Punch (71.1876)

October 14, 1876.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

161

DIFFICULTY AND DARING.

question may be raised
on the motto adopted
by Lord Beacons-
field : Forti nihil
difficile. Is this true ?
Can it be verily
affirmed that nothing
is difficult for a brave
man ? Is not Latin
difficult ? Is not
Greek difficult ? Is
not Geometry diffi-
cult ? Is not Algebra
difficult ? Nay, are
not French and Ger-
man difficult, and is
not simple Arithmetic
difficult; are not
Multiplication, Divi-
sion, the Rule of
Three/ and Practice
difficult, and a doosid
deal too difficult, for
numbers of brave
men't* Is there not
far too many a brave
young man as ready
and willing as natu-
rally qualified, to
lead a forlorn hope,
who, mainly perhaps
because of that very
qualification, is de-
barred from ever
doing so in any higher
capacity than that of
a private soldier by his inability to pass a difficult examination ?

Suppose instead of " Forti, his Lordship were to read " Seventy nihil
difficile f Is he prepared to put the difficulty to the test, by trying to persuade
England into his view of the Eastern Question and how to answer it ? Or is he
too old a bird to try ?

NOT BEFORE IT '3 WANTED.

Dear Me. Punch,

In your public capacity as Mentor and Adviser,
will you kindly suggest to Preceptors of Colleges and the
Committee of Council for Eduo iUon that a new Science be
added to the existing Curriculum—a science imperatively
called for by the wants of the present day. I mean the
" Science of Drawing-room Navigation," by the study
of which young men may be enabled to move in society
without entangling their heels in Ladies' dresses, crushing
lap-dogs, pulling over articles of virtu, or light furniture,
plunging ankle-deep into pots of valuable ferns, upset-
ting ink-stands, card-trays, &c. They may also acquire
the art of resisting the attraction of the lace antimacas-
sars of chairs and ottomans, which seem to have a peculiar
tenacity of adherence to any button more prominent than
usual.

Yours to command,

Polonaise.

UTRTJM MAYIS ACCIPE.

Canon Liddon and Me. Malcolm McColl in their
voyage down the Danube, saw bodies impaled on the
Turkish shore. Musuetjs Bey, Turkish Ambassador in
London, writes, at once, to the Times to deny this on the
part of the "proper authority," and to charge the reverend
witnesses with optical illusion, if nothing worse."

Which is most consonant with probability and ex-
perience, that the Turk should shrink from staking his
victims, and that two English clergymen, with characters
to lose and their senses about them, should have said or
seen the thing that was not, or that the " proper autho-
rity " in Turkey should have first told a lie, and then
charged Musurus Bet to repeat it ?

We leave the Bey impaled on whichever horn he
pleases of that dilemma.

One thing we should recommend him, at all events;
not to stake his own credit on that of any Turkish autho-
rity—proper or improper.

OUE EE PEE SENT ATIVE MAN.
A Music Feast—Dinner—-Clay and Wagner.
Deae See,

What chances are these ! Music's the food of Love. Why,
here's my own Wagner in London, with Me. Cael Rosa at the
Lyceum. Ah, Rosa ! Bonheur ! (an artistic j'eu de mot at eighteen-
pence an hour,—reduction on taking a quantity).

Haven't I returned from Bayreuth full of Wagnee. As Me.
Bteon says in Little Don Ccesar de Bazan, "Am I not a man
and a Bey-reuther ! "—which, of all the puns — Oh, Sir, I
squeaked with delight. I dug my elbow into my neighbour's
ribs—there is no moral law against digging your elbow into
your neighbour's ribs, I believe—and then I had my fun, for /
explained the joke to him. By the way, Sir, I know a man (with

respect to the Bey's scruples, but if there ever was real good Pom-
mery from the caves of Madame Pommery, and if ever there was
Comet Port—with nuts—in this world, it was between us, entre nous,
at that moment), he says, " How about music to-night ? "
I replied—

" Last night, when undisturbed by State affaire,
Moistening our clay, and puffing off our cares ! "

" Bombastes /" cried the wily Bey, as well-read a man as any
that ever wore fez or drank fizz !

" The Bulbul is right," I replied, in true Oriental fashion; for
though a man of the world, he still likes to be called a Bulbul.
" You are right. Did you notice I said clay ? " I asked.

" Clay, by all means," returned the Bulbul, chucking up his cap
in the air. " Here's his health! "

How about Toto ? " I asked my Pegwell Bey.

most people you may generally interpret this phrase correctly by "Allah is good! Allah is kind! Mahomet is his Prophet!
inserting a negative before the verb ; but not so with me)—well, | Clay is good; and I hope Toto is his profit. I have not seen it."
I know a man who, being naturally obtuse, has determined to obtain j The worthy Mahommedan paused. His eyes trembled. Then he
for himself a fine appreciation of humour. His theory is, " It must said, " I prefer real good Clay to any mere sham, and—and—," he
be in me—just as my muscles are in my arm—only that they won't paused, and I was sure that he had something good to follow. Then
lift fifty tons unless I exercise them : so for my ' sense of humour ' he went on—" and I hope that he has succeeded in toto "

-my eighth sense—that, too, is in me, and if I only work it, it will
be strong enough to grapple with fifty puns." So what does he do ?
Why, he passes his life among wits—not professionals, who don't
throw away their capital, but among amateur wits, funny men,
sayers of good things at small parties, and he works out their jeux
de mots on paper, just as he would so many problems in Algebra.
Let x be the meaning of the joke which has escaped him. Good :
then he gets the other known quantities, including the joke itself,
puts on his dressing-gown, spreads his paper, pours out a libation of
ink, flourishes his quill—and at it he goes, with all the vigour of a
Colenso reducing the Book of Numbers to a question of figures.

I was dining with my old friend and pitcher, the ex-Turkish
Minister's private ex-secretary, who held a post in the Turkish
Army years ago (after a dinner with me, I have seen him holding a
post—a, lamp-post in Piccadilly—and most unwilling to part with
it) and the rare old Moslem,—his name is Pegwell Bey—a small
chap, a mere shrimp of a fellow to look at, but a prawn in pitched
battle, a lobster in the field, a crab in a combat,—he says to me,
sipping his second bottle of sherbet—(we call it sherbet, out of

That, my Bulbul, would make a capital advertisement," I
observed, " Success in toto."

" True, my jolly Christian dog," returned the Bey. _ " Good sher-
bet needs no bush, but a Clay is all the better for a little judicious
puffing.

J suggested a programme ;—a night wi' Clay, and one with
Wagner.

" What night with Clay ? " asked the Bey, who is such a Wag-
nerite that he might be called the Bey of Beyreuth.

"My distinguished Bulbul," I replied, "will see that Clay's
night is, at present, Don Quixote, the Knight of La Mancha."

There's no difficulty just now in London in hearing the works of
Wagnee. They've got extracts from that composition whose name
can scarcely be mentioned to ears polite, I allude to the Gotterddm-
merung,—while Santley is airing his nobby lungen (Bavarian dia-
lect for "wonderful lungs") at the Lyceum in the Flying Dutchman.
The Bey, whose English gets muddled occasionally, could not
remember this title; he would call it the Flying Dustman, and I
rather fancy he was thinking of the Italian version, L1 Olandese