Vanity Fair (UK), August 4, 1904
[See attribution note on Vanity Fair menu page]
 

In the Stocks.
 

SPECIAL trains are leaving St. Petersburg for the Far East carrying torpedo boats. A wise move. Russia at last realises that her ships are far safer on land than on the water.

•   •   •   •   •

Iced drinks, according to a medical paper, are a snare. We have known one to be a gin.

•   •   •   •   •

Being in want of funds for church expenses, the pastor of a Milwaukee Congregational chapel has let advertising spaces in the building to business men. Two merchants, says the Express, have paid to have their names in asphalt in front of the church; and it is understood that the undertaker of the town has offered to pay handsomely if a summary of the advantages offered by his establishment is worked into the hymn, “Brief life is here our portion.”

•   •   •   •   •

The Alake of Abeokuta has returned to Lagos. The people, says the report, with whom the police were quite unable to cope, pressed so closely round him that he was in danger of being crushed. He confided later to an interviewer that it reminded him of dear old Aberdeen and the ripping time he had with those jolly students. After which he smoothed out the dent in his hat, borrowed a pin or two, and limped into the public hall.

•   •   •   •   •

The force of bad example is notorious. With the Chicago meat crisis engaging public attention, we find in our daily paper the headline—”Japan Strikes.”

•   •   •   •   •

Bank-Holiday.

(A Reminiscence.)


The sun might shine on Hampstead Heath, its rays might fall on Kew,
The sands might scorch on Margate shore, as they are wont to do,
The fare (return) might be reduced to less than half-a-crown;
No briny air or moderate fare could lure me out of town.

For other ears did ’Arry play “Bedelia” on the sands,
And others passed the afternoon entranced by German bands,
For others’ eyes did ’Arriet flaunt her special summer gown;
No latest styles could woo my smiles, for I remained in town.

And when excursion trains returned, invariably late,
And each compartment held a score above its legal freight,
And every face, once wreathed in smiles, was darkened by a frown;
Then I was glad that I had had the sense to stay in town.

•   •   •   •   •

One is accustomed to look on the King as immune from those attempts on his personal safety to which long usage has accustomed the Czar and other potentates; yet at Goodwood last Wednesday a troupe of minstrels attacked him so strenuously with “Bedelia” that for a time he was in the utmost danger. Fortunately he escaped with a slight headache. It seems that the miscreants rendered the song from beginning to end four times. At the end of the fourth round, says one who was present, the only smile was on the face of the Duke of Sparta. The powers of endurance of the Spartans are justly proverbial.

•   •   •   •   •

In a paper read before the Sanitary Congress in Glasgow, the medical officer of health of that city said that the height and weight of school children increased with the size of the houses in which they lived. This idea of the house and the child growing up and expanding together, is not only pretty, but shows how greatly the science of architecture has advanced in recent years. India-rubber villas were unknown a decade ago.

•   •   •   •   •

“May I request you,” wrote a Babu to a Madras paper the other day, “to publish in your daily issue a tiger of extraordinary size, shot on May 12th?” The editor, we imagine, presented his compliments, and regretted that owing to want of space he was unable to avail himself of the contribution, for the kind offer of which he was much obliged.

•   •   •   •   •

Seeking for argument to support an attack on woman, a correspondent of a contemporary found what he thought was a suitable one in the Book of Job, and produced it in triumph. Next day another correspondent pointed out that, owing to a slight technical error, the argument was not so convincing as it might otherwise have been. It seems that the prophet’s remark was not about women at all, but about ostriches. These mistakes will occur.

Rasper. 


 

Printed unsigned in Vanity Fair; entered by Wodehouse as “In the Stocks” for this date in Money Received for Literary Work. It is possible that not all individual items are by Wodehouse.

 

Note:
For more on “Bedelia” see the notes to an untitled parody lyric to Bedelia.