Punch: Punch (97.1889)

I

290

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [December 21, 1889.

Taxes and Rates were rising fast,

As through a burdened City passed
A man who bore, with clenched thumb,

A Standard, with the legend rum,

Excelsior!

His brows were black ; his eyes beneath
Through “gig-lamps” flashed, like sword
from sheath,

And like a fearsome fog-horn rung
The sound of that too well-known tongue,
Excelsior!

(The true significance of that sound
Was simply “Ten Pence in the Pound!”
And all too well the listeners knew
It meant fresh turn of the Rate-screw :
Excelsior!)

In ill-built Schools he saw the blight
Of sewer-gas slaying left and right,

The Jerry-Builder spectral shone,

But still he yelled in strident tone—•
Excelsior!

“ Try not that path,” the Old Sage said,

“ Dark lowers the tempest o’er your head
Of public anger far and wide.”

And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

“ 0 stay! ” the Maiden said; “ do rest!
London is weary of your quest.

You’ve raised that Standard far too
high! ”

He answered, with a winking eye,
Excelsior!

“Beware the Public ’s awful wrath,

At what lies crushed in your mad path! ”
This, the Rate-payer’s last appeal,

A voice replied, with brazen squeal,
Excelsior!

(His finish doth not yet appear,

But when that cry the Public hear
Punch fancies it will soon be found,

They kick at “ Ten Pence in the Pound.”
Excelsior!)

The Health of Loxdox.—The approach
of “Russian Influenza” is dreaded, but Lon-
doners are still more apprehensive as to the
effects of the Gas-strike Fever.