"I say, Miss," said the inevitable wag, who was one of the standing
passengers, "steady on. We're more than full up already, you know. Do
you take us for sardines?"
And again mirth rocked us.
Finally, that night I was among the stream of humanity which pours down
Villiers Street from the theatres for half-an-hour or so between 10.40
and 11.10, all in some mysterious way to be absorbed into the trains or
the trams and conveyed home. After some desperate struggles on Charing
Cross platform I found myself a suffering unit in yet another dense
throng in a compartment going West; and again, amid delighted merriment,
some one likened us to sardines.
It is not much of a joke, but you will notice that it so seldom fails
that one wonders why any effort is ever made to invent a better.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU KNEW THE FUNNY MAN, SIS."
"I DIDN'T. BUT BY THE TIME I DISCOVERED THAT I DIDN'T--WELL, I DID."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and
more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving
entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which
the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one
another simultaneously.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66