Punch: Punch (76.1879)

April 26, 1879.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

191

WE ALL EXPECT A GENTLE ANSWER," &c

Shakspeare.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomhyns writes:—" My dear Mrs. Talbot Browne, we

are so dreadfully distressed ; but a horrid previous engagement pre-
vents us FROM accepting tour quite too delightful invitation to DlNNER

on the-" {Viva voce.) "Ponsonby!"—"Yes, my Love."—"What day

was it those Talbot Brownes' people asked us for?"—"The Fifteenth,
my Love."—"This Month, or next?" — "Next Month, my Love."——
(Writes.) "Fifteenth of next Month. i can't tell you how wretched

we both are in consequence ; and with our kindest regards to you
both, &c, &c, &c."

RANGE-FINDERS AND RED-TAPISTS.

We are a practical people. At enormous cost of time,
pains, and money we provide onr troops with the best
procurable rifle, and then we tell them to blaze away
with it as they best can—hit or miss—-happy-go-lucky,
by movable sight or more movable guess, by rule of thumb
or rule of eye, as the case may be. And all the while, we
have had for years in the service little instruments called
"range-finders," the invention of clever officers, easily
carried, simple, and uncostly of construction, ensuring,
with comparative certainty, that every bullet shall find
its billet, were a certain proportion of men trained to
use them and give the range to the rest. But we prefer
to go on in the old happy-go-lucky style, trusting to
eye-measurements of distance, which give yards of
error to the range-finder's inches.

Yes, we are an eminently practical people, meaning
thereby a people who get into and out of more scrapes
at more cost, and with more fuss, than any nation
of Europe. But the favourite field for display of our
practical superiority is the War Office. And the favourite
art of that Office is the art of shutting the door when
the horse is stolen, and throwing the cucumber out of
the window after spending the utmost pains and cost in
dressing it.

If you want proof of this, look for it in General Wray's
letter on Range-finders in The Times of Monday, April
14, and see what past-masters are our Military Rulers
in the art "How not to hit it."

The One Way.

"The Khedive's Secretary, who arrived yesterday from
Alexandria, has had an interview with several Ministers, but
his efforts to obtain the Sultan's approval of the attitude the
Khedive has assumed have very little chance of success."—
Telegram from Constantinople, April 17.

There is only one attitude of the Khedive's likely
to obtain the Sultan's approval. Let him put his hand
in his pocket!

Suzerain and Vassal,

Of course, the announcement that the Sultan, at the
instance of the Western Powers, intended deposing the
Khedive, must have been a hoax. Engaging the Grand
Turk to depose his Yiceroy would be, if not exactly like
trying to cast out Old Scratch by Beelzebub, very like
seeking to cast out Beelzebub by Old Scratch.

Definition for a Diner-Out. — An Unlicensed
Wittier—Quoth our worthy 'ost.—Aery.

"LIGHT, MORE LIGHT!"

[See the Prayer of Achilles in the Iliad.)

Punch, always glad to welcome allies in a good cause, begs to
claim the Daily News as a supporter of his reiterated demand that
more extended usefulness should be given to our street-lamps by
painting on them the names of the streets, as those of the stations
are already painted along some lines of railway, and should be
painted along all :—

"In London," so says the Daily News—by way of much needed ditto to
Mr. Punch—" the names of the streets are posted up so rarely, that it is
only by favourable chance that the inscription can be found. When found,
it is next to impossible to make a note of it, being written in characters too
small, and at a height too great for the range of ordinary eye-sight."

If the numbers of the houses could be painted up by tens below
the names of the streets, so much the better

to answer him—by doing as has been done already in the Queen's
Gardens' district, till lately one of the most labyrinthine in
London, but now comparatively easy of nocturnal steering, thanks
to the names painted on the street-lamps. Without such inscrip-
tions, these now serve little better purpose than to make darkness
visible; though, thanks to the latest improvements of lamp-posts
and burners, they make the darkness, at some points, a little more
visible than it used to be.

The Co-operative Movement and the National Anthem.

Dear Punch,

My signature will show that I must, as a matter of course,
hate the Co-operative mania as much as I love my Queen. On
both grounds it is impossible that I can continue calmly to listen to,
still more ioin in, the National Anthem, while it continues to include

P^Y.VwT'T8' -° "W™; Dewer; ■ . . the line, "Thy choicest gifts in store" I trust that the Parlia-

Punch has been pressing this cheap and easy improvement for ■ : ' n • , * n . 6i ___• . i --m „„„ of Tlor.DC!ar,-rTr

years. Again he urges it on the Improving Members of our Vestries j "f^X Commission, lately appointed will ^a**JeXZS
and District Boards A verv few r.nnr.rla a^d tn «,« rafe« wmild 1 change is made in this most offensive and objectionable attribution

and District Boards. A very few pounds added to the rates would
turn the London lamp-posts into London guide-posts, now far more
sorely wanted, and as completely wanting, in the streets of this
over-grown, and ever-growing Metropolis, as in the remotest region
intersected by a net-work of country cross-roads.

Let aU drivers-out, on their way to be diners-out, who have
suffered under the plague of drivers inevitably and blamelessly igno-
rant of the constantly extending chaos of the ever-spreading London
streets, back Punch's cry for more light from our street-lamps—
light not only on the darkness of London streets, but on that deeper
darkness of London street-naming and house-numbering.

Punch means to go on knocking at this door till somebody comes

of the gifts of Heaven to any source but the shop.

Yours truly, An Indignant Tradesman.

Wanted, a " Flaught " of Fire-damp.

The Ironmasters in Cleveland are " damping down " their furnaces
in consequence of the scarcity of coal and coke, produced by the
strike of the Durham coal-miners. If only common sense and hard
necessity combined would " damp down" the striking spirit among
the hewers and putters of our Northern Black Diamond district!