Volume 150 — THE FLYING MAN.
Reading edition
When the still silvery dawn uprolls And all the world is "standing to;" When young lieutenants damn our souls Because they're feeling cold and blue— The bacon's trodden in the slush, The baccy's wet, the stove's gone wrong— Then, purring on the morning's hush, We hear his cheerful little song. The shafts of sunrise strike his wings, Tinting them like a dragon-fly; He bows to the ghost-moon and swings, Flame-coloured, up the rosy sky. He climbs, he darts, he jibes, he luffs; Like a great bee he drones aloud; He whirls above the shrapnel puffs, And, laughing, ducks behind a cloud. He rides aloof on god-like wings, Taking no thought of wire or mud, Saps, smells or bugs—the mundane things That sour our lives and have our blood. Beneath his sky-patrolling car Toy guns their mimic thunders clap; Like crawling ants whole armies are That strive across a coloured map. The roads we trudged with feet of lead The shadows of his pinions skim; The river where we piled our dead Is but a silver thread to him. "God of the eagle-winged machine, What see you where aloft you roam?" "Eastward, Die Schlossen von Berlin, And West, the good white cliffs of home!"
Journalistic Candour.
Heading to the Stop-Press column of a Provincial Paper:—
"LATEST RAW NEWS."
"Motorcycle. Give £25 (maximum) and exquisite diamond ring (engagement broken off)."—Motor Cycling.
No sidecar required.
"Maeterlinck, the great Austrian statesman, looked with suspicion on all kinds of suggestions of reform or agitation."
Provincial Paper.
So unlike Metternich, the famous Belgian bee-farmer.
"Young Baby—Wanted, homely woman to take charge of duration of war."
Wood Green Sentinel.
If she will only finish it satisfactorily—the War, we mean, not the baby—we don't mind how homely she is.
Under the heading of "Horses, Harness, &c.":—
"Offer, cheap—Horse Chestnuts, 6 to 8 feet; Scotch, 2 to 3 feet; Spruce, about 2 feet; also Privet, Lilacs, Laurels, etc."
Irish Times.
We are quite glad to see this old joke in harness again.
"Tourists are permitted to carry cameras and use them as long as they do not attempt to take fortresses."
Russian Year Book.
These 4.7 cameras are deadly things for siege work.
"Quite the tit-bit of the evening was the little interlude in the duet from 'Faust' taken by Mr. H—— as Faust and Mr. B—— P—— as Mephistopheles. 'His Satanic Majesty' sings—
"'What is your will? At once tell me. Are you afraid?'"
Accrington Observer.
Is this "My dear Tino" under another name?