Punch (55.1868)

1G6

PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHAPIYAPI.

[October 17, 1868.


GREAT ASSURANCE.

Sister. “ I say, Bob, that looks like a Tailor's Bill ! ”

Bob. “ Yes—just fancy ! I have let that Fellow Dress me as he Likes for the last Three Years, and now he has
the Impudence to send me his Bill ! ”

ODD MEN OUT.

THE MAH WITH A VOICE.

Op this genus there are two species, as there were of the Man with
1 an Ear.

The first is the Man with a voice pure and simple, not necessarily to
be qualified as a tenor, baritone, or bass voice, or even as a musical
voice, but simply as A Voice.

I select Tupton as an excellent specimen. I catch him alive, and pin
him on to the board for your inspection. No one requires to see this
species to be certain of his presence in the house : you will say, instinc-
tively, “ I know Tupton’s here : I heard his voice.”

He is a sort of Invisible Prince in a household. You may recollect
that young Leander (which was the Invisible Prince’s name, I think)
used to be heard and not seen, and his voice would be constantly saying
all kinds of pretty things to the Princess, and ugly things to the wicked
somebody else, and no one, for the life of them, could tell whence the
sound came. So with John Tupton, the Man with a Voice. (Of the
second species I will not now speak suffice it, that it is necessarily
musical, out not necessarily powerful.)

The Man with a Voice possesses little, if any, power of modulation.
His voice may be marked on a sono-meter, as never standing at lower
than Loud, and rising by tonic degrees up to Bawling point. Tupton
is somewhat above the average English height, but is not to be spoken
of as a tall man. Some people would call him stout: some wouldn’t:
say, comfortable. He has a mode of his own for dress, which, by some
happy instinct, is never strikingly fashionable, nor strikingly out of the
; fashion. You would say, after some consideration, that he is well-
dressed. He is neither handsome nor ugly: so, in short, you would
pass Tupton in a crowd as you would have the Invisible Prince, if it
wasn’t for his Voice. That arrests you: you can’t help it. You’ll
turn and ask who he is. There is only one way of expressing in print j
| the loudness of Tupton’s voice, and that is by such a judicious use
of Capitals, as the Irishman employed in his letter to his deaf mother. I

After this preparation, enter Tupton.

I am walking during the season in the Park, and. talking to a lovely
young lady, to whom 1 have been introduced the night before at Mrs.
Fillips’s At Home. The lovely young lady speaks with the slightest
suspicion of a French accent, with the most ravishing little touches of
French manner, and is ignorant, [why should I bother her with my
domestic circumstances ? and my wife couldn’t go to Mrs. Fillips’s, !
no matter why—she couldn’t],—she is ignorant, I say, of my status in
society as a married man.

The conversation has stopped at some interesting point just for a
second, while she selects a seat and I search for twopence. It is
impossible, I admit, for any casual observer to see that the lovely '
young lady and myself are together. She is sitting down; I am
standing up, with my gloved-hand wedged in my trouser-pocket, strug-
gling with twopence, and my hand, having gone in open, makes some
difficulty about coming out again as a fist. Anyone who would not
have addressed me when with a lovely young lady (unless he was a
designing scoundrel who only did it for the sake of an introduction,
and ultimately cutting me out; I hate such guile, but that is not to
the point here) may certainly do so now. I am addressed ; loudly.

“ Hallo ! ” shouts a Voice, as if I were miles off

“ Hallo ! Old Boy! ” it repeats, and here is Tupton.

I say how d ’ye do to him, and remark, for the sake of diverting iiis
attention from the lovely young lady, between whom and Tupton I
carefully place myself, that it is so difficult to find coppers when you
want them.

“ Coppers ! ” shout Tupton’s voice. “ Here you are. How mauy ? ”

People attracted by this confounded Voice turn to see how many
coppers I am in want of; people passing slowly in their carriages lean
out, and languidly draw one another’s attention to the Voice, and the
two people engaged in the copper transaction. I feel for the lovely
! young lady, it must be intensely annoying to her. _ She cuts herself off
j from me by a tilt of her little parasol, but her ear is not urotected from
j the Voice.

i I am about to explain to Tupton that I am with a lady, preparatory