Punch (43.1862)

[October 18, 1862.

164

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Clara (tripping on to the Parade tumbles up against that young man coming round

the corner). “ Oh! I beg your pardon / I hope I haven't-”

Swjill. “ Haw, not at all—don’t mention it; po'm’ word rather like it / ”

SABBATARIAN ASSERTION.

THE GORILLA’S DILEMMA.

{To Professor Owen & Huxley.)

Say am I a man and a brother,

Or only an anthropoid ape F
Your judgment, be’t one way or ’tother,

Do put into pc sitive shape.

Must I humbly take rank as quadruman
As Owen maintains that 1 ought:

Or rise into brotherhood human,

As Huxley has ftatt ’ringly taught ?

Tor though you may deem a Gorilla

Don’t think much of his rank in creation,

If' of feeling one have a scintilla,

It glows to know “ who’s one’s relation”—
Apes and monkeys (now crowding by dozens
Their kinship with us to have proved),

Or an Owen and Huxley for cousins,
Though, it may be, a little removed.

If you ask me my private opinion,

(Whichhumbly throughPanzc/4is submitted)
For which sphere of nature’s dominion
I seem to myself to be fitted :

To speak with decision I’m funky.

Nature’s field when I selfishly scan,

For in some points if man’s above monkey,

In some monkey’s far above man.

My ignorance needs no apologies—

With anatomy nought I’ve to do—

This, with all the appurtenant “ologies”

I leave, my professors, to you.

But the points wherein I say that man _

Must perforce monkey own his superior,

Are where man apes the apes all he can,

And yet to the apes is inferior

Thus, in power of jaw apes beat fellows
Of your own scientific societies ;

The P.R. they outrival in “bellows,”

In gymnastics your first notorieties.

What’s Blondin to every chimpanzee,

Or Leotard great in trapeze ?

If their feats rouse the public to frenzy.

What rapture a gibbon should raise !

At Edinburgh the other day, a meeting was held by numerous enemies of
religious liberty. The Lord Provost, according to the Times, presided over

them, and the assembly of bigots comprised the leading members of the Presby-
icrian and other sects, including adherents of the Free Kirk desirous of abridging
the freedom of others. The object of these fanatics was to oppose a petition
signed by 1,400 of the working classes and addressed to the Lords of the Treasury,
asking that t he Edinburgh Botanical Gardens shall be open on Sunday. This con-
course of Sabbatarians was harangued by Doctors Mulr, Guthrie, Thomson, i
and Begg, and by some sanctimonious and stupid bailies. They bad the folly to
vote resolutions:—

“ Expressing regret and alarm that the gardens should be sought to be opened on the Lord’s
Day .... and setting forth that such a proposal was opposed not only to the Divine command-
ment, but to the law and usages of Scotland, and the convictions and feelings of the great
majority of the Scottish people, and that setting aside the authority of the Sabbath as a Divine
institution would remove the only efficient barrier which protects the working man from uninter-
rupted labour."

The only truth which the foregoing statement contains, if it contains any, is the
assertion that a tyrannical Scotch majority is desirous of shutting the minority
of Scotchmen out of the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens on a Sunday. We trust,
however, that not even this is true, and that the population of Scotland does
not chiefly consist of fools no better than real thistle-eating asses. The last of
the above-quoted assertions is one of such a nature that those who concurred in it
would agree in saying any thins, regardless of veracity. Why, Kew Gardens have
long been open to the English Public on a Sunday. Does the English workman,

then, lead a life of uninterrupted labour ? Perhaps the Lord Provost of Edin-
burgh, and the gentlemen whose names we had rather not repeat, and the stupid
unscrupulous zealots who constituted their audience, would not hesitate to say that
he does.

Black Ingratitude.

Sambo don’t feel the Proclamation,

Like Liberty’s benignant spell, come,

For, judging by the detestation
Shown in the North for Sambo’s nation,

Our black friend’s much more Free than Welcome.

You’ve low comedy actors consummate
In gagging, grimacing and chaff;

But in many who’d Buckstone look glum at
The monkey-cage wakens a laugh.

What are “Cures,” Nigger-dances and jibes
To the black spider-monkey’s contortions ?
Before preacher-monkeys by tribes
How small seem one Spurgeon’s proportions ?

One distinction alleged I must say
Betwixt man and monkey is hollow—

Where monkey or man shows the way.

Other men, other monkeys will follow.

But from all points of difference one turns
To this crowning divergence to come,

Not one man in a thousand e’er learns
To keep silent—all monkeys are dumb !

For distinctions of brain—Cerebellum-
Posterior lobe,—hippocampus—

I leave you to cut down or swell ’em,

They are scarce the distinctions to stamp us.
Now this way now that, without end,

I ’m swayed by the pros and the cons,

As I feel man and monkey contend

Which in nature’s domain are the dons.

Then help me, Professors, I pray;

For English opinion I value;

(You can’t think how I suffered when Gray
So pitched into me, through Du Cuaillu)
Anatomy out of the question,

Had 1 better be monkey or man,

By enlightened self-interest’s suggestion P
Say }ou—for hang me. if I can.