An eminent local
medical man asserts that morbiferous germs exist to a very dangerous
degree in the Whitecliffe atmosphere, and that the Whitecliffe water
is rendered almost solid by the multitude of bacilli it contains.
Another Chorkstone resident, who lately visited Whitecliffe, found
the air so relaxing that he fainted away, and had it not been for the
kindness of the landlord of a certain hotel, who had him carried out
of his bar and driven off in a trap to his own home, he believes he
would have succumbed! Comment is needless.
Yours impartially, THE MAYOR OF CHORKSTONE.
SIR,--There is not the slightest foundation for the ridiculous
_canard_ as to the inhabitants of this picturesque and abnormally
fashionable town being "in a state of complete panic, owing to the
fact that all the convicts recently confined at Shortland have broken
out, and are indulging in frightful excesses in the neighbourhood."
The convicts have _not_ broken out; but an epidemic of gratuitous
mendacity has done so, it appears.
Yours indignantly, THE MAYOR OF CURDSMOUTH.
P.S.--Have you heard about the sanitary state of Shutmouth? Shocking!
SIR,--As I hear that it is rumoured that M. PASTEUR has discovered an
entirely new and most dangerous kind of bacillus in the neighbourhood
of pine-trees, perhaps I may mention, in order to reassure our myriads
of intending summer visitors, that the death-rate at this town is
one in ten thousand, and that we should have had _no death-rate at
all last week_, if the one person referred to had not met with an
unfortunate accident.
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