"But I wanted to hear the story."
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"THE PACIFISTS."
As a reasonable jusquaboutist I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY
ARTHUR JONES'S farce--parable, _The Pacifists_. Assume _Market
Pewbury's_ afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart
cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting
people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their
crumpets, kissing their wives in the market square and proposing to
abduct them to seaside resorts, and none so bold to do him violence and
make him stop it; the police being ill or absent, the Mayor and his
friend, chief victim of the butcher's aggression, unwilling on account
of principles to do anything but talk and get up leagues to deal with
the trouble in general, and in a final ecstasy of disapproval to write a
strong letter; only uncle _Belcher_, a truculent old sea-dog with a
natural lust for whisky and blood, organising an opposition, valiantly
hiring a notable pugilist to deal with the butcher, and becoming
desperately anxious lest the matter should be peaceably settled because
the basher, having been engaged, _must_ find something to bash or there
will be trouble.
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