Chapter 3

"Number 1 was when he was employed in repairing the roof of one of the big London stations. He was slung up in a cradle when he lost his balance and fell to the ground--a distance of about 80 feet. The odds were about a million to one that he would be killed, but he managed to light on precisely the one spot in the whole station area which secured him a soft fall--a barrel of butter which was standing on the platform, and from which, for some reason or other, the lid had been removed. The butter was ruined, but Andrews escaped with a bad shaking. I believe the butter-merchant brought an action against the Company, but I forget what happened.

"Number 2 grew out of Andrews's weakness for parrots. He had bought a parrot from a sailor, who told him that the best way to teach it to speak was to hang the cage in a well and repeat the words or phrases to it at 3 A.M. in the morning, so as to secure the greatest freedom from disturbance. Andrews was then employed in a brewery at Watford, and lived in a cottage with a strip of garden at the back. There was also a well, so that he could carry out the sailor's instructions on the spot. The cage, which was a large one and nearly filled the well, was made fast to the bucket apparatus, and the first two lessons passed off without any incident. But on the third night, when Andrews was hard at work, he was hailed by a policeman, who came along the lane at the side of the garden--it was an end house--and asked him what he was doing. When Andrews said that he was teaching his parrot to talk, the policeman, naturally suspecting that he was there for some felonious purpose, climbed over the wall and made a grab at him. It was a dark night, and, in trying to dodge the policeman, Andrews stepped into the well, which, according to his account, was ninety feet deep. But, as good luck would have it, he got jammed between the cage and the side of the well, and remained hung up until the policeman hauled him out with the aid of the bucket rope. He was badly bruised, but got all right in a few days.

"Andrews's third and last escape was in the War. He was a reservist, went out early, saw a lot of fighting and came through without a scratch till last November, when his trench was rushed and he was taken prisoner. The front trenches at that point were only about forty yards apart, and before he was removed to the rear a British shell lit close to him and blew him back into his own lines. He was badly hurt and, after some months in hospital, was invalided out of the Army, but manages to do the light work I want all right."

We all subscribed to Bastable's view of Andrews's luck--all at least except Barmer, who was a little nettled at having his story eclipsed. "I can believe the yarn about the shell," he said, "but the butter story is a bit thick, and all tales about parrots are suspect."

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Toujours la Politesse.

"The officer and a man ran in and respectfully shot with a revolver and bayoneted two other men each."--_Englishman (Calcutta)._

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"Washington, Monday.

A representative from Mr. Gerard on his visit to the Kaiser at Headquarters has been received at the State Department, and is now being decoded."--_Manchester Daily Dispatch._

We cannot believe that any American diplomatist could be a mere cipher.

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MEDICALLY UNFIT.

For weight of years some men must stay And some must pause for lack, And some there are would be away But duty holds them back, Driving the jobs at home that must be done To smash the Hun.

And others, whether old or young, Refuse to wait behind; And some with scarcely half a lung Have found the doctors kind; Yet never once did any listen to my tick But barred me quick.

And some whose place should be the van Are doing nothing much; By all the blood that beats in Man I would that any such Could loan me, while he plays the skulker's part, His coward heart.

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A JUST MAN.

There were four on each side. At the last moment a short round man came running up and got in. Hurry had not improved his mood, and one glance of his eye was enough to make me move along two inches to give him room. He stood arranging his luggage on the rack, pulled his coat straight, and sat down--on the other side. The suddenness of his assault was terrific. I quickly recovered my two inches, and the journey to the next station was quite pleasant, so far as I was concerned.

He and I were then left alone.

"I am much obliged to you for moving to make room for me, Sir," he said politely. "But when I get into a compartment with four a side I make it a practice to sit down on the side on which nobody has moved--on principle, Sir, on principle."

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Very Still Life.

From a notice of Mr. BRANGWYN'S Academy picture, "The Poulterer's Shop":--

"Everything lies in its place as if it had been there for centuries."--_Morning Post._

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A Sinecure.

"GENERAL; £20; fam 2; every Sunday and wk-day off."--_Daily Paper._

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"The rebels barricaded St. Stephen's Green with motor-cars and tramcars, as in the French Revolution."--_Northampton Chronicle._

The 1789 models of motor-cars and tramcars are of course out of date by now.

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AT THE PLAY.

"Pen."

During one of the intervals which served so well to eke out the brief two hours of Mr. VACHELL's new "comedy," and were quite as good as many things in the play, I allowed my mind--an absolute blank--to dwell upon certain arresting features in the stage curtain of the St. James's Theatre. In the centre, imposed upon a design whose significance I do not pretend to penetrate, is a gigantic wreath encircling a monogram of the magic initials, G. A., which are surmounted by something which I took to be an heraldic top-hat. This headpiece is in turn surmounted by an heraldic eagle--the ordinary arrangement by which the helmet appears above the coat-of-arms being thus reversed. The central design is flanked on each side by two other wreaths, massive but subordinate. Within the sinister wreath is enshrined in Greek capitals the letters ALEX, and within the dexter wreath the letters ANDROS. "Reading from left to right" we have here the historic name of the Macedonian monarch.

I cannot account for the Greek form of the name on the ground that the St. James's Theatre is the home of the Classical Drama, for the themes of its plays seldom go back beyond the later decades of the 19th century A.D., and I can only conclude that it is meant to indicate that the conquests of Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER'S company resemble those of the famous phalanx of his namesake, the Great.

Most theatres have an atmosphere of their own, and it would be hard to recall any play at the St. James's that has been less in keeping with the local climate than this comedy, so described, of Mr. VACHELL'S. On the score of impropriety and improbability it might in the old days have appealed to the Criterion management; but its lack of broad humour must have negatived these advantages. In any case Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER'S house was no place for a farce so out of harmony with Macedonian methods.

Almost its solitary interest lay in the doubt, maintained to the last moment, as to which of its many fatuous males would turn out to be the hero--meaning by hero the chosen husband of the heroine, for none of them had any personal claim to the title. Indeed, the choice ultimately fell upon the one that had the least distinctive personality of all, his disguise being kept up by a kind of protective colourlessness.

But for Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS, who played the aunt of the preposterous _Lady Pen_ with a courage worthy of a better cause, and extracted from the play such humour as it held for her, matters would have gone badly for those of us who have been accustomed to look to Mr. VACHELL for entertainment. Mr. ALLAN AYNESWORTH, as the heroine's guardian, had no difficulty in transmitting pleasantly enough his mild share of the fun. Miss MARIE HEMINGWAY needed all her prettiness to make up for the futility of her part. And I was really sorry that so sound an actor as Mr. DAWSON MILWARD should have had such ineffective stuff put into his mouth.

Far the funniest thing about the play was the fact that so clever and experienced a writer should have made it. Perhaps the compliments I have paid to my friend Mr. VACHELL in these columns have given me the right to beg him not to take advantage of his many recent successes and palm off on the public just any kind of banality, For these are days when pens (with or without a big P) must be pretty good if they are to compete with the sword.

With this appeal (and with a silent prayer that the play may not come by a natural death in time for my homily to serve as a funeral appreciation) I hasten to conclude, hoping that it will find, him in the pink (as they say) of a blushful remorse; and, anyhow, I remain,

His sincerely, O. S.

* * * * *

NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN.

XI.--Saint John's Wood.

Saint John walked in a Wood Where elm-trees spread their branches And Squirrels climbed and Pigeons cooed. And Hares sat on their haunches. He built him willow huts Wherever he might settle; His meat was chiefly hazel-nuts, His drink the honey-nettle. His Wood that grew so green Is now as grey as stone; His Wood may any day be seen, But where's the good Saint John?

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"On all faces was the defiant scowl of hatred as we looked at them."--_Daily Chronicle._

What had our genial contemporary done to deserve this?

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"Turkish newspapers received in Copenhagen contain long lists of names of prominent Arabs who have been hanged for treason or for absenting themselves from military service. Overleaf is another list of well-known Arabs living in Great Britain and the British Colonies, who are cordially invited to return without delay."--_Morning Paper._

Dilly ducks, dilly ducks, come and be killed.

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JUSTIFICATION.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

It is pleasant to find that even in these days the revival of interest in volumes of short stories still continues. But of course the stories must have a certain quality. I am glad to think that _Traveller's Samples_ (MILLS AND BOON) will help forward the movement. Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY has a quite excellent touch for this sort of thing; her tales are both atmospheric and, for their length, astonishingly full of character. Also she has an engaging habit of avoiding the expected. Take one of the best in this present book, called "_John_," for instance. It is the slightest possible thing, just a picture of a schoolboy's hopeless love for a shallow cruel-brained girl eight years older than himself, who is in process of getting engaged to an eligible bachelor. But every figure in the little group lives. And the second part, which tells the return of the boy-lover twelve years later, shows you what I mean about Mrs. DUDENEY'S refreshing originality. I doubt if there are many writers who would have finished off the story in her very satisfactory way. There is one quality characteristic of most of the tales--a feeling for middle-age in men and women; many of them seem to be variations upon the same theme of a love that comes by waiting. Mrs. DUDENEY can handle this situation with unfailing charm. Her confessed comedies are by far the weakest things in the book; there is one of them indeed that seemed to me amazingly pointless. But with this exception I can commend her volume whole-heartedly, and only hope that the author will continue to send out goods of such excellent workmanship, "as per" (whatever that means) these attractive samples.

Those who search for minor compensations have affected to find one in the idea that the actual happening of the World War has removed from us the old fictional scares, novels of German super-spies, and unsuspecting islanders taken unprepared. But to think this is to reckon without the ingenuity of such writers as Mr. RIDGWELL CULLUM. He, for example, has but to postulate that worst nightmare of all, an inconclusive peace, and we are back in the former terrors, blacker than ever. Suppose the Polish inventor of German undersea craft to have been so stricken with remorse at the frightful results thereof that he determines to hand all his secrets to the English Government, in the person of a young gentleman who combines the positions of Cabinet Minister, son and heir to a great shipbuilder, and hero of the story; suppose, moreover, that the said inventor was blessed with an only daughter, of radiant beauty and the rather conspicuous name of _Vita Vladimir_; suppose the inevitable romance, a secret submarine expedition to the island where Germany is maturing her felonious little plans, the destruction of the latest frightfulness, retaliation by Prussian myrmidons, abductions, murders, and I don't know what besides--and you will have some faint idea of the tumultuous episodes of _The Men Who Wrought_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL). To say that the story moves is vastly to understate its headlong rapidity of action. And, while I hardly fancy that the characters themselves will carry overwhelming conviction, there remains, in the theory of the submersible liner and application to political facts, enough genuine wisdom to lift the tale out of the company of six-shilling shockers. To this extent at least _The Men Who Wrought_ combines instruction with entertainment.

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_Inter-Arma_ (HEINEMANN) is the title that Mr. EDMUND GOSSE has given to his latest volume of essays, reprinted from _The Edinburgh Review_. No one who loves clarity of style will need assurance about the quality of these studies, which, with one exception, are concerned with some or other aspect of the world-struggle. In "War and Literature," a paper dated during the black days of October, 1914, the author attempts to realise what will be the probable literary effect of the catastrophe by recounting the various ways in which French writers suffered from that of 1870. An interesting prediction, too, as recalling what many of us believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest of volumes [the autumn publishings of 1914] will mark the end of what is called 'current literature' for the remaining duration of the war. There can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which does not deal directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the various branches of strategy will, from Christmas onwards, not be published at all." As they stand, these words might well serve as a mild tonic for "current pessimism"; not even the paper famine has brought them to fulfilment. Elsewhere in the volume is an instructive paper on "The Neutrality of Sweden" (valuable but vexatious, as are all the indictments of our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his preface, of renewing the friendship he has already made with those readers "whose minds have become attuned to his," though they are now "separated from him by leagues of sea and occupied in noble and unprecedented service."

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The author of _The Dop Doctor_, with her expansive style, always seems cramped in any story of under a couple of hundred thousand words or so. Perhaps the best things in her new book of short stories, _Earth to Earth_ (HEINEMANN), concern _The Macwaugh_, a shocking bad artist with an immense thirst and the heftiest of Scotch accents. I don't think that there ever was or could be anybody like _Macwaugh_, or indeed that people talk or act like the majority of the characters in this book; but that's where, perhaps, "RICHARD DEHAN" scores a point or two off those realists who mistake accuracy of detail for art. This amiable drunkard, though absurd, lives and moves. The author is evidently attached to him, and that helps. She has, indeed, something of the Dickensian exuberance which carries off absurdities and crudities that would otherwise be intolerably tiresome. She even seems to get some fun out of this kind of thing:--"'Write,' commanded the Zanouka with a double-barrelled flash of her great eyes;" or, again, "It's all poppycock and bumblepuppy," meaning, just, it isn't true.

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If you are writing or intending to write a book about boys let me beg you not to follow the prevailing fashion and call your hero David. Within the last few weeks I have read DAVID PENSTEPHEN, DAVID BLAISE, and now it is Miss ELEANOR PORTER'S _Just David_ (CONSTABLE) and I am beginning to want a rest from the name. _David III._, if he may be called so, has saved me from utter confusion of mind by being an American product and having a charm that is peculiarly his own. Cynics indeed may find his perfection a little cloying, and may say with some justification that no human child ever radiated so much joy and happiness. All the same, this simple tale of childhood will appeal irresistibly to those who do not draw too fine a distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. On the whole Miss PORTER, although hovering near the border, does not pass into the swamps of sloppiness, and as an antidote to War fiction I can recommend _Just David_ without any further qualification.

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RICHARD HARDING DAVIS will, alas, entertain us no more with his easy-flowing pen. These short stories, _Somewhere in France_ (DUCKWORTH), must be his farewell to us. And it is good to feel that his sympathies are so whole-heartedly on the right side. The first of the stories (the only one that has anything to do with the War) is a spirited yarn of the turning of the tables on a German secret service agent, with plenty of atmosphere and hurrying action. The rest are light studies of American life, of which I chiefly commend an extravaganza set in Hayti with a resourceful Yankee electrician, as hero, in conflict with the President in the matter of overdue wages; and the final item of a tussle between a stern and upright District Attorney and the might of Tammany, in which the author seems to have a rather whimsical mistrust of both sides. I always like to think of Tammany when our croakers are holding up everything in this poor little island to obloquy.

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The God in the Car.

"Rumania asked permission for the passage through Bulgaria of several wagons of grain bought from Greece. Bulgaria agreed on condition that Rumania should release over 200 wagons of Bulgarian gods detained in Rumania."

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"An extract of squills, which has been used by the French Government in the trenches for two or three months, is to be used in a Berwickshire County Council experiment to exterminate rates."

_Provincial Paper._

We should like to hear of something equally deadly to taxes.

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"Miss Ruby Miller is in gorgeous green, to match her gorgeous red hair."--_Sunday Pictorial._

It is perhaps just as well that some people, notably engine-drivers, do not see things in this way.

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