E. V. L.
* * * * *
THE OLD BEER FLAGON.
(Many old English flagons are adorned inside with grotesque figures of animals.)
Within my foaming flagon
There crawls on countless
legs
A lazy grinning dragon
That wallows in the dregs;
Of old I saw him nightly
Look up with friendly leer,
As if to hint politely,
“I share your taste
in beer!”
Through merry nights unnumbered
(From Boxing Day to Yule)
He’d greet me, ere I slumbered,
From out his amber pool;
But now he is beginning
To look a trifle strange;
His smile, once wide and winning,
Has undergone a change.
No more, as pints diminish
(I wish the price grew less)
He hails me at the finish
With wonted cheeriness;
For, as I drain my mellow
Allowances of ale,
He seems to sigh, “Old fellow,
Will PUSSYFOOT prevail?”
* * * * *
=Commercial Candour.=
“Cleaning and pressing
suites, $3. Dyeing and pressing suits, $6.
Clothes returned looking like
now.”
Advt. in “Standard” (Buenos Aires).
* * * * *
From an election address:—
“As a woman and a ratepayer,
I realise the importance
of eliminating all unavoidable
expenditure in Municipal
undertakings.”
Local Paper.
We trust she will be elected and show how it’s done.
* * * * *
“After an interval of seven years, the ‘Beasts’ Ball, a pre-war popular annual event in aid of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is to be held at the Guildhall, on Wednesday, November 10. Tickets can be obtained from Mrs. Bushe-Fox and from Mrs. Wolf.”—Cambridge Review.
It sounds just like Uncle Remus.
* * * * *
[Illustration: =ECHOES OF THE COAL STRIKE.=
“WHAT’S THE KID SHOUTING ABOUT? THERE AIN’T NO RACING.”]
* * * * *
=OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.=
(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)
“Two households, both alike in dignity....” I ask you, could the novel, of which this quotation is the text, have been written by anyone but Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY? Actually indeed the disputants belong to two branches of the same family, that grim tribe of Forsytes, whom you remember in The Man of Property, and of whose collective history the present book is a further instalment (not, I fancy, the last). I should certainly advise anyone not already familiar with the former work to get up his Forsytes therein before attacking this; otherwise he may risk some discouragement from the plunge into