Chapter 3

When, however, at last we did arrive at his desired haven, late in the afternoon, when dusk was beginning to fall and blur with her gentle hand the sharp lines of hill and tree, we acknowledged his wisdom, for in the window beside the door, where we creakingly but joyfully alighted, were visible, although no longer distinctly, a vast ham as yet uncut and two richly-browned cold fowls. "There," said he, with a pardonable triumph, "didn't I tell you?" and so, our lips trembling with the anticipation of nutriment, we entered, flung off our wraps, and prepared, on the evidence, for such bliss as earth too rarely affords. But alas for hopes raised only to be shattered, for the host had nothing to offer us but bread and cheese. The ham and chickens were of _papier-mâché_.

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"HOTEL. ---- Sitting Waiter required, good experience."--_Bournemouth Daily Echo_.

The inclusion of the functions of a waiter among "sedentary occupations" explains a good deal.

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FROM LORD DEVONPORT'S LETTER-BAG.

I.--_From Professor Tripewell._

MY LORD,--You will, no doubt, forgive me for drawing your attention to the fact that the rationing system, to which you have lent the credit of your name, will bring us to the end of our food supplies in something considerably less than a month from now. I am far from wishing to be an alarmist, but it is as well that we should face the facts, especially when they are supported by statistics so irrefutable as those which I am willing to produce to you at any moment on receiving your request to do so.

Fortunately it is not yet too late to apply a simple and adequate remedy to this condition of affairs. All you have to do is to issue _and enforce_ an Order in the following terms:--

(1) Every occasion on which food, no matter how small the amount, is eaten shall count as a meal.

(2) Not more than two meals shall be eaten by any person, of whatever size, age or sex, in a day of twenty-four hours.

(3) No meal shall last more than ten minutes.

(4) The mastication of every mouthful shall last not less than thirty seconds.

(5) A mouthful for the purpose of this Order shall not consist of more food than can be conveyed to the mouth in an ordinary teaspoon.

I venture to think that this order, _if issued at once and drastically applied_, will meet every difficulty, and that we shall hear no more of a shortage.

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II.--_From Joshua Stodmarsh._

DEAR OLD SPORT,--It won't do--really it won't. I've been doing my best to give your plan of food rations a fair run, and every week I've found myself on the wrong side of the fence. I have never considered myself a large or reckless eater, though I own to having had a liking for a good breakfast (fish, kidneys and eggs, with muffin or buttered toast and marmalade) as a start for the day. Then came luncheon--steak or chop or Irish stew, with a roly-poly pudding to follow, and a top-up of bread-and-butter and cheese. Tea, of course, at five o'clock, with more buttered toast, and then home to a good solid dinner of soup, fish and _entrée_ and joint and some sort of sweet. This just left room for an occasional supper--say three times a week. It doesn't sound out of the way, now does it? And you must remember that I'm not one of your thin, dwarfish, anæmic blokes that you could feed out of a packet of bird-seed. No, I stand six foot, and I don't weigh an ounce under seventeen stone. Dear old boy, you can't have the heart to ask me to do it.

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III.--From _Miss Lavinia Fluttermere_.

DEAR LORD DEVONPORT,--I am writing on behalf of my sister Penelope as well as on my own to bring before you a difficulty under which we are labouring in connection with your Lordship's order in regard to the consumption of food. We are two sisters, the daughters of a country clergyman, who died when I was eighteen and Penelope a year and a half younger. I tell you this to show you that we were not accustomed in our youth to luxurious living. For many years now Penelope and I have lived together in a very small way on the income of an annuity for our joint lives which was bought with a sum of money left to us by an uncle. On this we have managed to get along comfortably, and have even been able to pay for occasional help in the work of our very modest household. When your Lordship's food order was issued we determined to obey it strictly, being glad of an opportunity to show our patriotic devotion to the cause of our country. "It will be hard for us, Penelope," I said, "for we are not used to such quantities of meat, and even the allowance of bread is too great, I fear, for our poor appetites; but, since Lord DEVONPORT wishes it, all we can do is to obey, even though this may entail a change in our manner of living and an increase in our weekly expenses." Penelope agreed, and on this principle we have endeavoured to act. We have, however, now found the task to be beyond our capacity, though we have struggled loyally to fulfil the duty imposed upon us; and we write to ask your Lordship to grant us some dispensation, lest permanent plethora should ensue.

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IN A GOOD CAUSE.

Mr. Punch desires to support very heartily Lord BERESFORD'S appeal on behalf of the fine work of the Ladies' Emergency Committee of the Navy League, who supply warm clothing to the crews of men-of-war and mercantile auxiliaries; equipment to Naval hospitals, and parcels of food and other necessaries to Naval prisoners of war. The strain upon the Committee's resources has been very heavy, and Mr. Punch is confident that his friends will not allow our gallant sea-services to suffer through any need which it is within their power to supply.

Cheques may be made payable to Admiral Lord BERESFORD, and addressed to the Hon. Secretary, Ladies' Emergency Committee of the Navy League, 56, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Street, W.

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"£1 REWARD.--Lost, Umbrella, engraved W.C.B. 1865-1915."--_The Times_.

We do not believe that such a faithful friend is lost; it has simply gone out to celebrate its jubilee.

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"FOOD IN FRANCE.

A friend who was in France last week tells me that the only cheap article of diet just now is eggs, which are about 1-1/2d. each. Meat, he said, averages 5f. a kilo, which is about the equivalent of 5s. a pound."--_Daily Mirror_.

No wonder we are not allowed to have the metric system.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

MR. CONRAD'S new hero is an unnamed chief-mate who gets his first command to a sailing vessel, also unnamed--queer and of course quite deliberate instance of the author's reticent, allusive method which is so entirely plausible. Her last captain, who had some mad savage hatred of ship and crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8° 20'. The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8° 20'--_The Shadow Line_ (DENT)--is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so curiously and deliberately detailed, of his finding the quinine bottles filled with a worthless substitute, and letting them "each in turn" slip to ground, I had again the most unusual shock of being unable to accept the credibility of his invention. This is so rare an experience that it only throws into relief for me the fine craft of this most brilliant of our impressionists, who tells so much with such delicate strokes, so conscientiously considered, so unerringly conveyed.

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_This is the End_ (MACMILLAN) is the kind of book that only youth can write--youth at its best. It has the qualities and defects of its parentage; but the qualities, a fine careless rapture, sensitive vision, a wayward and jolly fantasy, challenging provocativeness, faintly malicious humour, are dominant. Miss STELLA BENSON will grow out of her youthful cynicisms and intolerances, will focus her effects, without losing any of her substantial equipment. This is by no means the end. It is the second step of a very brilliant beginning. Already it shows improvement upon her first clever book, _I Pose_; a surer touch, a finer restraint. What is it all about? Does that matter? It is the manner of the telling rather than what is told that constitutes the charm. If I tell, you that _Jay_ runs away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful _Mr. Morgan_, her dead brother's soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all. I will merely add that you will be foolish if you miss this book.

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I have to begin by confessing that, despite its most attractive title, my first glance into _French Windows_ (ARNOLD) produced in me some feeling of prejudice. It was not that I failed to recognise both dignity and beauty of phrase in the writing; on the contrary, I told myself that "Mr. JOHN AYSCOUGH" had been betrayed by his own appreciation of beautiful phrases into an indulgence in "style," a deliberate arrangement of his war-pictures that was somehow out of harmony with the stark and horrible simplicity of their subject. But I hasten to make confession that this was but a passing and, I am convinced, a wrong judgment. Indeed, the abiding impression that the book has left upon me is one of enormous sincerity. Both as a soldier and a priest, the writer enjoyed (as his publishers quite justly say) special opportunities for getting into touch with men of all sorts and conditions. This, aided by his own gift of sympathy and comradeship, has resulted in a book that is very largely a record of fleeting but genuine friendships, made with individual soldiers, both French and English, in the Western battle. Many of them contain portraits and character-studies (a pedantic term for anything so sensitive and sympathetic as these tributes to nameless heroes, but I can find no better) that linger in the memory. I defy you, for example, to forget soon the story of that winter walk taken by the writer and certain officer-boys of his unit to the Cistercian Monastery, and what _Chutney_ said by the way; and what happened afterwards. For the sake of such sincere and memorable sketches as this I am more than ready to forgive what seemed like a touch of artifice elsewhere.

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Mr. GEORGE MOORE, continuing his labours as reviser and editor-in-chief of the Moorish masterpieces, has now directed his attention to _A Modern Lover_. Finding this (presumably) not modern enough, he has refashioned and republished it under the admirably comprehensive title of _Lewis Seymour and Some Women_ (HEINEMANN). Not having the original at hand, I am unable to indulge in comparisons; but there seems good reason to suppose that _Lewis Seymour's_ relations with the three amiable ladies who assist his artistic and amatory career remain very much what they probably were in the beginning. As for the tale itself, that too will hardly belie your expectation, being full of cleverness, carried off with an infectious gaiety, and boasting (I use the word advisedly) more than a sufficiency of that rather assertive and school-boy impropriety which the charitable might quote as evidence of our author's perpetual youth. It is an interesting, though perhaps futile, speculation to reflect how Mr. THOMAS HARDY, to whose plots the present bears some resemblance, might have handled it. Had _Lewis Seymour_ pursued his education in womanhood under the guidance of the wizard of Dorchester there would probably have been less of the atmosphere of holiday humour; but, on the other hand, we should almost certainly have been spared the quite superfluous naughtiness of the Parisian scenes. By the way, talking of Paris, surely I am right in supposing that the vision of a revived Versailles was an experience of two ladies? It is unexpected to find Mr. MOORE denying anything to "the sex."

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Of the late Mr. JACK LONDON'S alternative methods of writing, the defiantly propagandist and the joyously adventurous, I, being an average reader, have always preferred the latter; so that, remembering how separate and distinct he usually kept his two styles, I expected, in taking up _The Strength of the Strong_ (MILLS AND BOON), to be immediately either disappointed or gratified. But, as it turns out, the half-dozen essay-stories that make up this slender volume are by no means characteristic, for there is very little plot in any, and even less attempt forcibly to extract a moral; and amongst them are two not very successful North of Ireland studies that seem to have no connection at all with the author's usual manner. The volume is made up of social pictures, all (as Mr. LONDON liked to pretend) within his own experience, presented impartially for you to study, and draw, if you choose, your own conclusions. That experience ranges, comprehensively enough, from a first-hand sketch of primeval man attempting rather unhappily to group himself in clans and tribes, to a journalistic note of the Yellow Peril that materialised, we learn, somewhere late in the twentieth century and was overcome by science liberating disease--a Hunnish method no longer novel. Of the series I like best the tale of the San Francisco professor of dual personality, who by dint of much practical study of labour problems came at last to cut loose from his own circle and disappear in the army of industry. In this chapter alone is there a spark of the volcanic fire, now unhappily no longer in eruption, that blazes in such great stories as _The Sea Wolf_, _Adventure_ and _Burning Daylight_.

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Though there may be no very particular reason why you should be invited to read _The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc_ (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a vivid enough tale of its _genre_. Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution. But, granted that you do not suffer from squeams, you will find Miss MARIAN BOWER a deft weaver of romance. Here love and adventure walk firmly hand-in-hand, and from the moment _Guillaume-Marc_ makes his entrance upon the stage until the happy ending is reached any day might have been his last. The villain, too, is a satisfactory scoundrel, and cunning withal. "Brains," he considered, "may conceive revolutions, but it is the empty stomach which propagates them." I wonder whether they have the brains for it in Berlin.

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According to a recent official _communiqué_ from Petrograd, among the captures on the Caucasian Front was "an apomecometer (an instrument for estimating altitudes)." It is understood that the latest Turkish estimate of the "All Highest" was captured with the instrument, but was found to be unfit for publication.

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"The _Weser Zeitung_ now reports from Berlin that deliberations by the State authorities have led to the decision that from April 15 the meat ration will be increased to half a kilometre (about 17-1/2 ozs.) per week."--_Liverpool Daily Post_.

This must refer to the sausage-ration, which by reason of its length and tenuity is now advertised by the butchers (civilian) of Berlin as "The HINDENBURG line."

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"STEAM LUNCH--50 ft. x 7-1/4 ft., fast, liquid fuel."--_Yachting Monthly_.

A meal of these dimensions should surely attract the attention both of the FOOD CONTROLLER and the Liquor Control Board.