Punch (39.1860)

October 13, I860.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

141

THY VOICE, O HARMONY!


Conductor. “ Heasy with them Bones, Bill!"

Bones. “But I'm a playin’ llohligarter."

Conductor. “ Well, I didn’t say you wasn't; hut you needn’t go and drownd my Trertwler!

COALS OE EIRE.

Our friend, the Weekly Dispatch,
is now a highly respectable paper,
and recognises decency and Deity in
a way that would make its original
promoters (if still extant) stare
and swear. Mr. Punch has much
pleasure in habitually reading the
Dispatch. But there is such a thing
as being in too great a hurry to
forget one’s antecedents. Last
week the journal in question found
fault with Mr. Punch (who is never
wrong upon any topic in or out of
the world) for a joke which repre-
sented a Barrister as having taken
a certain position in order to ad-
dress a jury. The Dispatch inti-
mated that the jury was not in the
place where the advocate was.
Come, come, this is a little too
good in a paper whose success was
made by an Old Bailey Lawyer.
To pretend not to know that a
Barrister does not stand in the
jury-box, but at a considerable
distance therefrom! Jerusalem!
Snakes ! However, the Dispatch
is forgiven—the cavil was only
introduced as a puff for certain
maps, which are quite good enough
to need no puffs grounded on
affectation of ignorance, and to
which Mr. Punch, himself an Atlas
that sustains the world, is happy
to lend his good word.

A Cry from a Sponging
House.—“Wouldthat the scrapes
of this life were like those of little
schoolgirls — merely scrapes of
bread-and-butter! ”

SPIRITUAL HAT-MOVING.

There are no good lies in the Spiritual Magazine of this month; for
the stories about the “ Davenport Boys ” copied from a Yankee organ
of Spiritualism, called the Herald of Progress, are as silly as they are
false, and evince merely a stupid effrontery and an idiotic indifference
to truth. Erom the notices “ To Readers and Correspondents ” the
subjoined extract shall enjov all the advantage it can derive from quo-
tation in these columns. Hat-moving is a spiritual phenomenon as
well as table-moving, and as the hat of the Spiritual Magazine is going
round, we do not mind giving it a turn:—

“ Special Fund towards paying the Expenses and for Gratuitous Distribution of
the Spiritual Magazine :

“ Received since our last—An Inquirer, £5 ; Dr. B., £3 ; making with amount pre-
viously acknowledged, £75 Os. 0d. Subscriptions for this object are earnestly
solicited, and may be sent to the Editor, as above.”

We have no wish to impede the success of the Spiritual Magazine
considered as a commercial undertaking; nay, we will go so far as to
express the hope that we may not damage any pecuniary interests
which the Editor of that journal, or other parties connected with it,
may be suspected, from the tone of some of their replies to criticism,
to have in the credit of professional Mediums. If the publication of
the above appeal shall procure the Spiritual Magazine a lew additional
subscribers, we shall only have rendered a small service to struggling
writers of fiction. We have no desire that the Spiritual Magazine
should perish, though we expect that it will shortly have to give up
the ghost. __

The Ladies’ Fashionable Siphonia.

In consequence of the recent wet weather many sensible ladies have
"taken to wearing their Crinoline outside of their walking dresses, in the
form of a framework of gutta-percha tubes, serving the same purpose
as the pipes which conduct the rain-water from the roofs of houses.
The dress which is worn over Crinoline extends to such a circumference
than an umbrella affords it no adequate protection, saving nothing hut
the bonnet, so that it can only be defended from the showers by a
system of drainage, which is managed by an arrangement of Crinoline
combining utility with elegance.

ADVENTURE WITH ECONOMY.;

“ Mr. Punch,

“ As the taste for Alpine climbing is a very expensive
one, particularly to that parent of juvenile tourists who is ironically
called ‘the Governor,’ allow me to suggest a means whereby the same
amusement, essentially, may he practised in this Metropolis at the
small cost of 3d. Let the railing be removed from the spiral staircase
in the interior of the Monument, and let the cage also, which encloses
the top of it, be taken away. The wind is generally very high up
there, and what with that, and the chances of feet slipping, and people
jostling each other in their way up and down, the peril of ascending
the column would be nearly if not quite as great as any that could
attend an attempt to scale the Jungfrau,* * or any other mountain, peak,
or horn in Europe. Moreover, the ascent of the Monument would be
practicable at Christmas, when the idea of climbing Mont Blanc is out
of the question, and might also be hazarded on a Saturday half-holiday
by adventurous young men who now, at no season of the year, can
afford an excursion to any mountainous district more dangerous than
that of Hampstead.

“ If the Monument, the Duke of York’s Column, and all such
structures were only rendered sufficiently unsafe, those jmuths would
be enabled to realise, to a much greater extent than they can now, the
advantages of the Early Closing Movement. I have, Mr. Punch, with
a dozen children and a narrow income, the honour to be,

“ Your constant reader,

“ Paterfamilias.”

* Those who prefer safety to danger, and stairs to steps, should try Burford’s,
Leicester Square.

to Smile at.

Nothing

A Times correspondent says, “On Wednesday nine people convicted
of murder were hanged at Damascus, and many others await trial.”
We are sorry to say that if the gentleman returned to England at this
singular period, he would feel very much as if he were in Damascus.
Our journals have lately been little but enlarged editions of the New-
gate Calendar. “ Crime of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker.” May
the Old Serpent’s hiss speedily cease