Volume 103 — AT LAST!
Reading edition
(Jeremiad by a Middle-aged Martyr to the great Seaside Superstition.)
["To middle-aged people, at all events, nothing can be more trying and deleterious than holidays."—Daily News.]
Oh, thanks to thee, thanks to thee, sage unconventional! Heaven be blest, the truth's out, then, at last! Holiday woes—'twould take volumes to mention all!— Now, in the lump, meet a shrewd counterblast. Trying? Of course they are! Most deleterious? Scribe, let me clasp thee, in thought, to this breast! Holiday-hunting is Man's most mysterious, Maddening guest! Quixote, I swear, was a model of sanity, When with the Holiday-seeker compared. Fidgety folly, and fussy inanity. These be the figments by which we are snared. Soon as you're drawn from your own cosy drawing-room, Far over flood, field, or foam—for your sins— Then, when your breast makes for vulturine gnawing room, Bother begins! Bother, that bugbear of bufferish Middle-Age! Swift "scurry-funging" may do for the young, The "hey-diddle-diddle, the Cat-and-the-fiddle" age. "Over the moon" I myself once had sprung, Thirty years syne, in sheer fervour athletical— Now, like the dog, I would laugh, and look on. Once, with sheer "drive," I'd a sense sympathetical— Now I have none! Holiday? Term, Sir, is simply a synonym For—waste of tissue! What doctor will dare Tell his poor patients so? I'll put my tin on him! Rest? Recreation? Pick-up? Change of air? All question-begging fudge-phrases of sophistry! Let city-toilers who're fagged or "run down," Autumnal quiet (in home or in office), try; Not "out of town." Out of town? Where is the term that's claptrappier? Means out of temper, or out of your mind. Boot-black or old crossing-sweeper's far happier, Tied to his task in the town—as you'll find. Picking up coppers far better than picking up Shells by the sea, or sham friends on the snore. Bah! What have buffers to do with such kicking-up Heels? It's a bore! Who'll start a League to be called Anti-Holiday? Bet half the middle-aged men-folk will join! Then we might get an occasional jolly day, Free from the pests who perplex and purloin. "Health-Resort" quackery, portmanteau-packery, Cheat-brigade charges and chills I might miss. Dear-bought jimcrackery, female knicknackery!— Oh! 'twere pure bliss!
BRAVO, BOBBY!
["The Brighton Police have received orders to move on all organ-grinders."]
Bless you, Brighton Bobby, bless you, Boldly bringing balmy bliss! Barrel—organ barred—I guess you Banish blatant bands with this. Brazen blasts, by boobies blowing, Bad as barrel's buzz can be. Bid them budge! I'd vote for throwing Beggars like these in the sea. Battered bands from Bremen, Berlin; Bearded bandits, born between Bari and Bergamo, hurl in! Bathed—that's what they've never been! Britons all, oh, be not laggards, But, like Brighton, move them on! Bad, bacteria-hearing black-guards, Beastly, blatant brutes, begone!
ANOTHER ABOUT THE NEW LORD MAYOR ELECT.—"It's a Knill wind that blows nobody any good." Signed, BOGIE MOORE.
THE OLD SPIRIT.
["Gentlemen of the Life Guards,—Forward—March!"—Sir WALTER SCOTT. "Old Mortality."]
L'ESPRIT DE CORPS (loq.). "SHAME! SHAME!—IS IT THUS YOU USE YOUR SWORDS? WHATEVER MAY HAVE HAPPENED, ARE WE NOT STILL 'GENTLEMEN OF THE LIFE GUARDS'?"
"It is stated that Lord METHUEN, after censuring the conduct of the regiment, requested the men who had cut the saddle-panels to step forward and own the act, which would in that case be dealt with simply as a case of insubordination. He gave them a few minutes to consider, but as none of them made any admission, he intimated that he should have to report the matter to the Commander-in-Chief as a mutiny."—Daily Paper, 30th Sept., 1892.
AN ABSENT AUDIENCE.
Socialist. "Ah!—it's all very well yer looking at Me, with yer Smiles AND yer Jeers...."