TALES OF LONDON LIFE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17229, 21 December 1923, Page 5

TALES OF LONDON LIFE

HUMOURIST’S BOOK OF LAUGHTER. Many good sufc :es are told by Mr Pett Ridge in “A Story Teller; Forty Years in London.” Most of the author's best yarns are about London children. Thus : Once a small boy was bolding open the door of a taxi for Mr Pett Ridge when & bigger lad tried to intervene. ‘‘Go awayl** ordered the smaller boy • indignantly. ‘‘Go away, can’t you? I was the one that was asked to get the taxi for the silly old swine.” Then, touching his cap to the author, ** Wasn’t I, sir?” ANNOYING ! A boy approached a musician and asked bun the time. The musician put down his violin case, unbuttoned his overcoat, took out his watch, ajid told bum it was ten minutes to three. ‘Right,” said the boy. “At three O’clock get your hair cut!” A school manager once intervened in a geography lesson. •'You have to be very careful, boys.” be said, “ in regard to words that have an exactly similar sound. For initance. the spine is what most of us Wear do»\n our backs. But Spine, the country in Europe what your teacher has been telling you about.—that is a different affair altogether!” Of the old London busmen Mr Pett Ridge must inevitably tell a story. A •onductor, climbing the bus steps called out, asking if anyone wanted •• Westminister Abbey” (note the •xtra syllable). ‘ I do.” replied a traveller without mo\ing. “ Well,” exclaimed the conductor, “ you’ll really bare to come down for it; I can’t very well fetch it up to you.” The present Bishop of London was once speaking about Bethnal Green •* "When I first went to Bethnal Green,” he. said, ‘‘the neighbourhood was a sink, a ir.orass, a whirlpool of iniquity. When I left it, after some years of determined labour, it was God’s own fair garden.’’ A listener, seated next to the rector of Bethnal Green, asked whether this was a true description.

“It wasn’t,” answered the rector, *' when I left there at half-past eleven this morning.” Sir W. 8- Gilbert once described an actor who persisted in boisterous merriment over everything as follows: •* He is not quite a gentleman, and he knows it, and he tries to laugh it off.” AN UNPLEASANT FAMILY. Mr Pett Ridge quotes a saying of W. S. Gilbert in reply to an inquiry from a woman, “ Have you seen Irving in ‘Faust’ at the Lyceum ?” “ Madam,” be replied, “I go to the pantomime only at Christmas.” A young couple with one child moved from a house to a flat, and the husband went off on a golfing holiday while the work was being done. At the first dinner given in the new flat, the husband spoke to the guests of the ease with which the transfer had been effe<Hed. *

“No anxiety,” he declared. “ and absolutely no worry of any description. Isn’t that true, my dear?” '* Quite true.* his w ife agreed. “No ■Bore than there was when our little Gladys arrived.” The late Bishop of Carlisle, who had a trick of pronouncing “o” like “ u ” —“I am fond of hut coffee”—was giving advice at a working-girls’ club. ‘ Above all, girls.” be said, “try, by all means lavailable, to cultivate a hubby!”

Booth, the American actor, played in ‘‘King Lear” once in London. When the scene oetween the demented king and his daughter Goneril was ended, a matronly woman in a private box turned to another matronly woman, in the next private box :—-

* Rather,” she said, in tones which could be heard all over the theatre,

‘ rather an unpleasant family, these Lears!”

George Gissing. the novelist, had a deep voice that seemed ill-suited for ordinary remarks. “Do you know,” he would say at the table (and you might think from his tones he was about to submit a profound and well-thought-out argument), “ do you know’. T am half inclined to ask for a second helping of that admirable roast mutton.” JOKING APART At the house of Mrs Barry Pain, the wife of the well-know n author, people viere discussing the behaviour of a poetess who, after leaving husband Number One for husband Number Two, bad now eloped with a raau who came third in order of succession. Mrs Barry Pain was asked to give her views. “I never judge,” she answered, “by disappearances!” A lugubrious ok’ gentleman, giving an after-dinner speech, said he had reached the allotted span of life. “ Ere long,” he went on, heavily and tremulously, “ I shall be called upon to join the great majority, and 1 shall be forgotten by all who have held ray trustful and earnest affection. But.” —with an leflort—“putting all joking on one side ” Max O’Rell. while on a lecture tour in New South "Wales, referred to the old transportation days. when the principal export of Great Britain was convicts. In proposing the health of the Mayor, in the chair, the lecturer, in light-hearted vein, endeavoured to connect this with the subject of his toast. “I am positive that you. Mr Mayor.” he said, “enjoy liberty as few others have done. To you, when vnu send your mind back and think of the long period when freedom was denied to you ” and so on. HURT HIS FEELINGS. The speech did not go well. The Mayor did not acknowledge the address. In due course the humorist, found that he had lot his fancy caper about a man who had. in the past, endured three years’ imprisonment for errors in his behaviour! William Willis, Q.C., tm a Baptist and teetotaller. He lived near Lee Green and always chattered to every passenger in the little omnibus which ran from Black heath ‘‘You won’t forget, conductor,” said Willi* one night, breaking off in the middle of a. persistent conversation. "to put me down at the Tiger’s Read ” “Oh. mv good man," said a. per-turbed-looking woman to the eminent lawyer and strict Nonconformist, “don’t yon think von have had quite enough already?”

In the annals of English criminal law, there i* no more sensational storv than the conviction of John Lee fr%r the murder of Miss a wealthy maiden ladv living a* Torquay in Devonshire Three times John Lee was led to the scaffold hut. three times the mechanism failed to act. and his death sentence was commuted to life aervotude. This remarkable story is told in a motion picture entitled “ The Life Story of John Lee," or “ The Mau