Punch: Punch (33.1857)

34

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[July 25, 1857.

THE COURSE OF TRUE, &c, NEVER DID, &c.

Here's pooh Young Wiggles anxious to meet the Being he adores, but cannot do so, because the Newly-pitched Boat

upon "which he has been sitting, has caught him alive 0 !

A BOY'S PETITION.

"Dear Punch,

" You are a jolly old chap, and a friend to boys. Now I say.
old fellow, will you just give the governor a bint not to bother us with
Latin and that, out of school hours ? I don't think it's fair to a fellow.
Look here. I had come home on Saturday to go with the girls to see
the Frozen Peep (and capitally well it was acted too, I can tell you),
and on Monday morning we were all at breakfast. The governor was
reading the paper, and he comes to a Latin inscription to be stuck on
some hospital for the orphans of soldiers. 'Here, Charley,' says ne,
' what's orbas ?' Well, Mr. Punch, one doesn't remember everything
at a_minute's notice, so I said 'worlds.' 'Ah,' says the governor,
in his dry way, ' they are building an hospital to put worlds into
—sick worlds, I suppose. Perhaps, worlds the Comet has hit; and
so he went on, looking at me, and the girls giggling like idiots
as they always do when he says anything, never mind whether
it's good or not, of course they must laugh if the governor says it.
Presently he hands me over the paper, and requests me to give a free
translation of the inscription. Well, I felt sulky, and a chap oughtn't
to be asked such things when he's at breakfast; but the sirls all kept
laughing, and motherlooked as if she'd like me to come off creditably;
and, as there was the English inscription below, I squinted at that for
a crib. But I was sold, for the Latin began—

" Ne quas paterni consilii
Bt tutelse orbas
Keliquit mors patrum praematura
Juventute inculta,"—and so on.

and the English began about the Orphan daughters of soldiers, seamen,
and marines of the realm now and henceforth. So I boggled a bit, and
then a good thought struck me, and I said that I could give them a
general notion of the meaning, but the Latin was so shy that trans-
lation was out of the question. Well, they all laughed, and the
governor, who. is not a bad fellow, saw how it was, and let me down
easy, saying he wanted the paper. But I say, wasn't it prime
when a letter came out on Thursday cutting the inscription all to

pieces, showing that cede was wrong, and ac was cacophonous, and the
words did not explain what class of people the hospital was for. Jolly,
wasn't it, and didn't I cut out the letter and send it to the governor ?
ii'ut this was all luck. I say, say a kiud word for us, and tell the old
ones not to trot us out when we come home, that's a good chap, as it
makes a fellow look like a fool before the girls. All of us take you in
regularly.

" I am, my dear Punch, yours truly,

"Blobb Secundus."

TURNPIKE TRICKS ON TRAVELLERS.

Gentlemen taking cabs from the theatres to any part of the suburbs
so far from Town that thev will have to pass through two turnpikes to
reach it, are recommended to set their watches accurately at starting.
Watches thus set will be traps to catch turnpike thieves. Por the
first gate will clear the second, if the second is passed before 12 at
night, but not otherwise ; and at the second of two gates on one par-
ticular road, Mr. Punch, from personal experience, is very much
afraid that it is customary to put the hand of the clock on at midnight
for the purpose of extorting an undue threepence. There can be no
harm done, at any rate, in seeing that your watches are true, even if
that precaution should not issue in proving a turnpike man false,
and getting him sent to the House of Correction for having swind-
led you. _

a hero's joke.

If brevity is the soul of wit, Sir Colin Campbell, when in answer
to the question, how soon he could start for India, he answered,
"To-morrow!" uttered one of the smartest recorded pieces of ready wit.

Similia Similibus.—They are treating the Oidium Vinearium, or vine
disease, successfully with sulphur—probably from the very general use
of brimstone in bad cases of Oidium Theologicum."