Punch (6.1844)

HI

VEN as the farmer's wife, shaking in her apron the cereal
grains, bringeth all sorts of fowl about her—now calling to
cocks and hens, and now with her supper-voice charming doves
and pigeons from cot and roof,—now making some distant goose
give forth a hopeful gaggle, and now evoking even from ducks
a hilarious quack,-—even so hath Punch, shaking his purse of a
hundred guineas to ail men with pens—a Hundred Guineas, the
reward of a Prize Preface to this his Sixth Volume — brought
around him every sort of quill, now fluttering with hope, now-
tremulous for gold !

Alas! why cannot the resemblance continue % Why, like
the aforesaid farmer's wife, cannot Punch shower liberal handfuls
to all? Why hath he no more than One Hundred Guineas for one
successful bird ? In truth, if Punch, as his old friend Brutus once
hinted, could

" Coin his heart and drop his blood for drachmas,"—-

he would have more than enough to satisfy all comers. His
sympathies are unfathomable ; but though deep, his pocket has a
bottom.

Otherwise, how Would he cast about him the golden grain to
the quills stained to attempt the Prize Preface! He would throw i