Shortly afterward the familiar buzz of airplane motors was heard, and
three silver-gray machines came coasting above the channel of the
Boulevard. They flew low, and it was easy to read the initials C.P.H.
painted on the nether surface of their wings. Over the front ranks of
the parade (which was beginning to fall in line) they executed a series
of fantastic twirls. Then, as though at a concerted signal, they
dropped a cloud of paper slips which came eddying down through the
sunlight. The chuffs scrambled for them, wondering. A sullen murmur
rose when the messages were read. They ran thus:--
TO MAKE GOOSEBERRY WINE
(Paste This in Your Hat),
Ten quarts of gooseberries, thoroughly crushed;
Over these, five quarts of water are flushed.
Twice round the clock let the fluid remain,
Then through a sieve the blithe mixture you strain,
Adding some sugar (not less than ten pound)
And stirring it carefully, round and around.
To the pulp of the fruit that remains in the sieve
A gallon of pure filtered water you give:
This you let stand for a dozen of hours,
Then add to the other to strengthen its powers.
Shut up the whole for the space of a day
And it will ferment in a riotous way.
When you see by the froth that the fluid grows thicker
You, should skim it (with glee) for it's turning to liquor!
While it ferments, please continue to skim:
At the end, you may murmur the Bartender's Hymn.
This makes a booze that is potent enough--
Seal in a hogshead--and hide it from Chuff!
Corporation for the
Perpetuation of Happiness.
The Pan-Antis were still muttering furiously over this daring act of
defiance when a shrill bugle-call pealed down the avenue. Bishop Chuff
rode out into the middle of the street on his famous coal-black
charger, John Barleycorn. There was a long hush. Then, with a wave of
his hand, he gave the signal. One hundred bands burst into the somber
and clanging strains of "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor." The great
parade had begun.
From a house-top farther up the street Dunraven Bleak watched them
come. He had taken Quimbleton's word seriously, and with his usual
enterprise had rented a roof overlooking the Boulevard, on which
several members of the Balloon staff were prepared to deal with any
startling events that might occur. A battery of telephones had been
installed on the house-top; Bleak himself sat with apparatus clamped to
his head like an operator at central. Two reporters were busy with
paper and pencil; the cartoonist sat on the cornice, with legs swinging
above two hundred feet of space, sketching the prodigious scene. The
young lady editor of the Woman's Page was there, with opera glasses,
noting down the "among those present."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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