HERBERTISMS !

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 245, 16 October 1925, Page 3

HERBERTISMS !

MR. PUNCH'S REPRESENTATIVE. "Mr. Punch," of London, has as a representative with the Empire Press Delegation a chip of the old block in Mr. Alan Patrick Herbert, one of the youngest members of the staff, yet one of the most famous. As he has journeyed round Australia he has dropped some choice pearls of wit and humour, some of which have been recovered. Here are some of them: — "There is more joy in Fleet Street over one lover who cuts his sweetheart's throat than over 90 just men who live happily ever afterwards." '•Israel Zangwill once told mc that the essence of humour is surprise. That is why people laugh when they see a joke in 'London Punch.' " "As I was swirled along on what Queenslanders quaintly called roads, or bumped over what they optimistically term their permanent way, I sought enlightenment on some unfamiliar bird or beast, or flower, and was invariably told, 'Oh that is a pest—it comes from England.' " "The Psalmist said, 'Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' In Fleet Street they knew very well that joy might last a night, but a murder would last a fortnight." "The weekly cabinet meeting called by Mr. Punch to decide what the cartoon shall be is the most solemn affair in Great Britain." "In making a speech at a University welcome I felt like that famous Duke of Devonshire who had a horrible dream that he was making a speeeli in the House of Lords and woke up to find that he was really doing so." "Nothing I learnt at Oxford has been of the smallest practical use to mc. I learnt Socialism in my first term and grew out of it in my second. I learnt to smoke a pipe and play cards, and have been diligently practising these exercises ever since." "I lived with an Australian in a dugout on Gallipoli for a long time, and we spent happy days in the mud there educating each other."' "All over the world this Empire Press Delegation has been wandering, frightening Nature out of her couuses in the most extraordinary way. In the Rocky Mountains rain fell as it never fell before, but not one bear appeared." "My hobby? Just goldfish." Mr. Herbert is of opinion that humour is the same all the world over, and he could not say that Australia has developed any particular kind. He thinks jokes are less restrained than those fin most English journals, and that Australia hits harder at the foibles and follies of persons and* parties, both in leading articles and caricatures. In England there is more solicitude for the feelings.