Tf J, B, M, had only taken it and himself seriously, this achievement would have a place of honour in "Wheels" and half a dozen other anthologies, as well as in a number of the oneer periodicals that play hide-and-seek with their readers (if any). However, even the most impudent experimentalists have sufficient sense of humour to see the deadly criticism inherent in such skits as "The Soul's Questioning A little hour and man's most fitful fever Ta but a gossip for the springing worms, Death will take toll most certainly, most surely, Whether by battle, sudden death, or germs, And, again, here are two stanzas from "War," which might be a blood-red ululation from one of the young hyenas of the "Daily Herald Flash, crump, crater, and, borg, Blood, guts, bodies, and. brains, That's the way we do it," For he's jolly good fellow. At homo they smoke coronas, And applaud leering girls. And ogle twice a night.
God! If I had a four-point-five!
The author proclaims himself, in other respects than modesty "a confirmed, unrepentant Victorian," and he credits the mid-Victorian girls with "a deliciously fresh, flower like look which is wholly lacking in their sisters of to-day." He will not have it that there has been an advance in women's intelligence since the eighties, when imbecility, whether real or simulated, had not come into fashion." Perhaps something depends upon the class with which the comparisons are made, That the Victorian woman was no helpless creature might be inferred from the story of how the author's mother, having to dress her girls for a dance suddenly announced by Queen Victoria, and being several days' distance from shops, took down the muslin curtains and had them converted into effective ball dresses, with rowan berries for decoration.
The humours of Victorianiem, however, are not lost upon its devotee "Emery is reading to me out of a 00d book."
"Ard do you like it, dear??? ""Very much, indeed."?
"What ix Emery reading to you about? Ts it about Heaven?"
No, it's about ell."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.