Chapter 3

"EMPLOYMENT as odd man offered to a disabled soldier in a very good gentleman's household."--_Morning Paper._

As the above advertisement appeared several times we are afraid the gentleman must have been regarded as almost too good to be true.

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THE DUG-OUT DOMINIE.

Some thirty years ago or more He tried his hand at gerund-grinding, But very speedily forswore The _rôle_ before its ties grew binding; He earned a living by his pen, Paid court to Clio and Melpomene, Until the War broke out, and then Enlisted--as a dug-out dominie.

Shortsighted, undersized and weak, Intolerant yet self-distrusting, There could not well have been a "beak" Less fitted for the nice adjusting Of his peculiar point of view To that of forty-odd years later, Less eager to acclaim the New, Less apt for Georgian tastes to cater.

He strove, 'tis true, to keep abreast Of MASEFIELD'S grim poetic frenzy, Sought Truth in WELLS, and did his best To like the Oxford of MACKENZIE; With YEATS he wandered in the Void, Tasted of SHAW'S dramatic jalap, Then turned with rapture unalloyed To DICKENS, THACKERAY and TROLLOPE.

Thus handicapped, thus fortified, Behold him perilously faring Into a world where all are tried By boyhood's scrutiny unsparing; Where ev'ry trick of gait or speech Is most inexorably noted, And masters, more than what they teach, Are studied, criticised and quoted.

His idols mostly left them cold-- BAGEHOT, MATT. ARNOLD, SCOTT and MILTON; But they were quick in taking hold Of PRAED and J.K.S. and HILTON; And once undoubtedly he scored When, on a day of happy omen, He introduced them to A. WARD, The wisest of the tribe of showmen.

But still his fervours left them calm-- Emotion they considered freakish;-- He felt with many an inward qualm That he was thoroughly un-beakish; His mood perplexed them; he was half Provocative, half deferential, Too anxious to provoke a laugh, Too vague where logic was essential.

So, struggling on to bridge the gaps That seventeen from sixty sunder, And causing at his best, perhaps, A mild and intermittent wonder, At least he recognised the truth That there are other ways of earning The sympathy of clear-eyed youth Than by a mere parade of learning.

And yet I think his pupils may In after years, at camp or college, Admit that in his rambling way He added to their stock of knowledge; And, as they ruefully recall His "jaws" on CLAUSEWITZ and JOMINI, On BALZAC, HEINE and JEAN PAUL, Think kindly of their dug-out dominie.

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"Hide-bound red tape rules the day." SIR F. MILNER'S _Letter to "The Times."_

It is much more effective than ordinary unreinforced variety.

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A Happy Family.

"A milk deliverer 31 years of ago, who applied for exemption, said his father was an Atheist, his mother was 'all the other way about,' and his brother was a Socialist, and if he went away there would be war at home. He considered that he should stay at home to keep the peace."--_Western Evening Herald._

But a merciful tribunal, thinking that he was more likely to find it in the trenches, only exempted him for a month.

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THE NATIONAL SCAPE-GOAT ASSOCIATION.

My companion had come into the compartment hurriedly just as the train started. He was a small, middle-aged, sandy-haired man with a straggling tufted beard, the sort of beard that looks as if it owed its origin rather to forgetfulness than to any settled design. The expression on his face and, indeed, over his whole body was a deprecating one. He reminded me of a dog who has transgressed and begs humbly for forgiveness. He had no newspaper, and accepted the offer of one of mine with a deference of gratitude that struck me as excessive. Soon after that we slid into a conversation about the War and made most of the usual remarks.

"It's wonderful," he said, "how the country maintains its financial stability. Five millions a day, you know. It's a pretty big sum, and yet nobody seems to feel it. Here we are, for instance, you and I, travelling first-class."

"My next season-ticket is going to be third-class," I said. "All business has been hit very hard, and we've simply got to economise."

"I daresay, I daresay," he said. "It may be so with some businesses. All I know is my business hasn't gone off."

"Shipowner?" I said.

He gasped and shook his head emphatically. "Oh dear, no," he said. "Nothing of that kind--wish I was. But you won't guess what I do, not if I were to let you have a thousand guesses." His humility had vanished and he looked almost triumphant.

"I give it up at once," I said. "What are you?"

"I," he said, "am the National Scape-Goat Association."

"The _what_?" I said.

He repeated his words. "I see you don't understand," he went on, "so perhaps I'd better explain."

"Yes," I said, "much better."

"Well, it's this way," he said. "Have you ever written a book or been a Candidate for a seat in the House of Commons?"

I said I hadn't.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "You'll understand what I mean. Take the politician first. He issues an Address and makes speeches; in fact, does things which make him known to thousands of people whom he doesn't know. Do you follow me?"

I said I did.

"Well, then, somebody posts back his Election Address with 'This is pitiful balderdash and most ungrammatical' written plainly at the bottom of it. What would be your feelings if you got a thing like that?"

"I shouldn't like it," I said.

"Of course you wouldn't. You'd want to kick the writer, or at the very least you'd want to write back to him and tell him what you thought of him. But you can't do it, because of course he hasn't signed his name or given any hint of his address. It's the same way with anonymous letters of abuse. You can't answer them. So you 're done. You feel as if you'd tried to walk up a step where there wasn't a step, and your temper suffers. That's where the Association comes in. All you've got to do is to write to us, enclosing fee. For half-a-guinea we send down to any address in England one of our experts from the Assault-and-Battery Department, and you're entitled to kick him once--we guarantee him boot-proof, so you can kick as hard as you like. Or, if you prefer writing to kicking, you can write to me as if I'd written the anonymous letter or article or whatever it may be, and you can abuse me to your heart's content for half-a-crown. For three shillings you can call me a pro-German. Anyhow, the result is that your temper recovers and you feel perfectly satisfied. It's well worth the money, isn't it? I'm thinking of starting a Subscriptions' Department, to which you could write a refusal of any application for money, even if you have to subscribe in the end. It will give a man a pleasant glow to write to a clergyman, for instance (I shall keep a dozen or so on the premises), and say he'll be immortally jiggered if he'll subscribe to the Church Building Fund. But the anonymous letter business will always be my chief source of profit. Here's our prospectus, with all details. If you think any more of it perhaps you'll let me know. I get out here. Good-bye."

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Kipling Revised.

"Men of all castes had rallied to the Flag, and truly we had witnessed the truth of what the poet told us. 'The East is West and the West is East.'" _Surrey Mirror._

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"Alfred Billinger and Albert Robson, miners ... were fined 20s. each for trespassing in search of fame." _Provincial Paper._

Well, now they've got it.

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"In the Metropolitan Police District the employment of special constables has resulted in a saving of five-eighths of a penny."--_Yorkshire Evening Post._

Very disappointing! Not even a whole copper.

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From the report of a Dairyman's Association:--

"It further aims at insuring that the milk-supply for the city and district shall, like Cæsar's wife, be beyond suspicion, and it therefore enjoins on its members the necessity for taking every possible care that the sanitary conditions prevailing at the farms, in the dairies and during the transit of the milk to the public shall leave nothing to be desired. In short, its motto is, in these respects, '_Nilus secundus_'."--_Hampshire Chronicle._

If they must use water in their milk we are glad to think that the Nile is only their second choice.

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"The Sunday schools must try to 'wangle'--that was, a project their in-to 'wangle'--that was, to project their in-enlarged task, and attempt to do what seemed impossible."--_Provincial Paper._

We would not go so far as to say impossible, but they certainly seem to have difficulties ahead.

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"Good fish, fruit, and rabbit business for sale. No opposition fish or rabbits."--_Bolton Journal._

It looks rather as if the fruit might disagree with you.

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Under the heading, "Musical Instruments, etc.":--

"AMERICAN mammoth bronze turkey cockerels, strong, healthy, grand stock birds; 20s. each."--_Glasgow Herald._

You should hear these musical instruments throw off "Yankee-doodle."

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Mr. Maurice Hewlett's latest volume, _Frey and His Wife_ (WARD, LOCK), suffers from the defect of being in reality a long short story puffed out to the dimensions of a short novel; and in consequence, even with large type--most grateful to the reviewing eye; Heaven forbid I should complain of that!--and a blank page between each chapter, it has considerable difficulty in filling its volume. It is a tale of antique Iceland and Norway. The first part, which is really padding and has nothing whatever to do with _Frey_ or his matrimonial affairs, treats of one _Ogmund_, who was called _Ogmund Dint_, for the very good reason that he had been literally dinted as to the skull. It was done by a gentleman named _Halward_. Everybody naturally expected _Ogmund_ to dint back; but he was something of a conscientious objector in the matter of face-to-face dinting, and being too proud for vulgar conflict he bided his time till he could cut _Halward_'s throat with the minimum of personal inconvenience. End of padding and appearance of _Frey_. There is a picture of _Frey_ on the cover by Mr. MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN. You know already what the GREIFFENHAGEN vikings are like--high-coloured, well developed and (if I dare say it) sometimes a trifle wooden. _Frey_ indeed looked so very wooden that in my foolish ignorance I was tempted to protest. But the astonishing fact is that Frey was not only wooden in appearance, but in actuality. How then could he have for wife a slip of a sixteen-year-old maid that you may have met before in Mr HEWLETT's romances? This however is the real story, which (pardon me) I do not mean to tell. If it is no tremendous matter, it will at least please an idle hour, which will be almost time enough for you to enjoy every word of it.

_These Lynnekers_ (CASSELL) is yet another example of the "family" novel whose increasing popularity I have lately noticed. It is a clever and interesting story--the name of Mr. J. D. BERESFORD assured me in advance that it would be--and, when it is finished, the characters go on living and speaking in one's mind, which is, I suppose, a sound proof of their vitality. Yet in a sense vitality was just what most of the _Lynneker_ tribe chiefly lacked. They were an ancient and honourable house, country-born to the third and fourth generation, and all of them far too conventional and apathetic and fuss-hating ever to follow any but the line of least resistance. All of them, that is, except _Dickie_, who was the youngest of his father's numerous progeny, and in more senses than one a sport. How _Dickie_ released himself from the shackles of family tradition, how he grew up and bustled things about, and generally made a real instead of a conventional success--this is the matter of the tale. All the characters are well-drawn, and about _Dickie_ himself there is a compelling virility that rushes you along in his rather tempestuous wake. I am not sure that I altogether believe in his attitude towards the question of sex. He appeared to think generally too little, and on occasions remarkably too much, about it. Also the painful detail with which the author lingers over the death of old _Canon Lynneker_ (that attractive and human figure of ecclesiastical gentility) roused me to resentment. When will our novelists learn that, as regards the physical side of mortality, reticence is by far the better part of realism? This marred a little my pleasure in a story for whose quality and workmanship I should else have nothing but praise.

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In _To Ruhleben--and Back_ (CONSTABLE), Mr. GEOFFREY PYKE has such a fine yarn to spin of his foolhardy proceeding in walking right into the eagle's beak as correspondent for an English newspaper, at the end of September, 1914, and (after some months' solitary confinement in Berlin and his transfer to the civilian prisoners' miserable internment camp at Ruhleben) walking right out of it again, that one can forgive him for spreading his elbows for a piece of expansive writing when he was safe home. To tell the truth he writes extraordinarily well; one's only feeling is that the simplest idiom would be best for such an amazing narrative, and Mr. PYKE is too young and too clever (both charmingly venial faults) to write simply. When I tell you that this persistent youngster, hardly out of his teens, patiently worked out a plan of escape which depended for its efficacy on an optical illusion (the precise secret of which he does not give away), and with his friend, Mr. EDWARD FALK, a District Commissioner from Nigeria, part tramped, part _bummel-zugged_ the two hundred and fifty miles or so from Ruhleben to the Dutch frontier, disguised as tourists, with a kit openly bought at WERTHEIM's, living, when marketing became too dangerous, on potatoes and other roots burglariously digged from the fields at dark, you will gather that this is some adventure. But I am afraid the publication will not assist any other prisoners at Ruhleben to escape. It is pleasant to note that the Commandant of the Camp, VON TAUBB, was a sportsman and none too thickly tarred with the brush of Prussian efficiency; and that the Governor, GRAF SCHWERIN, threatened resignation if a no-smoking order, sent from headquarters, were insisted on. Indeed, the fact that our young friend was not shot out of hand must stand as a small entry on the credit side, not inconveniently crowded, of Prussia's account in the recording angel's ledger.

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In _A Frenchwoman's Notes on the War_ (CONSTABLE) Mademoiselle CLAIRE DE PRATZ discourses pleasantly and patriotically of sundry effects of the War on French life and character. She is excusably proud of the part which her fellow-countrywomen have played. The women of France seem to have accomplished to admiration what we in England are only beginning to understand. Quietly, almost automatically, Frenchwomen have slipped into the men's vacant places and carried on the work of the country. The industry and resourcefulness of the average Frenchwoman are proverbial, but the author ascribes the peculiar readiness they have displayed at the present time largely to compulsory military service, as well as to the Frenchman's habit of discussing his work with his wife and daughters and awakening their interest in it. Thus, when the local paperhanger was called to the colours his wife repapered the author's country cottage "quite as efficiently"; and thrilling indeed is the account of the gallantry of one intrepid woman who, when the German Staff entered an important town (from which the Mayor and Municipal Council had fled), resisted their demand for a large war ransom. Widow of a former Senator of the Department, she "alone remained, the sole representative of officialdom." "We want to see the Mayor," said the invaders. "_Le Maire? C'est moi!_" was the reply. "Then kindly direct us to some members of the Municipal Council." "_Le Conseil Municipal? C'est moi!_" We are told that the Teutonic officials were amazed--and no wonder. But in the end they were forced to go without the money, and the town and its defender were left in peace. I commend _A Frenchwoman's Notes on the War_ as a most inspiriting record of what women can do; though the author magnanimously admits that, "for the callings of the coal-heaver and the furniture-remover," men, even in France, are still indispensable.

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For novels which require a guide to conduct me through them I confess weariness, but in _That Woman from Java_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) I found the glossary less fatiguing hero. Things were going badly for _Mrs. Hamilton_ in the divorce case, "_Hamilton v. Hamilton_, co-respondent _King_," when the judge broke down. That might have happened to any judge, but, although I can follow the judicial _Bruce_ quite easily to his sick bed, I cannot believe that he would, on his recovery, have refrained from finding out how the case ended. Apparently being in love with _Mrs. Hamilton_, he did not dare to enquire what happened; but a more plausible explanation of his unenterprising conduct seems to be that he had only to act like an ordinary man and the rather sandy foundations on which E. HARDINGHAM QUINN's story are built would have collapsed. Here in fact we have a tale in which the main complications are caused by the characters behaving with a total lack of what the Americans call horse-sense. But if you can get by this difficulty you will admire, as I did, the reticence with which the troubles of the much misunderstood heroine are told, and also admit that the colour of Java has been vividly conveyed.

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Save the Mark!

Germany's last word:--

"_Kriegsvermoegenszuwachssteuergesetz._"

And a very pretty word too. But it does not surprise us to learn from the German Press that the Legislature will probably have to devote at least three weeks to the discussion of the subject which it defines.

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From a book catalogue:--

"_The Royal Marriage Market of Europe._ By Princess Radziwill. With eight half-ton illustrations."

It is thought that these must be portraits of German princesses taken before the War had deprived them of their usual supply of butter.

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"ARTIST, Academy Exhibitor, paints gentlemen's residences."

_Sunday Paper._

Another result, no doubt, of the exigencies of War, but rather hard on the ordinary house-decorator.