Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, January 24, 1917 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, January 24, 1917.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, January 24, 1917 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, January 24, 1917.

  “Riddle me, riddlemaree,” quoth I,
    “Is a game that’s ill to win,
  And the day is o’er fair such tasks to try”—­
    Said he, “Ye shall know at the inn.” 
  With that he suited his path to mine
    And we travelled merrily,
  Till I was ware of the promised sign
    And the door of an hostelry. 
      And the Romany sang, “To the very life
        Ye shall pay for bed and board;
      Will ye turn aside to the House of Strife? 
        Will ye lodge at the Inn o’ the Sword?”

  Then I looked at the inn ’twixt joy and fear,
    And the Romany looked at me. 
  Said I, “We ha’ come to a parting here
    And I know not who you be.” 
  But he only laughed as I smote on the door: 
    “Go, take ye the fighting chance;
  Mayhap I once was a troubadour
    In the knightly days of France. 
      Oh, the feast is set for those who dare
        And the reddest o’ wine outpoured;
      And some sleep sound after peril and care
        At the Hostelry of the Sword.”

* * * * *

For our “National Lent”—­the War Loan.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Pet of the Platoon.  “I DIDN’T HALF TELL OFF OUR SERGEANT JUST NOW.  I CALLED HIM A KNOCK-KNEED, PIGEON-TOED, SWIVEL-EYED MONKEY, AND SAID HE OUGHT TO GO TO A NIGHT-SCHOOL!”

Ecstatic Chorus.  “AND WHAT DID HE SAY?”

Bill (after a pause).  “WELL, AS A MATTER OF FAC’, I DON’T THINK HE QUITE HEARD ME.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

When the eminent in other branches of art take to literature, criticism must naturally be tempered with respect.  This is much how I feel after reading Sir WILLIAM RICHMOND’S The Silver Chain (PALMER AND HAYWARD).  Probably, however, I should have enjoyed it more had not the publishers indulged in a wrapper-paragraph of such unbounded eulogy.  If anybody is to call this novel “a work of great artistic achievement,” and praise its “philosophy, psychology, delightful sense of humour, subtle analysis” and all the rest, I should prefer it to be someone less interested in the wares thus pushed.  For my part I should be content to call The Silver Chain by no means an uninteresting story, the work of a distinguished man, obviously an amateur in the craft of letters, who nevertheless has pleased himself (and will give pleasure to others) by working into it many pen-pictures of scenes in Egypt and Rome and Sicily, full of the glowing colour that we should expect from their artist-author.  But the tale itself, the unrewarded love of the middle-aged “Philosopher” for the not specially attractive heroine Mary, and the subordinate very Byronic romance of Herbert and Annunziata, quite frankly recalls those early manuscripts that most

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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, January 24, 1917 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.