Punch (62.1872)

June 29, 1872.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

269

HAPPY THOUGHTS.

-fffir Happy Thought.—
Begin again.

By the sea-side at
Little Shrimpton comes
this Happy Thought to
me. I refer back to the
last note made in my
diary five years ago.

I note, also, that the
First Volume of Typical
Developments has nearly
reached completion: all
but putting it together,
and -writing the last hun-
dred-and-hfty pages, it
is comparatively finished.

Happy Thought. —
Finish it positively.

POPGOOD AND GrfiOOLLT,

my publishers, are think-
ing about it. It will
certainly be (I think) a
grand philosophic and
generally comprehensive
work. They want to
know, by way of coming
practically to business,
"What it will make?"

Happy Thought. — To
reply, genially, "A Hit."
They mean, however,
" How many pages will
it make ? " The ques-
tion with me is, " How
many pages do they want it to make ? " Subject postponed until
I've found this out. I decline to hurry it. They agree with me.
Because a work like this requires application, concentration,
and sustentation. Again they agree with me. In the mean-
time they have, they say—at least, their Managing Director says—
that they have by them some novel illustrations for a Christmas
book about Cinderella, and if I'd like to undertake writing up to
these, why, Typical Developments, Yol. I., might easily wait.
Think it over at sea-side. Little Shrimpton with my other Aunt

and a couple of Uncles.

******

[Why the Cottage in the Country was given up nearly three years
ago, why I am in charge of my other Aunt (bless her !), why I am
but for her and my two Uncles alone, and how it comes about that I
am really beginning again, has nothing to do with Happy Thoughts
either past or present. If this is enigmatic, so it must remain.
Passons.]

******

Complication in Family Matters.—Basking in the rays of a warm
sun on a pebbly beach, under a clear blue sky, and fanned by a
gentle breeze, which is neither east nor north—and that's all that I
negatively know about it—I lie, considering present circumstances.
I am here, supposed to be, what my friend Englemore calls
" picking myself up," and " pulling myself together."

Happy Thought—Like a puzzle. Mem.—Note this for Typical
Developments, Yol. I. (or somewhere, if not room for it here on
account of Popgood and Gkoolly wanting it to make so many or so
few pages), under heading, " P. for Puzzle; Man," &c, &c. There's
a fine thought in this, rather hidden, but to be worked out. Do it
later.

The process of pulling myself together and picking myself up,
seems to consist chiefly in laying myself out, not to shine in Society,
but away from Society, in the sun. After two weeks of this method
I am partly pulled together, and slightly picked up.

Without a family, I am a family man. Inexact quotation which
occurs to me, " Some achieve families, and some have families thrust
upon them." Mine is the latter case. My Aunt (as I said before,
" Bless her!") came to take care of me, and my two Uncles were
bequeathed to my care.

My two_ Uncles are now on the sands, within easy reach of the
human voice (mine), trying to bury one another with wooden spades
in holes of moderate depth. If necessary, I can take both my
Uncles under my arm, and whip them, if they deserve it. They are
four and five years of age respectively. They are the result of a

Happy Thought {occurring to a hale and hearty grandfather over
seventy.)—Marry again.

Reminds me of arithmetical game of Thoughts. " Think of a
grandfather, over seventy. Double him. Add two to him. Halve
him. Then subtract him altogether. Remainder, my two Uncles."
Orphans. Poor little Uncles! * * * One of these days, as their

| guardian, I shall have to take them to school, then to college. I
shall have to write to their Master, and say: "Dear Sir,—I hear
that you make some reduction on taking two Uncles instead of one.
How much per annum for the pair ? " &c, &c.

" P.S. I wish my Uncles to have One Shilling each, pocket-
money, per week, and to have a cold bath every morning."

My Uncles—Uncle Jack and Uncle Gel (abbreviated) — being
tired of sand-digging, are commencing stone-throwing. Their im-
mediate object is an old gentleman who is gazing at the sea. Uncle
Jack's intention (he is four years old) is, no doubt, admirable, but
his capabilities are limited. It might be called a game of "Any-
body's head." This time very near mine. I awake from a reverie
to the fact that stone-throwing is dangerous. I speak severely.
They laugh.

Happy Thought.—Here's my Aunt Jane and the nurse.
My Uncles are given in charge.

My Aunt Jane has something to say on the subject of Health;
hers. On this she prefers consulting me to going to a Doctor.

She is aware that I once went to Aix-la-Chapelle for rheumatism,
and that, more or less, ever since, I've been studying pulling my-
self together and picking myself up; with one exceptional time
when my whole object was to pull myself down.

My Aunt Jane is a martyr to neuralgia, she describes it as Rheu-
matic Neuralgia. She is of an impulsive, warm-hearted disposition,
and, generally speaking, would rather be talking than not.

Happy Thought.—She is "generally speaking."

She has a queer way of getting her words entangled before they
come out, leaving it to the hearer to unravel them and arrange them
in a coherent sentence. In a Pagan country she would have been
an Oracle.

Happy Thought.—My Sphinxian Aunt.

Having thought over her style of conversation—or her absence of
style—I see that it is not a Mrs. Malaproprian nor a Mrs. Rams-
bothamian style, but one peculiarly her own, and, on analysis, I
should say it arose out of an economical desire to save time by
thinking of sentence Number Two, while in the middle of sentence
Number One.

She addresses me, speaking rather hurriedly, and occasionally
stopping with a kind of gasp, and a surprised look, her mouth open,
as if the supply of words had (as it were) been suddenly cut off at
the main, I've been suffering all the morning with face-ache, but
whether it's my toothjaw (one word this) or what I don't know, but
I'm really afraid that I've got some irremedibiddle disease

which-" here she gasps. Supply cut off. I take advantage of

this to ask what she means by "irremedibiddle."

" You know very well what the word means, I'm sure, or ought
to," she replies, a little hurt.

" If you mean, Aunt, irremediable "-

[Happy Thought that. flashes across me. Que diable ! irreme-
diable ! To arrange this afterwards as a French joke, and put it
down to Talleyrand or Moliere.]

-"if you mean 'irremediable,'" I continue, for the Happy

Thought is only a mental flash which does not interrupt the sen-
tence, " I understand."

" Of course," she replies, " I said irremediable, and I know it's a
correct word, though you always find fault with what I say, because
when I was thinking about what a cureness was which couldn't

be-" here she corrects herself of her own accord—" I mean an

illness was which couldn't be cured, I thought there was one word
for it, and so I looked out irremediable and found it in Dixon's
Johnsonary."

" Johnson's Dictionary, Aunt," I say.

" I said so," she returns with some dignity; " and if I didn't, you
know what I mean well enough, and needn't take me up for every
little mistake."

She has decided that she has "Rheumatism all over her, and is not
quite sure that it isn't what the Doctors call ' imperceptible gout,'
which results," she adds, " in goodness knows what, and all sorts
of things."

What does she propose as a cure P She answers, readily, that she
would trust herself implicitly to me if I would take her where I
went myself some years ago, to Aix-la-Chapelle. She has evidently
made up her mind to this. I reply, that I will "turn it over."
While she goes down to my two Uncles on the sands, I meditate.

Process of " turning it over."—This year I have determined to take
up farming and gardening, or gardening and farming, scientifically
and (I think I foresee it in the future) profitably. Besides, in Vol. II.,
Typical Developments, I shall soon come to Letter F., naturally,
" Farming" with a note at bottom of page, " See, also, Or. Gar-
dening," and I shall want to write about it. My friend and adviser,
Englemore, has strongly recommended me agricultural pursuits as
a first-rate thing. As he is coming down to-morrow (unless he tele-
graphs, which, when once you've started him at what he calls

wiring," he generally does three or four times a day), I can con-
sult him as to when I ought to begin my " farming and gardening
operations." ... 1 am dropping off into a drowsy state when some-