Vanity Fair (UK), November 10, 1904
[See attribution note on Vanity Fair menu page]
 

In the Stocks.
 

MUCH as we may deplore the sanguinary contest between Russia and Japan, it cannot be denied that the cloud has a very large size in silver linings. An expert states that, as a consequence of the fighting, the sale of gramophones has fallen off 70 per cent.

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Ever since Solomon made his famous observation about the Bohemian methods of the fowls of the air as regarded costume, birds have taken very little trouble about how they might look. Man has at last stepped in to remedy their sartorial deficiencies. A Sydenham enthusiast, by profession a bird-catcher, was fined the other day for making rooks and jackdaws wear “braces to improve the plumage.” If this sort of thing goes on, we shall have them wearing trouser-presses in order to get a crease down the leg.

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Standing in a dogcart, with an umbrella up to keep off the rain, a Californian clergyman has performed the marriage service at Los Angeles. It was late in the evening, and the doomed couple held candles by which the clergyman might see to read. The sinister determination of people to get married in face of all obstacles is calculated to bring tears to the eyes of the hardened bachelor.

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A genius of Oneida, New York, has invented a mechanical shaving chair, in which the customer has only to sit and put a penny in the slot to get a clean shave. The manner in which the chair goes on shaving in its stolid, imperturbable way, regardless of the shrieks of its scraped victim, causes great amusement among the onlookers who have been through it themselves.

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Stories of animal intelligence are like some infectious disease. First America had it, then England went one better, and now France has plunged into the struggle with the customary enthusiasm of the Gaul. A cat belonging to a gentleman at Havre is the hero of the story. Aroused one day by the sound of violent scratching on his door, this man went out just in time to catch a thief appropriating his overcoat. The cat had had its eye on him, and had given the warning. Germany’s contribution to this international struggle is expected next week.

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A PROTEST.

(Kleptomania is largely on the increase amongst women.—Daily Paper.)

Phyllis, your eyes are remarkably bright,
 And their colour an absolute dream.
But they shine with a strangely unscrupulous light,
 With a weird, kleptomaniac gleam.
I scorn to expostulate, carp, or repine,
 I don’t for a moment complain;
But they ought to be gazing, I feel, into mine,
 And they’re fixed on my watch and my chain.

Your hands are a theme for a laureate’s song,
 Their beauty no blemishes mar;
But your fingers, I note, are uncommonly long
 Shall I live to regret that they are?
When I grasp that right hand, which I’ve striven to win,
 To take you for better or worse,
Shall I feel that the left is abstracting my pin,
 Or groping about for my purse?

Forego, I implore, your nefarious skill;
 Turn over, I beg, a new leaf.
It’s pleasant to feel that you’re clever, but still,
 One shuns e’en the cleverest thief.
Many, indeed, are the treasures I own,
 With which I’m not anxious to part;
Pray leave all my property strictly alone,
 Content to have stolen my heart.

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In the course of a case in which an organ-grinder claimed damages from a tradesman whose cart had run into and upset his lethal machine, it was stated that there are 14,500 pins in each barrel-organ, and that when it is turned over they are mixed up together and cannot be straightened, and the sinister instrument is thus promptly put out of business. This is worth knowing.

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“We are happy,” says the Svet, of St. Petersburg, “in the knowledge that having once drawn the sword, Russia will not sheathe it until Japan is finally defeated, and England deprived of the possibility of being a menace to us. The spirit of Japan is crushed, and therefore Japan’s fate is sealed.” So that’s all right. But it will be a painful business breaking the news to the Japanese, who at present do not know the Whole Truth.

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The decision in the case of Mr. W. W. Read, whose discharge, applied for at the Bankruptcy Court, was suspended for three years:—“Not out”—of his troubles.

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.