NEWS OF THE THIRD COMPETITION

The Editor has offered a prize of t5 for an Epitaph in Advance upm Henry Ford, Jack Hobbs, or Professor Albert Einstein. The award will be announced in next .reek's SPECTATOR.

Ix comparison with the first and second competitions, the third has fallen rather flat. The entries have been fewer in number and on the whole lower in quality. But half the excitement of journalism is in being wise after the event. We recognize now that we ought to have foreseen the bad jokes we should receive if we asked for comment upon Mr. Henry Ford ; we recognize that Professor Einstein means little in the lives of most of us. Perhaps, indeed, all three of our heroes arc too abstract, too impersonal, to arouse our intimate emotions ; it is more in their achievements than in their characters that we know them. The competition, however, will probably be easier to judge than the others have been ; we c.tn immediately set on the left-hand all those manuscripts that pun upon names, reminding us that Einstein is the German for a stone, or that---no, we cannot bring our- selves to detail these horrors. There remain a few very good epitaphs, and some of them we quote below. It is interesting to observe that our readers mostly prefer to compose in verse ; there are about fifty verse epitaphs submitted for each epitaph in prose.

Henry Ford.

" Here lies who sealed the heavens, and found the star

Sonic hitch their waggons to ; Ford hitched his car.

IN'here'er invention grew, he probed its root, And from each plant of promise plucked tho fruit.

From Phathus' ear its measured speed ho drew ;

From Night's funereal car its sable hue ;

Not Hades' self was shunned, he stooped to steal

Its tireless motion from Ixion's wheel ; Propulsive fire Elijah's chariot taught ; His tractors aped the car of Juggernaut.

On rivals passed lie looked with proud disdain, As on his bridled Kings looked Tamburlane.

Outpaced at last by Death's all-conquering car,

Ford triumphs still, for ' Fords' are—what they are."

THOMAS THORNELY: " Now swells the soft angelic chord

With strident hoots from Henry Ford Who sounds upon his cars and cycles

A fanfare louder far than Michael's."

WILFRID THORLEY,

" In memoriam

Honrici Ford vehiculorum opificis maximi qui quum viatoribus mobilitatem sibi suisque divitias comparassot post vita pulverem eo mobitigraturus

ro

ubi curru rotisque invohi non est anno Salutis * * * tetatis suae * • * " Luscus:

Jack Hobby.

Here lyes Jack Hobbs, not bowl'd nor stump'd nor catcht,

But, like the rest, with Death unfairly matcht :

Dread King, to whom th' unconquered spirit yields,

Grant him new Triumphs in th' Elysian Fields :

Or, if such Laurels grow not in that Place Where other Gamesters other Games imbrace, Let him converse with Nyren and with Grace,

And joyn, among the brightest of 'cm all,

The Constellation of the Bat and Ball."

LUSCUS4

Albert Einstein.

" Here Einstein rests, if any rest there be For souls obsessed by relativity. In life his axe shone ever at the root

Of some proud thought-encumbering Absolute.

Death holds him now, but ere his force was spent, Space shrank her bounds, Light, at his bidding, bent, And Gravitation fled the firmament.

Nor spared he Man : one arrow from his bow

Pierced Newton, one transfixed Galileo ; Their gold he proved with dubious ore alloyed,

And threatened Ether shuddered in her void ; With shattered axioms Nature's realm was strown ; Till Death, incensed at powers that paled his own, Shook the Imperial Thinker from Us throne."

THOMAS Taoressezt " Beyond all discord, all dispute,

Lies he who smote the Absolute ; 0 human race, long as you live,

gg.