Punch (16.1849)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

11

JONATHAN'S GOLDEN HARVEST.

(From our American Correspondent.)

expect you have read in some of them Greek and
[0 H I Roman story-book?, that makes the chief part of
I the schoolin' of you Britisher?, the yarn of Jason
and the Golden Fleece, and also about the Golden
Apples of the Hesperides. The Golden Fleece, I
take it, -was great fry and very little wool, and
I estimate that the Golden Apples warn't no ways
comparable to New Town Pippins. Well, however,
I can tell you that American Truth flogs Ancient
Mytholoey — that's a fact. We've got a real
Golden Chersonesus in California, and a genuine
Pactolus in the river Sacramento. I guess Midas
would have giv his ears for our Mormon Diggins,
and old Ckcesus would have swopped Lydia for
San Francisco. Tom Tidler's ground arn't nothen
to this here location. There's not a little gutter flowing into the main
stream but what, with a couple of aciive niggers, you may scrape ten
thousand dollars-worth of gold out on it in one week. You've only
got to walk into the bed of the river and pick up the pebbles, which
is a'most pure bullion. The very airth of the banks stumps your
March dust, a bushel of which, I've heer'd say, is worth a king's
ransom. The Scotch labourers in these fixins saves the very scrapins
of their shoes, and whittles their nails into the melting-pot. 1 calcu-
late that a month's diggin at the banks of the Sacramento would
be a better speculation for your physical force Chartists, than the
plunder of the Bank of England.

Well; here we are in a state of excitement that brats any camp-
meetin I ever sighted. Younsr and old cff we so, leavin our trades and
callins, our stores and families, away to Caliroruia like flocks of
pigeons. Our Golden Fever caps your Railway Mania. By the last
accounts there was to be seen the glorious spectacle of four thousand
of our enterprisin citizens a scratchin and scrapin away in the Sacra-
mento from mornin to night, as fast as so many bears arter wild honey.
The common wages of helps is thirteen dollars a-day; you may get
eight-and-forty for a bowie-knife, and eighty for a blanket; besides
doin a powerful deal of business with the benighted Ingines in printed
stuffs and ribbons.

The advantages of this here splendoiiferous discovery to our great
country will be inestimable. I compute that we shall soon see no such
a thing as a cent in all our model Republic. We won't, demean our-
selves by a currency of small change under silver. I contemplate that
we are set up with our gold mines to all eternity, and shall have
nothin to do but lay up our heels, enjoyin our cigars and mint-juleps
for everlasiin. Iu course, we shall be masters of the whole world, for
gold is the sinners of war, and our pockets bein chock full on it, will
enable us to lick universal creation.

The Europeans, and especially you Britishers, will be our slaves and
niggers ; we shall chuck our pusses to you and take your manufacturs,
which you, poor critturs, will come and lay at our feet. We shall
leave you varmint to produce, while we only consume. We shall be a
kinder Aristocracy among the nations of the aiith. We shall knock
our glasses and crockery into an immortal smash, and all eat and drink
out of gold plate. When we go a shootin' we shall load our rifles with
golden bullets. We shall roll and waller in gold, like hogs in a swamp,
or the sea-sarpent among the foaming billers. But you'll tell me,
perhaps, that gold, iu the mean time, may become dirt cheap, and that
we may find ourselves in the end overloaded with yellow rubbish, and
destitute of the rale wealth of nations, which arter all is their indus-
trial produce. You may pint to the example of Old Spain in proof of
what may come of gold mines. Bat don't you give us none of your
bark. It won't cure us of our gold fever, nohow, I tell you. You '11
only rile us, and make us wicked ugly, and provoke that dander which,
when riz, is a mixtur of the airthquake and the ailigator, with a touch
of the light nin.

Rather too Personal and Pointed.

An Italian paper protests most indignantly against any foreign inter-
vention which would be likely to lead the Pope back to Rome at the
point of foreign bayonets. We are sure that this is a point which the
Pope would not like to press for a moment. There are certain points
in argument, which, it is said, drive a person home very hard. Now
we should think the above point, if enforced against the Pope, would
ce one of them.

" all a-growino."

Old Paterfamilias is blest with a very large family, and is always
calling in the assistance of the tailor; so much so, that upon being asked
what he considered the most " growing evil ?" he answered, " Boys'
Clothes."

PORTERS' STATISTICS.

If that celebrated porter Atlas—the Pickford of Antiquity, who
carried the whole world, without even the aid of a knot, upon his
shoulders—should re-appear upon the earth, he would hardly be "strong
enough for the place" of porter at the Witba-u Station of the Eastern
Counties Railway. There is on the spot a meeting of two or three
lines; so that the official in attendance finds himself always in the midst
of a vt ry trying juncture. The impossibility of doing three t hings at
once will occasion a collision now and then; but we believe the
Directors think of advertising for a sort of human three-in-one to fill
the situation at Wit.ham : his duties being to turn the points, ring the
bell, and work the telegraph. We understand that an individual who
quints is always preferred on this line ; for the faculty of looking two
ways at once is likely to be useful to him in the discharge of his duty.
This accounts for the numerous startling cases of strabismus one meets
with along this line ; but as motion is not quite so rapid as vision, it
sometimes happens that the porters are destined to see danger in two
places at once, without the possibility of avoiding
it. A troop of railway acobats, for the service
of the economically managed lines, would perhaps
be found useful; and if the porters could be trained
up as Vauxhall Diavoli, to make rapid descents
along the electric telegraph wires from station to
station, they would be enabled to get from one
post to another in time to be on duty almost at two
places at tnce.

The Shabby Dog.

Among the workings of coi science that appear from time to <ime, in
the 3hape of payments to the Cha.ivcellor of the Exchequer, there
was on Saturday a case of the return of " £5, from a party who took
with, him an ar icle of that value, on leaving a Government Office "
Who could have been the shabby fellow tha1", on quitting the public
service, canied off some moveable or other, from the rooms of the
department in which he had s' rved ? The Government, Offices do not
abound in articles of knick-knackery, that could be very easily carried
away without detection, and we wonder therefore how the pilferer
managed to effect his paltry purpose unobserved. Cou'd he possibly
have smuggled a clock under his cloak, or boned an tfficial inkstand, or
run off with the scraper, or pocketed the thermometer?—though any of
these suggestions is negatived by the fact of its being a single article
worth five pounds, that the fellow purloined! The affair is certainly
one of the shabbiest that the annals of a stricken conscience—as read
in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's advertisements—have ever
disclosed.