Chapter M

MEDITATIONS ON MUSHROOMS.

We were playing the ancient and honourable game of acrostics and we had to think of and describe a word bounded on the West by the initial E, and on the East by the final H.

"That which you can never have of mushrooms," was one of the descriptions. It was, of course, guessed at once--"Enough;" and could there be a truer compliment to this strange exotic delicacy, which costs nothing but a walk in an early autumnal morning and is more choice than the rarest flavours ever designed by the most inspired of _chefs_? For certainly there has never been enough of them. I, at any rate, have never had enough. The thought of mushrooms missed must add pathos to many a death-bed.

It is a terrible moment when the dish comes in and one rapidly notes the disparity between the paucity of its contents and the vast and eager anticipation of the company. For it is useless to attempt to conceal greed when mushrooms arrive. A certain amount of dissimulation has mercifully been given by a wise Providence to all of us for the lubrication of the cogs of daily life; but it does not extend so far as this. And particularly so if the mushrooms have been fried in butter. Stewed they are not of course to be undervalued, especially if one dares to soak one's bread in the juice; nor even reposing in tragic isolation on Juan Fernandezes of toast; but the real way is to fry them in butter. As I say, it is a terrible moment when the dish arrives and the faces of the guests are studied; but should there be one present, or--more ecstatic moment still--two, who confess to a dislike of this perilous fungus, then what an access of rapture by way of compensation! Truly wise hostesses have been known to murmur something about toadstools and risk, as an encouragement to the doubters; or if they don't their husbands do. It is however no real good! Even with two defaulters the dish does no more than stimulate desire; whilst such is its power of fascination that consummate _gourmets_ have been known to express no dismay at the possibility of poison being there, a death so won being worth dying.

Mushrooms, to win such homage as this, must be picked in the fields and cooked at home. The forced mushrooms which grow under the shelf in the greenhouse or in a corner of the cellar lack something of divinity; while there is not a restaurant _chef_ in the world who has not a long record of ruined mushrooms to his name. No sooner does a public cook get at a mushroom than it begins to deteriorate. When the _chef_ comes in at the door the savour flies out of the window. It is a point of honour with him. When therefore I said that one can never have enough mushrooms I meant at home.

It is an injustice to the mushroom to eat it as an adjunct to other food; while there is one meat which in alliance it renders unwholesome. The odd thing is that every one differs as to what this meat is; but my own hazy recollection says mutton. Still that prohibition is not for us, who know the only way in which mushrooms should be eaten: fried, with bread and butter, and the butter spread too thick.

* * * * *

It is rumoured that the freedom of Hunstanton is to be conferred on the KAISER.

* * * * *

Illustration: THE BULL-DOG BREED.

_Officer._ "NOW, MY LAD, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE PLACED HERE FOR?"

_Recruit._ "TO PREVENT THE HENEMY FROM LANDIN', SIR."

_Officer._ "AND DO YOU THINK THAT YOU COULD PREVENT HIM LANDING ALL BY YOURSELF?"

_Recruit._ "DON'T KNOW, SIR, I'M SURE. BUT I'D HAVE A DAM GOOD TRY!"

* * * * *

"BUSINESS AS USUAL."

Corkey is the School Attendance Officer and a terror to every boy in the neighbourhood. He looks at the truant and says fiercely, "Where was you?" Then he wags a savage finger at him. "Yes, you was," he says, "you was, you know you was. I caught you in the hact." No boy has ever been known to withstand him.

Yet Corkey has a heart.

William Frederick Wright is our chief boy scout. In the first great days of the war, William was on duty at a railway bridge up the line. Local fame placed him somewhere between FRENCH and KITCHENER. Sent to round up the truant, Corkey reported in glowing words, "_Guarding his country._"

A second week's absence produced the same report. Then business instinct began to war with patriotism in the breast of Corkey. During the third week he once more looked the culprit up.

His report was grim and terse. "_Warned him_," he wrote.

On the following Monday William sadly returned.

* * * * *

THE AWAKENING.

Ere our lesson to the KAISER,
Self-anointed Lord of Earth,
Left that furious monarch wiser
_Re_ our troops' intrinsic worth,
Frankly, I had thought you flighty,
Callous to the very core;
Lovely?--yes, like Aphrodite;
Nothing more.

Later, when you slaked your thirsting
For an apron, cuffs and cap,
Long before the war-cloud, bursting,
Made a mess of Europe's map,
Though your mind showed some improvement,
Lady, I conceived you had
Joined a purely social movement
For a fad.

Now the scales at length uplifted
From my eyes in you reveal,
Verily, a woman gifted
With the power to help and heal.
So I send, for shame, these verses
Where you brave the battle's brunt,
One of England's noble Nurses
At the front.

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

I always open a new book by GERTRUDE ATHERTON with a pleasant grace-before-meat sensation of being already truly thankful for what I am about to receive. And it is hardly ever that I am disappointed. I do not mean to tell you that her latest story, which bears the attractive title _Perch of the Devil_ (MURRAY), will eclipse the record of all that has gone before; but it need not do that to be well worth reading. It is a tale of mining life, set against a background of claims and veins and drifts and ores--things that I for one delight to read about because of their infinite possibilities, the romance of the gamble that is in them. There is plenty of this gamble in _Perch of the Devil_ (the mountain township where the miners lived). _Gregory Compton_, the hero, makes his pile all right, and has some rare moments in doing it. He would have been happier if he could have enjoyed prosperity, when it came, for its own sake and for that of his pretty wife. But, though he bestowed upon her all the luxuries that successful mining commands--frocks and cars and European travel--it was another woman, _Ora_, who had his heart. And unfortunately she was the wife of his partner. It is with this quartette of characters that Mrs. ATHERTON works out her tale, an unusually small cast for a story of 373 pages; but you will hardly need to be told with what sympathetic and subtle skill she depicts them. Her art is, as always, extraordinarily minute and close. The two women especially are made to live before us with a great effect of actuality. She has wit, too, of a dry, rather grim, kind. I liked her comparison of _Gregory's_ emotion on finding himself in love with _Ora_ to that of a small boy despising himself for a second attack of measles before he discovers the later complaint to be scarlet fever. You must read this book.

* * * * *

In no industrial survey of the present situation have I seen any reliable estimate of the probable output of patriotic romance. Yet the figures seem likely to be impressive. One of the earliest samples is before me now. It is called _The Gate of England_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), with the sub-title, _A Romance of the Days of Drake_, and is in every way true to its admirable type. What I mean by this is that it contains everything that you expect and are glad to find--a Virgin Queen, imperious and quick of retort, with a generous eye for the claims of gallantry; a hero who simply could not be more heroic; villains (of Spanish name, priests, murderers, all a regular bad lot), and the right proportion of female interest and humorous relief. Need I give you the details? How the hero, Captain of the Queen's body-guard, saves Her Majesty's life (a scene with a genuine thrill in it) and is rewarded by her. How he goes in command of an expedition against Channel freebooters, and finally ends up as an agent of the British Intelligence Department, finding out things about the army of His Grace of Parma, then at Dunkirk awaiting conveyance by the Spanish fleet. He seems, however, to have been something of a failure in the way of intelligence, as by lack of this the hero managed to get himself and his companion imprisoned for spies (which indeed they were), and was only rescued by the intervention of DRAKE as the god from the machine. A pleasant, if undistinguished, tale that will be enjoyed by the young of all ages. It is a minor point, but when one finds the hero called _Christopher Stone_, and another character rejoicing in the name of _Gabriel Ray_, it is hard to acquit the author of some poverty of invention. His own name (I had almost forgotten to mention) is MORICE GERARD; and he has done better work.

* * * * *

_Pan-Germanism_ (CONSTABLE) is a seasonable cheap reprint of a study of that egregious creed by ROLAND G. USHER, an American Professor of History. With an almost cynical candour and detachment the author analyses the origins, assumptions, justifications and pretensions, and foreshadows with some insight the miscalculations, of those who have essayed to direct the destinies of modern Germany. It is as well that this essay comes from a neutral pen; it would else be discredited as a freak of prejudice. Pan-Germanism, as here seen, is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine that all is fair in war--and peace. It is no less than blank anarchy, philosophic and practical, and indefinitely less workable as a theory of international life than that of the so long discredited Sermon on the Mount. The honest Briton can find here solid justification of his cause. Perhaps it is not altogether unwholesome that our national withers don't entirely escape wringing. We are a little guilty, but much less guilty than our arch-opponent; so thinks this sober and wide-eyed critic.... Certainly, and the more significantly since it is without direction or intention of the writer, one sees behind all the tragedy of these dark weeks and of the long months and years to come the sinister picture of a man of no more than common earthly wisdom saddled with responsibilities that might well break the nerve of a council of the gods. Is it well, if the matches must be kept in the powder-magazine, to let the children in to play with them?

* * * * *

Illustration: PERHAPS THE LONDON PUBLIC WOULD FEEL MORE SECURE IF OUR GUARDIAN AIRSHIP WERE MADE IN THIS PATTERN.

* * * * *

That he will arm the German cat and dog
The KAISER swears in language hot and heady;
He leaves the swine out of his catalogue
Because the swine, it seems, are armed already.

* * * * *

THE HORRORS OF WAR.

"Another German officer prays for a decisive engagement which will
put an end to bloody encounters. One evening he and his
fellow-officers had to share between themselves a meal prepared for
their men."--_Times._

The records of the war have furnished many instances of physical hardship, but none more terrible than this.