Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[graphic][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

So long as I remained your constant flame, What if the old love were to come once I was a proud and very well-known

[blocks in formation]

more

With smiling face and understanding

tacit-

If Chloe went, and I 'd unbar the door;
Would you-well, pass it?

Lydia:

Though he 's as fair as starlight, and as

true

And you as light as cork or wild as fever,

"With all your faults" I 'd live and die with you,

You old deceiver!

[graphic]

Drawing by Held

THE GOLF ENTHUSIAST EXPLAINS A DIFFICULT IRON SHOT, OVER A POND, WITH A CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

"IT'S ALL RIGHT, JACK DEAR. WE MISSED THE CHICKEN, AFTER ALL"

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors]

IT

JOLTIN' 'IM EASY

BY ALBERT HICKMAN

PICTURE BY REGINALD BIRCH

T seems to me that the old London bus-driver has been responsible for some of the most incisive bits of restrained comment in the language. Here is a story told me by Barry Pain a dozen years ago in London:

Scene, Piccadilly, at the time in a summer's afternoon when the last of the shopping is on. Traffic jammed from curb to curb. In midstream a bus, loaded inside and out, halted by a ducal landeauround, fat-bodied landeau, with coat of arms on the door. Fat horses, fat coachman, fat footman, fat lady inside. The coachman is manipulating so that there will be the least possible number of fractional millimeters between the door of the landeau and the door of the jewelry shop

the lady wishes to enter. After a painful period, during which the entire traffic of Piccadilly remains blocked, this is brought to pass. The coachman lets the reins slacken and brings his whip to a formal position of rest. The horses throw their heads to pull out the martingale chains. The footman climbs down. The busdriver, who has sat like a plaster cast through this, shifts his foot, the brake comes up with a clang, the bus-horses surge forward into the collars, the threeton bus creaks, and begins to move. Then he leans over the edge, and addresses the dignitary on the box of the landeau in mellifluous cockney:

"'Ello, Ga'dener!" he says. "Coachman ill yet?"

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK

[ocr errors]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »