Volume 158 — TO JAMES (MULE) WHO HAS PLAYED ME FALSE.
Reading edition
[Many mules are appearing upon the streets of London and are showing an extraordinary and unexpected docility amidst the traffic.]
James, when I note your air supremely docile, Your well-fed look of undisturbed content (Doubtless you find this land an adipose isle After lean times on active service spent), I do not join with those who hymn your praises For calmness mid the turmoil of the town; I find myself consigning you to blazes— James, you have let me down. For I am one who, after having striven, A hero (vide Press) though far from bold, Has come back home and, naturally, given Artistic touches to the tales he's told; The Transport was my scene of martial labours; That was the section where I saw it through; And I have told astonished friends and neighbours Some lurid yarns of you. You are the theme I have been wont to brag on; I've told how you, my now innocuous moke, Would chew the tail-board off a G.S. wagon By way of mere plaisanterie (or joke); Dubbed you most diabolical of ragers, A rampant hooligan, a fetid tough, A thing without respect for sergeant-majors— That is to say, hot stuff. Full many a fair young thing I've seen displaying A sympathetic pallor on her cheek And wonder in her eye, when I've been saying How almost every day in Salonique You jazzed with me on brinks of precipices; But when I talk to-day they cannot fail To think of you in town and murmur, "This is A likely sort of tale." To take, without one thought of evil plotting, Even without one last protesting kick, Thus kindly to somnambulistic trotting— Oh, James, old pal, it was a dirty trick; To show the yarns I'd told of you and written (In letters home) were not entirely swank At very least, I think, you might have bitten The policeman at the Bank.
Boat Race "Intelligence."
"The Oxford University crew arrived at Henley yesterday for a week's practice. The Cambridge president, Mr. E.A. Berrisford, accompanied the crew as spare man."—Provincial Paper.
"The Government, said Mr. Bonar Law, had not received any intimation from the Netherlands Government that Holland had decided to keep the ex-Kaiser in Curaçoa."—Evening Standard.
Good news for Mr. Pussyfoot.
"Essex and Sussex Borders.—To be Let, well-built Mansion, surrounded by fine gardens, situate in one of the finest parts of this delightful country."—Daily Paper.
But it must be rather a nuisance to cross the Thames every time you want to go from the Essex to the Sussex wing.
MANNERS AND MODES.
TYPICAL COSTUME FOR AN EARNEST WORKER IN THE CAUSE OF CHARITY.
BEHIND THE SCENES IN CINEMA-LAND.
THE RAGE EXHIBITED BY AN AUTHOR WHILE HAVING ONE OF HIS NOVELS FILMED IS UTILISED BY THE INTELLIGENT MANAGER OF THE FILM COMPANY FOR A NEW "THREE-REEL COMIC," ENTITLED "HOW AUTHORS WORK."