T. W. H. Crosland

“ Fatigue is a good word.
I thank thee, Tsar, for that beautiful word fatigue.
All day Monday I felt so fatigued
That I went and joined a Peace Society.
The Boer war, my dear Tsar,
Is entirely over,
So far as I am concerned;
Henceforth I quarrel with no man.
Fatigue has laid its heavy hand upon me;
I am too much fatigued to quarrel even with the partner of my joys and sorrows. ”

“ So that on the whole I repeat that, in my humble opinion,
If you want to find
Really sound, white men,
Men of spotless character and impregnable probity,
You cannot do better
Than wend your way to Gorgonzola Hall.
And joking apart, my dear Stock Exchange,
You really are a blessing.
If it were not for you
People with a lot of money,
And people with only a little,
Would simply not lose it. ”

“ For years past, Glasgow has stood in the forefront
As a city given over to the small-pox
And magisterial reform.
It is, I believe,
An exceedingly well-managed city:
In fact, it appears to be managed
Out of all reasonable existence;
Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass
That it was lately visited
By a smart sample of the plague.
I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships
Are sincere and clean-thinking men.
I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,
Out of sheer public spirit
And with a view to bettering the condition
Of the city over which you preside. ”

“ Both in Birmingham and abroad.
As to the happenings in Birmingham,
Nobody cares tuppence for them.
The happenings abroad, however, are a different matter,
Inasmuch as they have brought you great fame,
And cost us a lot of money.
Your influence in the governance of this great country, my dear Mr. Chamberlain,
Is undoubted.
When you say things,
It is understood that all your fellow-ministers
Sit up and look good.
"We don't like it," they say in their decent hearts;
"But Joseph says it must be so, and be so it must." ”

“ Of our great nation.
It is like this:
The Bulldog is not too beautiful,
Neither is our great nation;
But he frightens people—
So do we;
He is tenacious
And magnanimous—
Which is just our game;
He fears no foe in shining armour,
Or any other sort of armour—
That is precisely our case;
And he is kept by Lord Charles Beresford,
The Duke of Manchester,
And Mr. G. R. Sims—
Three eminently typical Britons.
In short,
The genius of the British nation,
My dear Brindle,
Is not a policeman
But a Bulldog. ”

“ Into the Edgware Road, and so to the Marble Arch;
Time, at the outside, 15 min.
I am willing to admit
That we went down certain streets quite rapidly,
What time the policemen at odd corners stared stupidly,
And fumbled for their note-books.
But, as a result of that trip, my dear sir,
I have become an enthusiastic motorist.
I am convinced that speed and wind and the smell of petroleum mixed
Is the only thing which can be considered worth living for. ”

“ And, so far as you are concerned,
Mr.
Rudyard
Kipling
May
Be
Blowed!
All the same, I assure you
As an old muddifier
That there is a great deal in what the gentleman says.
To a delicate age,
Rifle practice presents many attractions:
To shoot out of a No. 1 rifle
At a choice array of clay pipes, dancing globules, and cardboard rabbits
Is on the face of it
A gentleman's job:
You can do it with your hair parted:
And providing you don't get betting drinks
That you will ring the bell every time,
It doesn't cost much. ”

“ Are so easy to imitate;
Diplomats, Members of Parliament, publishers' assistants,
Cabmen, poets, peers of the realm,
Nay, even the very crowned heads of Europe,
Have, at time and time,
Been consumed with a desire to do them for me;
Because, as I have said,
It is so easy.
Well, my dear little Prince,
Let us draw our moral.
The easy thing is not always the wisest thing. ”

“ The policeman roars out name of leading constituent.
Leading constituent departed in a huff twenty minutes ago,
Because he thought you were not attending to him.
There being no answer,
Policeman roars out name of leading constituent once more.
Name echoes along Lords' Lobby;
But not being there, leading constituent fails to come forward.
You look embarrassed, turn tail, retire to your back bench,
And feel deucedly uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. ”

“ That it is not half so bad as I can make them
When I try.
To come now to the region
Of practical politics,
Let me explain to you right off
That, despite all that has been said against you
By people who are mad about the Land
And the Game-laws,
And the feathered kingdom
And so forth,
I,
Who am always on the side of wisdom,
Have discovered a justification for you. ”

“ And do not tremble so!
We are all glad to see you going up Fleet Street,
We are all glad to see you going home the other way;
And we shall be equally glad to see your successor
Getting through the same flowerful day's work
Next year.
Goodbye, my dear Lord Mayor!
And
Hooray?
TO THE MOTORIST My dear Sir,—
When men have nightmares, they dream about you.
I myself have been chased over the tops of pinnacles
By flaming-eyed Panhards and Durkopps
In my sleep. ”

“ You are always of such parties,
You are always sitting
On other people's thymy banks,
And saying, "Why did So-and-so so-and-so?"
And depleting village public-houses of good beer,
And turning whole village populations into caddies,
And dotting the landscape with your red coats,
And generally appropriating the fair face of Nature. ”

“ Has cost more than the price of a row of houses,
And that it is my duty, as a full-blooded patriot,
To pay, and pay cheerfully;
And particularly so
Since it is not due for a month or so.
Ah, my dear Chancellor,
Who fears Black Michael
Must himself be black.
They call you Black because you want a lot of money ”

“ That the spectacle of an affable motorist
Bowling through a Surrey village
To the tune of six miles an hour
Shocks ther imagination,
And they believe for the rest of their natural lives
That the affable motorist aforesaid
Must have been travelling
At the rate of anything from 60 to 600 miles per minute.
Hence, my dear motorist,
It comes to pass that you are afforded so many opportunities
For airing your eloquence and the fatness of your purse
Before the police magistrates. ”

“ The young folks,
The postman,
The dustman
(No connection with the scavengers) ,
And the turncock.
We had a merry day.
Half the world pretended to be happy,
The other half pretended to be bored.
The festivities, I understand,
Are still being kept up.
There is a ping-pong tournament at the Queen's Hall
And a children's banquet
At the Guildhall on Tuesday evening;
Not to mention Mr. Dan Leno at Drury Lane
And Mr. De Wet at the Tweefontein.
It is all very cheerful
And very inspiriting. ”

“ In congratulating Miss So-and-So on her approaching marriage;
Also, that Everybody is in the Highlands,
That Everybody anticipates a good season,
That Everybody keeps a houseboat,
That Everybody sups at the Carlton after the theatre,
That Everybody recognises in Lord Salisbury a great statesman,
That Everybody plays golf,
That Everybody who can afford it dresses well,
That Everybody knows the King has tact,
That Everybody thinks the Queen grows younger as she grows older,
That Everybody hopes Sir Thomas Lipton
Will win the America Cup,
And so on. ”

“ On the tops of Atlas 'buses, and all other 'buses,
At the dining-tables of hotels at all prices,
At all theatres,
At all music-halls,
At all art galleries,
At all "evenings,"
At all social functions
Metropolitan in their nature
You, my dear Sir or Madam
(As the case may be) ,
Flourish and are to the fore,
There are people in the world
Who can pick you out at a glance. ”

“ It is a great game:
The people who play it are not the fault of the game.
It is also a good game.
If I am not mistaken,
It is a game that originally came out of Scotland;
Therefore it must be a good game.
For everything that comes out of Scotland is good,
Even the Scot.
And golf being a great and good game
I do not see any tremendous reason
Why you, my dear Common Golfer,
Should not engage in it if you so choose. ”

“ Your rapacity
Matters not so much to me
As to yourself.
People come once to your establishment,
They read your bill,
Pay your prices
And tip your dirty-shirted waiters,
And go away
And forget to come back. ”

“ I said, "Quite so;
But don't you think it is rather
Fortunate that Everybody is out of town?
And the pretty lady answered and said,
"No."
I conclude, therefore,
That you, Everybody,
Must, on the whole, be rather nice.
I hope you are;
For Everybody should be rather nice,
Should they not? ”

“ On Sunday afternoons
(On the afternoon of the Sabbath, as they would say in Birmingham) ,
You do so entirely without my approval.
I think it is scandalous, and, not being a politician,
I have no hesitation in saying what I think.
Somehow, while I know you to be a competent man of business,
You never figure in my mind's eye, Joseph,
As the sort of man who ought to have
Personal communication with his Sovereign,
Particularly on Sunday afternoons.
Birmingham men were not born to grace the Court ”

“ And contracted a stubborn cardiac hypertrophy
Which is even yet with me.
For nigh twenty years, however,
I have never, to my knowledge,
Taken part in a football match;
And, in spite of Mr. Kipling,
I do not propose to indulge again
In either Rugby or the other thing.
Youth loves to be muddied;
In old age one flings one's mud at other people. ”

“ We all like you,
Whether we be Catholics or Protestants or Jews or Gentiles or members of the Playgoers' Club;
And we all see you, in our minds' eye,
Seated benevolently upon your throne
Giving people blessings ”

“ No policeman of my acquaintance would be able to catch you,
Hence you would never be fined.
I have been out of sympathy with motor cars
Right up to the other night.
The other night I had the felicity to take a small trip on one.
The motorist would fain have driven me to my house,
Which is half an hour's cab drive from Charing Cross.
He offered to do the distance in ten minutes
And started stirring up his petroleum,
But I said "No. Let us go to the Marble Arch." ”

“ Will no doubt make a soldier and a gentleman of you,
And teach you to fear no Boer in shining armour.
These are points worth considering.
Also, the game does not hurt.
You need no lemon to help you through with it,
You run no risk of dislocation, fracture, hypertrophy, gouged eye, or broken neck,
You are on velvet all the time. ”

“ A man cannot marry
His deceased wife's sister
Until she is dead.
(By "she" of course I mean the man's wife.)
The bishops declare
That he cannot marry her anyhow
(By "he" I mean the man,
And by "her" of course
The bishops mean
The man's deceased wife's sister.
I desire to be explicit on these points
In order that we may avoid
Ambiguity.)
Well, my dear deceased wife's sister
(Always remembering that Mrs. —— is still alive) ,
What is your view of matters?
Do you really wish to marry me or not?
Have you any opinions about Lord Hugh Cecil?
If so,
Kindly state them. ”

“ Bar a question or so.
You sit, and sit, and sit through dull debate after dull debate,
And you sigh for the hustings and the brass bands,
And the banquets and the "He's-a-jolly-good-fellow"-s
And wonder how it comes to pass
That you, who were once set down in the Mudsher Mercury
For a blend of Demosthenes and John Bright,
Can never get more than twenty words off the end of your tongue
After "Mr. Speaker, Sir."
Oh! my dear Mr. ”

“ Not to say "recognised,"
By the Crown.
Some of them believe in their hearts
That they ought to have a peerage.
Others desire to be Baronets, Knights, and so forth,
In order that their wives may be called "Lady." ”

“ Has nothing prodigiously unusual about it.
Really and truly,
One is always hearing about you.
One is, believe me.
For example, the paragraph writers assure me
That Everybody is reading
Miss So-and-So's great novel ”