Punch (37.1859)

October 22, 1859.

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

171

composed for the occasion by Mb. Brunderrtt, was also sung; and to conclude
the ceremony, three long and hearty cheers were given. The cortege then returned
to the Botanical Tavern, where a supper was provided, consisting of six enormous
pies. The invited guests paid the usual funeral gift, and spent a merry evening.”

Wliat “the usual funeral gift” is, we do not know. The munera, or
dona, ci the ancient Roman rites were, if we have not forgotten all Dr.
Swishtail’s teachings, things that the deceased used to like. The
bereaved Scholes is the landlord of the tavern in question, but we can
hardly suppose that the guests pelted him with flesh of dead horses, or
with greaves; but rather that he made a good thing of his loss in the
shape of the reckonings for his pies and other refreshments. This,
however, is his business, not ours.

But, reserving all other comment upon the whole business, Mr.
Punch would ask, who that witnessed this Genteel Canine .Funeral will
ever be able to think gravely of the Undertaker and his mummeries and
his weepers, and his black bandages, and the rest of the rubbish with
which he robs the living in the name of the dead F Undertaking will
surely be a bad trade in Derbyshire, henceforth.

When the Roman mourners returned from their simple and sensible
rites, Dr. Swishtail used to tell us that by way of purification they
were made to step over a fire. In humble imitation of the Romans,
Mr. Punch has called the old idiots of Glossop over the coals, but he
has, goodnaturedly, not made them very hot, partly for a reason which
it might not be complimentary to state, and partly because the Glossop
proceedings may be regarded as a quizz upon the British Ghoul or
Undertaker.

PUNCH ON PUNCH.

Yesterday, at an Association for the Advancement of Social Science,
Mr. Punch delivered a lecture on Punch. Mr. Punch said: In lecturing
| on punch, a few of you will perhaps expect that I shall blow my own
trumpet. Nothing of the kind. I am not going to talk about myself,
but of the liquor which is my namesake. It is made with rum, brandy,
lemon, hot water, and sugar. I am speaking, and only intend speaking,
of punch proper; hot mixed punch: and shall postpone the considera-
tion of other punches. The things I have named are the essential
constituents of punch. A little beer is sometimes added—advan-
tageously. Instead of mere hot water, tea is occasionally used ; and
then your tea not only cheers, but also, if you take enough of it—or, as
Lord Brougham would say, too much of it—inebriates.

Put twice as much rum as brandy into the jug in which, and not
in a bowl, your punch should be made. The fault of most punch is
that brandy predominates in it. On the contrary rum should predomi-
nate. Rum, without any brandy at all, makes excellent punch. Mere
. brandy punch is nasty stuff. Put in as much sugar as the water will
dissolve. If you brew, say, a quart of punch, let it contain the juice
and the rind of one lemon. The juice, I say; not the pulp. The rind
also; not all the peel; none of the white pith: only the yellow out-
side pared off thin, so as to lay open the aromatic oil-cells. With
regard to the proportion of water you employ, let your own discretion
be your tutor. Some like strong punch; others weak,—ladies gene-
rally prefer weak. I prefer weak to smoke with.

Don’t put these things into your jug in the order in which I have
named them. Make your lemonade first. Mix your hot water, sugar,
and lemon. Let the water be boiling hot—fresh from the kettle on
the fire. If brought up from the kitchen, test it with a thermometer.
“It have a boiled, Sir,” is a maidservant’s or charwoman’s idea of an
affirmative answer to a question intended to ascertain if the tempera-
i ture of the water she has come with is 212°.

Put in first your lemon-juice and lemon-rind, pour thereon your hot
water, put a wrapper consisting of a folded napkin over the mouth of
your jug, and lay a thick octavo or some other equivalent body, over
the mouth of that vessel, and let it stand for five minutes. Then add
the liquors. If it stands on the hob all the better, and better still if it
stands in the oven. In either of the two latter cases you not only
may, but will do well to, add the spirits before covering up the jug;
because the heat they will be exposed to will more than make up for
their cooling effect on the hot water, wdiich^when themselves heated,
they will aid in extracting the aroma of the lemon.

To bake or stew punch without covering it in, is the act of an unen-
lightened savage, ignorant of the first principles of distillation, which
are familiar even to the Irish native.

Drink your punch from a wine:glass, pouring it thereinto from your
jug. It spoils the pleasure of drinking punch to ladle it out of a bowl
into a tumbler. In so doing you inevitably make a slop, which is offen-
sive to every orderly mind. Punch was meant to stick to the ribs and
not to the fingers.

Horrid Attempt.

We have received a letter from a wretch, who, after pointing out
the fact that one of the horses that ran the other day at the Newmarket
Second of October Meeting was named Gallus, suggests the probabi-
lity that the animal in question was ridden with a halter !

A FATAL FACILITY.

The Earl of Shaftesbury, in the magnificent address he delivered
at the opening of the Annual Meeting of the Association for the
Promotion of Social Science, tells us that “ everything has a tendency
to run into abuse.” If examples were needed of this trutn, we would
point to the religious newspapers, for you cannot look into a number
of the Tablet, or the Univers, or the Churchman, or the Pecord, without
instantly discovering that “its tendency is to run into abuse.” Take
abuse away from these papers, and you would have nothing but the
“imprint ” left; and that is precisely the end, taking a leaf out of their
own book of charity, that we should like to see most of them arrive at.

A ROMAN MARTYROLOGIST.

Our Roman Catholic contemporary, the Tablet, contains the follow-
ing illustration of the position of the Pope in relation to Victor
Emmanuel and Louis Napoleon :—

“The state of Italy must be satisfactory now to every liberal mind, for the con-
dition of the Holy See is a sad one. The Sovereign Pontiff is on the cross, and the
whole world is looking on, scoffing and jeering. The Kino of Sardinia, represents the
impenitent thief, and nothwithstanding the perils of his own position, he finds time
to insult the innocent one, though he does not curse Pontius Pilate who has
brought him to his evil case. The Emperor of the French looks calmly at liis
work, and is satisfied.”

“ Comparisons are odious,” says the old proverb. Does the Tablet
want to get that ancient maxim enlarged, by giving occasion for the
new saying, that “ Comparisons are impious ? ” “ Pontius Pilate,” and
the “Impenitent Thief,” will probably be inclined by the above simi-
litudes to consider that “ Comparisons are impudent.” It is lucky for
the Tablet that it does not publish profane articles under the govern-
ment of “ Pontius Pilate,”—-though that is not a procuratorship, but
an empire. Brother Veuillot and the Univers have had a warning
for sedition, calumny, and falsehood. We suppose that the Tablet
would represent MM. Veuillot and Taconet as stretched upon the
rack; those Catholic confessors thus undergoing a persecution in its
degree corresponding to the crucifixion of the Pope.

A Benison for Eenison.

Mr. Denison, in the letter in which he endeavours to account for
the stoppage of the Westminster Bell, dates it from “ Ben Rhydding.”
To make the truth complete, the locality should have been described as
Big Ben Rhydding, for there can be no doubt that it is at Mr. Deni-
son’s door that the “Rhydding ” of Big Ben lies.