Suggestion for developing a "White Hope" amongst our 'bus- and taxi-drivers.
Where Oriental calm derides
Our Occidental stress
And Ninety-seven E. collides
With Five-and-twenty S.,
You'll find a product of the West,
A Bachelor of Arts,
Who blends a mind of youthful zest
With patriarchal parts.
Each morning mid his rubber trees
He rides an ancient hack,
A cassock girt above his knees,
A topee tilted back.
Now reining in his steed to preach
A parable on sap,
Now vaulting from his seat to teach
The proper way to tap.
His swart disciples knit their brows
O'er algebraic signs;
They build their byres, they milk their cows
On scientific lines.
They use his microscope and gaze
On strange bacterial risks;
They tune their daily hymns of praise
To gramophonic discs.
And every evening after grace,
When converts clear the cloth,
He pins an orchid to its place
Or camphorates a moth.
Out of the world his path may run,
Yet still in worldly wise
He'll talk of feats with rod or gun,
A twinkle in his eyes,
And tell of tiger-stalking nights,
Of mornings with the snipe,
With never a pause save when he lights
An antiquated pipe.
We others earn our pensioned ease,
The furlough of our kind;
We book our berths, we cross the seas,
But he shall stay behind,
Plodding his round of feast and fast,
Dreaming the dreams of yore,
Of England as he saw her last
In 1884.
More Impending Apologies.
I.
"GREAT GALA NIGHT
WHEN
JOSEPHINE DAVID
will bid 'Au Revoir' to Bombay
By Special Request."Bombay Chronicle.
II.
"At the hour of six the Rev. S. F. Collier gave out the only possible hymn—
'And are we get alive
And see each other's face!'"Yorkshire Post
The supper-room was so full that I quite expected to find that, since I was so late, the harassed head-waiter had taken the liberty of presuming my death and letting someone else have my table; but there it was, empty and ready for me. I sank into a chair with a feeling of relief and, having ordered something to eat, began to examine the room. There was not a spare place; everyone was eating and talking and unusual excitement was in the air. From my remote corner I could not catch any words, but the odd thing was that at every table one at least of the men, who were all in evening-dress, was waving his arms. Now and then a man would stand up to do this better. It was as though they were all deaf and dumb, or cinema actors.
The next day at lunch I had a similar experience. I patronized another restaurant, which seemed to be equally popular, and again every man was gesticulating in a style totally foreign to the staid apathetic Londoner. What could it mean? What was the reason?
I asked the waiter. He laughed. "Ah," he said, "I have notice it too. It is funny, is it not? Zey all show each other how Carpentier won on ze foul."
