# Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3808/Charivaria

A weekly selection of short humorous items, normally on the first page of each issue.
CHARIVARIA.
It is not only misfortune that makes strange bedfellows. Both Earl Beauchamp and Sir Joseph Beecham appear in the recent Honours List.
By-the-by, it is denied that Sir Joseph Beecham was in any way responsible for the Government's "Pills for Earthquakes," by which it was hoped to avert the Irish crisis.
A New York cable announces that the Duke of Manchester is interesting himself in a cinematograph proposition of a philanthropic nature, and that the company will be known as the "Church and School Social Service Corporation for the Advancement of Moral and Religious Education and Social Uplift Work through the medium of the Higher Art of the Moving Picture." It will of course be possible for the man in a hurry to call it, tout court, the "C. & S. S. S. C. F. T. A. O. M. & R. E. & S. U. W. T. T. M. O. T. H. A. O. T. M. P."
The penny off the income tax came just in time. It enabled several Liberal plutocrats to buy a rose on Alexandra Day.
The balance sheet of the German Company which has been running a Zeppelin airship passenger service has just been issued, and shows a loss of £10,000 on the year's working. This is not surprising. The difficulty which all aircraft experience is to keep their balance.
At the launch of the liner Bismarck last week, the bottle of wine which was thrown by the Countess Hannah von Bismarck missed the vessel, whereupon the Kaiser hauled back the bottle, and with his proverbial good luck hit the target.
Five shots were fired last week at Baron Henri de Rothschild. At first it was thought that this was done to stop the author of Croesus from writing more plays, but, when it transpired that the assailant was a man who objected to the "Rothschild Cheap Milk Supply," public sympathy veered round in favour of the Baron.
Messrs. Selfridge and Co. were last week defrauded by a well-dressed man, who obtained two dressing-bags with silver fittings by means of a trick without paying for them. This is really abominable. It is bad enough when merely commercial firms are victimised: to best a philanthropic institution in this way is peculiarly base.
   "Mexican Rebel Split."
   Morning Post.
Now perhaps the other civilised Powers will intervene. We have heard of many inhumanities marking the war in Mexico, but this treatment of a rebel is surely the limit.
It is not often, we imagine, that the British Navy is used to enforce a change of diet. H.M.S. Torch has just been ordered on a punitive expedition to Malekula Island, where certain of the natives have been eating some of their compatriots.
An American woman, according to The Express, has a serious complaint about the London policeman. She declares that she walked all the way from Queen's Hall to Piccadilly Circus with three buttons of her blouse undone at the back, and "not a single policeman" offered to do it up for her. No doubt the Force was reluctant to interfere with what might turn out to be the latest fashion. A Boy Scout who offered, the other day, to sew up a split skirt got his ears soundly boxed.
Meanwhile the glad tidings reach us that women's skirts and bodices are to fasten in front instead of at the back. Husbands all over the world who have on occasions been pressed into their wives' service as maids, only to learn that they were clumsy boobies, would like to have the name of the arbiter of fashion who is responsible for this innovation, as there is some thought of erecting a statue to him.
Some distinguished German professors have been discussing the question of the best place in which to keep a baby in summer. It is characteristic, however, of these unpractical persons that not one of them suggests the obvious ice-safe.
"One of the first things the rich should learn," says Dean Inge, "is that money is not put to the best use when it is merely spent on enjoyment." It is hoped that this pronouncement may lead wealthy people to patronise our concert-halls more than they do.
"£1,600," a newspaper tells us, "were found hidden in the cork leg of Harry C. Wise while he was undergoing treatment in a hospital at Denver." And now, we suspect, Harry's friends will always be pulling his leg.
"Have you seen Pelleas and Mèlisande?"
"No. Is it as funny as Potash and Perlmutter?"