Punch (27.1854)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

209

4 i\JU-/ P • .^V

is..

A TRUMP CARD (IGAN).

CLERKS AND CLODHOPPERS.

While the Agricultural interest has been looking up, the Com-
meicial interest seems to be looking down, or at all events, it often
takes a very low view of clerks' salaries. Every day supplies us with
some fresh instance of the dreadful discount to which commercial
industry, ability, and integrity have fallen. The Times of the 11th of
this month contained the following advertisement:

T'LERK WANTED.—Wanted an in-door Clerk, to take cash and keep
^ a set of bonks Salary £30 per aunum. Address, statiDg age, &c. to the Early
Closing Association, Ludgate Hill.

Though wc are advocates for " early closing," we should be sorry to
s~e a young man, prematurely shut up as an in-door clerk at thirty
pounds per annum. If he is " to take cash," it is rather a prudent
step to stipulate for his staying in-doors, as it would be putting his
integrity to a rather severe test, if he were allowed to be at large on
his miserable pay, with any of his employers' money in his pocket. His
proposed salary is lis. §\d. per week, which is about §\d. below the
wages of an agricultural labourer. At this rate it seems more con-
ducive to health and wealth to use a spade in the open air than to dig
away with a steel pen in a close atmosphere. We cannot be surprised
that while clerks are remunerated at less than bricklayers' wages, the
criminal courts should now and then be called upon to correct clerical
errors.

AN EXTRA-PAROCHIAL OFFICER.

We must admit that Major Powys, Hon. Sec. to the Widows and
Orphans Association, has shown himself, by his conduct, in the case of
Ann Godwin, to understand thoroughly the duties of a Relieving
Officer. As that conduct has been approved of by the Woolwich Com-
mittee, we now suppose, what otherwise we should not have imagined,
that a Relieving Officer in the Army is expected to dispense charity in
the same spirit as that in which assistance is dispensed by the Relieving
Officer of the Workhouse. If this is the way in which relief is to
be administered to Soldiers' Widows and Orphans, those Orphans and
Widows will rejoice in the guardianship of a regular Board of
Guardians.

AVARICE OF THE CHURCHYARD.

We have often heard of the gaping and the greedy grave; and
always supposed that it gaped for, and was greedy of, only dead bodies,
and the valuables interred with them by social folly. It gapes, ac-
cording to the letter of "A Town Curate" in the Times, for some-
thing more. That clergyman, after relating a case of sad distress,
proceeds—

" The sick person died, and in a few days the landlady of the lodgings applied to
me for money to pay the funeral expenses. The parish, she said, had done all it
could do—had given a coffin, a shroud, and mean* for the payment of half the neces-
sary fees, the poor neighbours had contributed their pence and halfpence, but still
there remained upwards of 5.5. or 6s. to he provided before the burial could take place
. . . . the girl was utterly unable to find the requisite money, the body could no
longer remain where it was: it must, as she expressed it, ' be put under ground,' and
before the ground could be opened, these fees must be paid."

So that the grave gapes not only for the poor remains of mortality,
but also for a sum upwards of twelve shillings : considerably upwards,
perhaps, in some cases. For this money, however, the grave of course
does not gape on its own account. It gapes vicariously for some mon-
ster—does that mean that it gapes for the Vicar, or is the Rector that
monster whose mouth ought to be shut immediately ?

RUSSIAN DUCKS AND GEESE.

The wicked Czar's subjects don't swim on a pond,

But they're ducks of the sort that belonged to Mrs. Bond ;

What seas of their blood he has caused to be spilled,

Crying—" Bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, go and be killed ! "

To say they are geese 'twould perhaps be more right,

For such an unmerciful brute since they fight,

In whole hocks for slaughter by whom they are drilled,

With his "Bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, go and be killed ! "

A Hint.—What if there should appear in the next European Family
Recipe Book (revised in London and Paris) a direction How to take
Greece out of Maps ?