build triumphal arch …
build it out of bricks – something’
convenient to throw
Based on the line, “When ye build yer triumphal arch to yer conquering’ hero, Hennessy, build it out of bricks so the people will have something’ convenient to throw at him as he passes through,” attributed to Mr. Dooley.
Sorry but I cannot find a better citation.
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne’s essays contain the bartender’s commentary on various topics.
Also according to Wikipedia, Finley Peter Dunne (born Peter Dunne; July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist, journalist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, his first collection of the nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches.[1] Written as though speaking with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant from County Roscommon, Dunne’s fictional “Mr. Dooley” expounded upon political and social issues of the day from behind the bar of his South Side Chicago Irish pub.
I just feel like throwing bricks today.
I have also been looking for a specific snap shot of history and while looking for it, I came across this other snippet.
This is reported in the diary of John Colville, one of Winston Churchill’s private secretary.
This happened in May of 1940 just a week after Churchill took over as Prime Minister and led the showdown against Nazi Germany.
Mr. Colville writes that: Mrs Churchill who said that the preacher at St Martin-in-the-Fields had preached such a pacifist sermon that morning that she got up and left.
“You ought to have cried ‘Shame’,” said Winston, “desecrating the House of God with lies!”
I love that but that wasn’t the story I was looking for even though it fits a bit.
The story I wanted was in the Prophet of Truth.
Book V in Martin Gilbert’s multi volume biography of Mr. Churchill.
On the day Neville Chamberlin brought back the infamous Munich agreement, an agreement that allowed Germany to take over Czechoslovakia, an agreement that Mr. Chamberlin waved from his balcony, Mr Gilbert writes that:
Throughout the morning the British Government urged the Czechs to accept the ‘Munich’terms; at noon Beneš agreed to do so. That afternoon Chamberlain flew back to London. ‘Vast crowds in the streets,’ Oliver Harvey recorded in his diary, ‘hysterical cheers and enthusiasm. PM on balcony at Buckingham Palace. But many feel it to be a great humiliation.’
In an unpublished note written ten years later Churchill recalled how, that day, ‘My wife and Lord Cecil solemnly discussed marching themselves with a select band to Downing Street and hurling a brick through the windows at No 10.’
I have been thinking about bricks today.
How there are some people and some windows I would love to throw a brick through.
Instead, I voted.
And I have to say that when I fed my ballot into the machine, unlike any other time I have ever voted, I felt like I had thrown my brick.
I hope he felt it.
No Haiku For You 