The Project Gutenberg eBook of Outlook Odes, by T. W. H. Crosland

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at https://www.gutenberg.org/license. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Outlook Odes

Author: T. W. H. Crosland

Release Date: August 14, 2011 [EBook #37085]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

OUTLOOK

ODES

By T. W. H. CROSLAND

AUTHOR OF "THE UNSPEAKABLE SCOT,"

"LITERARY PARABLES," "THE FINER SPIRIT," &c.

LONDON: AT THE UNICORN

VII CECIL COURT W.C.

MCMII

TO

THE LORD WINDSOR

ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER

CONTENTS

TO THE PRIVATE MEMBER

TO THE TRUE-BORN BRITON

(After Peace Night.)

TO THE CAMBRIDGE CREW

TO DAN LENO

(On his appearance at Sandringham.)

TO THE POPE

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN

(Touching his audience of the King.)

TO THE TSAR

(After Dunkirk.)

TO DAN LENO

TO THE POET LAUREATE

TO THE AMERICAN INVADER

TO THE "MUDDIED OAF"

TO A PUBLISHER

TO AN HOTEL KEEPER

TO THE MAN WITH A GUN

TO THE STOCK EXCHANGE

(On its Centenary.)

TO THE LORD MAYOR

(November 9th.)

TO THE MOTORIST

TO NEXT CHRISTMAS

TO THE TRIPPER

TO THE GLASGOW MAGISTRATES

(On their proposal to banish barmaids.)

TO A BOOKSELLER

TO THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER

TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

(Before his retirement.)

TO THE COMMON GOLFER

TO MR. PIERPONT MORGAN

TO PRINCE EDWARD OF YORK

(On the return of the "Ophir.")

TO MME. BERNHARDT

TO SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

TO THE KING'S BULLDOG

TO THE DAILY MAIL

(August 3, 1901.)

TO EVERYBODY

TO THE PRIVATE MEMBER

My dear Sir,—

You may think it unkind of me

To interrupt the peaceful calm of your holiday

With a poem about business.

But I assure you, my dear sir,

That I do so with the very best intentions,

And at the call of what I consider to be duty.

Duty, as you know, is a tremendous abstraction,

And brings a man into all sorts of difficult corners.

It was duty that took you into Parliament:

Similarly it is duty that constrains me to Odes.

When a man sees another man and pities him,

It is the duty of the first man to let the other man know about it

Delicately.

I pity you, my dear Mr. Private Member,

From the bottom of a bottomless heart.

Many a time and oft in the course of my rambles

Through the lobbies and liquor bars of St. Stephens

It has been my ineffable portion to run across you—

Silk hat, frock coat, baggy trousers, patient stare, bored expression:

Suddenly you smile

And crook the pregnant hinges of the back of your neck.

Mrs. Wiggle, the three Misses Wiggle, and little Master Wiggle,

Wife, daughters, and son of Mr. Forthree Wiggle,

Draper, and burgess of the good old Parliamentary Division

Of Mudsher West,

Are up from Mudsher West,

And they want showin' round the 'Ouse, you know.

Round you go.

Again: you appear in the Strangers' Lobby,

Spectacles on nose, somebody's card in hand.

The policeman roars out name of leading constituent.

Leading constituent departed in a huff twenty minutes ago,

Because he thought you were not attending to him.

There being no answer,

Policeman roars out name of leading constituent once more.

Name echoes along Lords' Lobby;

But not being there, leading constituent fails to come forward.

You look embarrassed, turn tail, retire to your back bench,

And feel deucedly uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.

You would like to get away to the theatre,

But you dare not do it:

There are Whips about.

You would like to go home to bed;

You must wait the good pleasure of the course of the debate.

You would like to stand on your hind legs

And address the House on large matters:

But you know in your heart

That the House will stand absolutely nothing from you

Bar a question or so.

You sit, and sit, and sit through dull debate after dull debate,

And you sigh for the hustings and the brass bands,

And the banquets and the "He's-a-jolly-good-fellow"-s

And wonder how it comes to pass

That you, who were once set down in the Mudsher Mercury

For a blend of Demosthenes and John Bright,

Can never get more than twenty words off the end of your tongue

After "Mr. Speaker, Sir."

Oh! my dear Mr. Private Member,

Your case is indeed a sad one,

And it is all the sadder when one comes to reflect

That, as a general rule, you are a sincereish sort of man,

Burning and bursting with a desire

To do your poor suffering country

A bit of good.

You know that the men who have the ear of the House

Are mere talkers;

That they are only "playing the party game,"

And that the country may go to pot for anything they care.

And yet they make their speeches

And get them reported at length in the papers,

And are given places in the Cabinet,

And go for "dines-and-sleeps" with the King,

What time you grow old and grey and obese and bleary eyed,

And never get the smallest show.

I pity you, my dear Mr. Private Member, I do really.

But for your comfort I may tell you

That all you lack

Is courage

And brains.

TO THE TRUE-BORN BRITON

(After Peace Night)

Dear Sir, or Madam,

As the case may be,

When Britain first,

At Heaving's command,

Arose from out

The azure main,

This was the chawter

Of that land

And gawdian a-a-a-a-angels

Sang this strain:

Don't you think so?

For my own part,

I am quite sure of it:

Monday night convinced me.

Mafeking night,

As you may remember,

Was a honeyed

And beautiful affair.

But

Peace night,

I think,

Really outdid it in splendours.

At the cafe

Which I most frequent,

All was Peace.

Round the table next mine,

There were seventeen Jews,

With a Union Jack.

Ever and anon

(Between drinks, as it were),

They held up

That Union Jack

And yelled:

"Shend him victoriouth,

'Appy and gloriouth,

Long to-o reign over uth,

&c., &c."

I wonder, my dear Sir, or Madam,

Why the Jews are so pleased:

I can't make it out.

Howsomever,

Pleased they are,

And a pleased Jew

Is worth a king's ransom,

Or words to that effect.

Peace, my dear Sir, or Madam,

Is a chaste and choice

Thing.

Outside the aforesaid cafe,

The crowd

Was so numerous

And exuberant

That I was compelled

(Much to my annoyance, of course)

To remain inside

Till closing-time.

Then I went home

In the friendly embrace

Of a four-wheeler.

For a little while,

There was much shouting and yelling and roaring and squeaking and singing;

And then I knew

No more.

My cab

Bowled away

Through the sweet evening air

(That is to say,

If the common or Regent Street growler

Ever does bowl away),

And all the time

I snored.

Duly awakened

Outside my bungalow,

I raked up the fare,

And, in reply to kind enquiries

In the hall,

I remarked:

"Peace, O woman of mine,

Peace!"

TO THE CAMBRIDGE CREW

My dear Cambridge,

You have pulled it off,

As all men know.

This ode

Will make Oxford pretty sick;

But the spoils are to the victor.

If Oxford had rowed better

And won,

They should have had a nice new ode,

Like good boys;

But they have been and gone and lost,

And are, therefore,

Not fit subjects

For immortal verse.

Pah!

I pass by Oxford!

As for you, dear Cambridge,

Here's to you:

In spite of your long and honourable connection

With the manufacture

Of sossiges,

There appears to be something in you,

Which is more than can be said

For some of the sossiges.

Cambridge, my own,

You have won the bowt rice!

'Ave a drink!

What is the good of winning the bowt rice,

If you don't 'ave a drink?

I don't know,

And I'm sure you don't.

Also, what is the good

Of winning the bowt rice

At all?

I give it up.

Yes, I do really;

Please do let me give it up.

You have won;

You can afford to be generous;

Suffer me to indulge my little whim:

There is no good

In winning the bowt rice, Cambridge

No good at all.

On the other hand,

When I come to think of it

I am not quite sure

That to have rowed

In the Cambridge boat

Which won the bowt rice,

Is materially to have damaged

One's prospects or career:

At the very least, it makes one safe

For a tutor's job

At £80 per annum;

And what self-respecting person from Cambridge

Could wish for more?

I have heard of a man

Who rowed

In a winning Cambridge boat

And is now driving

A hansom cab.

And I have heard of another man

Who omitted to row

In a winning Cambridge boat

And is now driving a four-wheeler.

You see the difference, of course!

After all,

To row

In a winning Cambridge boat

Does give one

A sort of start in life,

And don't you forget it.

Always remember, my dear Cambridge, who you are.

You licked Oxford by five lengths

In 1902.

This is probably

All you will get

For your father's money.

Be thankful.

TO MR. DAN LENO

(On his Appearance at Sandringham)

Dear Mr. Dan Leno,—

This has been a great week

For Art—

One of the biggest weeks in fact

On record.

For at the beginning of the week, my dear Mr. Leno,

You were a mere popular entertainer,

Whereas at the present moment

You are a proud and 'appy man,

And in a position to walk about the Strand

With a diamond E

Scintillating in your cravat.

The thing that was anticipated

By the intelligent paragraphists,

My dear Mr. Leno,

Has come to pass.

His Britannic Majesty

King Edward VII., D.G.: B. et T.T.B.R.: I.I.,

Does intend to give artists and authors and people

A little bit more of a show

Than has hitherto fallen to their lot.

His Majesty,

My dear Mr. Leno,

Has always been noted for his tact,

And in opening the ball with you, as it were,

His Majesty has exhibited an amount of tact

Which leaves absolutely nothing to be desired.

Had he commenced with Mr. Swinburne,

Or myself,

Or Mr. Hall Caine

What howls there would have been!

Whereas as it is

Everybody is delighted,

And the Halls resound nightly with his Majesty's praises.

Furthermore,

Besides being tactful,

The King's choice of you,

My dear Mr. Leno,

For an invitation to Sandringham

Has its basis in a profound common sense;

For I am acquainted with nobody in the movement,

My dear Mr. Leno,

Who could have done the Sandringham turn

With anything like the success which appears to have been yours.

I gather from interviews

That the King "laughed heartily" at your jokes,

And that "it was a treat to see him enjoying himself."

It is just here that Mr. Swinburne, myself, and Mr. Hall Caine

Would have broken down.

It seems to me unlikely

That the King would have laughed

At Mr. Swinburne's jokes;

My own jokes, as everybody is aware,

Are constructed on a principle

Which entirely prohibits laughter;

While, as for Mr. Hall Caine's jokes,

They have such a tremendous sale

That it is not good form to laugh at them.

Mr. Leno, my boy,

You have been the humble means

Of doing us all

A great kindness.

Those jokes of yours

Which have tickled Royal ears

Will be nectar to me

When next it is my pleasurable duty

To sit under you;

That hand which Royalty has shaken

I shall grasp

With an added fervour;

That smile will cheer me all the more readily

Because it has cheered

My liege Lord and Sovereign;

Those feet——

But, after all, the great point

Is the scarf pin.

I suppose you would not care to lend it to me

For a week or two

While I have one made

Like it?

TO THE POPE

May it please your Holiness

There are possibly two,

Or it may be three,

Men

In Europe

Who could indite this Ode

Without treading on anybody's corns.

After mature reflection,

I am inclined to think that I am those three men

So that you will understand.

Well, my dear Pope, I hear on all hands

That you are engaged, at the present moment,

In the cheerful act and process

Of having a Jubilee.

I have had several myself

And I know what pleasant little functions they are,

Especially when the King

Sends a mission to congratulate one on them.

To proceed,

You must know, my dear Pope,

That, by conviction

And in my own delightful country,

I am a rabid, saw-toothed Kensitite Protestant;

All my ancestors figure gloriously

In Foxe's "Book of Martyrs,"

And, if they don't, they ought to.

Also, I never go into Smithfield

Without thinking of the far-famed fires thereof

And thanking my lucky stars

That this is Protestant England

And that the King defends the Faith.

But, when I get on to the Continent,

To do my week-end in Paris,

Or my "ten days at lovely Lucerne,"

Or my walk with Dr. Lunn

"In the footsteps of St. Paul,"

Why, then, somehow

The bottom falls clean out of my Kensitariousness

And I become a decent, mass-hearing, candle-burning Catholic.

That is curious, but true,

And may probably be accounted for

By differences of climate.

However, we can leave that;

Here, in England, my dear Pope,

We all like you,

Whether we be Catholics or Protestants or Jews or Gentiles or members of the Playgoers' Club;

And we all see you, in our minds' eye,

Seated benevolently upon your throne

Giving people blessings;

Or walking in the Vatican Garden

Clothed on with simple white.

We all think of you, my beloved Pope,

As a diaphanous and dear old gentleman

Whose intentions are the kindest in the world.

And yet, and yet, and yet—

The memory of Smithfield

So rages in our honest British blood

That, in spite of your white garments

And your placid, gentle ways,

We feel quite sure that you do carry,

Somewhere about your person,

A box of matches;

And that, if certain people had their way,

You would soon be lighting such a candle in England

That we should want a new Foxe

And a new Book of Martyrs

Of about the size of a pantechnicon.

Hence it is, my dear Pope,

That we—er—Englishmen remain Protestant

And make the King swear fearful oaths

Against popery and all its works,

Although, for aught one knows to the contrary,

He may have Mass said twice daily

Behind the curtain, as it were.

All the same, I wish you good wishes

As to this your Jubilee

And

Nihil obstat.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN

(Touching his Audience of the King)

My dear Mr. Chamberlain,

Since you last heard from me,

Many curious things have happened,

Both in Birmingham and abroad.

As to the happenings in Birmingham,

Nobody cares tuppence for them.

The happenings abroad, however, are a different matter,

Inasmuch as they have brought you great fame,

And cost us a lot of money.

Your influence in the governance of this great country, my dear Mr. Chamberlain,

Is undoubted.

When you say things,

It is understood that all your fellow-ministers

Sit up and look good.

"We don't like it," they say in their decent hearts;

"But Joseph says it must be so, and be so it must."

To the delicate souls of Arthur James,

And George, and Broddy, and the rest of 'em,

You must, my dear Mr. Chamberlain, be a good deal of a trial,

But, somehow, they have to put up with you,

Even as the honest martyr has to put up with his shirt;

And, for my own part, I rather like to see it:

At any rate, in a sort of way, don't you know.

But, my dear Mr. Chamberlain,

In the daily papers of Monday morning,

What did I read? Why, I read:

"Mr. Chamberlain had an audience of the King

Yesterday afternoon."

And yesterday afternoon was Sunday afternoon.

Now, my dear Joseph, I do not mind in the least

What you do to Arthur James,

Or what you do to George,

Or what you do to Broddy,

Or whether you do it on Sunday afternoons,

Or on any other afternoon.

But I really must draw the line somewhere,

And I wish you to understand

That if you go to see His Majesty the King

On Sunday afternoons

(On the afternoon of the Sabbath, as they would say in Birmingham),

You do so entirely without my approval.

I think it is scandalous, and, not being a politician,

I have no hesitation in saying what I think.

Somehow, while I know you to be a competent man of business,

You never figure in my mind's eye, Joseph,

As the sort of man who ought to have

Personal communication with his Sovereign,

Particularly on Sunday afternoons.

Birmingham men were not born to grace the Court;

And, when it comes to the furnishing of Pleasant Sunday Afternoons for Monarchs,

In my opinion, they are quite out of it.

When business presses,

As it no doubt did press on Sunday, Joseph,

It is your business, as a Birmingham man,

To remember your origin,

And, if you have anything on your mind

Which really must be communicated

To His Gracious Majesty King Edward the Seventh,

To look up the peerage and send round somebody

Who is, as one might say, fit for the job.

There is always Salisbury,

There is always Arthur James,

There is always George,

And there is always Broddy:

These men, my dear Joseph, are gentlemen,

And have known the Court all their lives.

What they do on Sundays I neither know nor care

But I have no doubt that, if you told them to go round and see the King,

They would go hotfoot and see him.

So that you have no excuse, Joseph.

Birmingham will, no doubt, forgive you this once:

As for me, I solemnly swear that I never will.

TO THE TSAR

(After Dunkirk)

My dear Tsar,—

I am owing you

The usual apologies.

I did not come to Dunkirk,

I did not come to Dunkirk,

I did not come to Dunkirk;

I was billed as usual,

But at the last moment

I did not come.

So that it was in vain, my dear Tsar,

That you and your Imperial spouse

(To whom I offer my very humble duty),

It was in vain

That you and your Imperial spouse

(To whom I again offer my very humble duty)

Searched the poop of La Marguerite

With your Imperial binoculars;

I was not there,

I was not there,

(O pregnant phrase!)

I was not there;

I was not on the poop,

I was not on the poop,

I was not on the poop,

I was not even abaft the binnacle,

In fine, I was not there at all.

And why?

Ah, ingrate that I am,

Why? O why?

The North Sea or German Ocean, my dear Tsar,

No doubt hath its pearls,

It also hath other things,

As, for example, a Dover-Ostend route.

I went on that route

On Saturday last;

It is a nice route,

I give you my word for it;

But the North Sea or German Ocean

Also has

An Ostend-Dover route,

On which route I went

On Sunday evening

And part of Monday morning last.

Five hours, my dear Tsar,

Had I of that Ostend-Dover route;

And I am now at a place called Thame

In Oxfordshire,

Recruiting—

Though I promised a man at Bruges,

And another man at Ypres,

That I would infallibly see him

At Dunkirk.

The Loubets are, of course,

Bitterly disappointed,

But you can explain for me,

Can you not, my dear Tsar?

You understand,

Do you not?

The North Sea or German Ocean

Fatigued you,

Did it not?

That is precisely what it did to me.

Fatigue is a good word.

I thank thee, Tsar, for that beautiful word fatigue.

All day Monday I felt so fatigued

That I went and joined a Peace Society.

The Boer war, my dear Tsar,

Is entirely over,

So far as I am concerned;

Henceforth I quarrel with no man.

Fatigue has laid its heavy hand upon me;

I am too much fatigued to quarrel even with the partner of my joys and sorrows.

Peace, perfect peace,

Is what I require,

And what I mean having.

Time writes no wrinkles on the Ostend-Dover route.

But you should see the people who have been that way.

Thame, in Oxfordshire,

Pitches beneath my feet

When I think of it.

TO DAN LENO

Dear Mr. Leno,

It is now many happy weeks

Since I had the pleasure of addressing you.

On the last occasion, you will remember,

You were fresh from Sandringham,

With a medal and sundry excellent stories

As to the manner in which you had been received

By His Majesty the King

And the Members of the Royal Family.

"To see them laugh," you told us, "was a treat."

Since then you have gone about

With a diamond "E" in your cravat,

And "The King's Jester" written all over you

As I have already stated,

I do not doubt for a moment

That the King really did laugh

At Mr. Leno.

I have laughed at him

(That is to say, at Mr. Leno) myself,

And I know what it is;

But to-day, Mr. Leno,

To-day being the 1st of April,

It is my turn to laugh,

And I do so with a right good will,

For to-day, Mr. Leno,

Your cup appears to be full,

Inasmuch as for this day only

You are actually editing a paper!

Now when a man takes to editing papers

All is over with him:

The next step is

Into the unutterable dark.

I have read your paper, Mr. Leno,

And I find that on the whole

It has been remarkably well edited:

That is to say, you as Editor

And your big co-editor,

Mr. Campbell of that ilk,

Have had the good sense

To edit the paper

In the only way in which an editor

Should edit a paper,

Namely, by leaving it to itself

As much as possible.

If all editors would have the sense

To take this wise course,

Contributors and subordinates, generally,

Would, to say the least of it,

Have a fairly happy life.

It seems in a way a pity, Mr. Leno,

That you should waste yourself

Upon an evening paper,

When there are so many morning papers

Requiring Editors:

The Daily Chronicle, for example,

Would have offered you a fair field

For the exercise of your extraordinary abilities;

Even the Times might, for once in a way,

Have added lustre to itself

By taking on

Your joyous and winning lucubrations;

Then there is Punch,

Which journal, I understand,

Is always (and still) on the look-out

For that humour

Which somehow never comes its way.

But there, Mr. Leno,

You have missed your chance,

And possibly it will not come round again.

As you are young in journalism,

Let me say three things to you:

Imprimis, never be an Editor,

It is better to be in the ballet;

Item, always be on either a morning paper or a weekly.

The all-day papers keep one too busy.

Item, if you are an editor only for a day,

Be sure to subscribe to the Newspaper Press Fund;

Otherwise, what will your widow do?

TO THE POET LAUREATE

My dear Poet Laureate,—

Do not, I implore you,

Be perturbed.

It is not my purpose to harp

Upon old strings,

Or to express the smallest satisfaction

Either with you as an official personage

Or with your verses as a production of an official personage;

I have called to-day, as it were,

For a little quiet talk:

You are a fellow-townsman of mine,

Consequently

I am a fellow-townsman of yours;

We ought to get on well together.

Between ourselves, my dear Poet Laureate,

It seems to me

That if you were to set about it

In the right way

You might, with very little trouble

Render a real service to the State

Being as you are

The only writer fellow

Who in his literary capacity

Is associated with the Court,

You have, if I may say so, chances and opportunities

Such as do not appear to have been vouchsafed

To any other contemporary worker in the department of Letters.

Our Gracious Sovereign Lord King Edward VII.

(I make no doubt)

Continually consults you on matters literary

"Dear Mr. Austen" (I can hear him saying),

"Would you now advise me to read

Mr. Newverse's Sonnets

And Miss Jumpabouti's new novel,

Or would you not?"

Of course, my dear Poet Laureate,

If you were one of those stiff ungenerous Poets Laureate

Who make it a rule to stick to business,

You would say very respectfully,

"Your Majesty honours me,

But I am not your Majesty's Book-Taster,

Being, as your Majesty is aware,

Paid only to wangle my harp

In celebration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

Therefore I must respectfully, civilly, humbly, and generally otherwisely

Beg to decline to answer your Majesty's kind inquiry."

But my dear Poet Laureate,

There is nothing of that sort about you.

You believe that a Poet Laureate,

Should not only be a sort of walking rhyming dictionary,

But also a general compendium of advice, counsel, and straight tips

For crowned heads.

Hence (I make no doubt)

That when his Majesty the King

Does ask you for a hint as to the kind of book he ought to read

You break the marble box of your wisdom

Upon the palace floor

And expound things to him.

Having thus the ear

Of an exceedingly amiable and capable Monarch,

You should by all means

Take advantage of the circumstance

To do what you can in that quarter

For the benefit of your brethren and sisters of the pen.

Many of them, my dear Poet Laureate,

Are at the present moment

Going about the country

With weary souls and tattered nerves

Because their Services to Literature

Have not been blessed and approved,

Not to say "recognised,"

By the Crown.

Some of them believe in their hearts

That they ought to have a peerage.

Others desire to be Baronets, Knights, and so forth,

In order that their wives may be called "Lady."

Others, whom I know,

Would be well content with a humble K.C.B.

And yet others

Would go off their heads with joy

If they might only be invited regularly

To the King's Levees and Droring Rooms.

My dear Poet Laureate,

I charge you to do your best for these suffering people.

WRITING IS A NOBLE ART,

IT SHOULD MOST CERTAINLY BE RECOGNISED BY THE CROWN.

Rub these facts well in, my dear Poet Laureate

(You know who to rub 'em into);

And while you are about it,

There are two persons

On whose behalf

You might use every legitimate endeavour

To rub your hardest—

One of them, my dear Poet Laureate, is YOURSELF

And the other is

MYSELF.

Your own desires in the way of "recognition"

Are of course your own affair,

Ask for what you like, my dear Poet Laureate,

And see that you get it,

For me

(Let me whisper)

I want a pension.

TO THE AMERICAN INVADER

Dear Sir or Madam

(As the case may be),—

Peace hath her victories as well as war

And sometimes

When I have occasion to travel

In this muggy metropolis of ours,

I begin to wonder whether I really am in London,

Or in New York.

On the tops of Atlas 'buses, and all other 'buses,

At the dining-tables of hotels at all prices,

At all theatres,

At all music-halls,

At all art galleries,

At all "evenings,"

At all social functions

Metropolitan in their nature

You, my dear Sir or Madam

(As the case may be),

Flourish and are to the fore,

There are people in the world

Who can pick you out at a glance.

The American woman, I am told,

Wears a certain kind of complexion

And a certain kind of blouse;

The American man, I am told,

Is weedy and anæmic,

A cigarette smoker,

A confirmed spitter,

And a moderate drinker;

He has a soft hat and unlimited dollars:

It is his dollars, of course,

Which are creating all the trouble.

They are beginning to circulate

And "geta-holt"

Wherever honest Britons most do congregate.

My tobacco merchant,

Who sells me two ounces of the real thing every week,

Has just been bought up by an American syndicate;

My barber is in the same case;

And I feel sure

That the woman who brings home "the laundry"

Is seriously considering proposals which have been made to her

By a syndicate of wealthy American gentlemen.

The electric-lighting plant in St. Paul's Cathedral

Was, it seems, paid for by an American.

Another American is doing something or other

With the underground railways,

And a third proposes to erect a building

Which will contain 6,000 rooms

On one of the best sites

On the new Holborn-Strand improvement.

Also I am using

An American roll-top desk,

An American typewriter,

An American chair,

American ink,

American pens,

American blotting paper,

American gum,

American paper fasteners,

American notions,

An American pattern of Ode,

And Heaven knows what besides.

I am all American.

I can whistle the "Star-Spangled Banner,"

I can, really!

Shake!

I like you,

There are no flies on you.

How are Mr. Roosevelt and all at home?

Is Pierpont keeping hearty?

Do you miss Carnegie—much?

Have you seen the Amur'can eagle at the Zoo?

Is Monroe's docterin'

Good for dyspepsia?

And it's O to be at home

On the rolling perarie,

With one's money well invested in English concerns,

Run by British labour,

And paying good old, fruity, nourishing British dividends!

TO THE "MUDDIED OAF"

My dear Muddied Oaf,—

While still a youth and all unknown to fame,

I went to school.

And on a certain Saturday

I put on a beautiful blue jersey, and some striped knickers,

And betook myself into a damp field

With my hands nice and clean,

And my hair parted.

Within an hour's time

My shins had the appearance of a broken paint can,

My garments were covered with mud,

One of my teeth had somehow got swallowed,

And my hair was out of joint.

When I come to think of it,

In that hour I must have been a Muddied Oaf,

Though I did not know what to call myself.

And no doubt on that and successive Saturday afternoons

I won my various journalistic Waterloos,

And contracted a stubborn cardiac hypertrophy

Which is even yet with me.

For nigh twenty years, however,

I have never, to my knowledge,

Taken part in a football match;

And, in spite of Mr. Kipling,

I do not propose to indulge again

In either Rugby or the other thing.

Youth loves to be muddied;

In old age one flings one's mud at other people.

I don't know, my dear Muddied Oaf,

How you like being called a Muddied Oaf.

The average Muddied Oaf of my acquaintance

Will not in the least understand

What Muddied Oaf means,

And even when a dozen reporters

Have explained it to him, dictionary in hand,

He will not care.

You cannot take the glory of having crumpled up the Footleum Otspurs out of a man

By calling him Muddy;

And as for Oaf,

When all is said

It is a poor synonym for "dashing forward."

No, my dear boy,

Phrases out of poems cannot damp your ardours.

And, so far as you are concerned,

Mr.

Rudyard

Kipling

May

Be

Blowed!

All the same, I assure you

As an old muddifier

That there is a great deal in what the gentleman says.

To a delicate age,

Rifle practice presents many attractions:

To shoot out of a No. 1 rifle

At a choice array of clay pipes, dancing globules, and cardboard rabbits

Is on the face of it

A gentleman's job:

You can do it with your hair parted:

And providing you don't get betting drinks

That you will ring the bell every time,

It doesn't cost much.

Regular practice

At the ordinary shooting booths

Will no doubt make a soldier and a gentleman of you,

And teach you to fear no Boer in shining armour.

These are points worth considering.

Also, the game does not hurt.

You need no lemon to help you through with it,

You run no risk of dislocation, fracture, hypertrophy, gouged eye, or broken neck,

You are on velvet all the time.

And when it comes to calling names,

You will have the honour and glory

Of being set down for a gallant and gilt-edged

Defender of your country,

Ponder it, O Muddied One,

And be wise.

TO A PUBLISHER

My dear Sir,—

In the whole round

Of animated nature

I am acquainted

With nothing or nobody

Who is, generally speaking,

So gay, gaudy, and interesting

As yourself.

From my youth up

I have been taught to look upon a publisher

As a very great person indeed.

When I was young and courted him

He it was drew from me

(As morn from Memnon)

Rivers of melody;

The which, however,

He took good care

Not to glorify with his imprimatur.

In those days

I looked upon publishing as a trade

And poetry as a profession.

Recently I have become wise,

And I feel in the heart of me

That publishing is a profession

And poetry a trade.

In spite of all that has been said to the contrary,

Barabbas

Certainly was not a publisher.

I have not had time to look him up,

But I feel quite sure

That he was not a professional man.

Besides,

If he was a publisher,

Why did he not publish something?

Echo and the Publishers' Association

No doubt answer

"Why?"

I sometimes think I should like to be a publisher myself.

It must be rather nice

To know for a fact

How many copies

Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so

Really do sell,

And how many "A second large edition"

And "Tenth impression"

Really mean.

It must be rather nice, also,

To go off to Switzerland every year

(With your wife)

To attend the Publishers' Conference.

It must be rather nice, too,

To know of a surety

That when an author is making money

Some publisher or other

Is making just as much,

And not infrequently a trifle more,

On the same work.

We have learnt of late

Greatly to our disgust

That when a publisher dies rich

He has made his money out of Apollinaris.

This is hard on authors,

Who, between ourselves,

Are not by any means bad people,

And invariably take a kindly interest

In their publishers' welfare.

On the other hand,

You must admit, sir,

That a publisher seldom goes bankrupt,

And does not as a rule sleep

Under his own counter.

Once

I lent a publisher half a crown.

He paid it back.

The average author would have taken it

As money earned.

So that, on the whole,

I am inclined to like publishers,

And to set them down in my tablets

For

Useful persons.

TO AN HOTEL KEEPER

My dear Sir,—

Oft in the stilly night

My thoughts fly

In your direction,

For oft in the stilly night

It is my unfortunate habit

To have uncomfortable dreams,

And the worst of them

Runs to bankruptcy.

I have a horror of bankruptcy,

At any rate in my dreams.

I sometimes lie

Between the blankets

In a cold sweat

And for public examination as it were,

And the presiding genius of the court

Says to me, sepulchrally,

"To what do you attribute your financial rottenness?"

I fall into a colder sweat

And remark,

With a humility

Which becomes my unfortunate position,

"Sir, if you please,

I have been living at an hotel."

At this juncture of course

I come in for every sympathy:

The Court is with me,

The Court has been there itself;

There is not a dry eye about the place,

Every man present knows what I mean,

And his heart is touched accordingly.

Sir,

My dear Sir,

You also know what I mean;

In other words, you know

That I am the victim of a convention,

And that, when all is said that can be said,

You are the author of that convention.

As to the nature of that convention

We will put it this way:

One pound of steak

To the actual consumer

Should cost, say, 1s. 2d.

Trimmings

In the way of potatoes and peas might cost, say, 6d.,

Bread, 1d.,

Pepper, salt, and mustard, 1d.

(You will notice that I put a princely price on everything),

Total, 1s. 10d.

Fifty per cent. profit for you, let us say,

Would bring us up to 2s. 9d.

Really you ought to let one off for 2s. 9d.,

But what do you do?

Well,

So far as I can gather from your bills,

You lie awake at night

Debating with yourself

Whether you should charge one 3s. 6d. or 4s. 6d.

And you usually come to the conclusion

That it will be best

For all parties concerned

To charge one 5s.

If one expostulates,

You remark

With hauteur

That you thought you were dealing with a gentleman.

You are quite correct in this surmise.

But—

One pays,

And you pocket the difference.

Then, again, on one's bill

You put

Bed, 7s. 6d.

Which is cheap;

And I do not murmur;

But you also put

Attendance, 2s. 6d.;

Coffee in bedroom before rising, 1s.;

Bath, 1s. 6d.;

This is just 5s. too much,

Especially in view of the fact

That the attendance wears dirty shirts,

That the bath

Is lukewarm if you order it cold

And lukewarm if you order it hot;

And that the coffee before rising

Doesn't cost you a farthing.

I am aware, of course,

That all this is very mean

And low down

On my part,

But frankly

Your rapacity

Matters not so much to me

As to yourself.

People come once to your establishment,

They read your bill,

Pay your prices

And tip your dirty-shirted waiters,

And go away

And forget to come back.

Hence

You are bound to charge

The next man that comes along

As much extra as he will stand,

And by slow degrees

Your establishment

Is becoming

A by-word

And a warning.

My dear Sir,

Have a shilling bottle of wine

(For which you charge me 3s. 6d.)

At your own expense,

Consult with your wife,

And make up your mind

Never to charge

More than 2s.

For 9d. worth of goods.

Honesty is its own reward—

It is really.

TO THE MAN WITH A GUN

My dear Sir,—

I suppose you are having an excellent time just now.

There are a large number of counties

In England and Scotland,

And I am not acquainted with one of them

Wherein your bang-bang

And puffs of smoke

And red-faced men with dogs

Are not to be encountered.

You like it;

It is very nice;

And really, when you come to think of it,

It is what the counties were made for.

In the history books

They were wont to say

Of a certain Norman monarch,

That he loved the red deer

As if he were their brother.

Of you it may safely be said

That you love the red grouse

And the brown partridge.

As if you were a poulterer.

You are a sportsman.

The man who first went out with a gun

To shoot game

Probably did it on the sly.

Had he been caught

He would no doubt have been regarded

By the sportsmen of his day

With the same contempt

That you yourself indulge

For the unprincipled blackguard, Sir,

Who shoots foxes.

But time and the gunsmiths

Have changed all that;

And now you are a sportsman,

A shooter of birds

For the London market.

You are also a gunner,

And you kill things.

Oh! why do you not go

And live at Gunners-bury?

Bad joke?

Well, I know it is.

But I assure you, my dear Sir,

That it is not half so bad as I can make them

When I try.

To come now to the region

Of practical politics,

Let me explain to you right off

That, despite all that has been said against you

By people who are mad about the Land

And the Game-laws,

And the feathered kingdom

And so forth,

I,

Who am always on the side of wisdom,

Have discovered a justification for you.

It is this:

There has been a great demand of late

For really competent shots.

In response to that demand

Mr. Kipling has started a village rifle club.

I understand that the members thereof

Are, let us say, five hundred in number.

Now, I put it to you, Sir,

How many sportsmen are there

Shooting in this beautiful country and Scotland

To-day?

Well, we will not compute;

It is dangerous.

But you could make a fairly big rifle club out of them.

They are all good men,

And of course all beautiful shots.

Some day

(When the war is over)

England may want them.

Will they answer to the call?

My dear Sir,

You have your uses.

Go in peace.

TO THE STOCK EXCHANGE

(On its Centenary)

My dear Stock Exchange,—

I am given to understand

That to-day you are a hundred years old,

And that to-day therefore

You will celebrate

What nine men out of every ten of you

Call your "Centeenary"

By taking a whole holiday instead of a half one.

It would be easy for me, my dear Stock Exchange,

To present you

With a sort of illuminated address on this occasion;

But I refrain.

One short year ago

I tumbled into a little money;

It was "not enough to live upon,"

But it was a nice sum.

A man introduced me to a member of the Stock Exchange,

The member of the Stock Exchange introduced me to a little game of "in and out,"

And my five hundred pounds folded its tents like the Arabs—

That is to say, it silently stole away.

It was not the member of the Stock Exchange's fault;

Certainly it was not my fault;

And I will not say that it was the fault of the Stock Exchange.

But I am not giving the Stock Exchange

Any illuminated addresses

At present.

On the other hand, let me assure you

That I believe the Stock Exchange

To be a highly respectable,

Honourable,

And useful institution.

It leaves the court without a stain upon its character.

I say these latter things advisedly,

Because some time back

A friend of mine who writes articles on food supply

Having delivered himself of the opinion

That London's milk was largely water,

Was sued for slander

By the Amalgamated Society of Dairymen's Daughters,

And had to climb down and apologise.

So that on the whole I repeat that, in my humble opinion,

If you want to find

Really sound, white men,

Men of spotless character and impregnable probity,

You cannot do better

Than wend your way to Gorgonzola Hall.

And joking apart, my dear Stock Exchange,

You really are a blessing.

If it were not for you

People with a lot of money,

And people with only a little,

Would simply not lose it.

It would lie in banks and old stockings and kindred receptacles

Till it went mouldy.

You keep things going.

You are the heart of the monetary world,

You pump in the gold,

You pump out all that you don't happen to want.

And you go and live in Maida Vale,

Keep a butler,

Drive two horses,

And change your name from Manassah to Howard.

This "Centeenary" holiday of yours

Gives me much pause.

Supposing, instead of taking a day,

You were to take a year,

What would happen to England?

SHE—WOULD—BE—RUINED!

Yeth, indeed.

TO THE LORD MAYOR

(November 9th)

My dear Lord Mayor,—

In Fleet Street all is gay

From min' office window I catch glimpses

Of fluttering bunting and swinging festoons.

I don't know who pays for them

(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say),

But I am informed by the police that they

(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say)

Have been hung up in honour of YOU.

I am also given to understand that there has been a big rush

For free windows to view your procession,

Which, all being well (the Procession, that is to say)

Will take place this day, Saturday;

For my own part I am going into the country,

And I dare say that on the whole

You wish you were going with me;

But ambition has its penalties,

And if you will become Lord Mayor of London

(A dizzy pinnacle to which none but the biggest-souled of us

May aspire)

I suppose you must put up with the attendant inconveniences

And publicity.

So far as I have been able to judge

(And I arrive at this conclusion by dint of steadfast abstinence

From witnessing Lord Mayors' Shows)

A Lord Mayor's Show is a distinctly inspiriting spectacle.

It may be set down

As the Londoner's one annual opportunity

Of seeing a circus for nothing;

Hence no doubt its popularity.

Think not, however, my dear Lord Mayor,

That I deprecate your little pageant, gratis though it be.

This country, as everybody knows,

Has for centuries past been on the high road to ruin,

And, in my humble opinion, its decadence has been largely due

To a deep-rooted tendency on the part of the powerful

To curtail and do away with mayoral and other shows.

Feasts and fairs have been kicked out of England

By the aforesaid powerful:

If you would be a respectable community

You must have neither feast nor fair,

And, if you would be a respectable citizen of any given city,

You must not array yourself in motley.

A man who walked into his bank

In yellow trousers and a blue silk hat

Would never be allowed an overdraft,

Black and subdued greens and browns being the only wear

For persons who would get on in life.

All this is wrong, my dear Lord Mayor.

I am of opinion that millionaires

Ought to wear purple breeches;

I see no reason why I myself

Should not have a morning coat of red, white, and blue,

Or a waistcoat emblazoned with the arms

Of the Worshipful Company of Spectaclemakers.

In fact, my dear Lord Mayor,

To perpetrate a Mrs. Meynellism,

The colour of life is the salt of it,

Just as the Lord Mayor's Show is the salt of the Lord Mayoralty

And the one beautiful thing

About life as people expect you to live it

In the Metropolis.

Come hither, come hither, my dear Lord Mayor,

And do not tremble so!

We are all glad to see you going up Fleet Street,

We are all glad to see you going home the other way;

And we shall be equally glad to see your successor

Getting through the same flowerful day's work

Next year.

Goodbye, my dear Lord Mayor!

And

Hooray?

TO THE MOTORIST

My dear Sir,—

When men have nightmares, they dream about you.

I myself have been chased over the tops of pinnacles

By flaming-eyed Panhards and Durkopps

In my sleep.

Nor is this all,

For if one brings oneself

To read reports of the proceedings of police courts

One finds that the average citizen

Gets more or less chased by you sir,

In his waking moments.

The Police I know, sir, seldom speak the truth:

They remember so well the day

When a horseless carriage had to be taken through the street

At the speed of a funeral march,

And with a red flag in front of it,

That the spectacle of an affable motorist

Bowling through a Surrey village

To the tune of six miles an hour

Shocks ther imagination,

And they believe for the rest of their natural lives

That the affable motorist aforesaid

Must have been travelling

At the rate of anything from 60 to 600 miles per minute.

Hence, my dear motorist,

It comes to pass that you are afforded so many opportunities

For airing your eloquence and the fatness of your purse

Before the police magistrates.

In my opinion it seems just possible

That the real trouble lies in the fact

That you, my dear sir, do actually

Go through villages at a very low speed,

And that really the best thing you can do

Would be to make a point of going through them

At the highest speed consistent

With the safety of your own person.

For if you did this,

No policeman of my acquaintance would be able to catch you,

Hence you would never be fined.

I have been out of sympathy with motor cars

Right up to the other night.

The other night I had the felicity to take a small trip on one.

The motorist would fain have driven me to my house,

Which is half an hour's cab drive from Charing Cross.

He offered to do the distance in ten minutes

And started stirring up his petroleum,

But I said "No. Let us go to the Marble Arch."

We went through the Mall, to Hyde Park Corner,

to South Kensington, to Paddington,

Into the Edgware Road, and so to the Marble Arch;

Time, at the outside, 15 min.

I am willing to admit

That we went down certain streets quite rapidly,

What time the policemen at odd corners stared stupidly,

And fumbled for their note-books.

But, as a result of that trip, my dear sir,

I have become an enthusiastic motorist.

I am convinced that speed and wind and the smell of petroleum mixed

Is the only thing which can be considered worth living for.

And if you happen to know anybody

Who would be willing to take

A typewriter and a pair of skates (not much worn)

In exchange for a Durkopp racer,

Kindly communicate with me.

TO NEXT CHRISTMAS

My dear Next Christmas,—

It is an excellent journalistic thing,

Not to say a poetical thing,

To be first in the field.

Behold me, therefore, advancing

At the head of that motley army

Which will inevitably hail you

When your time comes.

For your predecessor,

My dear Next Christmas,

I cannot say much.

He came in with several thousand inches of rain;

He went out on a watery moon.

There was turkey as usual,

Pudding as usual,

Mistletoe as usual,

Peace on earth as usual.

There were also the waits,

The young folks,

The postman,

The dustman

(No connection with the scavengers),

And the turncock.

We had a merry day.

Half the world pretended to be happy,

The other half pretended to be bored.

The festivities, I understand,

Are still being kept up.

There is a ping-pong tournament at the Queen's Hall

And a children's banquet

At the Guildhall on Tuesday evening;

Not to mention Mr. Dan Leno at Drury Lane

And Mr. De Wet at the Tweefontein.

It is all very cheerful

And very inspiriting.

All the same,

Let us not repine:

Christmas comes but once a year,

And it will come again, I fear.

This couplet, of course.

My dear Next Christmas,

Is not intended to be

Disrespectful to you;

It is inserted simply

For the sake of effect.

For I never miss an opportunity

Of bursting into rhyme.

When the way is plain before me.

My dear Next Christmas,

Do not be discouraged,

Come next year by all means;

If I said "Don't come"

You would come just the same.

Therefore, I say "Come,"

And I trust, my dear Next Christmas,

That when you do come

You will bring us a little luck.

Ring out the old, as it were,

And ring in the new;

Let candied peel

Be a trifle cheaper;

Let the war be settled

To the satisfaction of both parties;

Let the book trade flourish;

Let the Income-tax be reduced:

Let there be a fine Christmas Eve

And dry waits,

And a little skating next morning;

Let there be peace and plenty,

A pocket full of money,

And a barrel full of beer,

And all other good things,

Including a free and enlightened Press,

And a strong demand

For seasonable poetry.

My dear Next Christmas,

Here is my hand,

With my heart in it.

Till we meet again—

As Mr. Hall Caine says—

Addio.

TO THE TRIPPER

My dear Sir, or Madam,—

When James Watt,

Or some such person,

Had the luck

To see a kettle boil,

He little dreamed

That he was discovering you,

Otherwise he would have let his kettle boil

For a million million years

Without saying anything about it.

However,

James Watt

Omitted to take cognisance of the ultimate trouble,

And here you are.

And here, alas! you will stay,

Till our iron roads are beaten into ploughshares,

And Messrs. Cook & Sons are at rest.

"When I was young, a single man,

And after youthful follies ran"

(Which, strange as it may seem, is Wordsworth)

Your goings to and fro upon the earth,

And walkings up and down thereon,

Were limited by the day trip.

For half-a-crown

You went to Brighton,

Or to Buxton and Matlock,

Or Stratford-on-Avon,

As the case may be.

A special tap of ale

And a special cut of 'am

Were put on for your delectation;

You sang a mixture of hymns

And music-hall songs

On your homeward journey,

And there was an end of the matter.

But nowadays there is no escape from you.

The trip that was over and done

In twenty-four hours at most

Has become a matter

Of "Saturday to Monday at Sunny Saltburn,"

"Ten days in Lovely Lucerne,"

And "A Visit to the Holy Land for Ten Guineas."

Wherever one goes

On this wide globe

There shall one find

Your empty ginger-beer bottle and your old newspaper;

The devastations,

Fence-breakings,

And flower-pot maraudings

Which you once reserved for noblemen's seats

Are now extended to the Rigi,

The Bridge of Sighs,

Mount Everest,

And the deserts of Gobi

And Shamo.

Indeed, I question whether it would be possible

For one to traverse

The trackless forests of Mexico

Or "the dreary tundras of remote Siberia,"

Or to put one's nose

Into such an uncompromising fastness as Craig Ell Achaie

(Which is the last place the Canadian Pacific Railway made

And which may not be properly spelled)

Without coming upon you

Picnicking in a spinny,

And prepared to greet all and sundry

With that time-honoured remark,

"There's 'air,"

Or some other

Equally objectionable ribaldry.

Well, my dear Tripper,

Time is short,

And poets fill their columns easily,

So that I must not abuse you any more.

You are part of the Cosmos,

And as such I am bound to respect you;

But, by Day and Night,

I wish

That James Watt

Had taken no notice

Of his boiling kettle!

TO THE GLASGOW MAGISTRATES

(On their Proposal to Banish Barmaids)

May it please your Worships,

For years past, Glasgow has stood in the forefront

As a city given over to the small-pox

And magisterial reform.

It is, I believe,

An exceedingly well-managed city:

In fact, it appears to be managed

Out of all reasonable existence;

Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass

That it was lately visited

By a smart sample of the plague.

I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships

Are sincere and clean-thinking men.

I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,

Out of sheer public spirit

And with a view to bettering the condition

Of the city over which you preside.

In other words, I impute no motives:

That is to say, no base motives.

But, my dear Worships,

Why, in the name of Heaven, would you abolish

The harmless, necessary barmaid?

Have you never been young?

Have you never known the tender delight

Of whiling away a morning

With your elbow on the zinc

And threepennyworth of Bass before you?

What, may I ask your Worships,

Is Bass without a barmaid?

I grant that, taking them all in all,

The barmaids of Scotland

Are not what you might term

An altogether bewitching lot.

Years ago, when I was young and callow,

Fate threw me into the propinquity

Of a lady of this ilk;

She hailed from Glasgow,

And she was not beautiful;

On the other hand, I was young.

And, out of an income which was even slenderer then

Than it is now,

I purchased for that dear lady of the North

Many bottles of perfume,

Many pairs of kid gloves,

And a Prayer Book or so;

And, when I had consumed innumerable Basses

At her altar,

And the time had, as I thought, become ripe,

I offered her matrimony,

To which she replied, in limpid Doric:

"Gang awa hame to yer mither."

That, my dear Worships,

Is Glasgow!

If you can weed out of Glasgow

All young females

Possessed of this particular kind of temperament,

I am not so sure

But that you would have my blessing.

On the other hand, I am free to admit

That I hae my doots as to your capacity for so doing.

The perfume-bottle,

The kid gloves,

The Prayer Book

And "Na, na, na, I winna,"

Will always remain the prerogatives

Of the Glasgae lassies,

If I know anything of them.

Also, my dear Worships,

One thing is absolutely certain,

That, if the magistrates of all the cities

In the United Kingdom

Would take the step you have taken,

We should have gone a very considerable way

Towards solving the drink problem,

And putting Sir Michael Hicks-Beach

Into a fearful hole for money.

P.S.—I hate Scotch men,

But I sometimes think that Scotch women

Are rather bonnie.

TO A BOOKSELLER

My dear Sir,—

"There lies a vale in Ida

Lovelier

Than all the valleys

Of Ionian hills."

I take it

That this is a geographical fact.

Anyway it is Tennyson,

And I quote it

In order that you may perceive

That I have some acquaintance

With the higher walks of Literature,

And am therefore a man

Of entirely different build from yourself.

I was born a poet,

And have stuck to my trade

Unto this last.

Possibly you were born a bookseller.

I am willing to give your credit for it,

But I doubt it all the same,

For I often think the average bookseller

Must have been born a draper.

The other day I had occasion to do a little book-buying.

It was my first essay

In what I now believe to be

An altogether elegant and delightful form

Of intellectual recreation.

Of course, I went into a shop:

From the yawning Cimmerianity at the back of that shop

There came unto me swiftly and in large boots

A fat youth.

He bowed, and he bowed, and he bowed.

"I want a good edition of Shelley," I said.

And he replied straightway

"Ninepenceshillingnetoneandsixpencenethalfa-

crownnettwoandeightpencethreeandnine-

pencefiveshillingsnethalfaguineaandkindly-

stepthisway."

I said, "Thank you,

But I want Shelley,

Not egg-whisks."

Whereat he smiled and banged under my nose

A heavy volume,

Bound like a cheap purse,

And murmured, "There you are,

The best line in the market,

Two-and-eight."

And because I opened it,

And looked disconsolately at the stodgy running-titles

And the entrancing red-line border,

He cast upon me eyes of contempt and disgust,

And told me that I could not expect

Kelmscott Press and tree-calf

At the money.

In fact, that fat youth

Annoyed me.

He

Was

A bookseller.

Ah, my dear Sir,

When I reflect that whatever I may write,

No matter how excellent it may be,

Must ultimately pass into the hands

Of that fat youth

And become to him

Something

At ninepenceashillingneteighteenpencetwoandsix-

netthreeandninefiveshillingsnetorhalfaguinea-

andkindlystepthisway

The spirit of my fathers quails within me,

I know that authorship

Is a trade for fools.

Go to!

Ninepence me no ninepences,

Two-and-sixpence me no nets,

Bring yourself at once

To your logical conclusion,

And next time I call upon you

For Shelley,

Sell him to me,

As you appear to sell "Temporal Power."

By the pound

Avoirdupois.

TO THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER

My dear Deceased Wife's Sister,—

(The wife of my bosom being still happily amongst us,

The above,

As the learned might say,

Is a misnomer.

You, on the other hand,

Are a Miss ——,

And I would not marry you

To save myself from boiling oil.

If I had wanted you

I could have had you in the beginning.

And if I had married you

The wife of my bosom

Would have been aunt to her own children, as it were.

And in the event of your demise

She would also have been

My deceased wife's sister—

Which is at once inconsequential and peculiar.

A man cannot marry his deceased wife's sister

Till she is dead.

This is quite wrong.

In my humble opinion

It is also quite right.

Anyway, we will close this parenthesis

With the usual sign,

And proceed along the primrose path

Of business)

As I have already remarked

In my usual quaint way,

A man cannot marry

His deceased wife's sister

Until she is dead.

(By "she" of course I mean the man's wife.)

The bishops declare

That he cannot marry her anyhow

(By "he" I mean the man,

And by "her" of course

The bishops mean

The man's deceased wife's sister.

I desire to be explicit on these points

In order that we may avoid

Ambiguity.)

Well, my dear deceased wife's sister

(Always remembering that Mrs. —— is still alive),

What is your view of matters?

Do you really wish to marry me or not?

Have you any opinions about Lord Hugh Cecil?

If so,

Kindly state them.

Was he or was he not justified in demanding

On Wednesday night

That the word "Shame"

Be put upon the record?

If so, why not?

If not, why so?

My dear deceased wife's sister,

Do not let us get confused.

Let us clear our minds of Cecil.

After all is said

You are the Auntie of my children,

And the great-niece of my wife's great-uncle,

Not to say the sister-in-law of my children's father.

Come along,

Here are ducats,

A ring,

And a Canadian parson,

Let us get married at once.

Of course it is so sudden.

It always is.

And we have forgotten about Mrs. ——

We always do.

But I tell you here and now,

And in good set terms,

My dear deceased wife's sister,

That if I wish to marry

Either you or any more of your mother's daughters

(Which Heaven forbid),

I shall go to Canada or Australia

And marry 'em.

TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

(Before his Retirement)

My dear Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,—

The devotion of one's life

To the service of the Muses

And the neglect of golden opportunities,

Is not without its compensations,

One of the chief of them being

That the devotee can look into the eyes

Of the most rapacious of Chancellors of the Exchequer

And smile.

For my own part, dear Sir Michael,

By the writing of Odes,

And general inattention to business,

I am able to knock up a precarious one hundred and seventy-five pounds per annum;

On one hundred and sixty pounds of that sum

I am always careful to claim exemption,

Which leaves a taxable balance of fifteen pounds.

Out of this balance, my dear old friend, you are welcome to take fifteen shillings,

Or twenty-three and fourpence ha'penny,

Or twenty-seven and sixpence farthing,

Or any other sum that you think might come in handy.

Indeed, in all the circumstances

(And without prejudice),

I should not be greatly upset

If you took the lot.

For well I wot

That the late War

Has cost more than the price of a row of houses,

And that it is my duty, as a full-blooded patriot,

To pay, and pay cheerfully;

And particularly so

Since it is not due for a month or so.

Ah, my dear Chancellor,

Who fears Black Michael

Must himself be black.

They call you Black because you want a lot of money;

I call them black because they've got it.

However, this is not a Ruskinian oration,

But an Ode,

And I shall therefore proceed to give you a few tips

As to legitimate methods of raising the wind.

Judging by your recent efforts,

You appear to be short of ideas.

Here you are.

Put sixpence a hundred on cigars.

"See What You Save"

Will see me through somehow;

Besides, I never smoke cigars.

Put a bit more on all sorts of wines and liqueurs,

Excepting Sauterne and Benedictine

(Of which I am particularly fond);

Put a bit more on beer,

And sixpence a pound on arsenic

(As a rule I do not take either);

Tax railway tickets

(I invariably travel on "passes");

Tax perambulators

(My sons and heirs can all walk);

Tax sky-signs

(Like the Omar Khayyam Club,

I never advertise);

Tax bicycles

(I abhor exertion);

Tax gold and gem jewellery

(I never keep it);

Tax fiction

And "Fourth enormous" editions

(We shall then hear less about them)

Abolish the free breakfast-table

(I invariably begin the day with lunch);

Also tax ground-rents

(I am not the Duke of Bedford);

And seize all the unclaimed bank balances

(None of which by any possibility

Can be mine).

In fact, my dear Sir Michael,

Tax and seize whatever you like.

The opulent, and the well-to-do,

Not to mention the rascally working classes,

Will have to put up with it.

TO THE COMMON GOLFER

My dear Common Golfer,—

The game you affect

Is a great game

Played by yourself

And all the crowned heads of Europe,

Not to mention all the fat persons who desire to bant,

All the thin persons who desire to become

Vigorous and muscular, as it were,

All the clerks who desire to pass for dukes,

And all the dukes who relish the society of clerks.

It is a great game:

The people who play it are not the fault of the game.

It is also a good game.

If I am not mistaken,

It is a game that originally came out of Scotland;

Therefore it must be a good game.

For everything that comes out of Scotland is good,

Even the Scot.

And golf being a great and good game

I do not see any tremendous reason

Why you, my dear Common Golfer,

Should not engage in it if you so choose.

On the other hand, I wish from the bottom of my heart

That you did not engage in it.

I know a bank

Whereon the wild thyme blows

(Or ought to blow):

Oft of a pleasant summer morn

Have I taken a cheap ticket

To a station which is not far from that bank,

And there (on the bank, that is to say) reclined me

What time I looked up into the blue dome,

And watched the lazy-pacing clouds,

And flicked away the midges,

And wished my name was Corydon,

And remembered bits of Keats

And bits of Herrick

And bits of business,

And so forth.

Oft, I say, have I done these things;

But of late I no longer do them,

Inasmuch as my bank

Has become (if I may so term it)

Golf-ridden.

The other day I repaired to the said bank

On rural musings bent.

What did I find?

Why, my dear old thymy bank

Was in the possession

Of half a dozen gross fellows in red coats,

Thy had pipes in their mouths,

And a jar of beer in their midst,

And they were actually talking and laughing

In the most uproarious fashion.

I heard one of them say

"Why did Arthur Bawl-Fore?"

And the others thought hard,

And trifled with their brassies and things,

And could not make answer.

O, my dear Common Golfer,

You were of that party;

You were;

You are always of such parties,

You are always sitting

On other people's thymy banks,

And saying, "Why did So-and-so so-and-so?"

And depleting village public-houses of good beer,

And turning whole village populations into caddies,

And dotting the landscape with your red coats,

And generally appropriating the fair face of Nature.

I cannot stop you, my dear Common Golfer,

I cannot, O I cannot!

Would that I could. O would that I could!

In which case, perhaps, I wouldn't.

No, my dear boy,

Rural England is yours,

Also the sea-side,

Take them, old man, take them;

I hand them over to you with the best heart in the world.

Take them—they are yours—

And excuse these tears.

TO MR. PIERPONT MORGAN

Dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,—

I hasten to give you a hearty British welcome.

Come to my arms;

I am in the Trust line myself—

That is to say, I used to be

Before people started putting up announcements

To the effect that

"Poor Trust is dead,

Bad pay killed him."

Some day, an I mistake not, Mr. Morgan,

Your Trust will die:

All Trusts are grass.

Ponder it!

I am a political economist, and I know.

Meanwhile I am very pleased to think

That we have amongst us a man of your financial prowess

And purchasing power.

There is a certain class of British person

Who apparently goes in bodily fear of you.

That class of person has groaned loudly over your steel exploit,

And he has groaned loudlier still

Over your purchase of the Leyland Line of Steamships.

To groan over a fair deal of any kind

Appears to me, my dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,

To be an entirely stupid proceeding.

Nobody can come to grief by selling things,

Providing they sell them at the right price.

You have bought the Leyland Line of Steamships:

I see no reason why you should not buy all the other lines

If you want them, and have the wherewithal to pay for them,

For in the long run everything comes to him who vends.

You buy my steamships, or my steelworks,

Or, for that matter, my caller herrin':

I take your money, I put it in your bank,

And live sumptuously on the interest.

You have all the trouble

Inasmuch as you have to rake up the interest.

I sit at home and enjoy myself,

You scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme,

I am happy,

I hope you are.

Between ourselves I should not tremble

If you bought up Great Britain and Ireland (especially Ireland),

And all that in them is,

Providing always, as I have said before,

That you paid the price.

Indeed, I hope to live to see the day

When Englishmen will cease to toil and spin,

And derive their incomes

Wholly and solely from American dividends.

Fools buy things, my dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,

Wise men sell them.

That is particularly true

When the article involved happens to be poetry.

Nevertheless, as you appear to be in a buying frame of mind,

I take this opportunity of informing you

That I have at my villa at Hindhead

A large and varied stock

Of sonnets, odes, rhymes, jingles, and what not,

Which I am prepared to sell at an enormous sacrifice.

My price to you for the lot would be

Fifteen Million Dollars.

If you care to deal, I undertake to melt your cheque

At your own bank,

And to invest the proceeds in any concerns

In which you happen to be interested,

So that you would not only get the poetry,

But also your money back again.

This, at any rate, is how it seems to me.

Vale!

TO PRINCE EDWARD OF YORK

(On the Return of the "Ophir")

Most well-behaved little Prince,—

As the small boy

Who will one day be the Sovereign Lord

Of certain other small boys

In whom I am interested

I hasten to assure you

Of my loyalty to the Imperial House

Of which you are the joy and hope,

And of my respect for your own podgy little person.

To-day, I need scarcely tell you, my dear little Prince,

Is a very big day for you,

Inasmuch as

To-day your excellent parents—

Their Royal Highnesses

The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, KG.—

Return from their wanderings,

Laden, I am given to understand,

With presents for his Royal Highness

Prince Edward of York,

Who, I am given to understand,

Has been a very good boy

During these long weeks of separation.

I am quite sure

That you deserve these presents,

And that your Grandmama

Will be able to give your parents a very good account of you,

And that your Grandpapa,

With that tact which is only one of many of his excellent qualities,

Will refrain from making reports

Which might lead to parental chastisement,

I remember quite well

That when my own Mama and Papa

Returned once from a little jaunt

They brought back with them,

As a present for me,

A tin cylinder with a spike to it,

Which you set on a piece of wood

And spun round;

Then you looked through some holes in the tin cylinder

And beheld many wonderful things,

Such as a little girl skipping,

And jockeys riding a steeplechase on tigers.

If your Papa, my dear little Prince,

Has not brought you one of those,

Be sure you ask for it.

It is not rude to ask for what you do not see in the window,

Providing you say "Please."

And now before I go

Let me add a few words

Of kindly admonition.

I hope you will grow up to be a good and great man,

And that you will never give your parents

Cause for sorrow,

By turning Socialist,

Or newspaper editor,

Or attempting to imitate these Odes.

To your infant mind

This last crime

May appear to be the most innocent in the world,

Because these odes

(God wot)

Are so easy to imitate;

Diplomats, Members of Parliament, publishers' assistants,

Cabmen, poets, peers of the realm,

Nay, even the very crowned heads of Europe,

Have, at time and time,

Been consumed with a desire to do them for me;

Because, as I have said,

It is so easy.

Well, my dear little Prince,

Let us draw our moral.

The easy thing is not always the wisest thing.

I feel that in my inmost heart.

And if you blossom into manhood

With the same conviction,

More or less,

I make no doubt whatever

That you will be an immense success

As a king.

I wish you the best of luck.

TO MME. BERNHARDT

My dear Madame Bernhardt,—

I have been very nigh addressing this ode

To the winner of the Derby.

But, on second thoughts, I said,

"No, no—never!"

(Non, non, jamais, in fact.)

"Not while we have in our midst

One of whom I wot,

For is it meet

That the charming Mme. Bernhardt

Should return to her interesting country

Possessed of the impression that the bas Anglais

Have a greater feeling for le sport

Than for the arts dramatiques,

Or whatever you call 'em?

Non, non, a thousand times, non!"

Ah, Madame, believe me,

I love my country—

La patrie, la patrie, la patrie, you know:

It is a fine country when you understand it,

And I would have my beautiful Bernhardt

Take away with her

Nothing but splendid memories of it.

I was exceedingly glad

To read in the papers the other morning

That in the opinion of the critics dramatiques Anglais,

Or whatever you call 'em,

Madame had done herself proud

At the Lyceum Theatre the other evening.

One critic dramatique Anglais,

Or whatever you call him,

Wrote of Madame thus:

"Such passages,

Wherein the eaglet is borne away

On a flight of adoration for the dead eagle,

Recur throughout the play:

They are, in fact, its keynote,

And Mme. Bernhardt

Declaimed them with superb intensity.

The famous voice has lost its golden notes,

But its power to thrill remains,

She runs the gamut of the emotions

With all the grace and dexterity

Of

A

PROFESSOR."

Madame Bernhardt,

You will perceive

That the critics dramatiques Anglais,

Or whatever you call 'em,

Write of nobody

That they do not adorn;

My beautiful B.,

You are a made woman,

You have all the grace and dexterity

Of

A

PROFESSOR.

O happiness!

O crown and fulfilment of a life-time devoted to Ar-rt!

Your cup, my quenchless one,

Is at length heaped up,

Like Benjamin's,

And it runs over!

Heaven bless us all!

And in conclusion, my dear Mme. Bernhardt,

Will you do me the honour to allow me to explain

That in the event of any young enthusiast from Paris

Calling round at any of our newspaper offices

With a view to getting satisfaction

From the person who accuses you

Of having all the skill and dexterity

Of

A

PROFESSOR,

He (the young enthusiast from Paris)

Will do himself no good,

Because in my dear country, dear Madame Bernhardt,

We do not fight the duel à la cut finger,

Like gentlemen;

We merely throw downstairs.

TO SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

My dear Sir William Harcourt,—

(I have not time to get up your other distinguished names,

So that you must please excuse the plain Sir William),

My dear Sir William, do you ever survey the Liberal party,

From China to Peru,

And from Rosebery to Lloyd-George as it were?

Do you, my dear Sir William? O do you?

I do sometimes.

I do, Sir William, I do indeed.

O, I do!

And what is the conclusion I come to, my dear Sir William,

Ah, what?

O, what?

What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?

Shall I tell you, my dear Sir William?

You are sure you won't be offended if I do?

And it will be strictly between ourselves, now, won't it?

Well then, come hither, coz,

Put your sweet hand in mine and trust in me,

And do not construe my kindness into cruelty;

Harken, my dear Sir William, harken,

Harken, harken, harken, harken har——court:—

The Liberal party is an unweeded garden

Choked with a myriad strange growths,

And a sad, fierce, baffled, careless-ordered thing to look upon,

And in its midst there sits down perennially

A huge and ponderous and unwieldy ruminant,

Whom, merely for the sake of talking, my dear Sir William,

We will call the Harcourt.

Here, when it is not at its lordly pleasure-house,

Which men call Malwood,

The Harcourt, as I say, sits down.

Goodman Bannerman cometh to his Liberal Garden

To gather him a posy and do a little weeding;

The Harcourt is there heavily chewing the cud,

And it takes the heart out of goodman Bannerman

To behold him.

Goodman Asquith had fain pick a bit of dinner in the precincts;

The Harcourt watcheth him with rolling eye,

And goodman Asquith shivereth.

And by and by cometh the simple, rural Rosebery,

Armed cap-à-pie with a muck-fork;

Being rural he understands gardening;

He looks over the wall and sayeth,

"Gadzooks, when folk tell me that I am the man to put this garden to rights

They speak a mortal deal o' truth.

I will e'en go in and delve a bit."

And then he beholdeth the Harcourt

Luxuriating with his back against the biggest fig tree,

And he sayeth "No;

That powerful big animal be there still,

And I know'un, I do, I know'un!"

And who shall blame him?

What jobbing gardener of any self-respect

Would undertake to do up my genariums and fuchers

If I had a wild rhinoceros gambolling upon them

Day in and day out?

I should have great difficulty

In finding such a jobbing gardener, my dear Sir William;

And, to come at once to the plain poetry so belovèd of this age,

Let me tell you, my dear Sir William,

That, in my opinion, you (and no other) are at the present juncture

The real trouble and incubus of the party you love.

If you would only go home and crown yourself with a laurel or two,

And read history books, and take tea with bishops

And not come back again,

I believe the Liberal party

Would begin to get along like a house afire.

Will you not try it, my dear Sir William; oh, will you not try it?

For who would fardels bear and flounder round,

When he might sit with Lulu on the lawn

And leave his party for his party's good?

TO THE KING'S BULLDOG

Dear Brindle,—

Possibly your name is not Brindle,

But that is of no consequence;

The great point, my dear Brindle, being

That when his Majesty Edward VII.

Landed at Flushing the other day

He was accompanied

By

You.

At least so I gather from the halfpenny papers,

And I am free to admit

That when I read the paragraph

Descriptive of your landing at Flushing

My bosom swelled with honest pride.

I am not a doggy man myself,

Dear Brindle,

And no judge of points.

Also,

When I see a dog coming towards me

I invariably

Whisper

"Bite,"

And consequently

My hair

Is apt to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine

At pretty well every canine approach.

Bulldogs especially

Affright me,

So that I can well understand

How the little foreign boy,

Assembled at Flushing

To scoff in his sleeve at the English King,

Remained to flee as it were

At the sight of you.

That, in a nutshell,

Is why my bosom swelled

When I read the paragraph

To which previous reference has been made.

It was a picturesque circumstance, my dear Brindle.

And may be taken

As one more illustration

Of his Majesty's determination

(Pray excuse the rhyme)

To do things as a king of England should.

To have alighted at Flushing

Accompanied by a Lion

Would have been a little outré,

And Unicorns, we know,

Are not obtainable—

What does his Majesty do?

Why he takes, as he always has taken,

The middle and dignified course:

He disjects himself on Flushing

With You by his side.

Next to the Lion and the Unicorn

The Bulldog may be reckoned

The truest

Exemplar and symbol

Of our great nation.

It is like this:

The Bulldog is not too beautiful,

Neither is our great nation;

But he frightens people—

So do we;

He is tenacious

And magnanimous—

Which is just our game;

He fears no foe in shining armour,

Or any other sort of armour—

That is precisely our case;

And he is kept by Lord Charles Beresford,

The Duke of Manchester,

And Mr. G. R. Sims—

Three eminently typical Britons.

In short,

The genius of the British nation,

My dear Brindle,

Is not a policeman

But a Bulldog.

TO THE DAILY MAIL

(Aug. 3, 1901)

My dear "Daily Mail,"—

To-day you attain

Your 1,650th number,

Which, for the sake of talking,

We will call your Jubilee.

Congratulations,

My dear Daily Mail,

Congratulations!

There are people in the world

Who,

In the time of your infancy,

Gave you the usual three months.

Most new papers

Get three months on the day of their birth.

For at the sight of a new sheet,

Your wise man invariably taps his nose,

Looks even wiser than is his wont,

And says,

"My dear Sir,

I give it

Three months."

Well,

My dear Daily Mail,

You have survived the sentence of the wise,

And I am given to understand

That you have long been a tremendous property.

Once again

Congratulations!

BUT

(These buts are fearful things,

Are they not?)—

But

(Pray excuse me if I appear to say "but" again)—

But—

Well, you know what I mean, don't you?

Let me put it this way.

When I come to town of a morning,

Per 'bus or Potromelitan Railway,

As the case may be,

What do I see?

Not to put too fine a point upon it,

I see a row of silk or straw hats

(According to the state of the weather),

And I see a row

Of choice trouserings,

And between the hats and the trouserings

There is spread

A row of rustling morning papers.

I can tell you the names of those papers

With my eyes shut:

Five out of six of them is called

The Daily Mail.

This upsets me.

It is all right for you, of course,

But it distresses me,

And I do not like being distressed.

Now, why does it distress me?

Shall I tell you?

Are you sure that you could bear the blow?

Can you pull yourself together for a moment?

Very well, then,

You distress me

Because

The price of you is one halfpenny.

I am of opinion

That in the present condition of the general purse,

Things which are sold for a halfpenny

Are really too cheap.

I will give you my reasons some other day.

Meanwhile

(To take your own case)

When I look into your pages,

Which is seldom,

What do I find?

I will be frank for the second time,

And tell you:

I find,

My dear Daily Mail,

Ha'pennyness

Writ in every line of you,

From the front page, "Personal Column,"

With its "Massa, me nebber leab you

While you keep So-and-So's toffee about,"

To the last line

Of your astonishing Magazine page,

You are

Ha'pennyness,

Ha'pennyness,

Ha'pennyness,

Ha'pennyness,

Ha'pennyness,

Ha'pennyness

All the time.

Of course there is no harm in that,

Especially

As you get the ha'pennies,

And far be it from me

To contemn you for it.

On the other hand,

As I have remarked previously,

I do not like it.

I have no advice to offer you,

Inasmuch

As I do not see how you can help yourself.

But I shall ask you kindly to note

That the congratulations

Expressed at the beginning of this poem

Bear reference to your attainment of your 1,650th number

And not

To another matter,

Which,

While you certainly have the right upon your side,

You appear to me to be conducting

IN

AN

UNMITIGATED

HA'PENNY

WAY.

TO EVERYBODY

My dear Everybody,—

The other day I lunched at a place

Where there was a pretty lady.

During the course of the talk

The pretty lady said to me,

"You see, Everybody is out of town

At present."

I said, "Who is Everybody?"

Whereupon the pretty lady replied,

"Well—er—Everybody."

I said, "Quite so;

But don't you think it is rather

Fortunate that Everybody is out of town?

And the pretty lady answered and said,

"No."

I conclude, therefore,

That you, Everybody,

Must, on the whole, be rather nice.

I hope you are;

For Everybody should be rather nice,

Should they not?

And when I come to think of it

The circumstance that I heard of you

The other day

Has nothing prodigiously unusual about it.

Really and truly,

One is always hearing about you.

One is, believe me.

For example, the paragraph writers assure me

That Everybody is reading

Miss So-and-So's great novel;

Also, that Everybody will join with them

In congratulating Miss So-and-So on her approaching marriage;

Also, that Everybody is in the Highlands,

That Everybody anticipates a good season,

That Everybody keeps a houseboat,

That Everybody sups at the Carlton after the theatre,

That Everybody recognises in Lord Salisbury a great statesman,

That Everybody plays golf,

That Everybody who can afford it dresses well,

That Everybody knows the King has tact,

That Everybody thinks the Queen grows younger as she grows older,

That Everybody hopes Sir Thomas Lipton

Will win the America Cup,

And so on.

Which is well.

I don't mind in the least.

Why should I?

Yet, if I were Everybody,

I imagine that I should not do things

Quite in the same way that you do them.

To my mind, your great defect is that you do things

Not because you like to do them,

But simply because

Everybody does them.

This is an excellent reason

From your point of view;

But to me it seems a trifle stupid.

Who is reading Miss So-and-So's book?

Everybody.

Why are they reading it?

Because Everybody is reading it.

Do they like Miss So-and-So's book?

They are not quite sure.

But Everybody says it is good,

And therefore Everybody must read it.

Why are frock-coats worn?

Because Everybody wears them.

Why does Everybody wear them?

Because Everybody wears them.

Why does Everybody dine at a certain restaurant?

Because Everybody dines there.

Why does Everybody dine there?

Because Everybody dines there.

Why does——

But, there,

I forbear.

Did time allow I might multiply instances

Till Everybody felt bored,

But I stay min' hand;

Enough, you know, is as good as a feast;

Likewise, better a stalled ox

Than a dinner of herbs;

Everybody says so,

Wherefore I am constrained to believe it.

By way of conclusion, let us ask ourselves

What is happening just now.

Everybody says

That nothing is happening just now,

And that everything is frightfully dull;

And

Everybody

Is

Quite

Right.

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Outlook Odes, by T. W. H. Crosland

TO THE PRIVATE MEMBER

TO THE TRUE-BORN BRITON

TO THE CAMBRIDGE CREW

TO MR. DAN LENO

TO THE POPE

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN

TO THE TSAR

TO DAN LENO

TO THE POET LAUREATE

TO THE AMERICAN INVADER

TO THE "MUDDIED OAF"

TO A PUBLISHER

TO AN HOTEL KEEPER

TO THE MAN WITH A GUN

TO THE STOCK EXCHANGE

TO THE LORD MAYOR

TO THE MOTORIST

TO NEXT CHRISTMAS

TO THE TRIPPER

TO THE GLASGOW MAGISTRATES

TO A BOOKSELLER

TO THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER

TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

TO THE COMMON GOLFER

TO MR. PIERPONT MORGAN

TO PRINCE EDWARD OF YORK

TO MME. BERNHARDT

TO SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

TO THE KING'S BULLDOG

TO THE DAILY MAIL

TO EVERYBODY

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE