Punch (71.1876)

SOO PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [January 6, 1877,

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A MORNING CALL (IN PANTOMIME SEASON).

Miss Lily (to Three unruly Brotliers). " Now, you Boys, if you behave like that, I'll turn you all our of the Room!"
Three unruly Brothers. " Ha ! Ha ! You can't ! For Mamma sent us here to play Forfeits—you know she did ! "

SNAKES AND THE SEX.

(A Protest from one who abominates both.']

" The Ladies patronise birds, why should they not patronise snakes ? If
snake-skin dresses once became fashionable, the extermination of snakes is
inevitable. I hope shortly to see Ladies wearing snakes in their hats d la
gorgon. This fashion would look very pretty."—Mr. Frank Buckland in

"Zand and Water."

On, fie, Mr. Buckland ! How could you? Oh, shame, Mr. Sam-
bourne ! * I'm sure
She-fashions sufficiently trying for pockets and nerves to endure,
The Sex can, unaided, excogitate out of its own silly head,
Without your superfluous suggestion of horrors that fill one with
dread.

Snakes ? Eugh ! Just imagine Society 'neath an Ophidian spell!
Our Ladies like willing Laocoons—crowned a la gorgon as well!
Their boas all boa constrictors, their trains with huge rattlesnakes
tipped!

Each waist by a cobra encompassed, each wrist by an asp closely
gripped!

Just fancy the wife of your bosom a python as far as her face !
Your love like an undisguised Lamia seeking your shrinking
embrace !

Oh, a vixen in guise of a viper were surely a Nemesis fit
For men who can make such a use of their ill-employed fancy and
wit!

" Why should Ladies not patronise Snakes ? " Mr. Buckland, you
surely forget

That little primeval affair whose results rather bother us yet!
The Serpent's first patron, no doubt, would be prompt to play
patron again ;

But that one of our sex should suggest it! 0 Buckland, you've
snake on the brain !

* See " A Caution to Snakes," in la3t Number of Punch.

There's too much of the Serpent already about the she-creatures,
I say.

([ could never regard Elsie Venner as anything out of the way.)
15at the Snake in the Sex, Sir, has surely sufficiently chastened our
sins,

Without you advising our Eves to assume with snakes' slyness their
skins !

" The fashion would look very pretty " ! ! ! Perhaps that is meant
for a joke.

Snakes charm and are charmed, but such charming what man not a

muff would invoke ?
Though Beauty has patronised beetles, methinks she might there

draw the line—

Not a serpentine one—and eschew the Ophidian's sinister shine.

No! Woman is Anguis in herbd, and ophiomorphous in soul.
But encourage Ophidian fashions in dresses ? 0 Frank, you 're a
ghoul!

That snake of Old Nile was a type,—she who died of the aspic at
last,—

But she did not go clad in the sloughs that the serpents of Egypt
had cast.

You say did snake-skins grow the rage, the whole serpentine race

't would exterminate.
I could half deem the game worth the candle, so much I the

villanous vermin hate,
Oh, were they but both ophiophagous—seeing of both we've too

many—

The sex and the snakes then might play the old game of the Cats of
Kilkenny!

Drury Lane Pantomime.—" Vokes et prceterea nihil." (If it
isn't new, it's true.) _

Motto for Rival Battue-Shooters.—" Murder most fowl!