First Player. "How OUGHT WE TO DIVIDE? I'M PRETTY FEEBLE. Fourth Ditto (ignoring the conventions). "I'M RATHER HOT STUFF. Now LET'S START OVER AGAIN." MOSCOW'S BEAUTY CAMPAIGN. RECENTLY an official order has been issued from Moscow, addressed to all nice little girl Communists, stating that "there is no good reason why they should remain ugly and unbecoming. Beauty and proletarian dictatorships are not incompatible," the order further observes, "and a striving for beauty and feminine allurement is not necessarily a bourgeois trait." FASHION NOTES. if so I find it rather inspiring to think Column of Ervestia, the well-known Other Die-hards too in Communist Russia have expressed themselves disgusted at this weak-kneed pandering to suchadmitted bourgeois traits as Beauty, Allurement and Cleanliness. It is, they say, but the thin end of the wedge. From Soap to Clean Collars; from Patent Leather Shoes to Powder Puffs these are steps on the downward path This order has aroused much opposition among the Die-hards of the Communist party, as opposed to the Livesofts. The Electric-Light-Bulb Department of the State Electrical Trust, which employs many young Com-to Aristocracy. munistes, has even set its face against On the other hand there are some patent-leather shoes; and one orator, in an interval from overseeing bulbmaking, has denounced the order in very definite words, stating that "no girl can think properly about Communism if her mind is on her dress and appearance." This expression would seem to indicate either a view of the feminine mind as unbalanced, or else an appreciation of the fact that Communism is a wholetime job. It is probably the latter, and BY COMRADE NADINA POPSKI. Well, dears, and here we are in our very firstest page about fashions. Now that our dear rulers have decided that to be Beautiful is not to be Bourgeoise, Good Looks are coming in. Those of us who have been out of the fashion so long can at last go about boys and can make ourselves attractive and without being called Aristocrats by nasty little yet be as plebeian as the Haute Monde. Saw that darling man Commissar Uglimugski, the other day, quite one of the Masses' Upper Ten, you know, and he told me that, while cotton stockings are still the thing for women, it is no longer de rigueur to wear them baggy and twisted. And all signs that the Government order is you little Comsmols can now titivate having a certain effect. The newly- your short black leather coats (still à la appointed Commissar of Fashions is mode, by the way) with fancy adornments. reported to have shaved; the Head Quite the latest is an appliqué of little Wardress of a State prison has been bombs with fine pistolling all round the hem. shingled; and among the members of Red will, I fear, still be the fashionable the Comsmols (as girls of the Com-shade for hair for some time to come, but munist Youth are called) there has de- there is no objection now to the "Bayonet" veloped a great demand for red garters Shingle. And to have a Bob will not be and underwear. considered rank capitalism. Meanwhile I have been privileged to secure a few notes from the first Fashion The State Fripperies Trust tell me they are experiencing a great demand for Mani cure Sets. The manufacture of these is practically a lost art, but one set has been found in a museum and is being faithfully copied by hastily-trained workers. As it is skilled work, only a sixteen-hour day is being imposed, so there will be a frightful rush for months and months. Saw a dinky little garter yesterday in Commissar Isaacoff & Cie's with a dainty little clasp to hold a dagger. Bye-bye, Comrades! More next week! Don't miss it—particularly a cute little Beauty Hint on how to remove discolouring from behind the ears. A. A. CULTURE WEEK. How intriguing are these Big Stores' advertisements of celebrities who are prepared to teach you how to play games. "Let make you a batsman in ten minutes." "Chat over your bowling difficulties with "A word with Mr. — on your forehand drive." All this is splendid; but suppose you have intellectual ambitions, spiritual yearnings, a craving for moral urge and uplift? Can anything be done for you, while you wait, striving inwardly, between the haberdashery and hair-cutting departments? Certainly it can, and we are arranging guidance for you in these matters during our Culture Week, when you may acquire a social polish, a Wider Vision, and a new sense of Reality. First let us try to improve your powers of self-expression. Perhaps your accent is wrong, suggesting Billingsgate, or Oxford, or both. We think a few minutes with Mr. ST. JOHN ERVINE will equip you for refined society, a post in the B.B.C. and a place in your local Repertory Company. Are you satisfied with the style of your conversation? Can you grapple with the big problems of the hour? Can you hold your friends while you talk round and round a topic, dive into its historical origins, expound its present ramifications, and penetrate with a prophetic flair into its sequela? If not, we will arrange for you to see the improving spectacle of Mr. GARVIN engaged with an Ultra-Tory, confounding him with the memory of DISRAELI, paralyzing him with the prospect of a Russian Entente, and promoting from his ashes a Liberal Risorgimento. Does your conversation show signs of mental catarrh? Do your remarks lack pith and punch? Do you fail to rise regularly after dinner to make one of the great sayings of the week? In this case we recommend our short courses with masters of different styles. Our Mr. LANSBURY will develop your faculty for polite repartee; our Sir JOHN SIMON will show you how to advocate the cause of Truth and Justice without committing yourself; and our Mr. JACK JONES will mend you to consult our experts in help you to attain an explosive direct-autobiography, a varied assortment of ness in the use of simple words. With the confidence thus obtained, you must not neglect the opportunity of self-expression in letters to the Press. Dean WELLDON and other divines will help you to write on subjects of general interest: an East Anglian drainage scheme, the introduction of a semicolon into a passage of the Revised Prayer Book, the return of the lesser snuffchit half-an-hour earlier this spring than last. As soon as you find yourself capable of greater literary effort, we shall recom elderly peers, operatic singers, clubmen, nursemaids, murderers and private secretaries. In case you should be overcome by the colossal tedium of your reminiscences, you will be taught how to tell stories about people you have not met, and to obtain a rich colour for your narrative not so much by a merely snobbish respect for distinguished names as by a heroic disregard of the laws of truth and probability. But even more important than your power of expression is the quality of your mind. Are you living a too narrow mental life? Do you feel enchained by with the connivance of his tutor LONGTHE EIGHTY-NINTH. conventional moralities? Do you want LEY (afterwards Archbishop of Canterto set yourself in accord with the really THE centenary match played at Lord's bury) that he was visiting the dentist. progressive forces of your age? Do you last week is not the hundredth between Who would have thought (a) that this long to re-interpret the world in terms Oxford and Cambridge, but the eighty-excuse was as old as that, and (b) that of your own will? We think an inter-ninth. The centenary was that of the so eminent a D.D. ever employed it? view with Mr. H.G. WELLS will discover first contest, the scene of which was What Uncle WILLIAM, the poet, would your latent powers, and you will feel Lord's on June 4th, 1827. Let it ever have said to his nephew's expediency encouraged to proceed against those of your friends who are not in the movement of things and want scrapping, some nervous whining pestilent pedagogue under whom you have suffered, or some superfluous uncreative female with whom you are entangled. If you feel unequal to a share in this task of social reconstruction and prefer to realize your generous emotions as a spectator of modern life, we shall ask Sir PHILIP GIBBS to introduce you to a few bright young people who will demonstrate their gallant impatience of any old thing, their sexless camaraderie, their financial gaiety springing out of spiritual independence. MR. ABELL AT HIS DEVOTIONS. we can only guess; but he must have been proud of his prowess in the field, for although the youth made only 8 (bowled by the Cambridge captain) out of Oxford's score of 258, he did so well with the ball that Cambridge made only 92. The scorers of those days did not bother about the bowler off whom batsmen were caught, and therefore we may not have WORDSWORTH's full figures; but the record shows that he clean bowled no fewer than seven of the foe. Uncle WILLIAM himself does not seem to have been a cricketer, although BYRON was, playing for Harrowagainst Eton. Cricket as a game for poets was a comparatively recent development, and to-day, of course, all the London Mercury singing-birds are famous performers. be remembered to the credit of the Or it may be your heart is too large Church that the prime mover in this and your sympathies too diffused. You initial engagement was a potential are suffering from the fatty degenera-bishop-none other than CHARLES The first inter-university match was tion of Socialist Idealism. Dean INGE WORDSWORTH, later Spiritual Lord of unfinished. In the second match, in will destroy your illusions. He will use St. Andrews, among whose other dis- 1829, at Oxford, the home side won for his demonstration a film entitled tinctions it was to have played for by 115 runs. The embryo prelate, it "England," with appropriate captions Harrow in the first regular Eton and is true, on that occasion bagged a from the great writers, featuring first our Democracy in process of producing its various barbarians, with special close-ups of Labour Members in the House of Commons, and then a Rural State purged of dysgenic elements and governed by selfdenying oligarchs of unimpeachable pedigree. These are some of the provisions we have made for Culture Week. Don't doubt your ability to respond. You may have studied text-books on the art of conversation. You may be au fait with the Manners and Tone of Good Society. You may have taken a correspondence course in will-power, and have submitted your moral difficulties to the editors of The Daily Mail and other religious newspapers. What you need is the personal touch. Another Impending Apology. From an account of the opening of a new district hospital: "Expert doctors as well as our local practitioners appreciate its equipment." brace, but he clean bowled one Light Blue in each innings and in each innings caught one, both the bowlers who had been too much for him falling to his hands. That was CHARLES WORDSWORTH'S last season at Oxford. In 1830 he became a private tutor, with such pupils as WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE and HENRY E. MANNING to his name. WORDSWORTH lived until December 5th, 1892, the year in which Oxford, under LIONEL PALAIRET, Won by five wickets and C. B. FRY first appeared. The other of the two earliest captains, HERBERT JENNER, who later changed his name to JENNER-FUST, lived until July 30th, 1904. He played his last cricket in 1880, made eleven runs, kept wicket and was put on to bowl. MR. HOLMES FAILS TO HIT MR. IRVINE TO LEG. wish him all good fortune there and almost invisible captain, was unlucky height as the stumps. Imagine our then, and meanwhile a safety-pin for with the bat but very capable with astonishment when, on one occasion the sleeve of his bowling-arm. Will his head. He seemed to doubt if he when returning the ball to the bowler, Mr. DAWSON attain to a patriarchal were really stumped in the second inn- he paused en route to deal Mr. LONGold age and in 1980 be still active with bat and ball? I hope so. Let me add that I am delighted to find that both have been chosen for the Gentlemen against the Players this week-the revival of an excellent tradition of selection. There has been more brilliant cricket than in this centenary match, which lacked any outstanding personality in either teain-any GREGOR MCGREGOR, say, or "JACKER" or SAMMY WOODSbut the game almost never ceased to be interesting and now and then was dramatic. One figure we all missed, and on every side were heard regrets that "DULEEP" was not playing; for, judging by his performances early in the season, this was to have been DULEEP'S year. But that demon bowler, Pneumonia, was too much for him. May 1928 see him fully recovered! I suppose that this year's match will go down to history as Mr. JUDD's, whose 124 was a splendid and decisive effort, but I thought the best Cambridge batting that of Mr. ROBINS. He was the only one who tried consistently to place the ball, and he ran too with more enterprise and celerity than any other. On neither side was the running alert enough; and that excellent weapon, the stolen run, was hardly ever in use until Mr. HOLMES came in to make his great effort for the losers. If undergraduates cannot be quick between the wickets, who can? Well, as a matter of fact, HOBBS and SUTCLIFFE and HOBBS and RHODES, mature as they are, can; but how much faster should these youths be! Mr. ROBINS was also, in addition to his batting, an influence for vivacity and vigour-two qualities which the match was continually wanting. Cambridge had the better batting as a whole, although no Light Blue was so accomplished as the Dark Blue captain, and Cambridge had much better bowling, Mr. LONGFIELD being, I think, the pick of the whole lot and Mr. IRVINE importing dangerous guile under a blameless exterior; but when it comes to fielding and throwing (that rare accomplishment) there was no ENTER MR. NUNN TRAILING A BAT. ings, but HARRY BUTT, the old Sussex wicket-keeper, who was the umpire, was emphatic enough, and he ought to know. It was one of the swiftest things I ever saw. Mr. ABELL, by the way, CRICKET-LOVERS. RIGG's head a severe buffet. "Is this," asked the Cambridge partisans, "quite cricket?" "Need we," said the supporters of Oxford, "resort to such tactics to get them out?" But it was pure accident: Mr. ABELL was not taking a leaf from the book of brother CAIN; merely the faithful hand had slipped. Mr. ABELL apologised, while Mr. LONGRIGG, after giving his bruised scalp another rub, proceeded with the task of making his invaluable fifty seven. One of the best single hits came from the massive SEABROOK in his first innings of fifty-one not out: right over the ropes to squarish leg. Indeed, both Light Blue innings were 1emarkable for the number of runs made to leg, long and square, and if the ghost of the first TOM HAYWARD, of Cambridge, whose leg-hitting (with that of CARPENTER) was glorious and constant, was at Lord's to see, it must have rejoiced. TOM HAYWARD the second, who watches benevolently over Cambridge to-day, was on the ground, happily in the flesh, as these eyes can testify, and he must have rejoiced too when again and again his protégés made the fine old stroke. In cutting, however, the side was weak. Mr. SEABROOK can cut, but Mr. JUDD has no notion of such finesse. Oxford went in for the second time against not only eleven Cambridge men but the very spirit of confidence. The first two wickets fell before there was a run on the board; but then came a stand which sets the match among those that may be classed as historical, Mr. HOLMES making his courageous 113 by brilliant and unfettered methods -a true captain's innings and a forlorn hope most admirably fought-while Mr. BARBER was stolidly putting his bat behind every good ball and scoring off the others to the tune of 62. An unusual board-one for none, two for none, three for 183! And the whole side out for 262! For the rest, I thought that the intervals were not so gay as they have been. The frocks were less attractive, their wearers not so pretty. There were also, thing to choose between the two teams. | the hero of this incident, although not on undergraduate heads, some shockBoth were as near perfection as could a short man at all, is, when crouched ing bad hats. It is my earnest hope be asked. waiting for the ball, so compactly that no members of the teams wear E. V. L. Mr. DAWSON, who is an astute and diminished as to be exactly the same things like that. RACING CLIPPERS. (A Wool Fleet Memory.) There ain't no racin' clippers now, nor never will be again, And most o' the ships are gone by now, the same as most o' the men, I've not made much o' my life, Lord knows; I'm a has-An' nobody left but a few old shells like us in the world to been through an' through, An' meanin''s as far as I've mostly got with the things as I've meant to do; Of muckin' my chances an' blowin' my pay I reckon I've done my share, But I was one o' the Clansman's crowd when she raced the Robin Adair. There was Dan an' Clancy an' Liverpool Bill-an' they were the pick o' the lot— An' a Glasgow lad as skenned like mad, but his name I've clean forgot; A big buck nigger an' a cross-eyed Swede, an' a feller from County Clare Them was the chaps in the starboard watch when we raced the Robin Adair. An' Dan was lost off the topsail yard o' the Pole Star, years But there come a time as we climbed the Trade, the day was just begun When we sighted a ship hull down astern an' comin' along like fun, An' the Old Man clapped his glass to his eye, an' you should ha' heard him swear, For out o' the South with a bone in her mouth up romps the Robin Adair. We started pilin' the canvas on, and it 'ad to stop there too; It was breezin' up when we sighted 'er first, an' afore it was dark it blew ! I've seen some carryin' on in my time, but I tell you he made me stare Crackin' it on in the Biscay gales to beat the Robin Adair. But we made the London river at last-it was twelve by St. George's clock, I counted the chime as we made her fast to the buoys in the London Dock An' we'd won the race from the width o' the world with the tail of a tide to spare That was the way of it, long ago, when we raced the Robin Adair! care For the great ol' skippers an' the great ol' ships an' the great ol' days they were, And the way they had in the Wool Fleet once when we raced the Robin Adair. C. F. S. HEREDITY. ARE women ever satisfied? I have a daughter; I should perhaps say that Joan and I have a daughter, as she also claims to hold Founders' shares in the young woman. I regret to say that our infant is rather a bone of contention between us and we have argued for sixteen months as to whether she takes after her father or her mother. I am a Devon man but my wife was born within a twothat no one would ever take her for a Londoner. penny 'bus ride of Hyde Park Corner, though she insists paternal grandfather's chin and her paternal uncle's eyes. It is perfectly clear to me that the child has my nose, her My wife, on the contrary, insists that her eyebrows are a palpable infringement of her own copyright; her dimples are obviously a legacy from her maternal grandmother and her ears bear a marked resemblance to those of her youngest maternal aunt. That is how the position lay until the other day. entertain us for a few minutes before going to her bath. Last Thursday Pamela, my daughter, was brought in to for the coal-box. She crawled quickly round the room and headed straight "Don't go near the nasty coal, darling," said my wife. Pamela continued on her course undismayed. "Don't go near the dirty coal, darling; don't you hear me?" repeated my spouse. Pamela stopped, sat down and regarded her mother sternly. "Naow!" she said clearly and distinctly. "Oh, Bill, did you hear?" said my wife; "that's the first intelligent remark she's ever made." "Bless her heart, she's a marvel!" I replied. "She has also settled the vexed question as to whom she favours. I shall never dispute your claim again." "What d' you mean?" said my wife. "Did you ever hear a Devon man or woman express dissent like that?" I asked. |