Punch: Punch (56.1869)

A GENTLE VEGETARIAN.

“ ’Morning, Miss ! Who’d ever think, looking at us two, that you devoured Bullocks and Sheep, and / never took

ANYTHING BUT RlCE? ”

WIiAT CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS COME TO.

Oh dear, oh dear, and oh dear, here’s a muddle—

Alabama Convention got all in a huddle :

Though Stanley and Reverdy o’er it did cuddle.

And swore ’twould hold water like what is called “ puddle.”

There’s Johnson 5s been dined ever since we first heard of it,
High-faluting, serene, has in rapture referred to it,

Swearing all the Conventions e’er drawn but absurd to it.

And here’s Uncle Sam won’t say never a word to it!

Here’s the Press lias been blowing its trumpet o’er Stanley—

How he's all that’s straightforward, clear-headed, and manly—
How ne’er was diplomatist—speaking humanly—

So beyond either blunder or bungle as Stanley !

And here we have all been consigning to blazes
Old-fashioned diplomacy’s myst’ries aud mazes ;

And, in self-satisfaction’s complacentest phrases,

Singing new-fangled open diplomacy’s praises !

Here was Reverdy Joiinson, all gushing and go a-head,

To count chickens unhatched, and e’en ask them to crow a-head;
Here was Stanley, perfection! Nor too quick, uor too slow-a-head ;
Here was Clarendon, after the first foul, to row-a-head !

All these wonderful cooks, with their wonderful toiling.

The broth have completely succeeded in spoiling:

And Reverdy Johnson his slack-jaw up-coiling—

! May sigh “ We ’re small taters, I guess,—the whole boiling.”

And—sorest of slaps on the face, not a doubt of it,

To the diplomates who in advance made a shout of it,

Aud at mutual compliments had quite a bout of it,—

Here’s John Bull, like Jonathan, glad to be out of it!

“ A JEWEL PROM AN EARTHEN POT.”

George Herbert.

Even if this squalid Convent case had dragged its twenty days’ length
along to no better end than this (it has doue vast good in exposing
the character of convent life), Punch could not say that the time had
quite been thrown away when occasion was given to Sir John
Coleridge, Solicitor-General, to say what we thus embalm for the
ages :—

“ I will take the liberty, Gentlemen of the Jury, of giving you a warning
upon another matter. j)o not be afraid of doing what is right and just
because it chances to be popular. That is a danger to which sensitive and
high-minded men are much more liable than to the coarser and commoner
forms of temptation. But, Gentlemen, there is one old and a grand distinc-
tion—a distinction drawn first by, perhaps, the very greatest man who ever
filled the seat that my Lord [C. J. Cockburn] now so worthily occupies, I
mean Lord Mansfield—the distinction between the popularity which follows,
and the popularity which is followed after—a distinction which I earnestly
entreat you carefully and inflexibly in this case to remember.”

Those be words. Sir John, for which Mr. Punch heartily thanks
you. They point a moral which needs a good deal of pointing just
now, and which Mr. Punch, who has ever been superior to the weak-
ness condemned, begs all sensitive and high-minded men to remember
and apply. Voxpopuli is not necessarily Vox Del but neither is it
necessarily the exact Opposite. Once more, thanks, Coleridge, for very
happily timed counsel. Your grand namesake aud relative never spoke
more wisely—we despair to add a compliment you would like better.

A Safe Guess.

We see a little treatise advertised under the attractive title of
The Stomach and its Difficulties. What may be these difficulties, we
who are not medical and know not indigestion, are happily quite ig-
, norant. We apprehend, however, that with very many persons, the
i ehief difficulty of the stomach is that of regularly tilling it.