Punch (51.1866)

MISTAKEN IDENTITY; OR, A “ CURRANT-JELLY” AFFAIR.

(CAPITAL FINISH AFTER A BLANK DAY, WHEN THEY DREW FOR A FOX, AND FOUND A HARE. DELIGHTFUL FOR THE GENTLEMAN

WHO INDUCED THEM TO COME.)

Indignant Master of Foxhounds. “There’s the Fox you viewed, Mr. Snaffles, pointing for your Larder.”

THE QUEEN IN THE BLACK COUNTRY.

Gracious Queen Victoria, Wolverhampton greets you:

Pranks her unlovely face in smiles, with homage as she meets you :
Underneath her Arch of Coal loyally entreats you,

Wreaths nails locks and bolts, and near the iron trophy seats you.

Grimy labour washes and puts on its Sunday clothes :

Por holiday unwonted forges cool and smithies close :

Pale toil-stunted children leave their nailing for the shows ;

The stream of subterranean work, idly, above ground flows,

In honour of the Queen, whose very name sounds strange and odd
To many here that know no more of a Queen than of a God.

Slaving from dawn to darkness at nail-hammer and nail-rod,

Their backs bowed to the anvil, and their souls chained to the clod.

The Queen comes honouring those who honour him she loved and
lost,

Albert, good, wise, and thoughtful, who in spite of chill court frost
Kept the green spring of head and heart alive, not counting cost
Of time, or toil, or scorn that scoffed, or doubt his work that crost.

’Tis well his statue should stand high, in this Black Country’s core,
Looking across these cindery wastes, seamed, scathed, and ashy-hoar :
Where the eviscerated earth knows seasons’ change no more,
j Where the only seed is gold, the only harvest coal and ore.

Where greed has gone upon its quest, with naked hand and brow—
Naked, and not ashamed—bent to gain, not caring how :

Blighting man’s life, even as it blights the blossom and the bough ;
Over souls and over bodies driving its iron plough.

Till stamp of sex is beaten out, and youth is hard and old :

Rude toil makes ruder leisure : man grows brutal, woman bold :

And so the iron is but dug and forged, and hived the gold,

Pew question how Pleaven’s grace recedes, and the Devil’s sway gains
hold.

’Tis well the good, wise, thoughtful Prince should show his gentle
face,

Betwixt the wealth and wretchedness of this unhallowed place,
Pointing to Christian goals Competition’s reckless race,

Making Property less selfish, to rude Labour adding grace :

Guide, for teaching of the highest, how good work should be done;
Proof, for comfort of the humblest, that high and low are one :

Record of a life’s course, by love’s and duty’s compass run—

All lessons needed here, that Earth’s smoke quench not God’s sun 1

RITUALISM AFLOAT.

A new regulation will, with the approbation of the Ritualist bishops,
be shortly introduced into the Navy. The necessity of the innovation
will be rendered clear by the following painful fact. A Ritualistic
Naval Chaplain, who liacl recently joined one of H.M.’s vessels, was
nervously anxious that a certain genuflexion, at a particular part of the
service, should be made due East. He therefore requested one of the
midshipmen of the watch to report to him, at the right period, which
way the ship’s head was pointing. The young gentleman duly appeared,
at the proper moment, and whispered, “N.W. and by W-|-Vv., Sir.”
The way in which the Chaplain, unskilled in nautical matters, went
round and round in doubt and uncertainty, before the admiring officers
and crew, has been reported at home, and in future all Naval Chaplains
are to be able to Box the Compass.

The Sanitary Reformer’s Paradise.—Freshwater.