Punch (94.1888)

190

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[April 21, 1888.

TWO VIEWS OF IT.

Brown. " Shockin' Thing ! You heard of poor Mullins getting his
Neck broken in that Collision 1"

Jones. " Ah !—it's as-tonisbing how lucky some Fellows are ! He told

ME 'last time I saw him he 'd just insured his LlFE for THREE ThOUs'd

Poun's !!"

NOBODY AT HOME.

An Interview d la Mode.
Nobody was " at home," and as willing to be interviewed as a pushing poli-
tician, a ohampion pugilist, or a Music-hall Mountebank. Nobody is a person of

Imposing Indefiniteness
of demeanour, of middle-age, of average height, of medium complexion. He
produoed upon the beholder much the same effect as a scientifically smudged iu

Impressionist Portrait,
the most positive and salient point about him being his extra-large-size diamond
scarf-pin, which blazed out like

Sirtcjs from a Haze of Nebulous Stab-dust,
or the eye-catching "Caps" in a specimen of modern reporting. Thence his
extremities, head and heels, brain and boots, seemed to vaporise off into attenuated
vagueness, quite consistently with the latest theories of Art and Advertisement.
Salient and surcharged triviality, glaring forth like a Cyclops' eye from a misty
muddle of _ _

Circumjacent Nullity,

is, indeed, the open secret of success in the two chief branches of contemporary
charlatanism. Notwithstanding this accentuated nebulosity, however, Nobody
had an indescribable air of being emphatically All There !—what there was of him.

" No doubt," said I, " during your long and sensational oareer you have done
many things-"

" And people!" interjected Nobody, with a delightful mixture of Whistlerian
airiness and Slugger-Sullivanesque swagger. " Rather 1 I am found everywhere
—in Parliament and the Prize Ring, at Burlington House, and in

Lady Lamia's Drawing-room,
on the Stage, and the Cinder Path. I am, in fact, the Champion Humbug, and
to be that is, in these days, to be the Champion of Champions."

"Ah I Hercules, Apollo, and Mercury in one?" said I, with a sympathetic wink.
"Hercules he bio wed! Apollo— not up to third-rate Music-hall form!! Mercury
—a mere mug III" cried Nobody, contemptuously. " I should just like to have
Hercules in a Forty-foot Ring I

I'd Mitchellise him till he couldn't hit half an ounce,
or ' land' within half a mile of a haystack.

" You have not confined your attention to the Ring, I
presume ? " said I.

" No, I've also had a cut in at the Book," responded
Nobody. "I've written, with assistance — the most

Startling Sensational Shlllingsworth,
on record, and had it log-rolled into sixty editions. Picked
up a shady story in the side-walk of Swelldom, cooked it
carefully with a weather-eye to the
Law of Libel,
and the Shilling Scan-Mag sold like Plumper's Skates or
Tooth-paste pwpED BT pAin ,

Beside that I've patented Pills, been appointed Special
Commissioner on the Borrioboola Boundary Question, lec-
tured all over England and America on
Art in the Nursery I
bossed a Sixteen-Acre Show, run a Conservative Caucus,
started a Liberal Ladies' Lily League, founded

A New Religion,
and inaugurated a new School of Music, on the principle
that not in Melody or Harmony, but in

The Unintermittent iEoixur Wail
is found the true secret of transcendental Musical Art. I
have also shown, in a book of six hundred pages, that the

Occult Double-Acrostics of the Odyssey
prove that Nebuchadnezzar really wrote the Homeric
Poems. I have started a new Gallery for the exploitation
of the great Neo-Teatray School of Art (first suggested by
me), founded on the eternal esoteric principle of

Prismatic Smudge 11
I am now hesitating whether I will next secure the Billiard
Championship, a Baronetcy, or the reversion of

The Leadership of the Liberal Party I
And still I am—Nobody !"

" Wonderful! " I cried, in gasping amazement. " And
how—how do you manage it ? "

"The Secret of my Success," he replied, "may be
expressed in a simpler 'formula' than ever quack invented
or tipster devised. That formula is'

Bounce and Big Capitals I
The world being largely composed of Jugginses and
Gapers, Credulous Geese, and Sensation-loving gohe-
mouches, Humbug and Advertisement are the twin Arts
to make Somebody, Everybody out of—Nobody! "

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

Act III., Scene 1.

Sltaksjpeare once more adapted to the Situation.

Biron-Bismarck loquitur:—

I foiled, forsooth, by Love ? I '11 be Love's whip,

A very beadle to an amorous sigh ;

A critic ; nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o'er the boy,

Than whom no mortal hath more thwarted me.

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid:

This lord of love-rhymes, brave with baby arms,

The appointed autocrat of blood-and-iron ?

This liege of loiterers and maloontents

Prince Bismarck baulk, venture to counter me,

Sole Imperator and great General

Of patriot policy ? 0 my mighty heart I

Am I to be a corporal of his field

And wear his oolours like a tumbler's hoop ?

What, II I sue to Love I I, for a wife,

A woman, so set back the German clock

Still a-repairing ; getting out of gear,

And never going right, like a cheap watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right I

Nay, to be baffled, which is worst of all.

And, among three, to get the worst of all I

Am I to stoop to Love r to bend for him ?

Make way for him ? Go to, it is a plague

That Cupid would impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will watoh his way to get my own,

I' ve whipped all foes; Cupid I 'fl faoe—alone I \Exit