Punch: Punch (101.1891)

222 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [November 7, 1891.

A DOMESTIC DIAGNOSIS.

Jones {who has come with his Wife to call on the new Neighbours). " Wonder if they've been Married long Hypatia ?
Mrs. Jones. "Oh no. Evidently Newly-married."

Jones. "How can'you tell?" Mrs. Jones. "Drawing-room smells of Tobacco-Smoke!"

THE IDLE AND THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE.

(An Old-fashioned Apologue with a Modern Application.)

Grandolph and Arthur were two young; Apprentices, bound
betimes to the ingenious and estimable Art or Craft of Cabinet-
Making. Both of them were youths of a Sprightly Genius, and of an
Alert Apprehension, attended, in the case of Grandolph, with a
mighty heat and ebullition of Fancy, which led early to a certain
frothiness or ventosity in speech. Arthur, on the other hand,
though possessed of excellent Parts, appeared to be of a more
phlegmatic temperament, and took on a more languorous, not to say
saturnine demeanour.

So it came about that for the time Grandolph seemed to carry it
oyer Ms fellow Apprentice, who indeed, amongst superficial observers,
incurred the reproach of indolence and lackadaisical indifference, and
although both were of creditable repute in the Craft, yet did Gran-
dolph shine the more prominently and give the greater promise of
pre-eminence, Arthur seeming content, as men say, to play second
fiddle to the more pushing Performer.

'Tis, however, within the purview of the Wise and the common
observation of the Judicious, that things are not always as they
seem !

Grandolph, at an early epoch in his Apprenticeship, did found a
sort of Comradeny or Free Company, which, from the number of its
constituent items, came to be intituled The Fourth Party, in the
which Arthur modestly took subordinate place, with unobtrusive
ease and languid resignation. This Party did push matters in the
Craft with a high hand and a talkative tongue. For as the
ingenious Earl of Shaftesbury saith in his Soliloquy, "Company
is an extreme provocative to Fancy, and, like a hot bed in gardening,
is apt to make our Imaginations sprout too fast."

That Grandolph was obnoxious to this charge of " sprouting too
fast" may seem made manifest by the sequel. He indeed pushed
himself into the front place .by dint of copious verbosity, and
militant oppugnancy. But (as the same Shaftesbury saith) where,
instead of Controul, Debate, or Argument, the chief exercise of the
wit consists in uncontroulable Harangues and Reasonings, which

must neither be questioned nor contradicted ; there is great danger
lest the Party, thro' this habit, shou'd suffer much by Cruditys, Indi-
gestions, Choler, bile, and particularly by a certain tumour, or
flatulency, which renders him, of all men, the least liable to apply
the wholesome regimen of self-practice. 'Tis no wonder if such
quaint practitioners grow to an enormous size of Absurdity, whilst
they continue the reverse of that practice, by which alone we
correct the Redundancy of Humours, and chasten the exuberance of
Conceit and Fancy.

Whether this particular " quaint practitioner" (our Idle Appren-
tice, Grandolph) plagued "the Party " too much with his "Cru-
ditys, Choler," &c, or whether he found himself unable to correct
his own " Redundancy of Humours," certain it is that, at the very
Pinnacle of Promise, and Height of Achievement, Grandolph broke
his indentures of Apprenticeship, and ran away !

And now, indeed, came the Opportunity of the true Industrious
Apprentice, the hitherto calm and languid-looking, but, in verity,
valorous, and vigilant, and virile Arthur. Whereof, to be sure, he
made abundant use, burgeoning forth into full blossom with
astonishing suddenness, seizing Opportunity by the forelock with
manly promptitude, and gaining golden opinions from all sorts of
people ; so that, after brief probation, he slipped, by general acclaim,
into that very premier place so strangely, suddenly, and mteni-
pestively abdicated by the Idle Apprentice, Grandolph.

Concerning the latter, the latest reports are not reassuring. Like
his celebrated prototype of fable, the ill-fated "Don't Care," he
runneth a chance of being 1' devoured by lions " ! At least he appears
to have sought the company of those parlous beasts m their native
Afric wilds. We hear that'' the lions kept him tucked up one night,"
which same news (—gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannes-
berg Star—) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is—for
the time at least—in every sense " tucked up," is only too obviously
true. Peradventure he may yet think the better of it, correct his
Frothy Distemper and Vagrant Disposition, and (as the agonising
advertisements have it) return to his friends that all may be forgiven
and much forgotten!

But the last accounts of him picture him as lying languidly asprawl