POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 1, 2 January 1931, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

BY PERCY FLAGE

Chronicle and Comment

Our Jirst good deed for 1931: Undoing the stupid resolutions we mado yesterday. * * * It is true enough, no doubt, as an illustrious hack writer points out, that the Prince of Wales, Mussolini, and Maurice Chevalier are the most talked* of men in the world to-day .'. . but They mal^ a fuss of the Prince and-Muss.» And Maurice with all his funning, That's quite all right, but what about übl Aren't we, too, in the running?

That million dollar debutante party, was a Christmas gesture calculated to supplement nobly, the Hoover campaign for the abatement of the miseries of unemployment. Look at the work it provided.

You can tell these to ladies "as is ladies.'' Suspicious Husband: "Who called this afternoon?" His Better Half: "Only Aunt Sophie." i S.H.: "Well, she loft her pipe." "Do you lovo me, Sadie?" "You know I do, Herman." "Heriftan? My name is Oswald." , "Why, so it is! Forgive me, dark ing, I keep thinking it's Saturday." * * #

An abortive attempt to square th» circle. Mr. Salmon is firmly of the- opinion that the Imperial Conference, just over, has sewed a good purpose. "If it did nothing else," said he, "it gave the Dominion representatives the chance to air their views on Empire trade. ..." The trouble was that they failed te square their-views with Snowden's.

Frailties of the great. A memorial to Warren G. Harding, President of the United States, concerning the circumstances of whosa death in 1923 amazing allegations hava been made, awaits dedication in Marion, i Ohio, his home town. It cost £.160,000, ' but no one eau. be found who will undertake the ceremony. In our posthumous case, we are afraid it will be the raising of the £160,000 that /Will tie up things a bit.

After this one, supplied to the "Daily; Telegraph" (Eng.) by a correspondent, we propose to do some browsing among our own elderly headstones. "Hero (begins the correspondent) is the inscription on a tombstone the inhabitants of Crayford raised to a 'pious and imrthfulman': Peter Isnell, for thirty years clerk of the parish, who died on his way to assist at a wedding in 1811." » The Life-of this Clerk was 'just threescore and ten. Nearly half of which time he had sung out Amen. In his Youth ho was married like other young men, But his Wife died one day, so he ehaunted Amen; A second he took, sho departed, what then'? He married and buried a third with.' Amen. Thus his joys and his sorrows were | Treble, but then His Voice was deep Bass as he sung1 out Amen. - ' v On the Horn he could blow as weJI a* most men, So his Horn was exalted in blowing Amen. But he lost all his Wind after threescoro and ten, And here with three Wives he wait* till again The Trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.

This is how it appealed to us at the moment the Old Year fled via tha tradesmen's entrance and his successor; came fluttering eurhythmically up the piazza:— We said "Good Day "in the usual wayj To the latest son of Time, Who blew along to a merry song On the heels of the midnight chime. The city thrilled as the sirens shrilled To the stars and the sleek"moon-rovei When we called him in from'the joyfut din To shake hands and look him over. He said "Hello! It is me, you know. I've come as was directed. Do I look like the lad you good folk* - had For some time past experteS?I**1 ** He was tall and slim, and the youth a£ him, As he stood there by the gateway, >• A trifle shy, with a laughing eye, . Took hold on the heart-string^ straightway. What has he for us, this stripling thing, For this little land, we wonder? Will he sweep from the skies the cloudi that rise And reveal a bright sun under? It is hard to say from day to day, But experience oft has taught us That at every furn we must work ty earn What each New Year has brought us*

An S.O.S. out of the blue. Dear Percy,— I implore you, as a confidential and sympcithetic friend, to help me. I've just received another bos of cigars from my mother-in-law. Last year she( gave me a Christmas-box of 100 of tha most villainous black species. that I've ever clamped my teeth into, and I've* smoked some corkers—low-grade corle at that, with an alloy of spinach. Yes f Percy, I'm' a well-seasoned stogie* smoker, but that box almost paralysed me. Well, I smoked every jack one' of those foul atrocities without anyj help. I had to, on principle. Now* I've dono my ma-in-law no harm, but I have a suspicion that she (maliciously; and for obsequious reasons) simultaneously ordered with that box the arti« fieial lilies and things. But I fooled her. I stuck to the job' bravely, likq a true Briton, and saw it through* though with each one of those horror* I had to hold on to a rail to steady myself. They seemed to get worse and worse, and when I stoked up on that last black-jack son of a cheroot, we saw no sign of our neighbours for a week., But they all came to. Fortunately, there were no casualties reported, except the asphyxiation of a battalion,' of neighbourhood cats that were indiscreet enough to come snooping around making inquiries, when I first lighted up on that fumigation plant. _ Serve* them right for their vulgar curiosity. And now this new ordeal! Of courss I could work them off on to my busU ness enemies, or the tax and debt-col-lectors, but that would offend the ten-der-hearted -wife. Oh! what shall I do? Percy, save me from this ignobly fate, I bfseech you! ■ Tours smoulderingly, OZZT. Remove tho strident bands, repacK the cigars, well camouflaged, post tfi your father-in-law —and prepare suit' ably to "say it with flowers." Either that, or send the deadly things to tli« Old Men's Home as the latest in frai lighters.