The Cologne Gazette is of the opinion that the American troops, when they arrive in France, will be hampered by their ignorance of the various languages. But we understand that the Americans can shoot in any language.
A weekly periodical is giving away a bicycle every other week. Meanwhile The Daily Telegraph continues to give away a Kaiser every day.
"I decline to have anything to do with the War," said a Conscientious Objector to a North of England magistrate, "and I resent this interference with my liberty." Indeed he is said to be so much annoyed that he intends sending the War Office a jolly snappy letter about it.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN says a gossip writer is coming to England in the Autumn. This disposes of the suggestion that arrangements were being made for England to be taken over to him.
Incidentally we notice that CHARLIE CHAPLIN has become a naturalised American, with, we presume, permission to use the rank of Honorary Britisher.
Before a Northern Tribunal an applicant stated that he was engaged in the completion of an invention which would enable dumb people to speak or signal with perfection. He was advised, however, to concentrate for a while on making certain Germans say "Kamerad."
An Isle of Wight man has succeeded in growing a vegetable marrow which weighs forty-three pounds. To avoid its being mistaken for the island he has scratched his name and address on it.
Those in search of a tactless present will bear in mind that Mr. MARK HAMBOURG has written a book entitled "How to Play the Piano."
The great flagstaff at Kew Gardens, which weighs 18 tons and is 215 feet long, is not to be erected until after the War. This has come as a great consolation to certain people who had feared the two events would clash.
In Mid Cheshire there is a scarcity of partridges, but there is plenty of other game in Derbyshire. The Mid-Cheshire birds are of the opinion that this cannot be too strongly advertised.
Thirteen years after it was posted at Watford a postcard has just reached an Ealing lady inviting her to tea, and of course she rightly protested that the tea was cold.
An estate near Goole has been purchased for £118,000, the purchaser having decided not to carry out his first intention of investing that amount in a couple of boxes of matches.
Herr Erzberger is known among his friends as "The Singing Socialist." We are afraid however that if he wants peace he will have to whistle for it.
The Provisional Government in Russia, according to The Evening News, has "always regarded an international debate on the questions of war and pease as useful." But our Government, not being exactly provisional, prefers to go on giving the enemy beans.
COMFORTING THOUGHT
When there are no taxis on your return from your holidays:
"OUR TRUE STRENGTH IS TO KNOW OUR OWN WEAKNESS."—CHARLES KINGSLEY.
THE END OF AN EPISODE.
I write this in the beginning of a minor tragedy; if indeed the severance of any long, helpful and sympathetic association can ever be so lightly named. For that is precisely what our intercourse has been these many weeks past; one of nervous and quickly roused irritation on my part, of swift and gentle ministration on his.
At least once a day we have met during that period (and occasionally, though rarely, more often), usually in those before-breakfast hours when the temper of normal man is most exacting and uncertain. But his temper never varied; the perfection of it was indeed among his finest qualities. Morning after morning, throughout a time that, as it chanced, has been full of distress and disappointment, would his soothing and infinitely gentle touch recall me to content. That stroking caress of his was a thing indescribable; one before which the black shadows left by the hours of night seemed literally to dissolve and vanish.
And now the long expected, long dreaded has begun to happen. He, too, is turning against me, as so many others of his fellows have done in the past. Who knows the reason? What continued roughness on my part has at last worn out even him? But for some days now there has been no misreading the fatal symptoms—increasing irritability on the one side, harshness turning to blunt indifference on the other. And this morning came the unforgivable offence, the cut direct.
That settles it; to-morrow, with a still smarting regret, I unwrap a new razor-blade.
THE WHOLE HOG.
["Victorian love-making was at best a sloppy business ... modern maidens have little use for half measures.... Primitive ideas are beginning to assert themselves."—Daily Paper.]
Betty, when you were in your teens
And shielded from sensation,
Despite a lack of ways and means
In various appropriate scenes
I sighed my adoration.
You did not smile upon my suit;
Pallid I grew and pensive;
My disappointment was acute,
Life seemed a worthless thing and mute.
I moped, then tuned my laggard lute
And launched a new offensive.
Thus you were wooed in former days
When maids were won by waiting;
The modern lover finds it pays
To imitate the forceful ways
Of prehistoric mating.
Man is more primitive (a snub
Has no effect), so if you
Should still refuse a certain "sub."
He will not pine or spurn his grub,
But, seizing the ancestral club,
Into submission biff you.
MAKING THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.
"As honorary organist at —— Wesleyan Church he has established a sound and compact business as wholesale grocer and Italian warehouseman."—Provincial Paper.
"Maid (superior) wanted for lady, gentleman, small flat, strong girl, able to assist lady with rheumatism."—Glasgow Herald.
If we hear of a small flat girl we will send her along; but this shaped figure is rather out of fashion just now.
