Chapter II: Part 2

They are the Fipple-Flute, a word
Suggestive of seraphic screeches;
The Poliphant comes next, and third
The Humstrum--aren't they perfect peaches?

About their tone I cannot say
Much that would carry clear conviction,
For, till I read of them to-day,
I knew them not in fact or fiction.

As yet I am, alas! without
Instruction in the art of fippling,
Though something may be found about
It in the works of LEAR or KIPLING.

And possibly I may unearth
In LECKY or in LAURENCE OLIPHANT
Some facts to remedy my dearth
Of knowledge bearing on the Poliphant.

But, now their pictures I have seen
In GALPIN'S learned dissertation,
So far as in me lies I mean
To bring about their restoration.

Yet since I cannot learn all three
And time is ever onward humming,
My few remaining years shall be
Devoted wholly to humstrumming.

That, when my bones to rest are laid,
Upon my tomb it may be written:
"He was the very last who played
Upon the Humstrum in Great Britain."

* * * * *

THE SPIDER.

Lately we had occasion to consider the place of the grasshopper in modern politics. Now let us consider the place of the spider in our social life.

It seems to me that the spider is the most accomplished and in some ways the most sensible insect we have in these parts. In my opinion a great deal too much fuss has been made about the bee. She is a knowing little thing, but the spider is her superior in many ways. Yet no one seems to write books or educational rhymes about the spider. It is really a striking example of the well-known hypocrisy and materialism of the British race. The bee is held up to the young as a model of industry and domestic virtue--and why? Simply because she manufactures food which we happen to like. The spider is held up to the young as the type of rapacity, malice and cruelty, on the sole ground that he catches flies, though we do not pretend that we are fond of flies, and conveniently ignore the fact that, if the spider did not swat that fly, we should probably swat it ourselves.

The real charge against the spider is that he doesn't make any food for us. As for the virtue and nobility of the bee, I don't see it. The only way in which she is able to accumulate all that honey at all is by massacring the unfortunate males by the thousand as soon as she conveniently can, a piece of Prussianism which may be justified on purely material grounds, but is scarcely consistent with her high reputation for morality and lovingkindness. If it could be shown that the bee consciously collected all that honey with the idea that we should annex it there might be something to be said for her on moral grounds; but nobody pretends that. Now look at the spider. We are told that as a commercial product spider-silk has been found to be equal if not superior to the best silk spun by the Lepidopterous larvæ, with whom, of course, you are familiar. "But the cannibalistic propensities of spiders, making it impossible to keep more than one in a single receptacle ... have hitherto prevented the silk being used ... for textile fabrics." So that it comes to this: if spiders are useless because they eat each other, the bees do much the same thing (only wholesale), but it makes them commercially useful. The bee therefore we place upon a pinnacle of respectability, but the spider we despise. Faugh! the hypocrisy of it makes me sick. My children will be taught to venerate the spider and despise the bee.

For, putting aside the question of moral values, look what the spider can do. What is there in the clammy, not to say messy, honey-comb to be compared with the delicate fabric of the spider's web? Indeed, should we ever have given a single thought to the honey-comb if it had had no honey in it? Do we become lyrical about the wasp's comb? We do not. It is a case where greed and materialism have warped our artistic perceptions. The spider can lower itself from the drawing-room ceiling to the floor by a silken thread produced out of itself. Still more marvellous, he can climb up the same thread to the ceiling when he is bored, winding up the thread inside him as he goes, and so making pursuit impossible. What can the bee do to equal that? And how is it done? We don't even know. _The Encyclopædia Britannica_ doesn't know; or if it does it doesn't let on. But the whole tedious routine of the bee's domestic pottering day is an open book to us. Ask yourself, which would you rather do, be able to collect honey and put it in a suitable receptacle, or be able to let yourself down from the top floor to the basement by a silken rope produced out of your tummy, and then climb up it again when you want to go upstairs, just winding up the rope inside you? I think you will agree that the spider has it. It is hard enough, goodness knows, to wind up an ordinary ball of string so that it will go into the string-box properly. What one would do if one had to put it in one's bread-box I can't think. When my children grow up, instead of learning

"How doth the little busy bee ..."

they will learn--

How doth the jolly little spider
Wind up such miles of silk inside her,
When it is clear that spiders' tummies
Are not so big as mine or Mummy's?
The explanation seems to be,
They do not eat so much as me.

That will point the moral of moderation in eating, you see. There will be a lot more verses, I expect; I can see _cram_ and _diaphragm_ and possibly _jam_ coming very soon. But we must get on.

The spider is like the bee in this respect, that the male seems to have a most rotten time. For one thing he is nearly always about two sizes smaller than the female. Owing to that and to what _The Encyclopædia Britannica_ humorously describes as "the greater voracity" of the female (there is a lot of quiet fun in _The Encyclopædia Britannica_), he is a very brave spider who makes a proposal of marriage. "He makes his advances to his mate at the risk of his life and is not infrequently killed and eaten by her before or after" they are engaged ("before or after" is good). "Fully aware of the danger he pays his addresses with extreme caution, frequently waiting for hours in her vicinity before venturing to come to close quarters. Males of the _Argyopidæ_ hang on the outskirts of the webs of the females and signal their presence to her by jerking the radial threads in a peculiar manner." This is, of course, the origin of the quaint modern custom by which the young man rings the bell before attempting to enter the web of his beloved in Grosvenor Square. Contemporary novelists have even placed on record cases in which the male has "waited for hours in her vicinity before venturing to come to close quarters;" but too much attention must not be paid to these imaginative accounts. If I have said enough to secure that in future a little more kindliness and respect will be shown to the spider in the nurseries of this great Empire, and a little less of it wasted on the bee, I have not misspent my time.

But I shall not be content. Can we not go further? Can we not get a little more of the simplicity of spider life into this hectic world of ours? In these latitudes the spider lives only for a single season. "The young emerge from the cocoon in the early spring, grow through the summer and reach maturity in the early autumn. _The sexes then pair and perish_ soon after the female has constructed her cocoon." How delicious! No winter; no bother about coal; no worry about the children's education; just one glorious summer of sport, one wild summer of fly-catching and midge-eating, a romantic, not to say dangerous wooing, a quiet wedding in the autumn, dump the family in some nice unfurnished cocoon--and perish. Is there nothing to be said for that? How different from the miserable bee, which just goes on and on, worrying about posterity, working and working, fussing about....

Yet all our lives are modelled on the bee's.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

_Mrs. M._ "PERHAPS I WAS RATHER SEVERE."

_Mr. M._ "SEVERE! WHY, ANYONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT YOU WERE TALKING TO ME."]

* * * * *

DOWN-OUR-COURT CIRCULAR.

Why should not some of the other people, who also enjoy life, have their movements recorded too? Like this:--

During Mr. William Sikes' visit to the Devonshire moors Mrs. Sikes will remain in town.

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. James Harris have arrived in London from Southend.

* * *

Miss Levi, Miss Hirsch and Master Isaacson are among the guests at Victoria Park, where some highly successful children's parties have been given.

* * *

Epping is much in favour just now, and a large number of (public) house-parties have been arranged. Among those entertaining this week are Mr. Henry Higgins, Mr. Robert Atkins and Mr. John Smith.

* * *

Mr. Henry Hawkins, Mrs. Hawkins, Mr. Henry Hawkins, junior, and Miss Hawkins left town on August 2nd for Hampstead Heath, for a day's riding and shooting. A large bag of nuts was obtained. Mr. Hawkins has not yet returned.

* * * * *

"LITTLE PROGRESS MADE.
KING STILL DEFIANT."
_Daily Paper._

Oh, dear! Another complication!
Who is the monarch? Which the nation?
We breathe again. The Leicester pro.
Kept up his end four hours or so.

* * * * *
"Another of the big round landlords of London is selling his
estate.

Sir Joseph Doughty Tichborne is selling his Doughty Estate of 14
acres."--_Evening Paper._

It recalls the famous case. "The Claimant" would certainly have made "a big round landlord."

* * * * *

"Here then is a new development of serious local journalism. Just
an unpretentious but exceedingly well-printed village sheet,
breathing local atmosphere, emitting nothing that can possibly
interest the natives."

_Local Paper._

But we seem to have seen journals like this before.

* * * * *

From a Dutch bulb-grower's catalogue:--

"Nothing but Inferior quality being sent out from my Nurseries. My
terms are Cash with order only."

In matters of commerce this Dutchman appears to be maintaining his country's reputation.

* * * * *

=THE ANNIVERSARY.=

It began as quite an ordinary day. I read my paper at breakfast and Kathleen poured out the coffee. She wore that little frown between her eyebrows that means that she is thinking out the menu for lunch and dinner and hoping that Nurse hasn't burnt Baby's porridge again. This is married life.

Then I started in a hurry for the office, hurling a "Good-bye, dear" through the open window as I passed. The 9.15 leaves little time for affection. That too is married life.

It was the sweetbriar hedge that made me decide to miss the 9.15. It clutched hold of me suddenly and told me that the sky was very blue and the woods very green, and that the office was an absurd thing on such a day.

I went slowly back home round the outside of the garden wall. Someone was singing in the garden. I stopped and whistled a tune. A face appeared over the wall--rather an attractive face.

"Hello!" it said; "someone I knew a long time ago used to whistle that tune outside my garden."

"Hello!" I said; "come out for a walk?"

"I can't come out at the bidding of young men on the highway. It isn't done."

"Never mind. Come out."

"Have I ever been introduced to you?"

"Introductions went out years ago. Come by the side gate."

She came. She held a shady hat in her hand and walked on tip-toe.

"Sh!" she cautioned; "no one must see me. I have a reputation, you know. I don't want the Vicar to denounce me from the pulpit on Sunday in front of Baby."

"I will be quite frank with you," she went on, holding out her left hand with a dramatic flourish; "I am married--I have a husband."

I gave a hollow groan; then, with a manly effort, I mastered my emotion.

"I hope he's nice to you," I said.

"No, he isn't. He grouches off to the office in the morning and grouches back in the evening and reads newspapers. He's just grouched off now."

"The callous brute!" I hissed through my teeth.

"There's worse than that," she said darkly.

"No!"

"Yes. To-day, to-day is an anniversary, and he forgot it." The manner was that of MADAME BERNHARDT.

"Anniversaries," I said reassuringly, "are difficult to remember. They accumulate so."

"Are you defending him?" she protested.

"Er--no," I said hastily. "The man's an unmitigated scoundrel. He ought to be divorced or something. What anniversary was it?"

"Our wedding-day," she said with a sob in the voice.

"Heavens!" I said. "Oh, the dastardly ruffian!"

"_You_ wouldn't forget your wedding-day, would you?"

"_Never!_" I said hoarsely.

"You're quite rather nice," she sighed.

"You're adorable," I said readily.

"How lovely! My husband never says things like that." And she leant against my shoulder.

We got on rather well after that. We had lunch in an inn garden, where you could smell lavender and sweet peas and roses and where there were box hedges turned under magical spells into giant birds. We discovered a stream in a wood with hart's-tongue fern growing along its banks. I picked her armfuls of wild roses.

"It's to make up," I said, "because your brute of a husband forgot your wedding-day."

"I'd love to be married to you," she said brazenly.

I turned aside to brush away a bitter tear.

It was almost dusk when we got back to the side gate.

"Good-bye," she whispered. "Go away quickly; I believe that's the Vicar coming down the road."

Then she shut the gate with gentle swiftness in my face. I walked round to the front door. She was in the hall.

"Hello!" she said; "I hope you had a good day at the office?"

"Thanks," I said; "pretty rotten."

"I've had a lovely day," she said; "I picked up such a nice young man in the high road. He's taking me out to-night. He's just going to ring up for seats."

Without a word I went to the telephone.

* * * * *

=The Right Order of Things at Last.=

"A Gentleman would be pleased to Recommend his Butler in whose service he has been three years."--_Daily Paper._

* * * * *

"TO AMERICANS IN LONDON.--The ----, Cornwall, offers you
comfortable home while on this side; far away from the madding
crown."--_Daily Paper._

Republican prejudices respected.

* * * * *

There was a hard-swearing old sailor
Whose speech might have startled a jailer;
But he frankly avowed
That the charabanc crowd
Would not be allowed on a whaler.

* * * * *

=THE PATIENTS' LIBRARY.=

Though a West-End physician of repute, he must, I think, have had a course of American training, if rapidity of action be any indication thereof.

Scarcely had the maid ushered me into his study and I had taken a seat than he came forward brusquely, looked at me with the glowering eye of the _Second Murderer_, grasped a large piece of me in the region of the fourth rib and barked, "You're too fat."

Having been carefully bred I refrained from retaliation. I did not tell him that his legs were out of drawing and that he had a frightfully vicious nose. But before I had time to explain my business he had started on a series of explosive directions: "Eat proper food. Plenty of open air. Exercise morning, noon and night and in between. Use the Muldow system. You need a tonic."

He turned to his table and was, I suppose, about to draw a cheque for me on the local chemist's when I decided to say my little piece.

"Excuse me, Sir," said I mildly, "I am not a patient."

The combination fountain-pen and thermometer almost fell from his hand.

"I am," said I, "the sole proprietor and sole representative of the Physicians' Supply Association. I gave your maid my card. I have called with a thrilling offer of magazines for your waiting-room."

"What dates?" said he, a gleam of interest in his dark eye.

"All pre-war," said I proudly; "none of them are later than 1900 and some go back to 1880."

"Not B.C.?" said he, with a look in which hope and disbelief were mingled.

"No," said I. "All are A.D.; but they include two Reports of Missions to Deep Sea Fishermen in 1885--very rare. I'm sure they would match splendidly the Proceedings of the Royal Commission on Aniline Dyes which you have in the waiting-room."

"No," said he firmly. "I have one of the most important practices in Harley Street. I likewise possess one of the finest collections of old magazines in the profession. That blue-book on Aniline Dyes is barely fifty years old. It was left me by my father, and I retain it simply through affection for him in spite of its modernity. But the rest go back to the Crimean vintage and earlier. When you have something really old, come to me. But"--and he threw in a winning smile in his best bedside manner--"not till then."

I am now in search of a young practitioner who is merely starting a collection.

* * * * *

_Mother._ "I DON'T CARE FOR THAT LITTLE FIGURE. HE'S TOO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FOR MY TASTE."

_Critical Little Girl_ (_who has lately taken part in tableaux-vivants_). "HOW CAN YOU TELL WHAT CENTURY HE IS, MOTHER? HE'S GOT NO CLOTHES ON."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

If sorrow's crown of sorrow is as the poet says, it should be equally true that there is enough satisfaction in remembering unhappier things to ensure success for _The Crisis of the Naval War_ (CASSELL), the large and dignified volume in which Admiral of the Fleet Viscount JELLICOE OF SCAPA, G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., reminds us how near the German submarines came to triumph in 1917, and details the various ways by which their menace was overcome. It is a solid book, written with authority, and addressed rather to the expert than to the casual reader; but even the latter individual (the middle-aged home-worker, for instance, remembering the rationed plate of beans and rice that constituted his lunch in the Spring of 1917) can thrill now to read of the precautions this represented, and the multiform activities that kept that distasteful dish just sufficiently replenished. I have observed that Viscount JELLICOE avoids any approach to sensationalism. His book however contains a number of exceedingly interesting photographs of convoys at sea, smoke-screens, depth-charges exploding, and the like, which the most uninformed can appreciate. And in at least one feature of "counter-measures," the history of the decoy or mystery ships, the record is of such exalted and amazing heroism that not the strictest language of officialdom can lessen its power to stir the heart. Who, for example, could read the story of _The Prize_, and the involuntary tribute from the captured German commander that rounds it off, without a glow of gratitude and pride? Do you recall how we would attempt to stifle curiosity with the unsatisfactory formula, "We shall know some day"? Here in this authoritative volume is another corner of the curtain lifted.

* * * * *

Although he is still comparatively a newcomer, a book with the signature of Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER is already something of a landmark in the publishing season. To this repute _Linda Condon_ (HEINEMANN) will certainly add. In many ways I incline to think it, or parts of it, the best work that this unusual artist has yet done. The development of _Linda_, in the hateful surroundings of an American "hotel-child," through her detached and observant youth to a womanhood austere, remote, inspired only by the worship of essential beauty, is told with an exquisite rightness of touch that is a continual delight. Mr. HERGESHEIMER has above all else the gift of suggesting atmosphere and colour (ought I not in mere gratitude to bring myself to say "color"?); his picture of _Linda's_ amazing mother and the rest of the luxurious brainless company of her hotel existence has the exotic brilliance of the orchid-house, at once dazzling and repulsive. Later, in the course of her married life, inspiring and inspired by the sculptor _Pleydon_ (in whose fate the curious may perhaps trace some echo of recent controversy), the story of _Linda_ becomes inevitably less vivid, though its grasp of the reader's sympathy is never relaxed. In fine, a tale short as such go nowadays, but throughout of an arresting and memorable beauty. The state of modern American fiction has, if I may say so without offence, been for some time a cause of regret to the judicious; let Mr. HERGESHEIMER be resolute in refusing to lower his standard by over-production, and I look to see him leading a return towards the best traditions of an honourable past.

* * * * *

It is not an impossible conception that _Sniping in France_ (HUTCHINSON) will still be available in libraries in the year 2020 A.D., and I can imagine the title then catching the eye of some enthusiastic sportsman, whose bent for game is stronger than his knowledge of history. Feeling that here is a new class of shooting for him to try his hand at, he will hasten to acquaint himself with the details and will discover that the first of the essentials is a European war in full blast. Whether or not he will see his way to arrange that for himself, I don't know and, since I shall not be present, I don't care. But in any case he will be absorbed in an eminently scientific and indeed romantic study of perhaps the most thrilling and deadly-earnest big game hunting there has ever been, and he will be left not a little impressed with the work of the author, Major H. HESKETH PRICHARD, D.S.O., M.C., his skill, energy and personality. As to this last he will find a brief summing-up in the foreword of General Lord HORNE, and he will be able to visualise the whole "blunderbuss" very clearly by the help of the illustrations of Mr. ERNEST BLAIKLEY, of the late Lieut. B. HEAD, and of the camera. There is undoubtedly much controversial matter in the book, which must necessarily give rise to the most remarkable gun-room discussions. I can well imagine some stout-hearted Colonel, prompted by his love for the plain soldier-man and his rooted dislike of all "specialists," becoming very heated in the small hours of the morning about the paragraph on page 97, in which a division untrained in the Sniping Schools is in passing compared to a band of "careless and ignorant tourists."

* * * * *

Señor IBAÑEZ' new novel, _Mare Nostrum_ (CONSTABLE), is ostensibly a yarn about spies and submarines, its hero a gallant Spanish captain, _Ulysses Ferragut_, scion of a long line of sailormen. And there can be no doubt of the proper anti-German sentiments of this stout fellow, even though his impetuous passion for _Freya Talberg_, a Delilah in the service of the enemy, did make him store a tiny island with what the translator will persist in calling combustibles, meaning, one supposes, fuel. But more fundamentally it is an affectionate song of praise of the Mediterranean and the dwellers on its littoral, especially the fiery and hardy sailors of Spain, and of Spaniards, in particular the Valencians and Catalonians. Signor IBAÑEZ' method is distinctly discursive; he gives, for instance, six-and-twenty consecutive pages to the description of the inmates of the Naples Aquarium and is always ready to suspend his story for a lengthy disquisition on any subject, person or place that interests him. This puts him peculiarly at the mercy of his transliterator, who has a positive genius for choosing the wrong word and depriving any comment of its subtlety, any well-made phrase of its distinction. Even plain narrative such as the following is none too attractive:--"The voluminous documents would become covered with dust on his table and Don Esteban would have to saddle himself with the dates in order that the end of the legal procedures should not slip by." What ingenuous person authorises this sort of "authorised translation"?

* * * * *

If I may say so without offence, Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS reminds me a little of those billiard experts who, having evolved a particular stroke, will continue it indefinitely, to the joy of the faithful and the exasperated boredom of the others. To explain my metaphor, I gather that Mr. BURROUGHS, having "got set," to an incredible number of thousands, with an invention called _Tarzan_, is now by way of beating his own record over the adventures of _John Carter_ in the red planet Mars. Concerning these amazing volumes there is just this to say, that either you can read them with avidity or you can't read them at all. From certain casual observations I conceive the test to be primarily one of youth, for honesty compels my middle-age to admit a personal failure. I saw the idea; for one thing no egg was ever a quarter so full of meat as the Martian existence of incomprehensible thrills, to heighten the effect of which Mr. BURROUGHS has invented what amounts to a new language, with a glossary of its own, thus appealing to a well-known instinct of boyhood, but rendering the whole business of a more than Meredithian obscurity to the uninitiate. I have hitherto forgotten to say that the particular volume before me is called _The War Lord of Mars_ (METHUEN). I may add that it closes with the heroic _Carter_ hailed as Jeddak of Jeddaks, which sounds eminently satisfactory, though without conveying any definite promise of finality.

* * * * *

* * * * *

=Do Poultry Pay?=

"Six Hens for sale, some laying 7s. each."--_Local Paper._

You will find three of them as good as a guinea-fowl.

* * * * *

"But the germ of Socialism or BZolshevism--however you like to
call it--has hardly entered the Polish working-class blood."

_Provincial Paper._

We fear, however, that it has got into our contemporary's composing-room.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note:

Page 116 corrected Typo: changed "Encylopædia" to "Encyclopædia".