Punch: Punch (70.1876)

[April 15, 1876.

LEAP YEAR.

"7 sat, Mother, that Girl had the cheek to ask me to Dance ! Fortunately, I could tell her my Card was full !"

ASIAN MYSTERIES.

Mb.. Punch,

We read your wisdom here in Cathay, where we are
naturally interested in Asian Mysteries. Let me tell you of one in
my own family. My ancestor, Aladdin, had an old lamp, by rub-
bing which he could, in a moment, summon to his service the
mightiest powers of earth and ah to do his bidding, like the Jins at
the bidding of Solomon (on whom be peace !). But one day, when
Adaddin was out, a venerable Hebrew merchant (he was in truth a
magician) appeared, offering new lamps in exchange for old ones;
and the court Ladies, and the snobs, sycophants, parasites, and
flunkeys about Aladdin's Princess-wife, Badrool-Badoor, per-
suaded her to exchange her Husband's old lamp for the Jew's new
one, which looked so much bigger and brighter. But with the
lamp departed all those spirits of power; and the Princess, and her
palace, and her hall witb twenty-four windows, from which she
looked on her domains in all quarters of the world, vanished away.
And now tidings come from your Land of the Setting Sun that your
Queen Victoria, who, for a thousand years, has worn a Crown more
wonderful than even the Lamp of Aladdin or the Seal of Solomon,
for its power of calling men and Jins from the East and the West,
the North and the South, to do her service by sea and by land,
has been persuaded to listen to an old Hebrew magician, who has
offered her in exchange for that venerable talisman of sovereignty
a new one, made of what your goldsmiths who travel into these
regions tell us is of the metal called Brummagem, electro-gilded in
Parisian fashion upon German metal. Will not your Queen or her
advisers take warning before it is too late, that the new Crown has
none of the marvellous powers of the old one; and that Victoria
may find, as Badrool-Badoor did, that he who offers her the dazzling
gawd is an Asian magician, wrhose powers lie among the unsubstan-
tial shows of the desert-mirage, rather than over the mighty if evil
majesty of the Jins and Afreets, or the more abject red spectres of
the nether world. Salaam aleikum.

Aladdin the Youngest.

SUB ROSA REFLECTION.
{A propos of Palmer's Case. By a Prig.)

As Faking Bill and me

Was enjoyin' our pots and our pipes,
He 'eaves a sigh, and he sez, sez he—

A takin' a pull at the swipes—

" I've been thinkin', old pal, o' this 'ere—■
A thinkin' until I'm dry—
Of them Bobbies as got in the street called Queer,
For hittin' a gent in the eye.

And I sez to myself, sez I,
What jolly times we'd see,

If prigs was as 'ard to identify
As P'licemen appears to be f "

Words of Command,

Concerning certain suggestions for the Private Soldier's comfort,
" Sero sed Serio," in a letter to the Times, declares " comfort" an
" unsoldierlike word." The divine Williams, however/makes
Bardolph avouch " accommodated " to be " a soldierlike word, and
a word of exceeding good command," Anyhow " comfort" is a thing
as excellent, and a word as soldierlike as accommodation which
implies it. How can a soldier be said to be "accommodated" in
barracks, unless he is comfortable ?

A Cabinet Question.

A partial Tax, now made more partial still,
A brand-new, lackered,_ Royal Titles Bill,
With mean alloy debasing England's Crown,
Bringing its pure gold to Mosaic down !
Bethink you whither these offences tend.
Are they not the beginning of your end ?