Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 57

PUNChPS LETTERS TO HIS SON.

letter iii.—objects worthy of discovery.—short story of
man and his duck.

labour and their soap in the vain attempt; to wash the negro white,—
why, starvation, obloquy, and wretchedness in every shape attend
you ! Your heart's blood may dry up in a garret,'and—if your car-
case be not arrested by the bailiff—you may rot in the pauper's
corner of the parish churchyard. To be sure, after some hundred
years or so, it may be some comfort for your ghost to slip from your
forgotten grave, and make midnight visits to the statue that may be
at length erected to the genius that died, the debtor of a twopenny
loaf to a benevolent baker. If you will be contented with such re-
ward, try of course to elevate your species. If, however, you would
rather enjoy present sixpences, why then spin pewter plates on a
balanced sword, or poise a donkey. My dear boy, work for ready
money. Take no bill upon posterity : in the first place, there
are many chances against its being paid ; and in the next, if it be

My Dear. Boy,—You tell me you have been reading Captain Cook's
Voyages, and are so much pleased with them, that you would start
round the world on a voyage of discovery to-morrow morning.
You will seriously offend me by any repetition of this folly. Leave
such mad adventures to fools and zealots. Stay you and make
greater discoveries at home.

Do you know the reward of these simpletons who peril life, and
forego all the comforts of the fleshly man—for what ? To give, it may

be, their name to an iceberg, and their carcases to the sharks. Co- duly honoured, the cash may be laid out on some piece of bronze or
lumbus discovered America, and was at last rewarded with fetters | marble of not the slightest value to the original* Sure I am that no
for his pains. Who can point out the two yards of dust that cover
Cabot the mariner, who found a home and a retreat for tens of thou-
sands ? Ask of the sea, in which of its multitudinous caves repose the
bones of Hudson ?

The world is quite large enough for you ; let fools, if they will,
leave their snug arm-chairs, and sea-coal fires, to extend its bounda-
ries. What matters it to you where the Niger begins or ends ?
Have you not the pleasant banks of Thames, the tens of thousands of
unsophisticated natives thronging its shores ; all of them ready to

6'

statue or monument is erected to the memory of one who is at length
called the benefactor of his race, that the ceremony is not a holiday
for famine and all the household furies. They behold in the thing an
irresistible temptation to other fools. One rewarded martyr inevit-
ably raises a new regiment to bleed and suffer.

It is upon this truth—for truth is not always to be disregarded—>
that I would have you stand : it is upon this principle I would have
you eschew all romantic notions of travels to Abyssinia, and voyages
to the Pole, for the more profitable discovery of the weaknesses of
exchange their gold-dust for any glass-beads you may bring for; mankind. Are vou fond of wfld countries, curious plants, rare
barter, it by your confidence and swagger, you can pass oft the glass ; animals strange adventures ? Plunge into the heart of man. There
for veritable diamonds ? If you can great and sufficient will be your wiU find d°esert poisonous weeds, snakes, and a host of iniquities
reward. It you cannot, you will undergo the rightful penalty of your | a d - gt a hosL You wiU also find streams M with
ignorance But the thing is done every day. Do not imagine that hea^ am\,.anthine flowers, cooing doves, and things of divine aspect
they are the only savages, whose skins are soot-colour who wear and Wenlyutterance : with these, however, meddle not. No ; turn
rings through their noses, stick parrots feathers m their woolly from them, and, spite of yourself, convince yourself that they exist
hair, and bow to Mumbo Jumbo as their only deity My dear boy, not_that thev were the mere phantasm of the brain-the mere
you will find amongst the whitest the most carefully-dressed, and offspring of the imagination, that, sickened with arid, burning tracts,
most ptous of London-absolute children of nature-men, as it would j ^ in fts gweet d>ase palms and siiver streams, and in the tinkling
seem expressly made for the support of their fellow-creatures, as of the camel>s bell hears the heart-delighting nightingale. Not so
shoals of herrings are every season spawned expressly for the nutri- with the dl.earyplaces and the venomous things. Learn every nook of
ment of whales Therefore trust yourself to no canoe on the Senegal, thege catal Ve every object. It is in such spots you are to drive a
but prosper on the banks of your paternal river. i vms trade it £ such articles are t0 use in bartei, Doea

You -would like to be a discoverer ? Very well. . London 1S a i not &e wise tradesraan put on his comeliest looks and bow lowest to
boundless region for the exercise of the greatest sagacity Leave to i hig best customer ? virtue is a poor, paltry creature, buying her
dreamers the solution of the shortest cut to India-find you the miserable penn'orths at miserable chandlers'. Now Vice, Weakness,
nortn-west passage to the pockets of your fellow creatures. Discover
the weaknesses of men ; they will be to you more than the mines of
Potosi—bring you richer merchandize than cargoes of gold-dust
and ivory.

If, forgetful of my paternal lessons and unworthy of your pro-
genitor, you address yourself solely to what is absurdly termed
the dignity of human nature and the amelioration of the condition of
mankind,—if you choose to make one of the fools who have lost their

and Co., are large, burly traders, and " come smug upon the mart.'
Therefore, make yourself master of their tempers—find your way to
their hearts ; for they have hearts—even as blocks of marble some-
times contain within them the sleeping, sweating toad, " ugly and
venomous."

However, in opening an account with this firm, be sure you never
apply to them the names spat upon them by clean-mouthed Virtue,,
Oh, no ! although you know them to be leprous to the bones, yoc
must treat them, must speak of them, as though they were the in-
carnation of health ; though their corrupt practices are to the nostril
like the foulness of a new battle-field, you must snuff them as though
you inhaled the odours of myrrh and frankincense burning in the
temple.

When you have become a scholar in the weaknesses of the human
heart, you may then lay them under what impost you will. You may
—but I will tell you a little story in illustration of the truth of this:—

You must know that the greater number of the inhabitant's of
Ceylon have it, as their firm belief, that when dead their souls will
take up their habitation in the bodies of various animals. A wise fel-
low—too wise to work, and sage enough to be determined to enjoy
himself without labour—turned the superstition of his neighbours to
constant profit. Whenever his pockets were empty he would rush
into the streets, and carrying a live duck in one hand, and brandishing
a knife with the other, he would exclaim to the terrified people—

" Wretches ! this duck may be your grandfather—your grandmother
— your father—your mother—your brother-—your sister—your son—
your daughter ! Wretches ! I'll kill the duck !

Whereupon, men, women, and children would throw themselves
upon their knees, and offering what money they had, beg of the man
not to kill their grandfather, their grandmother, their son, their
daughter, but in the depths of his mercy, and for the sake cf ready
money, to touch not a feather of the duck 1

And the man, pocketing the cash, would walk away, for that time.

My son, you are not an inhabitant of Ceylon ; but a denizen of en-
lightened London ; nevertheless, in every city every man has some
sort of a "grandmother" in some sort of a ? duck."