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Wisdom while you wait

Chapter 29: THE HIGHER LIFE.
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About This Book

A brief satirical miscellany masquerades as promotional material for a ludicrously grand encyclopaedia, blending parodic advertising copy, faux testimonials, a boastful preface, and absurdly detailed terms of sale. Fragments include mock lists of editors and departments, ridiculous delivery and storage schemes, secret-packing forms, and officious warnings that escalate into surreal consequences. The piece lampoons commercial hype, publishing pretension, and bureaucratic pomposity by using hyperbole, formal documents, and comic inversion of practical concerns.

THE HIGHER LIFE.


From the Article (12 pages) by LIEUT.-COL. NEWNHAM-DAVIS.

Restaurants—... Advancing civilisation having shown that efficiency is based on fine feeding, it is the paramount duty of every patriotic Briton to dine not wisely but too well. As a great gourmet has remarked, a rich menu spells a happy ménage. At the same time it is advisable to dine at home as seldom as possible: it is cheap but monotonous, and often nasty, and there are 150 restaurants in London where a succulent dinner can be had for anything from 15s. to 30s. a head, a fact of which the British workman seems to be painfully unaware. The conversation of a chef, or even an intelligent waiter, is, it should be borne in mind, almost invariably stimulating and refined. By thus conscientiously evading the dreariness of domesticity, a self-respecting and well-nourished citizen, reinvigorated by repeated visits to Monte Carlo, Cannes, Homburg, and occasional week-ends at the most luxurious hotels on the south coast, may be able to support the burden of existence with equanimity, and be ready for his country’s call. Every house should be connected to a good restaurant by a souptureenean passage....

[The New Volumes also contain Articles on WEEK-ENDS, PEARCE AND PLENTY, and DWARFS.]


A GREAT WRITER.


From the Special Article (111 pages) by HALL CAINE, M.H.K.:

Shakespeare, William.—... I was born at Stormville, in the Isle of Heine-mann, in the year 1853. Hall is not my only Christian name; like Huxley, I was also called Thomas Henry, but in no other respects can I be said to resemble that ruthless materialist, my whole life being dedicated to the furtherance of emotional religion and the betterment of Man. After a brief but soulful experience of provincial journalism, I came up to London at the invitation of Sidney Lee, Writer to the Cygnet of Avon, and commenced as a dramatic author. I subsequently visited Ignatius Donnelly in America, Pope Leo XIII. at the Vatican, and was the first person to interview royalty in the halfpenny press.

[The New Volumes also contain Articles on Mr. BEERBOHM TREE, TEMPORAL POWER, and THE SERVICE OF MAN.]

Spencer, Herbert. See ORDER OF MERIT—in vain.


ONE OF THE WORLD’S MASTERPIECES.


From the Special Article (91 pages) by LORD ELGIN.

Statuary.—... The Venus of Milo in the Louvre is an excellent example of what we mean. The student, by the way, may approach without fear—she is quite armless. But perhaps still more to our point is the bust of Mr. Barrie in Carreras marble, recently erected at the corner of Quality Street and Wardour Street. Could anything be more effective than the curve of his pipe stem? Recent sculpture has nothing better to show than this....

[The New Volumes also contain Articles on RODIN and the CRICHTON CLUB.]


SENILITY V. YOUTH IN JOURNALISM.


From the Special Article (1 page) by Mr. HILDEBRAND HANNIBAL HARMSWORTH.

‘The Times.’—... This once famous organ, undermined by the deadly competition of an efficient halfpenny press, fell into its dotage in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Feeble efforts were made to bolster it up by distributing it as a bonus to purchasers of the ninth and tenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, but an article condemning motor-cars marked the beginning of the end. An old paper run by a senile staff could no longer make headway against the triumphant combination of youth and ‘hustle.’ This fact can best be illustrated in the same way that the Daily Mail displayed the ages of railway directors—by the appended tables giving at a glance the ages of the leading men in the two organizations in the summer of 1902:—

AGES OF THE Times STAFF. AGES OF THE Daily Mail STAFF.
C. F. Moberly Bell 198 Alfred Napoleon Harmsworth 23
G. E. Buckle 186 Scipio Africanus Harmsworth 21
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace 185 Hildebrand Hannibal Harmsworth 19
Humphry Ward 193 Alexander Tamburlaine Harmsworth 16
George Hooper 179 Wellington Marlborough Harmsworth 14
Dr. Morrison 183 Charlemagne Attila Harmsworth 12
G. W. Smalley 178 Washington Roosevelt Harmsworth 6
J. A. Fuller Maitland 191 Rhodes Kitchener Harmsworth 2
A. B. Walkley 199
Hugh Chisholm 174
Valentine Chirol 170
M. de Blowitz 200

[The New Volume also contains Articles on THE EXPANSION OF TELEGRAMS, NEWS INVESTIGATORS, FIRE BRIGADES, and IMPERIALIST LIBERALISM.]