Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. ^

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

LETTER XXIII.—A FEW LAST WORDS. PUNCH REVIEWS HIS LABOURS.
THE LOTTERY OF LIFE.

Well, my son, I now approach the end of my labours. Reflecting
upon what I have written, I feel that I may in a double sense call
myself your father. You are not merely the offspring of my loins ;
but I trust, I may say, I have begotten your mind.

Yes, I have thrice scratched my head, and feel that I have
nothing more to say to you. I have now merely to contemplate—
with that delicious self-complacency which plays the divinest music
on a man's heart-strings—the beauty and excelling utility of the
labour undertaken by my parental love. I have now only to lean
back in my easy-chair, and twisting my thumbs, see, with dreaming
eyes, my beloved child playing a most prosperous part in this
eventful world. Let others call it a vale of tears ; you, my son, will
walk through it with a continual chuckle. Let others groan over the
uncertainty of daily bread ; you, my son, will have " your teeth white
with milk, and your eyes red with wine." Let others look with
longing glance at pauper sixpences ; you—for you have taken your
father's counsel—will know where to lay your hand upon ingots.

Consider, my son, what gratitude you owe to destiny for making
you what you are. You are the son of Punch. You might have
been the child of a Lord Chancellor. From your cradle you inherited
a wisdom denied to millions of others. Had you been born to finest
cambric and Brussels lace, you had never been taught the beautiful
truths of life, which it has been my paternal care to tattoo on your
adolescent mind. The son of Punch ! Consider, my child, the many
many million chances you had against your being this, and be
grateful for your exceeding felicity.

Mr. William Wordsworth says—

" Oar birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The Soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar."

Now, for a moment, adopting this poetical conceit, imagine the
millions of souls about to be despatched to this world, as a sort of
penal settlement, an uncomfortable half-way house, on the road to
immortal fields of asphodel. Have you seen whole clouds of
swallows congregating on the seashore for their mysterious flight to
—where, still remains a mystery. This multitudinous fluttering of
wings can give you but the poorest idea of the gathering of human
souls, bound to earth, and " trailing clouds of glory" from the home
they are about to leave. Your finite apprehension cannot grasp the
marvel in its entirety ; yet it may do something. You see the
myriads of winged souls—you hear their fluttering : you see that
they are like one another as swallow is like to swallow ; their chirp
is in the same key ; no soul asserts a dignity over its fellow-voyager ;
each has the same length of wing, the same hue of feather. These
are souls not yet provided with lodgings ; they are souls, so to speak,
in the abstract. Well, swoop they come down on earth, and
like the swallows I have spoken of, take their residence in clay !

Alas and alas ! poor souls ! Some are doomed to coal-pits, some
to arsenic mines, some dig in misery and darkness, some toil and toil,
and hunger and hunger ; and every day is but the wretched repeti-
tion of the past. And yet with all this certain evil grinding and
crushing thousands, how few among them would consent to draw
their lot again, if Destiny were to hold forth her human lucky-bac,
to give another chance ! " No, no," says the Hottentot, with a proud
downward look at his girdle of sheep's gut—" no, no ; I don't draw
again ; for who knows 1 I might come up a Dutch boor." " No lucky
bag for me," cries the Esquimaux ; " I might lose my delicious
whale blubber, and turning up an Englishman, be doomed to beef
tnd porter." " Much obliged to you," says the poor idiot with a
goitre at his throat as big as a foot ball,—" I hear there are such folks
as Patagonians ; straight-limbed fellows, seven feet high ; no lucky-
bag for me—I might be one of them."

If such, then, be the contentment of the great mass of the suffer-
ing world,—how prodigious should be your felicity to know that you
are the son of Punch—10 feel that you hold a position, the proudest,
the noblest,—the—

******
******
******

If the reader be a father, surely, surely, he will sympathize with
my feelings.

I had not heard from my son for a long, long time^ I was thinking
of him, when I was startled by the knock of the postman. I know
not how it was ; but the smitten iron sent a chili through my heart,
and the goose-quill fell from my fingers.

Our landlady—-we were then in lodgings—brought me up a letter.
My wife was happily from home ; called to assist at a neighbour's
labour. I immediately recognized the hand-writing of my son ; and
with trembling fingers, broke the wafer. I give the contents.

" Condemned Cell, Newgate.
" Honoured Parent,—I have to the best of my abilities followed
the advice sent to me from time to time in your Letters. You will
therefore, as the Ordinary says, not be surprised to find I write from
this place. It is a case of mutton, and I am to be hanged on
Monday. " Your Son,

"Punch, the Younger.

(C '

P.S.—You will find that, in spite of my misfortunes, I have the
credit of my family still at heart. I shall therefore be hanged as
John Jones."

My heroic boy kept his word : and until this very hour, his
mother is ignorant of his fate, believing him to be at this moment
Ambassador at the Court of ■-.

CONCLUSION OF PUNCH'S LETTERS.

THE PUBLIC HEALTH.
We have made some inquiries of the vendors of meat pies, and w<?
find that the public appetite rose last week from to 999, being

ffigfo and a fraction above the average of the last fortnight. If we are
allowed to take from appetite our data for health, it gives us a very satis-
factory amount of salubrity during the period our calculation extends
over. The public taste has run strongly in favour of the kidney puddings,
which is to be attributed to the foolish prejudices existing against tariff
pork and mutton, which the kidney interests have endeavoured to fan with
considerable energy.

ARISTOCRATIC MOVEMENTS.

Lord Huntingtower left the Queen's Bench prison last week for
the Court of Bankruptcy. After a long interview with the Com-
missioner, his Lordship returned to his residence.

Lord George Loftus paid a visit to the Insolvent Court. His Lord-
ship did not retire until he had made himself practically acquainted
with some of the forms in which justice is administered in the Court
alluded to.

Count Bathyany and the Earl of Chesterfield visited the Court of
Chancery. These distinguished noblemen entered with great spirit
into the proceedings, and put a very interesting questioa to the Judge
who presided there.

The Earl of Waldegrave is on a tour, and is understood to b«
studying the intricate theory of Outlawry.