Punch (42.1862)

THE LORD DUNDREARY, LOQUITUR.

jP—P—PB—PKEFACE, Mr, Punch! Come, I say, that’s chaffing a fellah, and old birds in the hand
are not to be caught in the bush—stop, if you’re in the hand you can’t be caught by putting salt
upon the bush—I haven’t quite got it, but the moral is the same. A P—P—Preface. What’s a Preface?
A fellah can’t be expected to know that without being told; can he ?—ridiculous, at least if he hasn’t
heard of it in some other way; you must see that. I w—w—wonder whether my brother Sam could write
a Preface. I shouldn’t think he could ; because nobody knows what his brother can’t do until he has tried,
and Sam’s never been tried, you know; at least he’s never been tried for writing Prefaces, so he’s not
guilty of that, Sam isn’t, and it’s a c—c—comfort to be able to say a fellah’s not guilty of anything_
especially ii you are his brother. I don’t mean that you ’re Sam’s brother, because if you were, you would
be me, which would be ridiculous: we couldn’t both be the same person and different, could we? Only
you might be a man and a brother, and then you and Sam would be cousins ; but, I say, then you would be
a nigger, and you mightn’t like that, eh ? and have to wash your face with a b—b—blacking brush ; very objec-
tionable idea that. But, I say, I wish you’d ask Sam to write your Preface for you; he lives in America, he
does, and if you write to the North and your letter comes back, I dare say he’ll answer it from the South.
Stop, no, he can’t do that if it comes back and he don’t get it; can he ?—but you might make it a
d—d—double letter, and put two heads on it, and then it would do for either North or South America. Two
heads are better than one, don’t you know—stop, is that right ? A fellah gets these epitaphs into his head
till—stop, are they epitaphs ? No, no, an epitaph was what they put on my Aunt Sally—not that she had
two heads, quite the reverse, and I never saw a two-headed aunt in ail my life—ridiculous, how could she
kiss my uncle if she had two heads?—why she’d be a a—s—Cerberus, and you don’t think my uncle, who
was a most respectable man, would marry a Cerberus—he was quite another kind of person. Now he could
have written a Preface for you if you like, he could, and I should advise your going to him, only he’s
dead, that’s one thing, so I suppose it wouldn’t be quite—no, of course, you can’t go to a late lamented
uncle and b—b—bother him for Prefaces—quite absurd. Besides, we don’t know whether he’s dead or not.