Punch (37.1859)

September 17, 1859.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 113

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“ It was a pleasant thing to walk on the beach, and see how amiably that great, good-natured
fellow. Paterfamilias, was buried alive by the little ones.”—Extract from, Letter.

MUZZY NOTIONS OF MERCY.

Our friend the Advertiser will be too much foi
us one of these days. If he makes us laugh until
something happens, he must really provide for
Mrs. P. and the Kids. He stated the other
day, in reference to the anticipated reprieve ol
Smethuest, that “he” (the Advertiser that is)
“ knetc that the Queen was always ready tc
give a gracious response to an appeal for mercy.’
Out of what very funny old School-book doe?
the Advertiser get his notions of the function?
of the Crown ? We are half inclined to believe
that he thinks the English Sovereign “signs
death-warrants,” and dips the royal pen into red
ink, for the purpose. He surely imagines that
Sir George Lewis, having decided on a re-
prieve, comes crawling on his knees to Queen
Victoria, and after a neat and pathetic speech,
founded on Portia’s, about mercy, humbly begs
for lenity to the culprit. Really it is too bad
of the Advertiser, being such a favourite at
Court, not to obtain more accurate knowledge.
He should not write as if the Queen had the
faintest personal responsibility for, or even
acquaintance with, the proceedings in such
cases. We assure him, on our honour? that
Her Majesty has nothing to do with criminal
documents, and consequently never dashes away
the pen with a “ Would I had never learned to
write,” as the Advertiser ignorantly supposes.

THE ITALIAN QUESTION.

“Please, Sir, may I accept Tuscany and the
Legations?”—Victor Emanuel to Louis Napo-
leon.


A RACE IN DANGER.

Mr. Punch, having humanely given his establishment, a holiday,
having sent his upper servants to Ramsgate and his inferior ones to
| Margate, and having turned his horses into Hyde Park, has taken to
I ride, of late, upon the tops of omnibuses, the only place in truth
j whence a true conception can be formed of the real character of
London. There, safe, and like Jupiter high throned all height above,

| the hurrying crowd, the furious Hansom, the deaf four-wheeler, the
rattling carnage, have no terrors for the London traveller; there he
} can calmly survey mankind from Chelsea to Mile End, and besides
having many agreeable revelations of first-floor life, he can really see
what the architecture of the Metropolis is, and be more and more con-
! firmed in his conviction that Lord Palmerston hath once at least in
his life talked bosh. Rut this is beside Mr. Punch’s present theme.

He has noticed (and what has he not noticed ?) that something or
other has wrought the most wonderful change in the character of his
| old friends (yes, my Lord Duke, he honours you with his friendship,

| but can afford to keep humble friends, which you can’t) the Omnibus
I men.

Of old, it seemed that the Omnibus Driver amply fulfilled his duty,
if he drove his vehicle with ordinary skill, avoided curb-stones and
gas abysses, was grumpishly civil to the passengers who sat near him,
and quietly growled at his conductor for not making two people get
out at once if they lived within a street or two of one another. The
j Conductor was also equal to his task if he kept a tolerably sharp
1 eye on the populace, unhesitatingly stated that the Omnibus went
exactly where any inquiring person wished to go, and had spirits enough
j to take an occasional mild sight at a rival. A readiness to pass bad
money, and a disposition to be insolent if twice told the same thing,

| were also ordinary characteristics.

j All is changed. The word “ Wake Up ” has evidently been given to
j the Omnibus world, and there has been a wake, with mwitness.

Drivers and Conductors have been transformed into i the most wide-
! awake, energetic, almost frantic of creatures. Instead of being lead,
they are quicksilver. Eyes, and ears, and brains are all alive, and
artillery officers hurrying their guns from point to point, to play upon
an advancing or retreating enemy, could not be more steady in their
position, more desperate in their dash. And all insolence has vanished.
A painful, almost a feverish politeness is observed, information is given
and even tendered, thanks are returned for money, you are a patron
and a benefactor—only, with tears in their eyes, the officials beg you to
“look sharp.”

A terrible rivalry has sprung up, it seems, and certain “Times” are
.aid down for t he starting, progress, and arrival of the vehicles. The

business of the twin managers of each omnibus is to violate this agree-
ment in the most daring, or the most subtle way; to. “get the road; ”
to sweep their enemy’s passengers off; to meet him at angles and
corners; to slang him furiously, and charge him with every crime that
is not capital; to cut away through nameless and obscure streets, and
up courts, and if necessary down cellars, so as to get out, into the
broad thoroughfare before him; to be ready, as a captain will in stress
throw his guns over, to tear out all their own passengers, and shove
them into a friendly Bus, so as to enable themselves to dodge the foe
without imprecations from the inside ; to be prepared with a storm, of
clamorous affidavits for the “time-keeper,” the main point of which
is that the deponents are the most innocent of lambs and the most
trampled of victims ; to turn a perfectly blind eye and deaf ear to any
old lady or lame gentleman whose tardy entrance into the vehicle might
spoil the race; to keep a succession of little boys as spies at the
corners of streets, and by posts, which infants screech horribly the
names of the drivers that have last passed the station^to crawl, like
a tortoise that has taken laudanum for gout, and anon To dash forward
like a pickpocket that lias caught sight of a detective’s askance glance;
to drive over costermongers, barrows, washing-carts, children, or any
other impediment if necessary, but to be infinitely cautious and slow,
if slowness just then is the desired dodge ; to be fertile in resources
for stopping, such as the discovery of an imaginary stone in the near
horse’s off left, or the absolute necessity of buckling up that mare two
holes (and it is astonishing how awkward a handy man can be); to see
visionary passengers half a mile off—or not to see real ones at three
yards, according to circumstances; and generally to follow out the one
object of the life of these gallant and ingenious men, namely, to cheat
each other’s “Time.”

The occupation affords scope for the exercise of all the best faculties
of man—patience, courage, vigilance, perseverance, skill, eloquence,
and if a passenger happens to have nothing to do, and not to be at all
nervous, the game is not an unamusing one. Unhappily, such passengers
are not the majority, and Mr. Punch regrets to hear, that the clamour
of the majority against a system in which the public is bumped and
hurried and shattered, or dragged and drawled and wearied, according
to the state of the said game, has eventuated in a contemplated Police
Act for dealing with Omnibus traffic, and reducing it to ignoble and
vulgar order. The new and fine race of men, thus created by the
necessities of competition, will be swept away, like Red Indians. They
shall not say that “they had no bard and died.” Mr. Punch has
embalmed them.

A Dairymaid’s Definition.—Flattery is the milk of human kind
ness turned into Butter.