Punch (49.1865)

214

PUNCH. OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

[November 25, 1865.

A MORNING CONCERT.

Wife. “ George ! George ! You are not in Church ! ”

LINES TOR THE TIMES.

BY THE FATHER OF A FAMILY.

1 Cannot eat but little meat,

’Tis such expensive food:

When butchers cry, “ Come, buy, buy, buy ! ”
I think them vastly rude.

They’ve raised the price of all that’s nice,
Beef, mutton, pork and veal:

Their meat’s so dear, I sadly fear
1 soon shall want a meal.

Chorus.

So scant my fare, my bones are bare,

I shiver with the cold:

Small strength’s within my shrunken skin,
Now meat so dear is sold.

My wife, poor soul! must needs control
Her appetite so good,

In lieu of chops she lives on slops,

Most unsubstantial food.

We pinch and screw for Sam, and Sue,

And Frank, and Maud, and May;

Five little chicks who eat like six,

Nor care how much I pay.

Chorus. So scant my fare, &c.

North, South, East, West, the rinderpest
Is rife, the butchers tell,

And that is why so dear we buy .

I fancy ’tis a sell.

It’s my belief that mutton and beef
Much cheaper should be sold,

For there’s scarce a rise in the wholesale price,
As the press hath plainly told.

Chorus. Yet scant’s my fare, &c.

I’d like to see a Compan.

To bring good meat to town,

No more at shops we’d buy our chops,
Then prices might go down.

Thus some fine day the butchers may
Look, like their aprons, blue:

And there may be for you and me
Cheap meat as e’er we knew.

Chorus.

North, South, East, West, the rinderpest
Is raging, so we ’re told :

And there’s no meat that’s fit to eat,

But is worth its weight in gold.

“ LESS THAN KIND.”

We perceive the following advertisement:—

DOG.—Required a Kind Master for an excellent Black Retriever Dog.
Owner parts with him on account of savage tendencies.—Address, &c.

A savage dog wants a kind master. The advertiser is evidently
advanced in the Victor Hugo school, which proposes to cure burglars
by presenting them with your silver plate. But why does he not carry
out his own theory F Perhaps, if he let this savage dog bite a few pieces
out of his owner’s legs or so, the animal would be converted to gentle-
ness, the retriever be retrieved. Perhaps, again, the advertiser is
relieving his conscience by asking for a kind master, and means to
deliver the savage over to the dogwhip much as the priests handed the
heretic to the civil power, begging that he might be kindly used.
“ There is much matter in these advertisers.”

The Suicide of Beauty.—Painted faces and dyed hair are un-
popular delusions, but fashionable fal-lalacies.

The Teetotaller’s Paradise.—The Temperate Zone.