Punch: Punch (101.1891)

October 31, 1891.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

LISTEN TO MY TALE OF WOA!"

(Not much Gaiety about it.)

TO MY LORD ADDLNGTOX.

[Lord Addixgtox, speaking recently at a Harvest
Festival, said, "If he were a labourer, and saw a
rabbit nibbling his cabbages, he would go for that
rabbit with the first thing at hand." (Enthusiastic
cheers.)—Jjaily NewsJ]

Lord Addington, most wonderful

Of people-pleasing peers,
You certainly contrived to raise

"Enthusiastic cheers."

The villagers come flocking- in
from all the country through,

To hear Your Lordship speak his mind
And tell them what to do.

You. did it well, you told them how
You'd have them understand

A lucky chance has made you own
A quantity of land.

Though very fond of shooting, yet
1 our love of shooting stops

At letting rabbits have their way
At decimating crops.

And so, if you a labourer were,
(The which of course you 're not),

And saw a rabbit in your ground
A-nibbling—on the spot

You'd go for him with spade or fork,

At which, so it appears,
There rang throughout the crowded room

"Enthusiastic cheers."

A Peer's advice is always good,
So doubtless they will grab it,—

But no one will be happier than
The cabbage-nibbling rabbit!

A LITTLE STRANGER.

[" At the meeting of the Bermondsey Vestry, the
Medical Officer reported that water drawn from the
service-pipe of a house in the Jamaica Road, had
been submitted to him. The water was clear, but
it contained a live horse-leech."—Daily Paper.']

Oh, into our domestic pipes

They crawl and creep by stealth,
The gruesome creatures known unto

An Officer of Health !
Harken to him of Bermondsey,

Think what his murmurings teach,
" The water seemed quite limpid, but—

It did contain a Leech! "

The service-pipe was sound and good

In the Jamaica Iload;
The cistern there had harboured ne'er

Microbe, or newt, or toad ;
No clearer water softly laved

A coral island beach ;
So thought the householder, until—

He found that awful Leech !

Perchance he was a temperance foe

To alcoholic drink,
And from all dalliance with Bung

Did scrupulously shrink.
Yet now to forms of fluid sin

He '11 cotton, all and each;
He does not like such liquors, but—

Prefers them to a Leech!

Our pipes will not be pipes of peace

If such things hap, I trow ;
And as for Water Trusts, 'tis hard

To trust in water now.
Oh, Co. of Southwark and Yauxhall,

"We ratepayers beseech,
Double your filtering charges, but—■

llemove the loathly Leech!

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

There is a judicial review of George
Meredith's work in the Quarterly for Oc-
tober—masterly, too, quoth the Baron, as
striking a balance between effect and defect,
and finding so much to be duly said in high
praise of the diffuse and picturesquely-cir-
cumnavigating Novelist through whose laby-
rinthine pages the simple Baron finds it hard
to thread his way, and yet keep the clue.
When the unskippingly conscientious peruser
of George M.'s novels is most desirous
that the author shall go ahead, George, like
an Irish cardriver, will stop to " discoorse
us," and at such length, and so diffusely,
and with such a wealth of eccentric word-
coining and grammar - dodging, that at last
the Baron gasps, choked by the rolling bil-
lows of sonorously booming or boomingly
sonorous words, battles with the waves,
ducks, and comes up again breathlessly,
wondering where he may be, and what it was
all about. "Story! God bless you, I haven't
much to tell, Sir!" says the luxuriantly
fanciful novel-grinder. And he hasn't much,
it must be owned, for essenced it would go

into balf a volume, or less, and all over and
above is pot-fuls of rich colour, spilt about
almost at haphazard, permutations and com-
binations, giving the effect of genius. Which
—genius it is ; but a little of it goes a great
way, in fact, a very great way, wandering
and straying until at length the Baron calls
for his Richard Fever el, and says, " This is
the best that George Meredith has written,
as sure as my name is

"The Baron de Boor-Worms."

Bard v. Bard.

There was a poor Poet named Clough,
Poet Swinburne declares he wrote stuff.

Ah, well, he is dead !

'Tis the living are fed,
By log-rollers, on butter and puff.

A Suggestion.—In a new poetical play at
the Opera Comique there is a good deal of
hide-and-seek. It might have had a second
title, and been appropriately called The
Queen's Room ; or, Secret Passages in the
Life of Mary Stuart.