Punch: Punch (33.1857)

112 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [September 12, 1857.

THE HEAT OP THE WEATHER.

We hope the following fact will be fully cre-
dited, for it is far too wonderful to be pooh-
poohishly doubted. The Heat of the Sun was,
on Thursday 1 jj»t, so powerful at Filey, in York-
shire, that a Negro, who went to bathe in the
Sea, was discovered, upon emerging, to have
changed colour from a deep black to a beautiful
bright red! From head to toe, he was as red as
a boiled lobster! This singular change of cu
tide has been attributed entirely to the extra-
ordinary warmth of the water. The poor fellow,
who was footman in a rich lawyer's family, upon
; losing his natural colour, immediately lost his
1 situation; but we are glad to state that he has
since been engaged, at a liberal salary, by a
i humane Doctor, for the purpose of trying ex-
i periments upon his skin. It will be, also, his
business to stand outside the Doctor's street-
door during the night, so as to act in the
double capacity of Watchman and Red Lamp.—
Abridged from the Yorkshire Dumpling.

KndbbleSf Jan. hears that the later you fish in an evening, the more likely you. are to catch something.

He never tries it again.

A Wise Doctor.

A Doctor in large practice was in the habit
of sending out some wonderful lozenges to his
patients—but his patients never received them.
At last, it struck the Doctor that the lozenges
were of the exact size of a sovereign. For the
future, he took the precaution of writing on the
envelope, "No Money Inside;" and, strange to
say, every one of his lozenge-letters, so directed,
arrived safely at its destination !

The Divorce Drama.—" Half-price has begun.'5

THE CAPTIYE.

After Sterne.

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. 1 sat down close
to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand I began to figure to
myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and
so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I took a single clerk in the Circumlocution Office, towards the close
of August; and having first shut him up in his room, I peeped
through the key-hole to take his picture. I beheld his body limp with
the heat of London, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was
which arises from being low down in the office, and not getting away
till everybody else has had his six weeks of vacation.

Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish : from ten to four
daily for ten months, he had pined in that apartment; he had had no
lark, no outing in all that time. As for amusement--

But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with
another part of the portrait. He was sitting on his chair in the
further corner of the room, before the table which was alternately his
desk and footstool—a pad of blotting paper lay before him scored all
oyer with the vague scrawls which had occupied so many of the
dismal days he had spent there—he had one of these sheets before him,
and with a steel pen he was adding another aimless flourish to the
melancholy maze.

As my presence at the key-hole diminished the small stock of fresh
air he had, he lifted up a hopeless-eye towards the Arnott's venti-
lator—then cast it down—shook his head—and—went on with his
work of affliction.

I observed his patent leather boots, as he wearily threw up his legs
upon the table—he laid down his pen, and took up the second edition
of the Times—he gave a deep sigh—I saw the iron of the Civil Service
enter his soul—I burst into tears—I could not sustain the picture of
confinement which my fancy had drawn—I started up from my chair,
and calling the servant, bade her order me a cab for the Dover Station,
and have it ready at the door by nine in the morning.

I'll go directly, said I, and have six weeks' fresh air somewhere.
Let my publishers say what they will.

" the pofe's progress."

Pius paused long before returning to the Vatican. Was he pondering
over the Dutch proverb, "Hoe verder van Rome, hoe nader big God,"
which means, " The farther from Rome, the nearer to God ? "

THE JUNIOR IRISH BRIGADE.

A New Irish Brigade is about to be formed under the auspices of
the Brotherhood of St. Vincent de Paul. This Brigade, however,
is to be established, not for the purpose of impeding legislation, in
the interest of Popery, but for that of cleaning boots. It is to be
denominated the '"Catholic Shoeblack Brigade," and is to consist of
poor Irish boys, many of whom at present, instead of picking pockets,
go and enrol themselves in the Protestant, or, at least, the Pro-
miscuous Shoeblack Brigade—to the great peril, as their priests
consider, of their souls. How Catholic shoeblacks are to endanger
their souls in combining with Protestant shoeblacks to scrub upper
leathers, is a mystery which we will not shock those who believe m it
by attempting to fathom—we will only suggest, that the establishment
of a Catholic Brigade of Shoeblacks is drawing the principle of
exclusiveness rather fine. Indeed, the idea of the thing is so ridiculous
that most people will probably ascribe it to the imagination of Pimch.
Not so; we should have been proud of the notion- but we are
indebted for it to the Weekly Register, a Roman Catholic paper, and
not, on the whole, a rabid one. That journal appeals to its readers
for the support of this scheme for the admixtion of theology with
blacking.

The project is not likely to be self-supporting. Catholic boots are a
small minority, which is made yet smaller than it might be by some
friars who dispense with everything of the kind. To be sure, that,
perhaps, is no reason why, particularly if they are Irish friars, they
should not employ shoeblacks. "Brian O'Lynn," as we all know,
"had no shoe to his fut." Accordingly, as i« also well known to every-
body, "he tuk and he blackened it over witti sut," &c. &c. It might
not be against the laws of the barefoot Hibernian fraternity to extem-
porize apparent brogues by the simple help of the Catholic Shoeblack
Brigade. Whatever amount of success that force may obtain, we shall
be agreeably disappointed to hear of. We do not at all object to the
Brigade, although we consider it an absurdity. It is, at all events, not
a mischievous and quasi-treasonable confederacy, and the work which
it will do, if it does any work at all, will be far less dirty than what
has been done by that other Brigade which was organized by the Irish
Priesthood.

a capital offence.

London, with its Trafalgar Square, its National Gallery, its con-
temptible fountains, its ugly monuments, its architectural deformities, is
decidedly, as measured by Paris, or other capitals, a Capital Offence !