The Puzzle:
N AB CD.EFG W HIJ KL.MNO
A)
PRIVATE WILLIS
I often think it's comical--Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive--Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative! Fal, lal, la!
B)
DUKE Oh, for that, I'm as cheerful as a poor devil can be expected to be who has the misfortune to be a Duke, with a thousand a day!
MAJOR Humph! Most men would envy you!
DUKE Envy me? Tell me, Major, are you fond of toffee?
MAJOR Very!
DUKE Yes, and toffee in moderation is a capital thing. But to live on toffee -- toffee for breakfast, toffee for dinner, toffee for tea -- to have it supposed that you care for nothing but toffee, and that you would consider yourself insulted if anything but toffee were offered to you -- how would you like that?
COLONEL I can quite believe that, under those circumstances, even toffee would become monotonous.
DUKE For "toffee" read flattery, adulation, and abject deference, carried to such a pitch that I began, at last, to think that man was born bent at an angle of forty-five degrees!
C)
NANK. But how good of you (for I see that you are a nobleman of the highest rank) to condescend to tell all this to me, a mere strolling minstrel!
POOH. Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. When all the great officers of State resigned in a body because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?
PISH. And the salaries attached to them? You did.
D)
ELSIE It is sung with the ring Of the songs maids sing
Who love with a love life-long, O!
It's the song of a merrymaid, nestling near,
Who loved her lord, but dropped a tear
At the moan of the merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sad, and whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
E)
GAMA I'm sure I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be;
You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer,
I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer.
To ev'rybody's prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman's age in half a minute -- and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet ev'rybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
And I can't think why!
F)
BUNTHORNE If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them ev'rywhere.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
And ev'ry one will say, As you walk your mystic way,
"If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!"
G)
SIR RODERIC When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies--
When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay at the moon,
Then is the spectres' holiday--then is the ghosts' high-noon!
H)
FREDERIC: It breaks my heart to betray the honoured father of the girl I adore, but as your apprentice I have no alternative. It is my duty to tell you that General Stanley is no orphan!
KING/RUTH: What!
FREDERIC: More than that, he never was one!
I)
GENERAL: Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
J)
JACK POINT I've wisdom from the East and from the West,
That's subject to no academic rule;
You may find it in the jeering of a jest,
Or distil it from the folly of a fool.
I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind;
I can trick you into learning with a laugh;
Oh, winnow all my folly, folly, folly, and you'll find
A grain or two of truth among the chaff!
K)
SIR JOSEPH When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
L)
MIKADO My object all sublime I shall achieve in time--
To let the punishment fit the crime--
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!
M)
RALPH. I am poor in the essence of happiness, lady--rich only in never- ending unrest. In me there meet a combination of antithetical elements which are at eternal war with one another. Driven hither by objective influences--thither by subjective emotions--wafted one moment into blazing day, by mocking hope--plunged the next into the Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair, I am but a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms. I hope I make myself clear, lady?
JOS. Perfectly. (Aside.) His simple eloquence goes to my heart.
N)
ALL: What never?
CAPTAIN: No, never!
ALL: What never?
CAPTAIN: Hardly ever!
ALL: Hardly ever run a ship ashore!
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For the tar who never runs his ship ashore;
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For he never runs his ship ashore!
O)
MARCO, GIUSEPPE, GIANETTA, TESSA. In a contemplative fashion,
And a tranquil frame of mind,
Free from every kind of passion,
Some solution let us find.
Let us grasp the situation,
Solve the complicated plot--
Quiet, calm deliberation
Disentangles every knot.
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