called to it, but it did not hear, and was soon out of sight.

"So primroses needn't always stop where they are till they die," she said to herself. "Why did the bee deceive me? If I were like that I could see the garden and the gardener and the pretty gay sitting-rooms and the rich people."

She waited impatiently for the bee's return, and when he came she told him about the aviator.

"He was so splendid," she said, "so big and strong, and he flew beautifully. How can I get wings, too?"

"Pooh!" said the bee. "That wasn't a primrose. That was a brimstone butterfly; and as for flying--why, he can't compare with me. I could beat him every time: hundred yards, quarter-mile, mile, long distance--everything."

"He looked just like a wonderful big primrose," said the solitary flower wistfully.

"That's because you've got only one eye," said the bee. "He was a butterfly right enough;" and he hurried away laughing at the silliness of her mistake.

But that day the little primrose had part of her wish; for a party of children came into her corner of the wood and began to pick the flowers with cries of delight.

"Here's one all alone!" said a small girl. "I shall pick that for mother." Straightway the primrose was torn from its root and held tightly in a hand which was far too hot to be pleasant.

Down the road the children went, and the primrose looked as well as she could at the hedges and the trees.

"So this is the world," she said to herself. "It seems really interesting, but I should like it better if I didn't feel so faint."

At last they came to a garden gate and passed through it, up a long path, with strange flowers on each side, which the primrose saw mistily, for she was now really ill.

"I am sure it is all very beautiful," she murmured, "but I know I shall die if I don't have some water soon."

And then they entered a room, and the little girl hurried up to a lady and gave her the solitary primrose. "It was growing all alone," she said, "so I brought it for you."

"Put it into a vase at once," said the mother, "or it will die." And the primrose was placed in water, and at once began to revive.

Then she looked about her and saw what a nice room it was, and was happy.

The next morning in came the bee with a great fluster and bumped all over the room.

"Hullo," he said to the little primrose, "you here?"

She told him all her adventures.

"Well, what I said is right, isn't it?" the bee remarked. "It's all very jolly here, isn't it?"

"I suppose so, but I wish I didn't feel so weak. I never had an ache when I was in the wood."

"Ah, but you weren't among the nobs then," said the bee; "make the most of your time while you're here, for it won't be for long, you know."

"Come and see me to-morrow," the little primrose whimpered. "I feel so lonely here. I was happier in the wood."

"You won't be alive to-morrow," said the bee cheerily. "But never mind, you have seen the world." And out he bashed again, blowing his motor-horn to clear the way.

* * * * *

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"PYGMALION."

The original Pygmalion took a block of dead ivory and made of it so fair a figure of a woman that he fell in love with his own creation, and Aphrodite, at his request, brought it to life. Mr. SHAW'S _Pygmalion_ takes a live flower-girl, turns her into a lifeless wax figure fit for a milliner's shop-window, and flatters himself, as an artist, on the result, but, as a man, proposes to take no interest in it, moral or physical. So you can easily see why almost any other proper name you can think of would have done better for the title.

The play itself shows the same typical inconsequence, the same freedom from the pedantry of logic. _Eliza Doolittle's_ ambition is to become fitted for the functions of a young lady in a florist's shop. _Henry Higgins_, professor of phonetics, undertakes for a wager to teach her the manners and diction of a duchess--a smaller achievement, of course, in Mr. SHAW'S eyes, but still a step in the right direction. And he is better than his word. After six months she has acquired a mincing speech, from which she is still liable to lapse into appalling indiscretions; but after another six months the product might pass muster in any _modiste's_ showroom. And then she turns on him and protests that he has spoilt her life. As a flower-girl, she tells him, she used to earn her living honestly; now there is nothing she is good for.

Of course, you say, her contact with refined society--"we needs must love the highest when we see it"--has unfitted her for mixing with inferior people. On the contrary. She has, it is true, passed the final test of a series of social functions; but meanwhile all this time of her apprenticeship in manners she has been living her daily life, doing half-menial duties, in the house of _Higgins_, who happens to have no manners at all. One trembles, indeed, to picture the figure that he himself, the master, must have cut when he took his pupil to the halls of the great.

Then perhaps, you say, she has fallen into an unrequited passion for him, and this accounts for her peevishness? Well, if she has, we have only Mr. SHAW'S word for it, and she gets no sympathy from us for her deplorable taste in men. There was another man who was always about the house, a man with a habit of courtesy, but this gallant soldier left her cold. Such is the perversity of women--and Mr. SHAW. _Higgins's_ one act of civility to his _protégée_, on which we had to base our hopes of a happy issue, was to throw a bunch of flowers at her from a balcony in Chelsea--not perhaps a very tactful reminder of her origin. But he was only just in time. Another two seconds of delay and the final curtain would have cut off this tardy and inadequate effort of conciliation.

However, nobody goes to a production of Mr. SHAW'S with the idea of seeing a play. We go to hear him discourse on just anything that occurs to him without prejudice in the matter of his mouthpiece. This time he was represented by a dustman; and for once Mr. SHAW consented to temper his wisdom to the limitations of its repository. His _Alfred Doolittle_ (father of the flower-girl) threw off a little cheap satire on the morality of the middle-classes, yet admitted the drawbacks of unauthorised union (as practised by himself), since a man's wife is there to be kicked, whereas a mistress is apt to be more exigent of the amenities; you must adopt a more lover-like attitude if you want to retain her. He also argued brightly in defence of his proposal to sell his own daughter to any man for a fiver; let fall a platitude or two in praise of the lot of the undeserving poor; and (having come in for a fortune) found that charity had lost its blessedness--that the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin was only admirable when you did the "touching" yourself. Not bad for a dustman, but Mr. SHAW has done better.

For the rest the attraction lay in the performance of individual actors rather than in the stuff of the play. Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL was delicious, both in her unregenerate state, and even more during the middle phase of the refining process. She made the Third Act a pure delight. Later, when she became tragic, she sacrificed something of her particular charm to the author's insincerity.

Sir HERBERT TREE, always at his best in comedy, was an excellent _Higgins_ in his lighter moods. As for Mr. EDMUND GURNEY, he was far the best dustman I have ever met. His freedom from scruples, combined with a natural gift for unctuous and persuasive rhetoric, commanded admiration. _Higgins_, indeed, who could read potentialities at a glance, considered that he might, under happier conditions, have gone far toward attaining Cabinet rank or filling a Welsh pulpit.

Of the others, Mr. PHILIP MERIVALE played the too subsidiary part of _Colonel Pickering_ with admirable self-repression; and Miss ROSAMOND MAYNE-YOUNG, as the mother of _Higgins_, was a very gracious figure.

The play was curiously uneven. If one might be permitted to enter and leave at one's pleasure I would advise you to miss out the desultory First Act. But if you insist on seeing it then take care to read your programme before the lights go down and find out that the scene is the porch of a church. I thought all the time that it was the porch of a theatre. Make sure in the same way about the Chelsea flat, or you may mistake it for a charming country cottage. The Second and Third Acts are not to be missed on any account, but I shouldn't worry about the Fourth. In the Fifth you should go away for good the moment that the dustman makes his exit. The tedium that follows is most distressing, and can only be explained as the author's revenge for your laughter. It was a cruel thing to do.

But I forgive him. I take away many delightful memories of my evening with _Pygmalion_, and, best of all, the picture of Sir HERBERT'S frank and childlike pleasure at having discovered Mr. BERNARD SHAW.

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* * * * *

"POTASH AND PERLMUTTER."

If you have ever been to an American commercial drama, you will know the opening scene of this one before the curtain goes up. The business interior; the typewriter on the left; the head of the firm opening cryptic correspondence and dictating unintelligible answers; spasmodic incursions of cocksure buyers and bagmen; a prevailing air of smartness, of hustle, of get-on-or-get-out. In _The Melting Pot_ Mr. ZANGWILL has been creating a diversion with an Hebraic theme, his hero being a refugee from Kieff, where his family had perished in a pogrom. This new variation has occurred--independently, no doubt--to the author of _Potash and Perlmutter_, who has grafted it (including the detail of the immigrant from Kieff) on the old commercial stock, and done very well indeed with his blend.

His two protagonists in the Teuton-American-Semitic firm of "cloak and suit" manufacturers that gives its title to the play are extraordinarily alive. I am but imperfectly acquainted with this racial variety, but I can easily recognise that Messrs. AUGUSTUS YORKE and EGBERT LEONARD, who represent the two partners, are gifted with the most amazing powers of observation and reproduction.

The pair are alike in their mercenary tastes and in that loyalty which is so fine a feature of the Jewish race, and is here found in frequent conflict with their commercial instincts. The cruel wrench that their generosity always costs them is a true measure of its excellence. They quarrel alike over details of business policy; but they always stand together where profit is obviously to be made by a common attitude, or where they find themselves in a tight corner. Yet the author has preserved a nice distinction between them. It is _Potash_, the elder of the two, and encumbered by fetters of domestic affection, who is the weaker vessel, and commits the indiscretions with whose issue he is impotent to cope; it is _Perlmutter_, with the quicker brains, contemptuous but devoted, who throws all the blame where it is due, yet stands by to share the punishment.

I found their language and accent rather hard to follow, a difficulty not shared by the strong Jewish element in an audience that was extremely quick to appreciate the humour that kept one always on the alert. It is profitless to ask how much of the fun was due to the things said and how much to the manner of saying them. The essential matter is that actors and author between them gave us an unusually good time, and I am much obliged to them.

Apart from the leading characters, the _Mrs. Potash_ of Miss MATILDA COTTRELLY was a most delightful study, and the breezy methods of Mr. CHARLES DICKSON as a buyer and Mr. EZRA MATTHEWS as a salesman were effective of their kind.

The plot, as usual in such plays, was rather elementary. So, too, with the love interest; but the right kind of sentiment was not wanting in the very human characters of _Potash_ and _Perlmutter_. For a rare moment or two there was a break in our laughter and tears were not far away.

O. S.

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THE POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANK.

My nephew Rupert has been spending part of his Easter holidays with me. There is nothing like a boy of fifteen for adding an atmosphere to a house--in which term I include a garden. It is a special atmosphere, hard to define, but quite unmistakable when you have once lived in it. It is compounded of football, cricket, hockey--these are not actual, but conversational--of visits to the stables, romps with dogs in a library, tousled hair, muddy trousers, a certain contempt for time, the loan of my collar-stud, an insatiable desire to look through the back volumes of _Punch_, long rides on a bicycle and an irresistible tendency of ink to the fingers, presumably caused by the terrible duty of writing letters to parents. There may be other ingredients, but these are the chief. I am bound to add that he is a very amiable boy, with a strong sense of humour, and that he associates on very friendly terms with the little girls, his cousins, who form the majority of this household, it being quite understood that, for the time, they become boys while he remains what he is.

The other morning Rupert evidently had something on his mind. He made various half-hearted and thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to leave the room, twiddled his cap in his hands, tripped over the rug and finally spoke.

"Thanks awfully, Uncle Harry, for lending me your bicycle."

"That's all right," I said. "You're very welcome to it. It's a good thing for it to be used."

"Yes," he said, "but I shan't want it again."

"Tired of it?" I said. "Well, there's no compulsion."

"Oh, I know that--thanks awfully--but it isn't that. It's a ripping bicycle. I should like to ride it for ever, but----"

"Well, what is it? Out with it."

"I've got one of my own."

"One of your own!" I said. "How's that? You hadn't got one yesterday."

"No, but I've got one now. I bought it this morning at Hickleden. There's a bicycle shop there, and I heard there was a good bicycle for sale cheap, so I went over this morning and had a ride on it, and it suited me splendidly, so I bought it, and I've got it here."

"Bought it?" I said. "That's all very well; but how did you pay for it?"

"That," he said, "is where all the bother comes in."

"It generally does," I said. "Either you've got the money, and then it seems such a waste; or you haven't got it, and then it's a lifetime of misery. Debt, my boy, is an awful thing."

"Don't rag, Uncle Harry; I've got the money all right."

"Then be a man and shell out."

"Yes, but that's just what I can't do. It's this way: the price of the bicycle is five pounds seventeen and sixpence."

"And a very good price too."

"It's got three gears and a lamp and everything complete. Well, I've got three pounds ten in the Post-Office Savings Bank. I put it in in London."

"That's a good beginning, anyhow."

"Yes, and Aunt Mary gave me a pound for my birthday, and I put that in at the post-office here yesterday. It's better not to keep pounds in your pocket."

"Quite right," I said; "we have now got to four pounds ten."

"And Grandma sent me a pound this morning in a postal-order."

"We're all but up to it now," I said. "The excitement is becoming intense."

"Isn't it? And I've got the rest in shillings and sixpences and coppers."

"Away you go, then, and pay for the bicycle."

"Ah, but it isn't as easy as all that. I can't get the money out of the Post-Office."

"What," I said--"they won't let you have your own money? They calmly take the savings of a lifetime and then refuse to give them up?"

"I went round there this morning and they said I'd put the money in in London and there were various formalities to be gone through before I could draw it out here."

"The official mind," I said, "delights in technicalities. Let us see how you stand:--

To save you from the silly game of playing drakes and ducks You banked the cash in Middlesex--but asked for it in Bucks.

Or we could put it in this way:--

In order not to spend it all in lollipops and toffees You gave it to the P. M. G. to keep it in his office.

Or in this way:--

You bought a three-gear bicycle because you had a will for it, And now you've gone and fetched the thing and cannot pay the bill for it.

Rupert, you're in the cart."

"By Jove, Uncle Harry," he said in an awestruck tone, "that's poetry."

"Is it?" I said. "I just threw it off."

"Oh, yes, it's poetry all right. It's got rhymes, you know."

"Rupert," I said, "let us come back to plain prose and consider your desperate financial situation. You cannot get your three pounds ten."

"No, not yet."

"And Aunt Mary's pound?"

"They said that, being holiday time, that wouldn't have got to headquarters yet."

"Gracious goodness," I said, "I never knew a savings bank had so many pitfalls. The whole thing is too complicated for my mind."

"It isn't really complicated," said Rupert. "It's quite plain; but perhaps if you put it into poetry you'll understand it better."

"Rupert," I said, "let us have no sarcasms. The thing is too serious for that. You possess your grandmother's pound in a postal-order and assorted coins to the amount of seven and sixpence, total one pound seven and six, to pay for a bicycle costing five pounds seventeen and sixpence. In short, you are a bankrupt."

"But I shall get the money."

"That is what they all say."

Eventually the matter was arranged and the bicycle man was satisfied. Rupert's correspondence with the Post Office still continues. But his faith in that institution has received a severe shock.

R. C. L.

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"The Rev. C. A. Brereton has presented to the St. Pancras Guardians a donkey for the use of the children at Leavesden Poor Law Schools, and a member of the Board has presented an A B C time-table."--_Daily News._

_Anonymous Benefactor_ (_when the secret of his name leaks out_): "No, no, don't thank me.... It was last year's."

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Headlines to adjoining columns in _The Toronto Daily Star_:--

"MAYOR TO CALL MEETING | "MAYOR CALLS 'GLOBE'S' TO DISCUSS SCRIPTURE." | REPORT A 'BLASTED LIE.'"

These Mayors lead a life full of variety.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)