The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol.
CLVIII, January 7, 1920, by Various

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Title: Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920

Author: Various

Editor: Owen Seaman

Release Date: December 3, 2009 [EBook #30593]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH-CHARIVARI, JANUARY 7, 1920 ***

Produced by Lesley Halamek, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOLUME 158, JANUARY 7, 1920

[Illustration: Punch. Vol. CLVIII.]

LONDON:
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 10, BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.4.
1920.

Bradbury, Agnew & Co., Ltd.,
Printers,
Whitefriars, London, E.C.4.

* * * * *

[Illustration: VOLUME CLVIII.]

* * * * *

NEW WELLS FOR OLD.

Over the top of Part II. of _The Outline of History_ I caught the
smiling glance of the man in the opposite corner of the compartment.

"Good stuff that," he said, indicating the History with a jerk of his
head.

"Quite," I agreed, maintaining my distance.

"Immense," he continued. "And it means the dawn of a new life for
me. I'm WELLS'S hero. Every time I've appeared in his half-yearly
masterpiece, ever since _Tono Bungay_. And look at the mess he's made
of my life. Often I've had to start it under the cloud of mysterious
parentage. Invariably I have been endowed with a Mind (capital M).
Think of those uphill fights of mine against adverse conditions.
And my unhappy marriages. He has led me into every variation of
infidelity. When I _did_ hit it off with my wife for once, he sent us
to the Arctic regions as a punishment. In the depth of winter, too.

But, now he's taken up this History, I'm free. The dam has burst and
strange things come floating down ..."

He sprang to his feet in his excitement. He was wearing a
loose-fitting suit and what his master might call a lower middle-class
hat.

"And now I'm going to do all the things I've always wanted to do. A
happy marriage; well-ordered life in the suburbs; warm slippers in the
fender, and all that tha