Genre Humor. Page - 24

ent to put Lord Goring into a class quite by himself. But he is developing charmingly!

LORD CAVERSHAM. Into what?

MABEL CHILTERN. [With a little curtsey.] I hope to let you know very soon, Lord Caversham!

MASON. [Announcing guests.] Lady Markby. Mrs. Cheveley.

[Enter LADY MARKBY and MRS. CHEVELEY. LADY MARKBY is a pleasant, kindly, popular woman, with gray hair e la marquise and good lace. MRS. CHEVELEY, who accompanies her, is tall and rather slight. Lips very thin and highly-coloured, a line of scarlet on a pallid face. Venetian red hair, aquiline nose, and long throat. Rouge accentuates the natural paleness of her complexion. Gray-green eyes that move restlessly. She is in heliotrope, with diamonds. She looks rather like an orchid, and makes great demands on one's curiosity. In all her movements she is extremely graceful. A work of art, on the whole, but showing the influence of too many schools.]

LADY MARKBY. Good evening, dear Gertrude! So kind of you to let me bring my

e land.
_Quezox:_ But, noble Francos, we now wend our wayTo meet the vermin which do suck our blood,And they with tongues which serpent-like can charmMay fool thee with their tales of dire intent.

_Francos: (striking his breast):_

Fear not, they soon shall feel how vain it were
To seek to trick one who, in halls of state,
Hath met the wiles of shrewd, self-seeking men,
But to ward off attack with virtue's shield.
_Captain and Seldonskip approach._
_Captain:_ Most noble potentate, as I my rounds

Of observation make, it pleasures me
Most mightily, to make obeisance to
The one so honored by his native land.
As captain of a vessel may be judged
By those subordinate to his command,
So do I quick conception of thee form.
By the broad mental gifts of Seldonskip
Who were the hose, through which thy mind doth squirt Most sapient thought, for mankind's betterment.
_Seldonskip:_ You bet his

ion, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford an

of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.

But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely inten

ch of delicate pink dust in the hole. Iput my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it out again. Itwas a cruel pain. I put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first onone foot and then the other, and grunting, I presently eased my misery;then I was full of interest, and began to examine.

I was curious to know what the pink dust was. Suddenly the name of itoccurred to me, though I had never heard of it before. It was FIRE! Iwas as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. Sowithout hesitation I named it that--fire.

I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added a newthing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, and wasproud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell himabout it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem--but I reflected, anddid not do it. No--he would not care for it. He would ask what it wasgood for, and what could I answer? for if it was not GOOD for something,but only beautiful, merely bea

evil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar

ast in the carp-pond at the end of the King's Walk. With the enthusiastic egotism of the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as "Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his début as "Guant Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance, and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought.

III

The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not b

ck. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.

Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.

Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.

Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.

Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. [The sound of an electric bell is heard.] Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. Now, if I get her out of the way for ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Wi

managers of big city shops once lifted the rule prescribing certain modes for their female working staffs--if they should give their women clerks a free hand in choosing their own wardrobes for store hours--well, you know how women are!

Nevertheless and to the contrary notwithstanding, I will admit while I am on this phase of my topic that there likewise is something to be said in dispraise of my own sex too. In the other--and better half of this literary double sketch-team act, my admired and talented friend, Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart, cites chapter and verse to prove the unaccountable vagaries of some men in the matter of dress. There she made but one mistake--a mistake of under-estimation. She mentioned specifically some men; she should have included all men.

The only imaginable reason why any rational he-biped of adult age clings to the habiliments ordained for him by the custom and the tailors of this generation, is because he is used to them. A man can stand anything once he gets used to

down and wrote out a prescription,and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in.The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it.

I said:

"You are a chemist?"

He said:

"I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotelcombined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampersme."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with1 pt. bitter beerevery 6 hours.1 ten-mile walk every morning.1 bed at 11 sharp every night.And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking for myself -that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had thesymptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a generaldisinclination to work of any kind."

What I suffer in that way no