Much Ado About SomethingLawrence, C. E. (Charles Edward)
Science
Much Ado About Something
Lawrence, C. E. (Charles Edward)
England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Fairies -- Fiction
At a bye-election, politicians found themselves scrupulous; canvassers
stuck to the truth, took no unfair advantages, left personalities coldly
alone. The Buffs, always well-provided, lent their enemy, the Blues,
whatever carriages and motor-cars they could spare. Partisans of either
side went to chair the rival candidate, and in the friendliest manner
possible wished him to lose....
The causes which you, O reader, are opposed to fizzled out.
Roofs of city houses were covered with green plants, and turned into
gardens, enabling employés to do their business better because work was
punctuated with restful visits to the flowers....
Soap was vigorously used. Cleanliness became a creed and a passion.
Morning faces, floors and doorsteps shone. (Five fortunes would not
induce me to divulge the name of the favourite soap.)
All British birds in cages were taken into the country and released.
Gourmets started a league to prohibit the eating of larks. The
woodlands, therefore, rang with happier songs, and Fairyland advanced
with seven-league boots....
Bean-feasters devoted evenings to the practising of glees, reviving
folk-songs, so that country roads were no longer rendered wretched with
the crude strains of music-hall choruses. Delightful concerts were
organized for Londoners among the green fields. England once more began
to be merry with song....
Vulgarity lost its flavour. Rudeness was cold-shouldered. Jokes which
were not nice were not laughed at. They fell flat as recumbent
tomb-stones. Humour--the real article--lived again. It was pleasant to
hear the persiflage of office-boys, which began to be original. Omnibus
drivers and cabmen were sometimes really funny. As for judges, they
always joked in the right places....
The elves and the Bodyguard looked to the hoardings, which became more
pleasant and effective as the artistic charm of advertisements
increased. Colours were chosen which combined harmoniously. Passers-by
no longer suffered toothache and heart-spasm because of some militant
eyesore. Those pestilent bobbly lights, that reiterate a trade-name at
night-time, were torn down by righteous raging mobs, hammered and
drowned....
What else the fairies did I need not detail here, for the reader who has
come to this page has proved perfectly capable of adding to the series
of their good effects. It was all just splendid.
London surely and rapidly recovered itself; and as its appearance and
manners progressed towards perfection, more fairies, encouraged by the
brightness, came; more pillar-boxes were settled upon; the circle of
influence was still wider spread; the march of amelioration went on.
When a hundred fairies had arrived, and forty-three gnomes had followed
them--which was not until October, the sere of the year, had
arrived--June decided to give a garden-party on the roofs of Paradise
Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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