Customer. “ONE OF THOSE THAT ARE HOLLOW, YOU KNOW.”

Waitress. “OH—­ONE OF THEM.  THAT’LL BE FOURPENCE.”]

* * * * *

    “Four Volumes ‘The Great World War,’ pre-war price Rs. 40.  What offers? 
    Perfect.”—­Indian Paper.

A clear case of propheteering.

* * * * *

From an Irish Labour manifesto:—­

    “Impulsive cats, howsoever justifiable, may prove to be unwise.”—­
    Irish Paper.

Remember what happened at Kilkenny.

* * * * *

THE PRIVILEGES OF MARGOTISM.

[Something was said in Punch last week about the advantage to the reminiscencer of being his (or her) own JOHNSON and BOSWELL too.  Mrs. ASQUITH’S recent adventures with the descendants of some of her late friends, of whose fair fame they are not less jealous than she, suggest certain of the pitfalls incident to this double role, particularly when the autobiographer is remote from his (or her) journals.  Since however an inaccuracy always has a day’s start and is never completely overtaken, while in course of time the pursuit ceases altogether, the greatest danger is not immediate but for the future.  Let us imagine a case.]

FROM “THE MARGOTIST’S REMINISCENCES.”

By the Author of Statesmen I Have Influenced; My Wonderful Life; The
Souls’ Awakener; The Elusive Diary, etc., etc.

One of my dearest friends in the early nineteen hundreds was Mr. Sadrock.  I have known eleven Prime Ministers in my time and have assurances from all, signed and witnessed, that but for me and my vivacious encouragement they would never have pulled through; but with none was I on terms of such close communion as with Mr. Sadrock, who not only asked my advice on every occasion of importance, but spent many of his waking hours in finding rhymes to my name.  Some of his four-lined couplets in my honour could not be either wittier or more charming as compliments.

He often averred that no one could amuse him as I did.  He laughed once for half-an-hour on end when I said, “It takes a Liberal to be a Tory;” and on another occasion when I said, “The essence of Home Rule is, like charity, that it begins abroad.”  Nothing but the circumstance that he was already happily married prevented him from proposing to me.

Mr. Sadrock is now to many people only a name; but in his day he was a force to compare with which we have at this moment only one statesman and he is temporarily out of office.

The odd thing is that if the ordinary person were to be asked what Mr. Sadrock was famous for, he would probably reply, For his devotion to HOMER and the Established Church.  But the joke is that when I was with him in 1902 he was frivolous on both these subjects.  It was, I remember, in the private room at the House of Commons set apart for Prime Ministers, to which, being notoriously so socially couth, I always had a private key—­the only one ever given to a woman—­and he was more than usually delightful.