Monkeying with Chimp's Lymphs.

Do/sc you ever pause, dear reader, in your pursuit of fame and fireworks, to contemplate those opti-mystic words: “Make me a child again, just for to-night.” How often have you heard this sophomorical supplication raised like the cry of a radio-uncle sore smitten with infantile paralysis in the child-welfare department, or a son of Haggis, who would, perchance, qualify for a half-price ticket as an applauder of Lauder.

From Greenland's ice-cream fountains to India's rubber bands, opti-maniacs pay good money for a bad imitation of Youth. They hie them to Vienna to get a brace of chimp's lymphs welded onto their conjunctional isthmuses, in the belief that, by monkeying with glands they may become impregnated with the germs of juvenility. True, some prefer to accept the art of plastic surgery at its face value, inclining to the belief that by wearing their ears back to front, bending the nose, putting a crimp in the cranium, and generally upholstering the facial furnishings with pseudo-moles and embroidered eyebrows, they can put back the hands of time on their clocks, and regain those careless days of soapless childhood.

Nay, dear reader, mother knows best—youth is not a matter of physique or physic; it cannot be recalled at will like the lingering flavour of garlic; neither can it be regained by wearing cast-off twiddly-bits from the zoo, nor by being insulated with Dunlop arteries.

Youth is of the arts rather than of the arteries. In speaking of rejuvenation, we do not refer to the art of make-believe or make-up, once practised by the female “juvenile lead,” in those dear old bellow-dramas we used to revel in, with titles like Yeast Lynn, Greased Sin, ‘Ell in a Glim, and The Face Round the Bathroom Door. Even the “juvenile lead” realised that rejuvenation was a matter not to be taken lightly, especially in view of her tonnage and the fact that her vocal vibrations were normally of the variety that caused movable objects to rock on their bases, bitumen to bulge, and strong men to quiver from end to end. But she, dear soul, refused to grow old, although foully treated by wicked uncles and beaten by ferocious step-mothers in a manner calculated to strain the rivets in the hull of an armour-plated armadillo.