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Punch, or the London Charivari
Volume 150, May 24, 1916

CHARIVARIA.

According to a contemporary, aregiment quartered at Pembroke Dockyardhad lost two thousand blankets"by pilfering." We shudder to thinkwhat a real Pembroke burglar wouldget away with.

"I am a looker for things," said aman at Willesden tribunal last weekwhen asked what his occupation was.The nation, which is paying £5,000,000a day for the privilege of pursuing thesame occupation, would be interestedto compare notes with him on thequestion of whether anything everturns up.

"A Saxon pot, quite perfect, hasbeen found at St. Martha'sHill, near Guildford," saysa morning paper. Here isstriking evidence in supportof the charge, whichhas more than once beenlevelled, that influentialalien enemies are still atlarge with the connivanceof the authorities.

First Public School Man. "Great Scott, Reggie! How on earth did you get that job?"

Second ditto (kitchen fatigue). "Oh, influence, dear boy—influence."

"The life-blood of Englandto-day is sulphuricacid," said a Professor atUniversity College theother day. That is certainlythe impression onegets from reading themore vitriolic section ofour Press.

The London CountyCouncil is teaching Esperanto.The innovation isintended to meet the needs of thelady tram-conductors, to whom conventiondenies the right to "sufferand be strong" in words of generalcurrency.

A soldier who lost his speech at thebattle of Loos has recovered it as theresult of an operation for appendicitis.He has the added satisfaction of knowingthat greater soldiers than he havebeen compelled by the exigencies of thepresent War to swallow their words.

At Willesden a conscientious objectorhas eaten a £1 note in preference togiving it up in part payment of his fineof forty shillings. It would probablywork out cheaper in the end to swallowthe Compulsion Bill.

While the Ealing Inspector of Shopsis serving in the Army his official dutiesare to be carried on by his wife. It isno doubt in anticipation of other positionsof this sort being thrown open tothe female sex that so many womencan nowadays be seen familiarisingthemselves with this class of war workin Regent Street and its neighbourhood.

In a recent appeal case a man who hadreceived sentences amounting to twenty-sixyears begged to be put under chloroform,as he had heard that people underthe influence of this drug always toldthe truth when they were asked questions.As a fact, however, the most thatthe medical profession have ever claimedfor it in this way is that it often enablesthem to get a little inside information.

A Belfast man who was fined forgroaning at Mr. Asquith is understoodto have informed a sympathetic friendthat if he'd known that ten shillingswas all he would be fined, begorra, he'dhave had thirty-shillings' worth, so hewould.

"To get and keep an upright carriage,"says a woman-writer in TheDaily Mail