第39章

"And such a voice!" We are told it is a perfect imitation of a motor-car.When she laughs people spring into doorways to escape being run over.

If he will marry that sort of woman, what can he expect? The man is asking for it.

The lady who followed him also told us a sad story of misplaced trust.She also was comic--so the programme assured us.The humorist appears to have no luck.She had lent her lover money to buy the ring, and the licence, and to furnish the flat.He did buy the ring, and he furnished the flat, but it was for another lady.

The audience roared.I have heard it so often asked, "What is humour?" From observation, I should describe it as other people's troubles.

A male performer followed her.He came on dressed in a night-shirt, carrying a baby.His wife, it seemed, had gone out for the evening with the lodger.That was his joke.It was the most successful song of the whole six.

[The one sure Joke.]

A philosopher has put it on record that he always felt sad when he reflected on the sorrows of humanity.But when he reflected on its amusements he felt sadder still.

Why was it so funny that the baby had the lodger's nose? We laughed for a full minute by the clock.

Why do I love to see a flabby-faced man go behind curtains, and, emerging in a wig and a false beard, say that he is now Bismarck or Mr.Chamberlain? I have felt resentment against the Lightning Impersonator ever since the days of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

During that summer every Lightning Impersonator ended his show by shouting, while the band played the National Anthem, "Queen Victoria!" He was not a bit like Queen Victoria.He did not even, to my thinking, look a lady; but at once I had to stand up in my place and sing "God save the Queen." It was a time of enthusiastic loyalty; if you did not spring up quickly some patriotic old fool from the back would reach across and hit you over the head with the first thing he could lay his hands upon.

Other music-hall performers caught at the idea.By ending up with "God save the Queen" any performer, however poor, could retire in a whirlwind of applause.Niggers, having bored us with tiresome songs about coons and honeys and Swanee Rivers, would, as a last resource, strike up "God save the Queen" on the banjo.The whole house would have to rise and cheer.Elderly Sisters Trippet, having failed to arouse our enthusiasm by allowing us a brief glimpse of an ankle, would put aside all frivolity, and tell us of a hero lover named George, who had fought somebody somewhere for his Queen and country.

"He fell!"--bang from the big drum and blue limelight.In a recumbent position he appears to have immediately started singing "God save the Queen."[How Anarchists are made.]

Sleepy members of the audience would be hastily awakened by their friends.We would stagger to our feet.The Sisters Trippet, with eyes fixed on the chandelier, would lead us: to the best of our ability we would sing "God save the Queen."There have been evenings when I have sung "God save the Queen" six times.Another season of it, and I should have become a Republican.

The singer of patriotic songs is generally a stout and puffy man.

The perspiration pours from his face as the result of the violent gesticulations with which he tells us how he stormed the fort.He must have reached it very hot.

"There were ten to one agin us, boys." We feel that this was a miscalculation on the enemy's part.Ten to one "agin" such wildly gesticulating Britishers was inviting defeat.

It seems to have been a terrible battle notwithstanding.He shows us with a real sword how it was done.Nothing could have lived within a dozen yards of that sword.The conductor of the orchestra looks nervous.Our fear is lest he will end by cutting off his own head.

His recollections are carrying him away.Then follows "Victory!"The gas men and the programme sellers cheer wildly.We conclude with the inevitable "God save the King."