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Page 9
But enough, Sir. Let me subscribe myself
A RUINED MAN.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Teacher._ "WHAT ARE ELEPHANTS TUSKS MADE OF?"
_Smart Boy._ "PLEASE, TEACHER, IT USED TO BE IVORY; BUT NOW IT'S GENERALLY
BONZOLINE."]
* * * * *
A STORM IN A TEA-SHOP.
A NEW TALE OF A GRANDFATHER.
You ask me, Tommy, to tell you the really bravest deed
That was ever yet accomplished by one of the bull-dog breed,
And, although the hero was never so much as an O.B.E.,
I think I can safely pronounce it the bravest known to me.
It was not done in the trenches, nor yet in a submarine,
Mine-sweeper or battle-cruiser; it was not filmed on the screen;
For, though the man who performed it had three gold stripes on his
sleeve,
It happened in Nineteen-Twenty, when he was in town on leave.
He was strolling along the pavement, a pavement packed to the kerb,
When he felt a sudden craving for China's fragrant herb,
So he turned into a tea-shop--as he said, "like a silly fool"--
Which was patronised by the leaders of the ultra-Georgian school.
He ordered his tea and muffin, and, as he munched and sipped,
Strange scraps of conversation his errant fancy gripped,
Strange talk of form and metre, of "Wheels" and of SHERARD VINES,
And scorn of TENNYSON, BROWNING and SWINBURNE (of The Pines).
He listened awhile in silence, but at last the fire grew hot,
When he heard "The Lotus-Eaters" described as "luscious rot";
And he shouted out in the madness that is one of Truth's allies,
"Old TENNYSON'S little finger is thicker than all your thighs."
A hush fell on the tea-shop, and then the storm arose
As a chunk of old dry seed-cake took him plumb upon the nose,
And a cup, a generous jorum, of boiling cocoa nibs,
Hurled by a brawny Georgian, struck squarely on his ribs.
For several hectic minutes the air was thick with buns,
It was almost as bad, so he told me, as the shelling of the Huns,
But our gallant Tennysonian held on until a clout
In the eye from a metal teapot knocked him ultimately out.
A sympathetic waitress fled off to fetch the police,
Whose opportune arrival caused hostilities to cease,
And they carefully conveyed him to a hospital hard by
Where a skilful surgeon managed to preserve his wounded eye.
It was from the self-same surgeon that I subsequently learned
The first remark of the victim when his consciousness returned:--
"The Georgians may shine at shying the crumpet and the scone,
But as poets they're just No Earthly compared with TENNYSON."
He never got a medal for his exploit, or a star,
And his only decoration was an ugly frontal scar;
But still I hold him highest among heroic men,
This lone Victorian champion in the Georgian lions' den.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "BED, SIR? HERE IS A GENUINE JACOBEAN, FOR WHICH WE ARE
ASKING ONLY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY GUINEAS."
"WELL, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH I WASN'T WANTING TO _BUY_ ONE. BUT I CAN'T GET
A BED ANYWHERE IN LONDON, AND I WAS JUST WONDERING IF YOU COULD LET ME
SLEEP IN IT TO-NIGHT."]
* * * * *
DOMESTIC STRATEGY.
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