Punch: Punch (40.1861)

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202 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. (May is, isgi.


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Railway Porter. “Any Luggage, Miss?”
Young Lady {who is also a leetle fast). “ Yes !

HERE, GET ME A HANSOM1.”

BY THE FAST TRAIN.

Portmanteau, a Little Bay Horse, and a Black Retrieves !—And look

THE LORD MAYOR ON HIS LEGS.

Who, that knows what is good, would not have been glad to par-
take of the Banquet of the Royal Academy? The Academicians ven-
tured to invite the Lord Mayor of London !—which of course they
would not have done if they had not been prepared to entertain the
first Amphitryon in the world in the manner to which he has been
acoustomed. The President proposed Prosperity to the City of
London, and the Health of the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor ; and in
responding to that toast the Civic Monarch said

“ I feel highly honoured in being on this occasion the mouthpiece of the City of
London.”

It is not every Lord Mayor that is qualified to be the mouthpiece,
in the sense of being the spokesman, of the City of London. Some
City Kings have not had sufficient command over that English which
is supposed to be included among the peculiar royalties of the Queen’s
Majesty. A difficulty of exercising due discretion in the use or
omission of the aspirate, has rendered it expedient for too many of
them to abstain as much as possible from public speaking. Even so
long ago as the time of Richard the Third we find Shakspeare
making the Lord Mayor himself inform the 'Duke of Buckingham that:—

“ The people were not used
To be spoken to but by the recorder.”

That officer has almost always been the only member of the Corpo-
ration with a tongue in his head fit to be employed in elocution. The
mouth of the Lord Mayor has been simply a devouring aperture, and
he could only have acted as the mouthpiece of the City in a representa-
tive character at dinner, and not in that of a speaker afterwards. But
Lord Mayor Cubitt is a Member of the House of Commons, in which
assembly of educated gentlemen everybody pronounces without ever
misapplying his H, and nobody clips the English of our Gracious
Queen.

A ROD IN PICKLE EOR ROGUES.

A Bill now before Parliament declares the selling of any article
with a false quantity affixed to it to constitute a misdemeanour, punish-
able as fraud by fine and imprisonment. This, if it passes, will be a
piece of legislation apparently based upon severely classical principles,
whereas the false quantity which will subject its perpetrators to punish-
ment is no mere mistake in thieves’ Latin, but the wilful and fraudulent
substitution of short measure for that which ought to be longer. It is
to be wished that all offenders of this kind should have an “imposition”
set them consisting of exercitations upon that Gradus which they would
not reach Parnassus by climbing, although they would perform a kind
of labour resembling too much poetry in the peculiarity of being
unproductive.

The Frozen-in Bees.

The beautiful couplet of the celebrated Dr. Watts:—

“ How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shiniug hour ! ”

is generally supposed to be especially applicable to the “ merry month
of May,” but this year, up to the day whereon these words are re-
corded, May, has hardly afforded the unhappy bees a single shining
hour to improve. If some improvement would take place in the cloudy
hour, the bees, which at present are not busy, but out of work, would
be delighted.

ADMIRABLY QUALIFIED FOR THE OFFICE.

Since most of our Chancellors of the Exchequer have been guilty,
or at all events accused, of the crime of “profligate expenditure,”_why
not offer that financial post to the Marquis of Westminster? for
that is about the last accusation that could ever be laid to that
esteemed nobleman’s charge.