Punch (53.1867)

September 14, 1867.] PUNCH OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

A VERY BAD JOB.

(See the “ Times,” of Wednesday, September 4.)

While Deputy, Clerks, Clients, all
Earn and pay fees below,

To feed the unseen and mystic three.
That take, nor earning know !

Oh, cruel Times, to go and grope
In a Blue Book as cruel,

For your hard-up dead-season fire
By way of finding fuel!

Those mystic three nor Deputy,
Client, nor Clerk hath seen;
But through the valet of my Lord
Revealed they have been.

To drag thereout a cosy nest
Of harmless sinecurists,

And offer it a holocaust
To prating, prudish, purists !

For once a quarter he appears,

And for the unseen three,

Three cheques receives, their quittance leaves,
And that is all men see !

Why leave the beaten path, thick strewn
With the dead season’s traces,

To brand three lucky men whose lines
Have fall’n in pleasant places P

Oh, favoured office ! happy state,
Where grow from deeds and dockets
Three sinecures, such as of old
Supplied birth-favoured pockets.

With centenarians to record,
Toads-in-coal, piscine showers,—
*The viper that bolts weasels whole,
The pike that “ browns ” devours:—

Ere Joseph Hume arose to save
Candle-ends and cheese-parings,
To cut down pensions, places, jobs.
And triumph in small sparings.

109

With ail that for quotation yearns.

In proud provincial journals—

With all the Yankee nuts to crack.

Rich in dead-season kernels

With fruit, crops, tourists’ grievances.

And social ills to howl of,—

Two harmless sinecurist swells,

And a Lord, why fall foul of?

What had Lord Truro, or Le Blanc,

Or Villars Meynell done,

That thou, oh, Times, should’st show them v."—
Three job-masters in one ?

Was’t that some briefless barrister,

Elat leaders doomed to brew,

When fain peak, pass, and glacier,

He had been free to “ do,”

Eelt savage, thinking of these three
Paid but to take their pleasure,—

Seven thousand pounds per annum shared,

To feed their lucky leisure ?

Was’t private wrath or public zeal
Most served to make him sore ?

Was’t that he loved the jobbed-for less,

Or the job hated more P

Boots not to ask : the job is there,

The show-up true and telling,

And Truro, Meynell, and Le Blanc,

Stand like trees marked for felling !

“ Middlesex Registry of Deeds,”

A pleasant place art thou—

Nay more, three pleasant places rolled
In one great job, I trow.

Eive clerks, four under, one their chief.

And ten for copying paid—

Of Middlesex’s registry
Eor lands bought, leased, conveyed.

Do all the work, and take in fees,

Twelve thousand pounds and more;

Whereof three thousand they retain.

And pay seven thousand o’er

To the three blesshd Registrars,

Who sit, serene, on high,

Like gods of Epicurus, perched
Above our workday sky:

Who toil not, but take toll of men,

Hard-labouring men below,

And smile as murmurs and complaints
Erom their inferiors flow.

So sit Lord Truro and Le Blanc,

And Meynell, each a god,

Their work, to pocket quarterly
Eive hundred pounds and odd. *

* See Viscount Folkestone’s and D. F. Cherniside’s letters to the Field.

Oh, cruel Times, thy hand forbear.

Nor this unique example

Of a job like our fathers’ jobs,

Out of existence trample !

The Mammoth’s frame and Mastodon’s
We in museums cherish;

Then shall this Mammoth-sinecure
Unwept, unpitied, perish ?

This Mammoth, that like Mammoths found
In bergs Siberian sticking,

Still shows, complete, hair, teeth and claws,
And bones well worth the picking !

THE WEATHER, THE CROPS, AND THE COUNTRY.

There has been a good deal of weather about lately.

There was some very bad wethers in Sussex, but the Inspector had
them killed at once.

A lady, who has taken to farming, has separated the beans from the
| other vegetables, on account of their being “ so broad.”

A French Bean has been hired by an agriculturist in the neighbour-
' hood of Colwell-Hatchney, to give lessons in his native language.

A labourer in the north, who began his iniquitous career by robbing
! his master of pig-iron, has now been transported for pig-steeling.

Farmers are saving up their money to buy sewing-machines for
next year. Women are to be employed on the work, who will chiefly
be engaged in sewing tares.

A Kentish agriculturist has composed a new harvest song, with an
appropriate chorus ; the burden is—

“ Hop light Loo,

And sow your pretty wheat.”

Chorus. “ Rye fol de riddle.”

A gentleman farmer, who is something of a logician, writes to us
to say that he considers the due springing up of the corn after the
sowing of the seed, to be a clear illustration of the “ Doctrine of Corn-
sequences.”

FUNEBRAL FINERY.

Among the “ toilettes ravissantes ” to be seen at a French watering
place, a Paris newspaper describes this sweetly pretty novelty :—

“Le bas de la jupe ornS de tStes de morts, imprim^es sur la mousseline.”

“ Cette fantaisie funehre,” as the writer nicely terms it, might be
thought somewhat appropriate, if the wearer were in mourning : and,
as novelty is charming, we may see death’s heads embroidered, not on
the skirt merely, but all over the dress. Cross bones might be also
used by way of decoration, and coffins might be deemed a fitting kind
of ornament for a funeral costume. As a check upon their gaiety, the
Egyptians used to set up a skeleton in their banquet rooms : but
if we chanced to sit at dinner by a lady in a dress with a tete de mort
embroidery, we doubt if our politeness would be able to prevent a
laugh at her bad taste.

A Pottle of Poetry.

It is said that an Italian poet has written a poem of nine hundred
lines on strawberries. Could not portions ot it be sung to a hautbois
accompaniment ?