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.
It is this:
There has been a great demand of late
For really competent shots.
In response to that demand
Mr. Kipling has started a village rifle club.
I understand that the members thereof
Are, let us say, five hundred in number.
Now, I put it to you, Sir,
How many sportsmen are there
Shooting in this beautiful country and Scotland
To-day?
Well, we will not compute;
It is dangerous.
But you could make a fairly big rifle club out of them.
They are all good men,
And of course all beautiful shots.
Some day
(When the war is over)
England may want them.
Will they answer to the call?
My dear Sir,
You have your uses.
Go in peace.

TO THE STOCK EXCHANGE

(On its Centenary)

My dear Stock Exchange,—
I am given to understand
That to-day you are a hundred years old,
And that to-day therefore
You will celebrate
What nine men out of every ten of you
Call your "Centeenary"
By taking a whole holiday instead of a half one.
It would be easy for me, my dear Stock Exchange,
To present you
With a sort of illuminated address on this occasion;
But I refrain.
One short year ago
I tumbled into a little money;
It was "not enough to live upon,"
But it was a nice sum.
A man introduced me to a member of the Stock Exchange,
The member of the Stock Exchange introduced me to a little game of "in and out,"
And my five hundred pounds folded its tents like the Arabs—
That is to say, it silently stole away.
It was not the member of the Stock Exchange's fault;
Certainly it was not my fault;
And I will not say that it was the fault of the Stock Exchange.
But I am not giving the Stock Exchange
Any illuminated addresses
At present.
On the other hand, let me assure you
That I believe the Stock Exchange
To be a highly respectable,
Honourable,
And useful institution.
It leaves the court without a stain upon its character.
I say these latter things advisedly,
Because some time back
A friend of mine who writes articles on food supply
Having delivered himself of the opinion
That London's milk was largely water,
Was sued for slander
By the Amalgamated Society of Dairymen's Daughters,
And had to climb down and apologise.
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.
It would lie in banks and old stockings and kindred receptacles
Till it went mouldy.
You keep things going.
You are the heart of the monetary world,
You pump in the gold,
You pump out all that you don't happen to want.
And you go and live in Maida Vale,
Keep a butler,
Drive two horses,
And change your name from Manassah to Howard.
This "Centeenary" holiday of yours
Gives me much pause.
Supposing, instead of taking a day,
You were to take a year,
What would happen to England?
SHE—WOULD—BE—RUINED!
Yeth, indeed.

TO THE LORD MAYOR

(November 9th)

My dear Lord Mayor,—
In Fleet Street all is gay
From min' office window I catch glimpses
Of fluttering bunting and swinging festoons.
I don't know who pays for them
(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say),
But I am informed by the police that they
(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say)
Have been hung up in honour of YOU.
I am also given to understand that there has been a big rush
For free windows to view your procession,
Which, all being well (the Procession, that is to say)
Will take place this day, Saturday;
For my own part I am going into the country,
And I dare say that on the whole
You wish you were going with me;
But ambition has its penalties,
And if you will become Lord Mayor of London
(A dizzy pinnacle to which none but the biggest-souled of us
May aspire)
I suppose you must put up with the attendant inconveniences
And publicity.
So far as I have been able to judge
(And I arrive at this conclusion by dint of steadfast abstinence
From witnessing Lord Mayors' Shows)
A Lord Mayor's Show is a distinctly inspiriting spectacle.
It may be set down
As the Londoner's one annual opportunity
Of seeing a circus for nothing;
Hence no doubt its popularity.
Think not, however, my dear Lord Mayor,
That I deprecate your little pageant, gratis though it be.
This country, as everybody knows,
Has for centuries past been on the high road to ruin,
And, in my humble opinion, its decadence has been largely due
To a deep-rooted tendency on the part of the powerful
To curtail and do away with mayoral and other shows.
Feasts and fairs have been kicked out of England
By the aforesaid powerful:
If you would be a respectable community
You must have neither feast nor fair,
And, if you would be a respectable citizen of any given city,
You must not array yourself in motley.
A man who walked into his bank
In yellow trousers and a blue silk hat
Would never be allowed an overdraft,
Black and subdued greens and browns being the only wear
For persons who would get on in life.
All this is wrong, my dear Lord Mayor.
I am of opinion that millionaires
Ought to wear purple breeches;
I see no reason why I myself
Should not have a morning coat of red, white, and blue,
Or a waistcoat emblazoned with the arms
Of the Worshipful Company of Spectaclemakers.
In fact, my dear Lord Mayor,
To perpetrate a Mrs. Meynellism,
The colour of life is the salt of it,
Just as the Lord Mayor's Show is the salt of the Lord Mayoralty
And the one beautiful thing
About life as people expect you to live it
In the Metropolis.
Come hither, come hither, my dear Lord Mayor,
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.
Nor is this all,
For if one brings oneself
To read reports of the proceedings of police courts
One finds that the average citizen
Gets more or less chased by you sir,
In his waking moments.
The Police I know, sir, seldom speak the truth:
They remember so well the day
When a horseless carriage had to be taken through the street
At the speed of a funeral march,
And with a red flag in front of it,
That the spectacle of an affable motorist
Bowling through a Surrey village
To the tune of six miles an hour
Shocks ther