Punch: Punch (38.1860)

February 4, i860.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

51

THE WEED AND THE ELOWER.

*31 Domestic ©pera.

Laura.

It’s really provoking, you will go on smoking,

The smell’s never out of these curtains of ours,

And the money, good lack, 0 ! you spend in tobacco
Would buy me such loves, dearest Henry, of flowers.

Henry.

My dear, you are joking, I can’t give up smoking,
Without it I should not be able to do ;

And as for the flora you talk of, dear Lauba,
Believe me, 1 care*for no flower, love, but you.

Laura. It. ’s really provoking;
Henry. My love, you are joking ;

L.aura and f You will go on
Henry \ I can’t give up

| smoking;

Both. What is one to do ?

Jjaura. I might have such roses;
Henry. Some folks have fine noses;
iMura andJ And marriage 1 .

Henry \ A husband Jsupposes
Both. Compliance a due.

Here is set a fresh proof of the Dean Being a Close thinker.
Having informed his hearers that beasts do not get drunk, whatever
the unlearned in zoology may say of them, the Dean proceeds to argue
that, whatever makes men mad deprives them of their mental power;
and hence it is, he reasons, that they are unable to distinguish right
(rom wrong. This is a conclusion that we cannot get away from, and
we congratulate the Dean on so convincing a remark.

In what follows this, however, the Dean is not so happy, and, with
however great a diffidence, we must own we disagree with him. In
the course of our experience, which is not a slight one, we have so
much more frequently seen our friends made jolly than made miserable,
by wine-drinking, that we cannot coincide in defining wine to be

— “ an artificial drink, which God never intended man to take, and which mail
only drank to his own misery.”

As Dean Close reads the Bible without, “ caring what it calls ”
things, one caunot, be surprised at finding him misreading it. Perhaps
the Dean will at his. leisure add a footnote to his text, and quote the
sacred passages which prove to him that wine was not “intended” to
be drunk. It is the fashion with some preachers to boast of being
taken, as it were, behind the scenes, and having further insight into
millstones than mere laymen. But to our ears it assuredly smacks
of profanity to make profession of acquaintance with heavenly
requirements, and of knowing what Divinity “intended” to be done.

His Very Reverence the Bottle Stopper next proceeds to tell us
that—

“ He had often thought people appeared stupid, and when he came to ask the
cause, the answer was Drink.”

Henry.

My child, leave off crying, I meant not denying
One innocent pleasure that sweetly beguiles.

Accept this small cheque, love, and hasten to deck, Iovp,
Your tables with flowers, and your features with smi'es.

Laura.

O Henry, my darling, forgive my slight snarling,

You ’re really too good to me, Henry, by far;

But now my behaviour shall merit your favour,

Do let your own Latjbakins light your cigar.

Both.

In future united we’ll live, and delighted
To please one another by words and by deeds.

And often, shall Henry’s gift-Flowers be requited
By Laura’s presenting her darling with Weeds.

A STOPPER FOR A BOTTLE-STOPPER.

The hot wrath of Dean Close lately smoked against tobacco; and
now we find the fumes of wine have an ill savour in his nostrils. The
Dean was terribly whole-hoggish in his intolerance of pigtail; and as
an advocate of temperance, he is as terribly intemperate. When he
appeared as a tobacco-stopper, he not merely clapped his veto upon
smoking in excess, but denounced the “filthy weed” as being the root
of every evil; and when now his AAry Reverence comes before us as a
bottle-stopper, he not merely would impede the over-circulation of the
claret-jug or beer-pot, but would stop the make of these and other
stimulating beverages, on the ground that drink which cheereth must \
certainly inebriate.

Whether water-drinkers suffer much from water on the brain, is a
point which we throw out for the doctors to determine. But their
orations are, in general, very watery and weak, and their flow of words j
not seldom becomes the merest dribble. The late outpouring of Dean j
Close to the Members of the Carlisle (so-called) Temperance Society, j
forms clearly no exception to this aquatic rule. Here, for instance, is !
a sample of the wishy-washy stuff which, no doubt, passed for “true
Pierian” with those who sat and drauk in the Dean’s dean-unciation:—

Drink ? Yes, very possibly ; but of what sort, please your Deanship ?
Do you mean us to infer that only wine-drinkers seem stupid ? If so,
we must beg tee-totally to differ from you. We don’t believe that
water is a good thing for the wits. Mental faculties get low when
kept on a Veau diet. Claret, while it clarifies, invigorates the brain,
while water but dilutes, and consequently weakens it. Indeed, if you
doubt the fact, your Deanship, of waterbibbers being stupid, one need
not seek much further than your Deanship’s speech to prove it.

“ His Christian friends had no idea of the extent and ramifications of the misery
occasioned in this country, not by drunkenness, but by drink,—by the thing itself,
by that which intoxicates. He did not care what they called it, or what the Bible
might call it, but it was the something that made people drunk, whatever that
might be, only it was not water.”

“Only if was not water.” Readers will please note the importance
of these words. Something makes people drunk : the Dean don’t care
what it’s called; only it is not water. How surprisingly Close-
. reasoning a brain the Dean must have, to arrive at the conclusion that
a something makes men drunk, and that this something is not water!

Further on we get another sprinkling of wish-wash, such as no one
but a water-spouter could have managed to pump up :—

“ Whatever made men drunk—he would not say, reduced them to the levol of the
beast, for beasts never got drunk,—but whatever reduced them to the state of
madmen, robbed them of their mental power, so that they could not distinguish
right from wrong ; this was the evil that percolated through society.”

Great Social Questions.

Which is the right side of twenty ? What do you say to fourteen ?
Is twenty-one the wrong side ? Should you call^ twenty-nine the
wrong side of twenty, or the right side of thirty ? Has forty any
right side at all, nearer than some figure under thirty ? If there is a
right side of forty, is it not that which is the nearer ‘to three-score
and ten ?

performing parsons.

We think the Pit and the Pulpit should not be jumbled up together.
When the former is invaded by the latter, we doubt if the pull is alto-
gether ou the side of the Church. We shall be having the Beadle
going round next, as often as there is a pause in the service, and crying
out, “ Any apples, oranges, or ginger-beer ?”

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