Punch (39.1860)

94

PUNCH, Oil THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[September 8, 1860.

‘

Paterfamilias. “I was thinking, Darling, that perhaps, as it is a very Long Journey, it would be better ip 1 went
First, and got everything comfortable; you could then Travel down with Nurse and the Children afterwards.”

[.Mamma doesn't seem to see it, and Nurse and Mamrna-in-Law think him a Brute.

GOING OUT OF TOWN.

GARIBALDI’S ASSES.

The sympathy with Garibaldi which Punch has always entertained
| was so enthusiastic, that it seemed capable of no increment. The little
but interesting circumstance, mentioned in the following extract from
j the letter of the Times correspondent on a voyage with the Italian
j Liberator, has raised the enthusiasm of Mr. Punch on behalf of that
; glorious fellow, to a heat which would be many degrees above boiling,
if Punch's enthusiasm could boil, which it cannot, because boiling
necessarily involves evaporation, and his sentiments with regard to
1 Garibaldi are fixed and not to be volatilised. The Dictator of Sicily
is not only a hero, but a wag. At the illustrious General’s own place
in the islet of Caprera, where he had landed with a select party, the
scenery and the crops having undergone inspection:—

! “ Presently some of the domestic friends of the solitary landlord came up—sheep,

goats, and pigs, which he knew and recognised one by one, four donkeys, one of
whom he hailed by the august name of Pio Nono, and the others by other names
equally illustrious in contemporary history which I shall not write down.”

“Do,” the King of Naples will doubtless say, when he reads the
words last foregoing. “ Write me down one of the asses.” “And me
another,” the Emperor of Austria will as probably exclaim;
addressing the other young tyrant, let us hope, at Vienna. “ Oh, that
he ” (the Times correspondent) “ were here to write me down an ass : ”
cries the young Neapolitan Dogberry, and the wish is echoed by the
juvenile Verges of Austria.

Garibaldi, by thus playfully assigning the names of his enemies to
jackasses, indicates that he bears them no malice, and that, in his
struggle to emancipate men from asinine despotisms, “ nought is done
in hate but all in honour.” And if those poor despotic creatures would
but accept their proper situation, and submit to their natural master,
they would no doubt receive at his hands the same kind and gentle
treatment as that which he is described as having extended to their
representatives on the above-mentioned occasion :—

“ The harmless creatures came forward to be petted by their kind master, and
rubbed their long-eared heads against his legs.”

If Pio Nono would only imitate this sensible as well as amiable
conduct on the part of his quadruped namesake, instead of kicking
against the prickles, he would show considerably more wisdom than he
does in proposing his toes to the lips of the faithful. The other human
counterparts of Garibaldi’s asses might also just as well submit as it
were to be patted by the benevolent conqueror, and rub their long-eared
heads against his legs.

But we have been confining our consideration all this time to three !
asses, and Garibaldi has four. Who is the fourth Ass P What other
name illustrious in contemporary history is it likely that a good and
great man would confer on a jackass P Louis Napoleon is not an
ass—although he is said to believe in Spirit-rapping. Yet Garibaldi
has evidently ideas of greatness which might induce him to regard
many a personage great in the world’s eye as merely a great donkey.
Perhaps the fourth of his Asses bears the name of Lamoriciere. Or j
can it be that Garibaldi’s fourth ass is Lord Normanby ? If he has
a fifth ass, to do any equally meritorious gentleman the honour of j
naming it after him, the Pope’s Brass Band might bray for that j
distinction, to be awarded to the utterer of the loudest “ ee-haw! ”

Mechi in the Literary Field.

Fired with emulation by the success of the Garden that paid the
Rent (query P was this Covent Garden ?), Our Farm of Four Acres,
and from Haytime to Hopping, Mr. Mechi, the great agricultural
blade of Boot-tree Hall, is about publishing an agricultural treatise,
entitled. From Crops to Strops.

the wrong woman.

Mr. O’Brien lias addressed a letter full of French sympathies, and!
Milesian nonsequiturs, to M. Marie Martin—the author of the silly
pamphlet called “ La Question Irlandaise." Mr. O’Brien must have
misdirected his effusion. At all events it reads as if it had been meant
not for Marie Martin, but for Betty.