Youna Sammy, poorly clad, had been provided with a new pair of boots by the kind Jewish family which had received the little refugee.
His host gave him a little advice on wear a tear. "Try climbing the stairs two at a time, he said. "Your new boots will last longer."
Sammy anxious to please, ran up the stairs three at a time, "See what I mean?" asked the delighted foster father.
"Yes," replied little Sammy, "it certainly saves shoe leather, but look—"
And, turning round, he revealed a long split in the' seam of his trousers, Drama in Five Shots Reports from Helsinki state that Russian prisoners are ill-fed, bedly-clothed and "'characleristically dejected."
The scene is the Russian front line ju the Arctic twilight. A lieutenant and four soldiers stare gloomily at the wastes of snow.
Ist Soldier It is very cold.
Yes, It is very cold.
It is very dark, too.
Yes, it is very dark, too.
Ist Soldier: What are we fighting for?
Lieutenant: If you ask that question again, Ivan Ivanovitch, I shall be obliged to shoot you.
2nd Soldier: We are fighting to save our beloved: Fatherland from the aggression of the imperialistic and rapacious Finns. The captain told me that.
3rd Soldier: It is very cold, anyway.
4th Soldier: Yes, it is very cold. lst Soldier: I want to go to Moscow.
Lieutenant: If you say that again, Ivan Ivanovitch, I shall be obliged to shoot you. Ist Soldier Can't I say anything without being I like the Finns, anyway.
3rd Soldier: Yes. I like the Finns, too.
4th Soldier: Little Father Stalin said that all men are brothers.
Lieutenant: If you say things like that T shall be obliged to shoot the lot of you.
1st Soldier: I want to go to Moscow.
Lieutenant (rising and drawing revolver)
sorry, Ivan Ivanovitch Ist Soldier: It's all right. I was just going to ^it myself. D (Lieutenant shoots 1st soldier.) 2nd Soldier: I want to go to Moscow, too:
(Lieutenant shoots 2nd soldier.) Lieutenant: Does anybody else want to go to "Moscow 3rd Soldier: I would prefer Pinsk. I live there.
Lieutenant: It makes no difference.
(Shoots 3rd soldier.)
Lieutenant (to 4th Soldier): And where do you want to go?
4th Soldier: Moscow. i (Lieutenant shoots 4th soldier.) Lieutenant: I also want to go to Moscow. (Shoots himself.)
8 Literary Notes I sam, writes a British humourist, to Dumb Dora the other day, "By the way, Ducks, do you read Shakespeare at all?"
"Of course I do," she said. "I'm crazy about him. And I've got a standing order with my twopenny library to send me any new book of his as soon as it's published.
Which reminds me about the poet who proposed to a girl.
She rejected him, so he threw himself into the wastepaper basket.
Once he called at the office of a certain magazine and asked the bloke at the door, "Is the editor in"
"I'm sorry," he said, "but he's out."
"Oh, well, just chuck this poem into the wastepaper basket for him, please."
I know a couple of writer chaps. One of them said to me yesterday, "I've just finished writing a very modern novel."
"Oh," I said, "and does the heroine marry the hero?"
"She certainly does," he told me.
"A different one in each chapter The other writer bloke tries to write plays. He said to me the other night, "By the way, have you heard of the new play I've written about a man and his wife who're always quarrelling "No." I told him, "but I've heard you and your misses rehearsing it."
An applicant asked the manager of a place for a job, and he said, "Sorry. We're sacking most of our staff."
"Well, couldn't I get the job of sacking them?"
He wouldn't stand for that,-and he told him to go away and not worry him. "I'm a selt-, made man," he said. R A And the applicant said, "That's what comes of employing unskilled labour."
By the way, the wife is a business woman. What business is she interested in?
Well, everybody's.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.