* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE PHILANDERER.

SINN FEIN.  “BE MINE.”

PRESIDENT WILSON.  “I DO HOPE I HAVEN’T GIVEN YOU TOO MUCH
ENCOURAGEMENT—­BUT I CAN NEVER BE MORE THAN A BROTHER TO YOU.”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  First Australian. “’OO’s YER SWELL PAL, DIGGER?”

Second Ditto.  “I DUNNO HIS NAME, BUT I REMEMBER HIS FACE.  I GIVE HIM A BIT OF BACON JUST OUTSIDE ST. QUENTIN.”]

* * * * *

WHY DRAG IN MRS. SIDDONS?

DEAR MR. PUNCH,—­Nothing annoys me more than the assumption that wit, learning, fancy, etc., were the monopoly of the past.  For example, a correspondent of one of our leading dailies has been trotting out Mrs. SIDDONS’ use of blank verse in familiar conversation, and quoting from LOCKHART:—­

“John Kemble’s most familiar table-talk often flowed into blank verse; and so indeed did his sister’s [Mrs. Siddons’].  Scott (who was a capital mimic) often repeated her tragic exclamation to a foot-boy during a dinner at Ashestiel—­

  ’You ‘ve brought me water, boy,—­I asked for beer!’

Another time, dining with a Provost of Edinburgh, she ejaculated, in answer to her host’s apology for his piece de resistance—­

  ‘Beef cannot be too salt for me, my lord.’”

This is all very well, but just as good blank verse is commonly used by eminent men and women to-day; indeed some of them excel in impromptu rhymes.  Thus in Mr. HAROLD WESTMORELAND’S interesting volume, Eavesdroppings, there is this charming story of the first meeting of Madame CLARA BUTT and Miss CARRIE TUBB.  They were introduced at a garden-party at Fulham, and Mr. WESTMORELAND overheard the memorable quatrain in which Madame CLARA BUTT greeted her sister-artist:—­

  “In our names we ’re alike
    But in minstrelsy—­ah no! 
  For I’m a contralto
    And you’re a soprano.”

To the same veracious chronicler I am indebted for a specimen of the impromptus which Lord READING frequently throws off, to the delight of his friends.  Mr. WESTMORELAND was having a pair of boots tried on at a famous Jermyn Street bootmaker’s when Lord BEADING was undergoing a similar ordeal, and electrified the courteous assistant by observing:—­

  “The right-foot boot to me seems rather tight;
  The left, per contra, feels exactly right.”

But perhaps the finest exponent of the art is a famous General, whose obiter dicta in verse are innumerable.  I have only space to quote one, spoken to a soldier with whom he had shaken hands:—­

  “You are the proudest man in France,
    Or at any rate in Flanders,
  For you’ve shaken hands, in a great advance,
    With the greatest of Corps Commanders.”

Surely in the light of these examples, which might be indefinitely multiplied, there is no need for the present to fear comparison with the past in the sphere of conversational verse?