E NECK, AIN'T
I?"]

* * * * *

"COUNTRY JOINER Wanted."

_Advt. in Provincial Paper._

To work on the Channel Tunnel?

* * * * *

BRIDGING THE LITERARY GULF.

(_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
Athenaeum_ 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 Athenaeum_ 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.

"For my own part I am convinced that a better way is to lure back the
modernists to a study of great writers by presenting them in a more
palatable form, not by compressing or abridging them--for that has
been tried before--but by having them re-written in conformity with
present-day standards by eminent contemporary writers. This notion had
been germinating in my head for some time past, but I did not see my
way clear until I read the luminous and epoch-making remark of Mr.
C. K. SHORTER, that he would sooner have written _Tom Jones_ than any
book published these two hundred years.