Various

“ ABOUT GOLF.
Golf is obviously the worst game in the world. I doubt indeed whether it is a game at all.
It is played with a ball, about which, though I could say much, I will say little. I will not decide whether it should have a heart of oak or a heart of gold, whether it should go through a 1·6-inch ring or a plate-glass window, whether it should sink like the German Navy or float like the British. Enough, if not too much, has been said about the standard ball. ”

“ I told him that I would appeal direct to the delegates themselves, with whom I had already done some defensive propaganda on my own. He told me it was nothing to do with the delegates; it was the delegates' ladies. Fool that I was, I had never thought of them!
That night I wrote in my diary: "At Geneva there is a mountain. It is called The Salève—a nasty name for a nasty mountain. On Saturday I shall be on the top of it. I always knew that the League of Nations would make trouble." ”

“ Of course, however, Mark does not remain for long in what I might call these dog-days of his young affection; love, strong, passionate and not too slavishly restricted to a single object, soon has his world going round as fast as the most exacting reader could desire. ”

“ Now, quite plainly, the essential idea underlying all games played with a ball, whether a club, stick, mallet, bat or cue be added or no, is that some interference should take place with the enemy's action, some thwarting of his purpose or intent. In Rugby football, to take a case, where no mallet is used, it is permissible to seize an opponent by the whiskers and sling him over your right shoulder, afterwards stamping a few times on his head or his stomach. ”

“ Nothing could be less enticing. Yet inside, I daresay, fortunes are made daily. I noticed no trace of this method at the Advertisers' Exhibition; they might give it a trial.
Now no doubt you fondly think that Bond Street is wholly devoted to luxuries; perhaps you have abandoned your dream of actually buying something in Bond Street? You are wrong. To begin with, there are about ten places where you can buy food, and, though there is no pub. now, there is a café (with a licence) . There are two grocers and a poulterer. There is even a fish-shop—you didn't know that, did you? ”

“ Of that total, nine are places where men can buy things to wear, and ten are places where they can buy things to smoke; I have charitably debited all the cigarette-shops to the men, even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with rose-leaves and violet-petals. But even if I do that and give the men the two places where you can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat shop, we are left with the result:—
From these figures a firm of Manchester actuaries has drawn the startling conclusion that Bond Street is more used by women than by men. ”

“ Friday, December 10th.—With the air of one who has something fresh and strange to impart the Prime Minister informed the House of Commons to-day that in regard to Ireland "the Government are determined on a double policy." The novelty presumably consists in putting those old stagers, conciliation and coercion, hitherto only tried tandem-fashion, into double harness. Martial law is to be introduced in certain of the most disturbed districts, and at the same time such Sinn Fein M.P.'s as are not "on the run" are to be called into conference. ”

“ Dorothea Conyers gives us once more all that we have learned to expect of her novels: the friendly, witty, blundering servants; the hunting society in which wealth and poverty, breeding and vulgarity, cheerfully rub shoulders; the descriptions of the wistful beautiful West of Ireland in autumn and winter ”

“ The same principle applies, though in a milder form, to the game of cricket, where you attempt to beat the adversary's bat with your ball, or, if you have the bat, to steer the ball between your adversaries, or at least to make them jolly well wish that you would.
Even with the baser and less heroic ball games, like croquet and billiards, where more than one ball is used at a time, action inimical to the interests of the opponent's ball is permitted and encouraged. ”

“ It is difficult to realise that there is anything but shop-windows in Bond Street, but I like to think that, up there in those upper storeys which one never sees, there does dwell a self-contained little community to whom Bond Street is merely the village street, down which the housewives pass gossiping each morning to the greengrocer's or the fishmonger's and never purchase any pearls at all.
When the butcher comes back I think I shall join them.
A. P. H.
Father. ”

“ Anyone can go shopping in Bond Street. I knew a clergyman once who went in and asked for a back-stud. He was afterwards unfrocked for riotous living, but the stud was produced. You can buy a cauliflower in Bond Street—if you know the ropes. There is a shop which merely looks like a very beautiful florist's. There are potatoes in the window, it is true, but they are "hot-house" ones; inside there is no trace of a common vegetable. ”

“ After all that England has done and come through in the last few years, is a man in baggy knickerbockers, with tufts on the ends of his garters, going to be daunted and foiled just because a man in slightly baggier knickerbockers and with slightly larger tufts on his garters has hit a small white pellet a little further than he has? ”

“ Which of the eight novels is the most irresistible must remain, I suppose, a matter of individual taste; for myself I found the opening chapter in the title-tale the funniest thing in the collection, and that not forgetting the billiard match in the detective story, a contest that I defy anyone to follow without tears. To attempt analysis of such happily unforced humour would be a dark and dreadful task ”

“ That is why, when I read long letters in the principal daily papers about the expense of this so-called game, and calculations as to whether it can be played for less than twenty-five shillings a time, I am merely amused. In my opinion, if the relatives of members of golf-clubs cannot afford to support them, these institutions should either be closed or the inmates should be provided with some better game, like basketball. ”

“ I have taken the standpoint of the prophet, who, as you know, is not without honour abroad—a prophet with the policy outlined above. When a prophet of my sort decides on a policy, and that policy consists of doing nothing, he takes a lot of shifting, even on the flat. And there the matter and I remained, when there arrived from England, on or about November 15th, a positive cloud of prophets, intent on the League of Nations. The busiest figure among them is the secretary of one of the delegates. ”

“ Seventy is suggested by the London County Council as the age limit at which coroners should retire. Complete justice cannot be done as long as there is anything in the shape of identity of interest between the coroner and the corpse.
"The natural position of the eyeballs in sleep," says a correspondent of The Daily Mail, "is turned upwards." The practice of leaving them standing in a tumbler of water all night should be particularly avoided by light sleepers.
We are asked to deny the rumour that the Poet Laureate is entitled to draw the unemployment donation. ”

“ For example, Mark, the hero, begins as the misunderstood son of one of those widower-fathers who in such stories dwell for ever behind the locked doors of studies, leaving in this instance Mark to be the victim of an aunt whose lack of sympathy approaches the pantomimic. ”

“ A rather unconvincing plot, with a dash of Great Expectations in it, yet offers a situation which has plenty of amusing possibilities. Honor and Evie Nutting, two middle-aged spinsters, find themselves the possessors of eight thousand a year, on condition that they spend it all. That sounds, of course, a very pleasant arrangement; but they have been struggling for years to make ends meet and economy has become a habit. The end of the first quarter finds them sending Harris, the English manservant, in haste to buy a frying-pan with the last unspent three shillings and sixpence. ”

“ Loud cheers were given, says a Bolshevist wireless message, when Lenin left Petrograd for Moscow. We can well believe it.
The Bolshevists now forbid men to walk through the streets with their hands in their pockets. Hands in other peoples' pockets every time is their motto. ”

“ This year's Oxford and Cambridge Rugby match is said to have been the most exciting in the memory of the oldest undergraduate.
According to The Daily Express twenty-five thousand Government officials are on strike in Austria. People are asking why we can't have this sort of thing in England.
Official kissing at Presidential functions is now discontinued in France and visitors must shake hands in future. These curtailed amenities are still an improvement on the Mexican custom of exchanging revolver shots.
"Hats," says The Times' fashion correspondent, "are worn well on the head." ”

“ Henry Ford's "Peace Party" has not proved an unqualified success. Battle royal broke out among the delegates at noon yesterday. Messrs. Brady, Cochran and Rickards have been taken to hospital, but are not expected to recover. The White House is in ruins.
The Great Fight.
Geneva, July 4th, 1960.—The fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, held under the auspices of the League of Nations, took place yesterday before a gigantic crowd. Dempsey, who now wears a flowing white beard, was wheeled into the ring in a bath-chair. ”

“ Being a busy (or shall we say idle?) man yourself, you will thus understand the reasons of my policy; if the mountain will not come to Mahomed then Mahomed and the mountain are best kept apart.
The inhabitants of Geneva have long been contriving, intriguing, I will even say complotting, to get me up The Salève. My doctor, having made me thoroughly interested in myself, got on to the subject of exercise; when my banker passed from the subject of interest on overdrafts to the advisability of my seeing the great Geneva view, it was undoubtedly blackmail ”

“ While it is not expected that his Majesty's engagements will permit him to be present, an action of this character is fraught with more than common interest, since it must be seldom that the Royal House finds itself in such conflict with the Church as to resort to the arbitrament of the law.
We see no reason why some legal engagements should not be boldly displayed, the more readily to catch the reader's eye. ”

“ A race of dreadful magicians, the descendants of the Old Man of the Mountain, who have been multiplying and acquiring extraordinary psychic powers in the interior of China for centuries, come forth to do battle with the United Secret Service for the souls of men. ”

“ Visitors to the Law Courts to-day should on no account fail to look in at King's Bench XIII., which is one of the cosiest of our beautiful Courts of Justice. Here will be continued the scintillating contest between Sir Anthony Prius, K.C., and that rising young barrister, Mr. Terry Blee-Smart, K.C. It is more than probable that the cross-examination of the humorous butcher will continue through most of the day. ”

“ Against no other ball game but golf, unless perhaps it be roulette, can this accusation be laid. Ask a man what happened last Saturday. "I went out," he says, rather as if he was the British Expeditionary Force, "in 41; but I came home"—he smiles triumphantly; you see the hospital ship, the cheering crowds—"in 39." Whether he beat the other fellow or not he hardly remembers, because there was in fact no particular reason why the other fellow should have been there.
Golf matches ought to be arranged, and for my part I shall arrange them in future, as follows:—
He. ”

“ London, October 10th, 1924.—A sensation was caused at the Circle last night when an old man jumped unannounced into the ring and offered to fight anyone living to a finish for five pounds and a pint of beer for the sheer fun of the thing. ”

“ We must act together, he and I; he would assemble the prophets, I the passports.
I refused to be bullied by him. He named some major prophets, whom I should find it more difficult to withstand. His propaganda amongst them apparently began at once. Mark the sequence of events:—
On Tuesday, November 16th, His Majesty's Minister-Plenipotentiary and Envoy-Extraordinary in Switzerland assembled the British element to dinner. I have reason to know that he had already [pg 477] been approached by the secretary. ”

“ Host (by way of keeping his guest's mind off the state of the course) . "Astonishing how quickly people have forgotten the War."
Guest. "What—with this mud, and you at the slope?"
OUR HEAVY-WAITS.
Our Boxing Correspondent sends us the following gloomy forecast. We have pointed out to him that Mr. Cochran has recently made a definite contract for a meeting between Dempsey and Carpentier. Our Correspondent replies that this does not affect his attitude, and urges us to publish his predictions of further delay. We do so under protest. ”

“ PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 159. December 15, 1920 CHARIVARIA.
Apparently the official decision not to issue Christmas excursion tickets for journeys of less than one hundred miles will inflict some inconvenience on the public. Several correspondents point out that they will be obliged to travel further than they had intended.
A newspaper correspondent describes Charlie Chaplin as being an amusing companion in private life. We always suspect a popular comedian of having his lighter moments. ”

“ Dempsey is to receive £100,000, Carpentier £75,000.
London, October 4th, 1924.—It appears that Olympia was already booked for November for The Daily Mail's Ideal Pyjama Exhibition, and Mr. C. B. Cochran has to-day issued a communiqué to the Press Association to the effect that the contest will be held definitely in Sark (Channel Islands) on December 23rd. He has hired the entire Cunard and White Star Fleets for the day, and those who cannot find standing room on the island will be provided with seats and telescopes in the ships' riggings. All will be welcome at fifty guineas a head. ”