POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 35, 11 February 1936, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGJB

All too frequently the pipe of peaca is used to lay, down a smoke screen. id » « * '" It was inevitable that some interest- ® ed sections would go crusty over tha new bread situation. is "' ■ * . ■ * ta Belgium must be about as happy as w a man whose neighbour has a mad bull l e tethered on his back lawn. as • • * # ie "Delirious Dan."—Every day I read and scan the Far East dispatches to is see if the dogs of war have had any c- further puppets. 3** * ■ ' The rubbish that disfigures some 24 holiday camping grounds is nothing to [d the litter our lady Irish terrier left in in the linen cupboard. a RHETORICAL NOTE, st Dear Flage,—The utterances of ft il- highly-placed political personage hay« as caused a lot of comment for some time ■t- past. Now there was an ancient comic song that enjoyed great popularity ->s about forty years since, of which the a- refrain was, "It's not exactly wot 'c ty sez, but the nasty way 'c sez it." 1 ie mention this, as it seems to clarify; id the situation a bit.—Sincerely yours, "d UPSON DOWNES O'FLYFFE THIS ENGLAND. .. "Daily Mirror": -The bows of.tha Napier Star had ripped through tha bows of the Laurentic just beneath one of the anchors. ... Three men were found dead in their bunks, three others were missing, their bodies hidden amongst the tangled mass of debris. . . . How near disaster came to catastrophe was also evident. Had the Napier Star struck twenty yards further astern, she would have cut clean into the first-class state* y rooms.' )f The "Star": Chatsworth without the 1S Duchess of Devonshire would still be .„ beautiful, but I do not stand alone in ' believing that the trees would hold their heads less high and the' flowert d lose something of their radiance. Ie * * * INQUIRY DEPARTMENT. '° "23/167."—According to the author!. -° tative Ernest Weekley, the term 1 "blighty" is derived, from the Hindusd tant "bilayti" ■ from Arabic "wilayat," ■S meaning inhabited, country, dominion, . but, in Hindustani, especially foreign l ~ country, and applied by soldiers to :0- England, home. The German equivaie lent of "a blighty," a hurt that meant a return to England, was "heimatsschuss," home-shot. 0 "Wager" (Levin). —You lose. Mad- ' ame Tussaud's waxworks show was de- . stroyed .by fire in 1925. Many of the k valuable moulds were saved, • and the , new "Madame Tussaud's" rose phoenix~L like from the ashes in 1928. This great^collection was first opened in the • Strand in 1802. It is now stationed in Marylebone Road. , Ellice Andrews.—(l) We haven't the time to spare for such an investigation. (2) Suggest the Parliamentary; (t Library. , PARODY. The art of parody is a comparatively recent growth. Sir John Squire, himself a craftsman of parody in verse, describes the game "as "a not wholly admirable art." Bret Harte, who had a real gift for writing humorous verse, parodied Poe's poem, "Ulalume," with skill and gusto. The following is th« first verse of the poem and the first stanza of Harte's parody of it:— The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere, The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was'hard by the dim lake of Auber, • In the misty mid region of Weir, It was down by the dark tarn of Auber, In the ghost-haunted woodland' of. Weir. The skies they were ashen and sober, The streets they were dirty" and drear; It was night in the month of October, Of my most immemorial year; Like the skies, I was perfectly sober, As I stopped at the mansion of Shear, At the Nightingale, perfectly sober, And the willowy woodland, down here. The closing verses of this skilful parody are as follows:— ' But Mary, uplifting her finger, Said, "Sadly this bar I mistrust, I fear that this bar does not trust. O hasten! O let us not linger! O fly, let us fly, ere we must!" In terror she cried, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust, Till it sorrowfully trailed in the dust. Then I .pacified Mary and kissed her, And tempted her into the room, And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of the vista, But were stopped by the warning of doom— By some words that were warning of doom. And I said, "What is written, sweet sister At the opposite end of the room?" She sobbed as she answered, "All liquors Must be paid for ere leaving th« room." Good fun, don't you think? * * » TROUBLE BREWIN'. I'm peevish when I work overtime till 6.30. It seems to me then that all the places I might have gone to before 6 lack lustre. I feel a sort of an uplift, sort of a—well—thank—God—-I'm —not —like—other—men. That feeling persists until I knock off at 4.30 sometimes and meet "Poy"—but that's another story. However, on the 6.5 p.m. car to Miramar last week I met a bloke—when I say met I mean that he met me—with a parcel of "riggers" in the slats (my slats). Then he sat down. "Trouble brewin'," he said (twice). I didn't take much notice, being peeved. I hate the odour of beer (on someone else), also reiteration. Again he said: "Trouble brewin'." He sounded mournful, and his voice did not belie him. Tall, withered, blue eyes, a long moustache that grew in places like weeds in a ditch, by specks of sawdust, and a dab of concrete behind the left ear, I deduced that he was not a teller in the Reserve Bank. However, to cheer him, 1 mentioned that— 1. Mussolini had not yet beaten the Abos. 2. Anthony Eden would watch our interests at Geneva. And, thirdly, was just getting into • my stride with references to Danzig and the Polish Corridor when he interrupted: I "You got me wrong, boy. You got me wrong. Listen. I 'ad ten gallons of the best 'ome brew in the copper, when the missus's mother comes out to give an 'elp with the washin'. Did she 'elp? Dumped all the dirty duds into mo brew!" So I sez: "There's trouble brewin'." He goes off. BINDY. P.S.—I concurred. •