When you go to bed at this farm you knock your head against the lintel of the sitting-room with a force corresponding to your height and vitality. Then you hit your head a second time when ascending the stairs and again on entering the bedroom. If you are a heavy breather you sweep the ceiling clear of flies and cobwebs while you sleep. At dawn, or possibly an hour or so before (for he is a nervously conscientious bird), the farm cock steps off the roof of the cow-shed on to your window-sill and bursts into enthusiastic admiration of himself and things in general. Some people of an egoistic and unimaginative temperament get up at once, in order that they may spend the rest of the day telling you how much they enjoyed the sunrise and what a fool you were to miss it. The true basker, on the other hand, declines to be a party to a procedure which destroys the whole poetry of dawn and reduces the proud chanticleer to the sordid status of an alarum-clock. He simply pushes the bird off the window-sill with his foot, turns over and goes to sleep. And later on, when the sound of other people knocking their heads against various portions of the building arouses him, he goes to sleep again.
[Illustration: _Shopman._ "ARE YOU SURE ONE WILL BE SUFFICIENT?"
_Member of the New Plutocracy._ "WELL, I'VE ONLY ONE NECK, AIN'T I?"]
(_Famous Publisher's Great Scheme of Reconciliation._)
Hearing on good authority that Mr. Blinkingham, the well-known publisher, was about to launch an enterprise of a magnitude only comparable with that of the _Ency. Brit._ or the _D.N.B._, Mr. Punch hastened to headquarters for confirmation of the report, was graciously admitted to his presence and furnished with the following interesting details. Mr. Blinkingham, it may be mentioned, is at all points a finely equipped representative of his class, handsome, well-groomed and wearing his monocle with distinction. His sanctum is furnished with delightfully catholic taste--Louis Quinze furniture, a Japanese embossed wall-paper, pictures by BOTTICELLI and Mr. WYNDHAM LEWIS and statuettes of PLATO, VOLTAIRE and Mr. WELLS (the Historian, not the Bombardier).
After some preliminary observations on the deplorable condition of the pulp industry, Mr. Blinkingham unfolded his colossal scheme. "By way of preface," remarked the great literary _impresario_, "let me call your attention to the momentous statement made by the Editor of _The Athenæum_ in the issue of May 7th: 'We doubt whether there has ever been a generation of men of letters so startlingly uneducated as this, so little interested in the study of the great writers before them.' The Editor of _The Athenæum_ takes a most gloomy view of the situation, which is fraught with an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion inimical to a revival of criticism. Yet he sees in such a revival the only way of salvation, the only means of healing the internecine feud which is now convulsing the young literary world.