Chapter II: Part 2

_Assistant_. Then I couldn't fit 'im if 'e was 'ere, cos 'e'd want a short muzzle and we've run out o' them.

_A Customer with a Pekinese_. Then will you find me a muzzle for _this_ one?

_Assistant (with resigned despair)._ You jest 'eard me say we 'ad no short muzzles, Mum. If you don't mind waiting 'ere an hour or two I'll send a man to the factory in a taxi to bring back a fresh stock--if they've got any, which I don't guarantee.

_The Customer with the Pekinese._ But I saw some leather muzzles in the window; one of those would do beautifully.

_Assistant._ I shall 'ave great pleasure in selling you one, Mum, on'y Gover'ment says they've got to be wire. 'Owever, it's _your_ risk, not mine. Well, since you ask me, I think you _'ad_ better wait.

_A Customer (carrying a large brown-and-white dog with lop ears and soulful eyes)._ I've been kept waiting here two hours, and I think it's high time--

_Assistant._ If you'll bring 'im along to the back shop, Mum, I _may_ have one left his size.

_A Lady with a lovely complexion and an unlovely griffon (to her companion)._ So fussy and tiresome of the Government bringing in muzzles again after all these years!

_Her Companion._ Oh, I don't _know_. We've had a mysterious dog running about snapping in our district for days.

_The Lady with the complexion._ Ah, but _this_ poor darling _never_ snaps, and, besides, he hasn't been used to muzzles in Belgium. You needn't _mention_ it, but I got a friend of mine to smuggle him over for me--such a _dear_ boy, he'll do anything I ask him to.

_Assistant (after attempting to fit the soulful-eyed dog with a muzzle and narrowly escaping being bitten)._ There, that's enough for _me_, Mum. Jest take that dawg out at once, please.

_Owner of the dog (which, having gained its point, affects an air of innocent detachment)._ I shall do nothing of the kind. It was the brutal way you took hold of her. The _gentlest_ creature! Why, I've _had_ her three years!

_Assistant._ I don't care if you've 'ad her a century. They're all angels as come 'ere; but I ain't going to 'ave _my_ thumb bit by no angels, so will you kindly walk out?

_Owner._ Without a muzzle? Never!

_Assistant._ Then I shall 'ave to call in a constable to make you. I'm not bound to sell you nothing.

_Owner (with spirit). Call_ a constable then! _I_ don't care. Here I stay till I get that muzzle.

_Assistant (giving up his idea of calling a constable)._ Then I should advise you to take a chair, Mum, as we don't close till seven.

_Owner (retreating with dignity)._ All _I_ can say is that I call it perfectly disgraceful. I shall certainly report your conduct; and I only hope you won't sell a single other muzzle to-day!

_Assistant._ If I didn't I could bear up. _(To a lady with an elderly Blenheim)_ If it's a muzzle, Mum--

_The Owner of the Blenheim_. That's just what I want to know. _Must_ he have a muzzle? You see, he's got no teeth, so he couldn't possibly bite anyone--now, _could_ he?

_Assistant. I_ dunno, Mum. You take 'im to see the Board of Agriculture. _They'll_ give you an opinion on 'im. _(To Staff Officer who approaches)_ Sorry, Sir, but our stock of muzzles--

_Staff Officer._ All I want is a new leather band for this wrist-watch. Got one?

_Assistant (with joy)._ Thank 'eaven I _'ave_! Gaw bless the Army!

F.A.

* * * * *

_Helen._ "WELL, I SHOULDN'T LIKE TO LIVE ON ONE--IT WOULD BE SO HORRID WHEN IT TWINKLED."]

* * * * *

THE REVOLT.

There is a cupboard underneath the stair
Where moth and rust hold undisputed sway,
And here is hid my old civilian wear,
And my wife sits and plays with it all day,
Since Peace is imminent and, I'm advised,
Even the bard may be demobilised.

She is a woman who was clearly born
To be the monarch of a helpless male;
And when she says, "This overcoat is torn,"
"These flannel trousers are beyond the pale,"
"You can't be seen in any of those shirts,"
I acquiesce, but, goodness, how it hurts.

For they are rich with memories of Peace,
The soiled habiliments my lady loathes.
I do not long for trousers with a crease;
I _do not want_ another crowd of clothes--
Particularly as you have to pay
Seventeen guineas for a suit to-day.

We are but worms, we husbands; yet 'tis said,
When the sad worm lies broken and at bay,
There comes a moment when the thing sees red,
And one such moment has occurred to-day;
"Look at this hat," I said, "this old top-hat;
I will not wear another one like that.

"This is the hat I purchased in the High,
Still crude and young and ignorant of sin;
I wooed you in this hat--I don't know why;
This is the hat that I was married in;
In it I walked on Sunday through the parks,
And even then the people made remarks.

"Now it is dead--the last of all its line--
Nothing like this shall mar the poet's Peace;
What have the nations fought for, wet and fine,
If not that ancient tyrannies should cease?
What use the Crowns of Europe coming croppers
If we are still to be the slaves of 'toppers'?

"It speaks to me of many an ancient sore--
Of calls and cards and Sunday afternoon;
Of hideous wanderings from door to door
And choking necks and patent-leather shoon;
'The War is won,' as Mr. ASQUITH said,
And all these evils are or should be dead.

"It moves me not that other men with wives
Have fall'n already in the old abyss,
Have let their women ruin all their lives
And ordered new atrocities like this.
President WILSON will have missed success
If other men determine how I dress.

"Yonder there hangs the helmet of a Hun,
And I will hang this horror at its side;
Twin symbols of an epoch which is done,
These shall remind our children----" My wife sighed,
"You'll have to get another one, I fear;"
And all I said was, "Very well, my dear."

A.P.H.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

Notice in a cobbler's window:--

"Will customers please bring their own paper for repairs?"

* * * * *

"Miss Carnegie wore a gown of white satin and point appliqué lace,
with a lace veil falling from a light brown coiffeur almost to the
end of the train."--_Daily Mirror_.

It doesn't say whether the light-brown coiffeur was a page or the best man.

* * * * *

From an account of the British sailors' reception in Paris:--

"Sous les clamations de la foule, les marins gagnent par les
Champs-Elysées, la rue Royale et le boulevard Malesherbes, le Lycée
Carnot, où M. Breakfast les attend."--_French Local Paper_.

Hospitality personified!

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"BUSINESS BEFORE PLEASURE."

The return of _Abe Potash_ and _Mawruss Perlmutter_ to London is not an event to be regarded indifferently. The light-hearted pair have evidently been through some anxious times. _Rosie Potash_ can never have been a very easy woman to live with. She has not improved. And now that she has infected _Ruth Perlmutter_ with her morbid jealousies the alert and as yet unbroken _Mawruss_ begins to know something of what his long-suffering, not to say occasionally abject, partner, _Abe_, has had to endure these many years.

It was bad enough in the dress business. But now they have gone into films it is indefinitely worse. Every reasonable person must know that you can't produce really moving pictures without an immense amount of late office hours, dining and supping out and that sort of thing, a fact which the _Rosies_ and _Ruths_ of this world can't be expected to appreciate. So that it would be as well, think the ingenuous _entrepreneurs_, if _The Fatal Murder_ were, so far as the ladies' parts are concerned, cast from members of the two households. Besides, what an excellent way of keeping the money in the family. However _The Fatal Murder_ is a dud; _Rosie_ and _Ruth_ are not the right shape; and film acting, with the necessary pep, is not a thing you can just acquire by wishing so.

What is wanted, says the voluble young hustler in the firm, who alone seems to know anything of the business, is real actresses as distinguished from members of the directors' families, and above all a good vampire. A vampire is the very immoral and under-dressed type of woman that wrecks hearts and homes, and without which no film with a high moral purpose is conceivable. You must have shadows to throw up the light. And on this principle all the uplift and moral instruction of that potent instrument of grace, the cinematograph, is based--a fact which will not have escaped the notice of cinema-goers.

When _Rita Sismondi_ appears in an evil Futurist black-and-white gown by Viola you can tell at once she is the goods. But naturally _Abe's_ first thought is, "What will _Rosie_ say?" His second, shared by _Mawruss_: "Hang _Rosie_! We shall both like this lady." Finances are not flourishing, but the crooked manager of the very unbusinesslike bank that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue of _Rita_, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous prude out for a good time. He accordingly advances more money for _The Guilty Dollar_ on condition that _Rita_ be engaged, and yet more money on condition that she be not fired by any machinations of jealous wives.

_Rosie_, indeed, says a good deal when she turns up at a rehearsal and finds the vampire clad in the third of a gown hazardously suspended on her gracious shoulders by bead straps, and _Mawruss_ and _Abe_ demonstrating how in their opinion the kissing scenes should be conducted so as to make a really notable production. However, the vampire's film vices make the success of the company, and her private virtues bring all to a happy ending.

The story need hardly concern us. It is not plausible, which matters nothing at all. Mr. YORKE and Mr. LEONARD are the essential outfit, and it seems to me they are better than ever. One simply _has_ to laugh, louder and oftener than is seemly for a self-respecting Englishman. No doubt their authors, Messrs. GLASS and GOODMAN, give them plenty of good things to say, but it is the astonishing finish and precision of their technique which make their work so pleasant to watch. If it throws into awkward relief the amateurishness of some of their associates that can't be helped. Miss VERA GORDON'S _Rosie_ is a good performance, and Miss JULIA BRUNS, the vampire, seemed to me to make with considerable skill and subtlety a real character (within the limits allowed by the farcical nature of the scheme) out of what might easily have been uninvitingly crude.

T.

* * * * *

OUR FRIEND THE FISH.

"What is a sardine?" was a question much before the Courts some few years ago, not unprofitably for certain gentlemen wearing silk, and the correct solution I never heard; but I can supply, from personal observation, one answer to the query, and that is, "An essential ingredient in London humour." For without this small but sapid fish--whatever he may really be, whether denizen of the Sardinian sea, immature Cornish pilchard, or mere plebeian sprat well oiled--numbers of our fellow-men and fellow-women, with all the will in the world, might never raise a laugh. As it is, thanks to his habit of lying in excessive compression within his tin tabernacle, and the prevalence in these congested days of too many passengers on the Tubes, on the Underground and in the omnibuses, whoever would publicly remove gravity has but to set up the sardine comparison and be rewarded.

Why creatures so remote from man as fishes--cold-blooded inhabitants of an element in which man exists only so long as he keeps on the surface; mute, incredible and incapable of exchanging any intercourse with him--why these should provide the Cockney, the dweller in the citiest City of the world, with so much of the material of jocoseness is an odd problem. But they do. Herrings, when cured either by smoke or sun, notoriously contribute to the low comedian's success. The mere word "kipper" has every girl in the gallery in a tittering ecstasy. But outside the Halls it is the sardine that conquers.

In one day this week I witnessed the triumph of the sardine on three different occasions, and it was always hearty and complete.

The first time was in a lift at Chancery Lane. It is not normally a very busy station, but our attendant having, as is now the rule, talked too long with the attendant of a neighbouring lift, we were more than full before the descent began. We were also cross and impatient, the rumble, from below, of trains that we might just us well be in doing nothing to steady our nerves.

But help came--and came from that strange quarter the mighty ocean, from Chancery Lane so distant! "Might as well," said a burly labourer (or, for all I know, burly receiver of unemployment dole)--"might as well be sardines in a tin!"

Straightway we all laughed and viewed our lost time with more serenity.

Later I was in a 'bus in Victoria Street, on its way to the Strand. As many persons were inside, seated or standing on their own and on others' feet, as it should be permitted to hold, but still another two were let in by the harassed conductress.

"I say, Miss," said the inevitable wag, who was one of the standing passengers, "steady on. We're more than full up already, you know. Do you take us for sardines?"

And again mirth rocked us.

Finally, that night I was among the stream of humanity which pours down Villiers Street from the theatres for half-an-hour or so between 10.40 and 11.10, all in some mysterious way to be absorbed into the trains or the trams and conveyed home. After some desperate struggles on Charing Cross platform I found myself a suffering unit in yet another dense throng in a compartment going West; and again, amid delighted merriment, some one likened us to sardines.

It is not much of a joke, but you will notice that it so seldom fails that one wonders why any effort is ever made to invent a better.

* * * * *

"I DIDN'T. BUT BY THE TIME I DISCOVERED THAT I DIDN'T--WELL, I DID."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one another simultaneously. Actually the scene is set during the American struggle for independence, thus providing a sufficiency of pomp and circumstance in the way of fine uniforms and pretty frocks; and the protagonists are _Captain Carter_, of the British service, and _Constantia Wilmer_, daughter of the American who had captured him. Perhaps you may recall that the identical campaign has already provided a very similar position (reversed) in _Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner_. It is only a deserved tribute to the skill with which Mr. JEFFERSON CARTER has told this adventure of his namesake to admit that I am left with an uncertainty, not usual to the reviewing experience, whether it is in fact a true or an imagined affair. In any event its development follows a well-trodden path. We have the captive, jealous in honour, susceptible and exasperatingly Quixotic, doubly enchained by his word and the charms of his fair wardress; the lady's conspicuous ill-treatment of him at the first, a slight mystery, some escapes and counterplots, and on the appointed page the matrimonial finish that hardly the most pessimistic reader can ever have felt as other than assured. Fact or fiction, you may spend an agreeable hour in watching the course of _Captain Carter's_ courtship overcoming its rather obvious obstacles.

* * * * *

Because I have so great an admiration for their beneficent activities, I have always wanted to meet a novel with a lot about dentists in it, and now Miss DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, in _The Tunnel_ (DUCKWORTH), has satisfied my desire. Dentists--a houseful of them--spittoons, revolving basins; patients going upstairs with sinking feelings; wondering at the pattern on the wallpaper; going down triumphant. Teeth. Appointment books. Dentists everywhere. This is not a quotation, but very like one, for Miss RICHARDSON affects the modern manner. Though one of the dentists is quite the most agreeable person in the book, he isn't the hero, because the author is much too clever to have anything of the sort. Her method, exploited some time ago in that remarkable book, _Pointed Roofs_, is to get right inside one _Miriam Henderson_ and keep on writing out her thoughts with as little explanation of her circumstances as possible, so that _The Tunnel_, to anyone who has missed the earlier books, must be very nearly unintelligible. Even the sincere admirer of Miss RICHARDSON'S talent will begin to wonder how many more books at the present rate of progress must be required to bring _Miriam_ to, say, threescore years and ten. My own belief is that if her creator is ever so ill-advised as to put her beneath a 'bus or drop her down a lift-well, she herself will be gone too; and for that I should be sorry, since I agree with almost all the nice things Miss MAY SINCLAIR says of the earlier books in an appreciation here reprinted from _The Egoist_. Miss RICHARDSON has evolved a way of writing a novel which somehow suggests the Futurist way of painting a picture; but _The Tunnel_ has left me wondering whether she has not carried her method a little too far. It seems to me that some of her heroine's thoughts were not worth recording; but perhaps when another four or five books have been added to _Miriam's_ life-history I may discover what the scheme may be that lies behind them all, and change my mind.

* * * * *

More than once before this I have enjoyed the dexterity of Miss VIOLET HUNT in a certain type of social satire; but I regret to say that the expectation with which I opened _The Last Ditch_ (STANLEY PAUL) was doomed to some disappointment. The idea was promising enough--a study of our British best people confronting the ordeal of world-war; but somehow it failed to capture me. For one reason it is told in a series of letters--a dangerous method at any time. As usual, these are far too long and literary to be genuine; though they keep up a rather irritating pretence of reality by repetitions of the same events in correspondence from different writers. Moreover, letters whose concern is the progress of recruiting or the novelty of war can hardly at this time avoid an effect of having been delayed in the post. But all this would have mattered little if Miss HUNT had chosen her aristocrats from persons in whom it was possible to take more interest. But the plain fact is that you never met so tedious a set. They are not witty; they are not even wicked to any significant extent. They simply produce (at least in my case) no effect whatever. Perhaps this may all be of intention; the author may have meant to harrow us with the spectacle of our old nobility expiring as nonentities. But in that case the picture is manifestly unfair. And it is certainly dull--dull as the last ditch-water.

* * * * *

In _America in France_ (MURRAY) Lieut. Col. FREDERICK PALMER, a member of the Staff Corps of the United States Army, sets out to tell the story of the making of an army. This is the first book by Colonel PALMER that has come my way, but I find that he has written four others, all of which I judge by their titles to be concerned with the War. Be that as it may, I welcome _America in France_ both because it gives a narrative of America's tremendous effort, and because the book is written with a modesty which is very pleasing. America came to the job of fighting as a learner. Her soldiers did not boast of what they were going to do, but sat down solidly to learn, in order that she might be useful in the fighting-line. How she achieved her purpose the world now knows. If any fault is to be found with the author's style, it is that the limpidity and evenness of its flow make great events less easy of distinction than perhaps they might be; but most people will hail this as a merit rather than a fault, and I agree with them. Colonel PALMER records the names of the first three Americans who died fighting. The French General to whose unit they were attached ordered a ceremonial parade and made a speech in which he asked that the mortal remains of these young men be left in France. "We will," he continued, "inscribe on their tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the United States to fall on the soil of France for Justice and Liberty' ... Corporal Gresham, Private Enright, Private Hay, in the name of France I thank you." As another matter of historical interest it may be stated that the first shot of the War on the American side was fired by Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery, "without waiting on going into position at the time set. The men dragged a gun forward in the early morning of October 23rd, and sent a shell at the enemy. There was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of Berlin. The gun has been sent to West Point as a relic."

* * * * *

I must assume that _Such Stuff as Dreams_ (MURRAY) was written by C.E.W. LAWRENCE with a purpose, but it remains obscure to me. A smart young married clerk in the oil business falls off the top of a bus on to his head and, from a confirmed materialist, becomes something not unlike a confirmed lunatic, with a faculty for seeing flaming emanations which enable him to place the owners of them in the true scale of human and spiritual values. He discovers that his wife's uncle, a whimsical but essentially tedious drunkard, is a better man than the egregious New Religionist pastor--a discovery I made for myself without falling off a bus. I was forced to the conclusion that these and equally dull, or duller, folk must exist or have existed, and that it could not possibly have been necessary to invent them. And if I am right then it obviously needs a greater sympathy than I can command to do justice to this type of narrative, with its presuppositions and inferences. Sir A. CONAN DOYLE has much to answer for.

* * * * *

I do not remember the precise number of murders which occur in _Droonin' Watter_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN), but readers of this sensational story can accept my assurance that Mr. J.S. FLETCHER has a quick and decisive way of meting out justice (or injustice) to his characters. In fact, from the very start, when a man with a black patch over his eye walks into Berwick-upon-Tweed and takes lodgings with _Mrs. Moneylaws_ (the mother of the man who tells the tale), the pace is red-hot. It is easy enough to discover improbabilities in such a yarn as this, but the only important question is whether one wants to discover what happens in the end, and I confess without a blush that I did want to follow Mr. J.S. FLETCHER to the last page. Let me however beg him in his next book to give the word "yon" a rest; four "yons" in eleven lines is a clear case of overcrowding; and I invite the attention of the Limited Labour Party to this scandal.

* * * * *

_Florist._ "YES, SIR--AND YOUR NAME?"

_Sub._ "OH, NEVER MIND MY NAME--SHE'LL UNDERSTAND."]

* * * * *

"Any owner whose dog shows signs of illness should be chained up
securely."--_Bradford Daily Argus_.

And every other _Argus_ will say the same.