Punch: Punch (56.1869)

200

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 15, 1869.

A RURAL STUDY.

BURLESQUE-WRITER FORCING PUNS.

STANZAS TO SUMNER.

Say that an Aristocracy, which fears
Plebeian rule too much, and street-made law,

And rough equality where all are peers,

Well pleased the cleft of your Republic saw,

And South Secession’s sword against North draw ;
Rejoiced to think that chasm would never close,

And huge Democracy the world o’erawe
No longer, split asunder, and at blows :

Withal took not your part, but sided with your foes.

Say that a Government the fact too soon
Proclaimed, which it needs must have, soon or late,
Giving your rebels ’vantage, for which boon
Prom your own act they would have had to wait,

So much if you unblushingly can state :

Say that a better watch it might have kept.

And that you had just cause to be irate,

Because a pirate cruiser, while it slept,

Out of a British port, the Alabama, crept.

Suppose all this. How spoke the People’s voice ?

Your adversaries did they back or you f
Why, your War’s issue hung upon their choice,
Napoleon would have made your Nation two,

Would Englishmen his plan have helped him through.
Yet not for Manchester and all its poor,

Starved by your conflict, did they prove untrue ;
Bearing dire loss with patience, they forboie
The cry that would have made your Union last no more.

What’s your return for British sympathy,

Sumner and Senate ? On wild fiction based
You proffer ns outrageous humble pie,

When meekness only can have earned its taste,
Yielding so much we were all but disgraced.

Bullies, before the Erench Imperial throne,

Let, if you dare, your dainty dish be placed.
There tender humble pie in hectoring tone.

Ah, but already there you’ve feasted on your own !

ROO-EY-TOO-EY-TOO !

Me. Goldwin Smith writes from Boston to Mr. Potter, editor of
the Beehive, to say that emigration to the United States had better not
be thought of for the present, Mr. Sumner having aroused so bad a
feeling against England, tie thinks there will be no rupture, but “is
prepared for a turn of affairs which will oblige the English to leave the
States.” Mr. Bunch declines to prepare himself, at present, for any-
thing of the sort, and unless the two foremost nations of the world are
mad, he believes the re-pnblication of the “ Sumner’s Tale,” by one
G. Chaucer, would be as likely to produce war as the Munchausen
Manifesto of his friend Charles, with whom, moreover, he means to
have a word shortly. However, as it is well to avoid the least mis-
understanding between friends, Mr. Bunch himself has paid _Mr.
Sumner’s Bill. The handwriting of the latter being indistinct,
Mr. Bunch is not quite sure whether he asks for Two hundred and
Fifty Millions, or Billions, and therefore has sent over the latter sum.
If there is a balance, Mr. Sumner can keep it for himself, or lay it out
in building a lunatic asylum, into which, if the quarrel should really
arise, the people of the United States will do well to insert every public
man they have, from sober Sumner down to drunken Chandler.

Absence Makes tbe Fingers Grow Fonder.

“ Absent but not forgotten.” Such is the tender, touching heading
to an advertisement in which a lady is quoted (by a sentimental but
business-like Co.) as saying that “ she has. been away for three months ”
from what, from whom does the sympathising reader think ? From the
home of her childhood, from all who are nearest and dearest to her ?—
“ from her sewing machine, but is much pleased with its working, now
she has returned ” !