Punch: Punch (32.1857)

258

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[June 27, 1857.

THE LADIES' LIQUOR LAW.

A Rather reasonable Liquor Law has been
adopted in the state of New York. By this
enactment, the drunken, and not the sober,
portion of the commuuity, are deprived of their
beer and grog. On a complaint preferred by a
wife that her husband is an habitual drunkard,
magistrates and overseers, in towns and cities,
are empowered to prohibit publicans from selling
him any drink for six months, under penalty of
fifty dollars for each offence. This seems all
very well; but ought the charge of habitual
drunkenness to be sustainable by the mere
evidence of a wife ? Ealse accusation would, of
course, be out of the question; but a wife—for
ladies are commonly inexact in their definitions
—could not perhaps be quite safely trusted to
testify to the reality of that condition, commonly
called the state of beer. Habitual drunkenness
might be, in the opinion of many ladies, habitual
indulgence in the cheerful glass, exceeding, in
any measure, habitual indulgence in dress and
display. The British Law's provision, that in
no case shall a wife give evidence against her
husband, is perhaps most especially requisite in
cases of alleged excess in fermented beverages.

It is quite possible to have too much of a Good Thing—as, for example, when
you get the asparagus shot overt your favourite duess-coat with the

Silk Facings.

a most desirable drain.

The Duck-Island well, in St. James's Park, is
draining all the Pumps in Westminster. Per-
haps this accounts for the unusual absence of
long speeches during the present Session.

The Yankee Walker.—Walker, the Fili-
buster, has had to hook it. He will thus be
doubtless considered to have acquired a handle
to his name.

A CHANT ABOUT EXETER HALL.

0, Stained windows, richly dyed with forms of saints and prophets
hoary !

0, aisles; 0, transepts, north and south ; 0, chancel, crypts, and
clerestory !

0, trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil; 0, mullions, transoms, finials, crockets !
0, crosses, candlesticks, and candles mounted in your sacred sockets !
Hear our melancholy chant, hear our mournful intonation,
Whilst in dreary tuue we sing of a dreadful innovation :

Exeter Hall!

In that Hall, where schismatics and low sectarians go a-Maying,
Bishops now are preaching heard, priests on Sunday evenings praying;
And the prelate at their head occupies the see of London ;
If this kind of thing goes on we shall certainly be undone.
Eoodloft,_reredos, altar-cloth, credence-table, hear our groaning,
Hear us, in the dismal notes of St. Gregory, intoning

Exeter Hall!

Holy Mrs. Adams made quite a proper observation,
When she said that out of Church, Scripture was but profanation.
Exeter Hall is not a Church ; it was never consecrated,
And it is not East and West canonically situated,
And therefore, in a place like that, no service can be worth a button;
Thy shepherds are a pack of wolves, and all their sheep are mere lost
mutton, Exeter Hall!

Listen to us all ye saints who ought to stand in empty niches,
Wherein we to place you itch with unutterable itches.
Dirty, ragged, poor old men, sit there close beside a bishop,
Pretty fisher of mankind fish of such a class to fish up !
It is quite against- all rule; it is wholly indecorous ;
Wherefore we continually shall cry aloud in choir sonorous,

Exeter Hall!

The beggars by the bishop's side afford diversion and amusement

io well-dressed worshippers for whom, Churchwardens in their

wisdom, pews meant.
Though pews we hate, we hate still more to see a lot of laymen humble,
With priests and prelates of the Church mixed up in such unseemly
_ jumble.

Of laity and clergy we, contending for the separation,
Must smg with sorrow, with a voice attuned to doleful lamentation,

Exeter Hall !

We weep ; our tears gush forth apace, like streams of water from a
fountain.

What next ? who knows that bishops soon will not go preaching on a

mountain ?

The qualified, the regular, the proper spiritual surgeon,
Appointed to the cure of souls, is practising like Mr. Spurgeon.
There '11 be an end of everything—and now the Comet's coming near us,
And so we sing—St. Dunstan, help ! St. Swithun, mercifully hear us !

Exeter Hall!

Instinct.

At one of the exhibitions of Mdlle. Vanderbecken's Oiseaux
Merveilleux, before a company of gentlemen connected with the arts
and literature, one of the diminutive performers, upon being directed
" to stop opposite the cleverest person in the room," hopped knowingly
in front of the Editor of the Morning Advertiser, and there chirped
most significantly. Every one began to titter, but_ the mistake was
quickly explained. It seems there had been an accidental change ot
actors," and unfortunately the bird substituted was a Mockmg-Bird !

what 's bred in the stone.

A Company at Erodsham, in Cheshire, are grinding gold out of
Virginia rock-ballast, at the rate of an ounce and a half to the ton. A
flour-mill in the neighbourhood, we are informed, is employed for
crushing the auriferous quartz. It is to be hoped that neither tie
company's shareholders, nor the Erodsham miller's customers are going
to get stones for their bread.

Pictures Without a Home,

The Committee "for determining the site of the National Gallery"
have had another meeting. It seems to us that these Commissioners
are taking a rare long time to determine a very simple question. Had
they not better refer the question to Mr. Hume (the spiritual hum-
buggist), since that gentleman has acquired a large notoriety for his
powers of " second site ? "

A Wise Precaution.—Sir Benjamin Hall has directed that the
dimensions of the new reception room at St. James's shall be calcu-
lated not by linear, but by crino-linear measurement.