Punch (44.1863)

[February 14, 1863,

68

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

A BLACK FOG.

OUR ARTIST IMPROVES THE OCCASION, AND CLEANS HIS SKYLIGHT,

GOING THE HULL HOG.

Underneath this heading, a weelc or two ago, Mr. Punch made some remarks upon a
statement in a newspaper which he received from Hull, to the effect that at the Fish Street
Chapel in that town a collection made in aid of the Lancashire distress had been diverted
from that object, and sent towards the building of a church in Madagascar. _ This statement,
it appears, was so far incorrect that the collection was not made by the Fish Street congre-
gation, but by the children of the Fish Street Sunday School: and their teachers, having
Simultaneously been asked to send some funds to Manchester, and some to Madagascar,
elected to send all the funds thus gathered to the latter. Their reason for so doing their
secretary thus states :—

“ In addition to the fact that the Sunday School Union fund is to be applied to the relief of Sunday
scholars only, who,- considered as cotton operatives, are not more deserving of help than their fellows
who are not in Sunday schools, the children of Fish Street school have already contributed to the Lanca-
shire fund, and it was therefore agreed that the collection, which would not exceed a few shillings, and would
not bo worth dividing, might be appropriated to the Church in Madagascar. ”

This seems all right enough, if the donors
were allowed to have a voice in the decision.
But when asked for their collection were the
children also asked for which of the two objects
they desired to subscribe ? A church in Mada-
gascar is no doubt a needful thing, but bread
and meat in Manchester, some think, are still
more necessary: and although the Fish Street
children, to their honour be it said, have sent
some funds to help the Lanashire distressed,
that surely is no reason why, if they wish to do
so, they should not send some more. With all
their knowledge of geography, we suspect that
their ideas of Madagascar are but dim : and were
they told the Madagascar people wanted a new
meeting-house, and that there were folk in Man-
chester who wanted bread and meat, we think
that we can guess to which their generosity would
naturally incline. To ask a school-child to con-
tribute to the building of a church for a set of
semi-savages is, to Mr. Punch’s thinking, neither
very laudable nor inordinately wise, and has in
it a smack of something close akin to cant: but
to ask a child to help a child who is not far
from starving, is an act of which no teacher has
need to be ashamed.

Mr. Punch has been politely begged to modify
the comments which he made upon this subject,
and he does so in so far as his words were
thought to bear upon the Fish Street congre-
gation, since, it appears from recent evidence,
they ought to touch the teachers only of the Fish
Street Sunday School. With regard to these
good people, Mr. Punch’s sole fear is, that they
are possibly too good: and he doubts the Fish
Street teaching must be a little fishy, if the
lessons there imparted convey no better doctrine
than that we should give a stone for church-
building when we are asked for bread.

SCOTCHING THE SNAKE.

We learn from the Scotsman that a newspaper
proprietor has been denied a deacon’s office in
the Crieff Free Church on the ground of having
suffered unchaste and quack advertisements to
be inserted in his paper. This decision being
come to at a meeting of the elders, the proprietor
“ craved extracts ” (whatever that may mean),
and gave notice of appeal to the Presbytery of
Auchterarder. In the interests of Christianity
as well as those of common sense, Mr. Punch
sincerely trusts that the appeal will be no go
(he would use the proper law phrase, if he only
knew it: Scottish friends in reading this will
please supply the break-jaw words). It is mainly
by advertisements that quacks exist and thrive,
and every newspaper admitting these uncleanly
puff's and lies, abets the filthy trickeries by which
sham doctors live. Mr. Punch regrets to say
that there are certain English journals defiled
in the same way, and he would vastly like to see
all their proprietors tabooed not merely from all
deaconships, but from all decent dwellings, so
long as they permit the publication of quack
pufferies, such as in no decent dwelling ought
ever to be found. Punch thanks his Scotch
friends heartily for having Scotched the Snake,
and he will rejoice to hear that, so far as con-
cerns Crieff, the Auchterarder Presbytery do
their best to kill it.

Punch’s Cookery Book.

The Lancet very properly informs the world,
in reference to that humble but delightful article
a Meat-Pie, that it will always be deleterious,
owing to emanations from the meat, “ unless
a hole is made in it.” Mr. Punch is happy to
say that no such precaution is neglected at his
board, and when his young men have dined on
Meat-Pie, the Lancet should see the awful hole
I made in it.

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