Punch (37.1859)

142

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[October 1, 1859.



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FLY-DRESSING IN THE HOLIDAYS.

“I say, Pug, just give me two oit three of your Eyelashes, to finish off this Black Palmer, there’s a good Girl."

SIRENS AT THE SEA-SIDE.

PROBABLE RAILWAY CATASTROPHE.

Miss Martineau proposes that ladies should he taught to swim.
All the young ones ought to be able to swim naturally, like ducks, as
they are; and as for the others, if not ducks, what are they, for at any
rate they are no chickens ? The proposition of Miss Martineau sug-
gests certain additions which, when it is adopted, should be made to
The Girl’s Own Book. Besides proper directions for swimming,
floating, diving, treading water, &c., instructions should be supplied
for performing various feats of elegance, dexterity, and skill. Aquatic
waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles are evolutions which the fair swimmers
might be taught to perforin, to their own great delight and recreation,

: as well as to the diversion of all beholders. Elegant bathing-dresses,

suitable to an aquatic ball, would render such a performance at any
fashionable watering-place abundantly profitable. The dresses, of
course, would be of a very light material, unless, by means of gutta-
percha tubing, crinoline of ordinary extent could be conveniently
i floated. Young ladies might also learn to embroider in the water, hem
handkerchiefs, do crochet, or execute drawings in water-colours. A
piano, supported by a little buoy, would afford peculiar means for
musical aquatic exercises; and the performer, accompanying herself in
a song, would appear like a regular mermaid, with her tail out of sight.
If young ladies generally could swim, and took to swimming, the waves
that wash the beach of Albion would swarm every autumn with sea-
nymphs, and 1 he British shoies would be assuredly crowded with
» worshippers of those marine divinities.

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“ Oh, that Sort of Person 1”

There has been a good deal of sympathy excited among vulgar
people in England, liy the account of the stealing and restoration of a
baby in Paris. This interest was at first shared by our better classes,
it being stated that the abstracted infant had been “exquisitely
dressed,” but this was destroyed when it came out that the baby had
been*for some time “nursed ” by its own mother.

A Most alarming accident on the South-Western Railway, attended
with the frightful mutilation of upwards of a hundred persons, and
resulting in the death of a number of human beings as yet unascer-
tained, among whom, there is too great reason to fear, will be included
a right reverend prelate and an illustrious person, may be obviated, if
Cabtain Ross, R.E., correctly reports that on that line “ the public-
are exposed to unnecessary risks,” and that “the management neglects
to make the simple insurance against accidents of this class, which
may be effected by an adequate provision of guard and break power."
If the board of directors of this once secure, but now perilous railway,
will only go to the expense of putting it in a proper condition, they
will avert an alarming sacrifice of human life, which more than one of
our contemporaries may correctly describe as a holocaust of human
victims, since the train may take fire, and burn the Bishop of Win-
chester, and Punch. If Captain Ross is right, fhe South-Western
Railway, whose officials used to boast that it was “ slow and safe,” is
now, in consequence of having ceased to be safe, not half what it used
to be.

The Pam of Spades.

Lord Palmerston, in turning the first sod of the Railway at
Broadlands, the other day, is said to have handled his barrow like a
true navvy. Till then nobody knew that we had such a navigator at !
the helm of the State. Pam is a trump.

Prom Our Youngest Contributor.—There is this difference i:
between the domestic cat and the military cat—that the one belongs to '
the feline species, and the other to the unfeeling.

Test for a Mended Tea-cup.—The Anglo-French Alliance, which
was regarded as broken, is now said to have been united with Chinese
Cement. We trust the composition will stand hot water.