PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

253

Young Rapid. " You are quite sure this is the Correct Dress
»or a Young Fellow of that Period, Eh %"

Mr. Noses. " Oh perfectly Correct, Sir ; and really looks

splendid on YER ! "

CHICORY AND CHICANERY.

Mawworm loved " to be despised;" and, if we are to believe certain
specimens of the "British tradesman," the "British public" loves to
be imposed upon. Thanks to the investigation pursued by Me. Wakley,
the discovery is now made that we have been drinkiug a concoction
and decoction of chicory, corn, and potatoes; or, in other words,
marigold, wheat, and vegetables, instead of coffee; and that, in fact,
our " fine old delicious Mocha" has been, to use an obvious, if not an
aged pun, a line old delicious mockery.

In a little work on " Coffee and its Adulterations," published at the
Lancet Office, we have what we might appropriately term " a Coffee
Dictionary," in which we get the real meaning, as tested by examination,
of the stuff sold under the various denominations of coffee in London.
We give an extract from this interesting piece of commercial
lexicography -.—

Delicious Coffee. Roasted beans and chicory forming one-third of
the article.

Finest Berbice Coffee. About one half coffee, much chicory, and
some wheat.

Splendid Turkey Coffee. About one half coffee, the rest chicory.
Fine Plantation Coffee. One-third coffee, the rest chicory, with a little
roasted corn.

Parisian Coffee. Principally chicory and corn; very little coffee.
Rich Drinking Coffee. One-third coffee, the rest chicory, with some
roasted corn.

Delicious Family Coffee. One-fourth coffee, three-fourths chicory.
Fine Java Coffee. Much chicory, and some roasted potato; very little
coffee.

Coffee as in France. Principally chicory.

The above definitions will supply a key to those highly-figurative
labels which greet our eyes in the shop-windows of the grocers: and
we shall know in future that when we are invited to try the "Fine
Java" at Is. llfrf., we are simply asked to purchase some roasted
potatoes and marigolds, at nearly 2s. a pound, when potatoes are dull
at %d., and marigolds may be had in the fields for the trouble of picking
them. When we observe an announcement, that " This is the noted
shop for the Delicious Coffee at twenty pence," we shall henceforth
feel assured that for our twenty pence we shall get upwards of half-a-

pound of beans, and other less valuable commodities, with about one- |
third of the article we are supposed to be purchasing.

It seems, however, that use has become such a second nature with
the public, who are accustomed to drink all sorts of trash under the
name of coffee, that, out-eeling the eels, they are not only accustomed
to be skinned, but insist on having the process applied to them.
Tradesmen write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, declaring they
have been serving chicory so long, that they have educated their cus-
tomers up to it ; and if the latter are supplied with genuine coffee at
two shillings a pound, they send it back, indignantly demanding the
old stuff they have been accustomed to.

We presume that the success of the Chicory chicanery, will encou-
rage other tradesmen to come out equally strong; and we shall have
the sausage-dealers openly announcing that the sausage-consumer will
not be satisfied without a good smack of the feline flavour in his
sausages. The milkman will renounce all pretence to the keeping of a
cow, and will inform the world unblushingly, that if he were to send
I out anything else than horse-brains, chalk, and water, he should have
the article thrown back upon his hands by his indignant customers.

The water companies, too, will protest against any interference with
their present monopoly of the rich unctuous wash that the public will
insist on paying for under the guise of water; and we shall be told, no
doubt, that, having been accustomed to a full-bodied fluid—full of the
bodies of animalcules—they would not be satisfied with the purer ele-
ment. It is, at all events, a step in the right direction, that things are
beginning to be called by their proper names, and all we ask is, that
if the public like chicory instead of coffee, it should be sold as chicory ;
that, it' sausage-eaters will be dogmatic in their tastes, the sausages
should be sold under their right appellation; and that, if the community
like to drink Thames wash, it should be classed under the head of
Sewer's Bate, instead of Water Bate.

STANZAS ON THE INCOME-TAX QUESTION.
To the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others

Ah ! why inquiry wouldst thou shirk

On Industry's unjust taxation ?
Wherefore so anxious, Wood, to burke

The Income-Tax investigation ?
That tax, which, under Schedule D.,

Is so atrocious an infliction,
That—if we can't evade it—we

All pay it with a malediction.

And Gladstone, Cardwell, Herries, Graham,

Oh! tell a class that claims your pity,
On what account, in Goodness' name,

You will not serve on Hhme's Committee ?
Sure you, at least, Sir James, might try,

If equal justice can't be meted,
To let us "know the reason why"

We must continue to be cheated.

What, are there, men of property,

You who have fixed the tax on Income,
Fads which you're not inclined to see,

And therefore are resolved to blink 'em P
Think you the inquest would declare

The simple truth to all beholders,
The burden which you ought to bear,

That you have clapp'd on others' shoulders ?

A CHEERFUL DWELLING.

Many persons entertain curious notions of cheerfulness. _ A house-
agent advertises in the Times a " cheerful Dwelling," which of all
cheerful places is situate in Newgate Street. Now the cheerfulness Oi
Newgate Street must be on a par with that of Greenwich Fair on a
Whit- or rather a Wet-Monday. The prospect of the Old Bailey from
the drawing-room windows must be most delightful to the mind that is
i'ond of cheerful associations ! But we imagine, after all, that the cheer-
fulness must be especially intended for the class of Lord Tom Noddies,
who are fond of capital punishments. The sight of an execution is, we
know, to them a capital joke, and possesses charms which the same
persons would in vain look for on the Surrey Hills, or any other standing
feature of cheerfulness in lodging advertisements. Viewed in this light, a
balcony in Newgate Street must rank higher than the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon, and could only be equalled in cheerfulness by the banks of
the South-Western Railway when an express-train of prize-fighters is
dodging up and down the line all day in search of a retired spot where
they can establish a " pretty little mill." On a Monday especially, with
the Gibbet standing out boldly in the foreground, there can be no place
out of the Agapemone half so " cheerful" as NewgaJe Street, We
wonder what the rent is ?