Punch: Punch (32.1857)

94

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[March 7, 1857.

N. B.

These Young Gentlemen are not indulging in the Filthy Habit op
Smoking.—They are only Chewing Toothpicks, the comforting and elegant
Practice now so much in Vogue.

[ Vide Public Streets, particularly St. James's Street, Regent Street, Bond Street, and \ Let us hope the Comet, cumming, cumming,

Her Majesty's Park of Hyde. Won't come it quite so very strong as that in June.

THE EXPECTED COMET.

(To Dr. Cumming.)

Air—"Draw the Sword, Scotland."

Hey ! a Comet's coming, Cumming, Cumming,
Ho ! a Comet's coming, expected very soon;
Unless folks are humming, humming, humming,

The Comet will be here on the Thirteenth day of June.
Prognostication
Spreads consternation,
And with prostration,
Old women swoon,
Thinking of the Comet, coming, Cumming,
The Comet that is due on the Thirteenth day of June s

Because the Comet coming, Cumming, Gumming,

Because the Comet coming, astrologers declare,—
Silly people humming, humming, humming,
Silly people humming,—will blow us into air,
Fouling this planet:
Goodness !—how can it,
If we but scan it,
The spheres so untune,
By the Comet coming, Cumming, Cumming,
By the Comet coming and due this blessed June ?

We know better, Cumming, don't we, Cumming ?

We are sure that any astrologer's a loon,
Or else a knave and humbug, humming, humming,
Who says the world is coming to its end so very soon,
Three years, if not more,
Lease it has got more,
May be a lot more,
Along with the moon,
Though a Comet's coming, Cumming, Cumming,
Though a Comet's coming—possibly in June.

If the Comet's coming, Cumming, Cumming,
If the Comet's coming, ice will be a boon,
When the flies are humming, humming, humming,
When the flies are humming on a sultry afternoon.
Hotter weather may prevail,
If it switch us with its tail,
How very like a whale,
Stung by a harpoon!

THE NEW BEER BILL.

Who would expect to find a coffee-mill or a tea-pot in a beer-barrel ?
Nevertheless, here is a new " Sale of Beer Bill" introduced into
Parliament, a Bill, in fact, not so much dealing with the sale of beer,
as with the sale of tea and coffee. The thing is a publican's measure.
We hear the voice of Boniface speaking from the bung-hole. Coffee-
shops are to be especially subjected to the official eye of the police,
and the evil eye of the informer, for the larger licence of the Bunch of
Grapes and the Horse-and-Anchor. Por instance, every keeper of a
coffee-shop is to be licensed at petty sessions by two justices of the
peace! _ Why ? As well should Mrs. Partington be licensed ere she
be permitted to fill her tea-kettle. Next: the price of the licence is
to be £2. Why not £5 ? If cost is to convey a sense of importance,
why not the larger instead of the lesser sum ? But will the cost of the

: licence, whatever it may be, fall upon the coffee-house keeper ?

\ Certainly not. It must be defrayed by his customers; by that

| abandoned class of society that is found throughout the Metropolis
by hundreds with their elbows on coffee-house tables—coffee, and haply

: the further dissipation of a muffin beside them—and spread before

! their meditative eyes the pages of Punch, or some such _ revo-

; lutionary print, whose sole purpose it is to turn the throne into a

■ three-legged stool, and the monarchy into a republic.

Again, these pestiferous coffee-shops, under the new Bill, are to be

' closed at nine o'clock at night; that conspiracies may no longer be
hatched over the thin-veiled pretence of bohea and mocha. What
then ? If the " Talfourd coffee-house," in Parringdon Street be shut at
nine—and the shade of the gracious judge must be pleased and mollified
that under his name flourishes the tea-shrub and the coffee-plant—if
" Talfourd" be closed at nine, is not the neighbouring Bed Lion open

1 until twelve ? Away, then, with thin libations, and welcome the
frothing " heavy! " Shove aside the effeminacy of cups and saucers,

! and a:t'e us the manly pewter!

We trust that this new " Sale of Beer Bill," which is, in fact, a
"Bill to discourage Coffee-shops," will be narrowly watched. Poli-
ticians owe it to their own poetic character to guard the interests of
the Mocha's sober juice:—

" Coffee that makes the politician wise,
To see thro' all tilings with his half-shut eyes."

Coffee must not be put upon by the beer-cask; and the Bill before
us is evidently a Publican's Bill; a Bill, in fact, made and provided for
those who are given to their cups, but rarely to their saucers.

Latest Intelligence from China.

(By Ethereal and Mesmeric Telegraph.)

Canton, 12 30 p.m. Feb. 26.

Sir John Bowring complains of a violent burning of the cars.
He says that he knows people are talking about him.

Admiral Sir M. Seymour has experienced the same sensation in
a milder degree, and expresses a similar opinion.

Lord Derby's Chinese Motion.

Brown observed that "he thought Lord Derby's motion on the
part of the suffering Chinese, proved him a man of the widest geo-
graphy of heart." Jones—the bitter Jones—demurred to the bene-
volence of the opinion: saying that "he saw in the motion nothing
more than a shabby attempt at tea and turn out."

A China Basin por Sir James Graham.— The pathetic Sir James
—weeping over the amiable and innocent Yeh—proposes " to wash hia
hands." How very dirty the water will be!