Punch (54.1868)

February 15, 1868.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

67

EDUCATION !

Papa (improving the occasion at Luncheon). “Now, look, Harry, the cir-
cumference of this Cake is equal to about three times the diameter,

AND-”

Harry. “ Oh, then, Pa’, let me have the c’cumf’bence for my Share ! ! ”

DOR’S BEAUTIES OF PARLIAMENT.

O Dod !

That heading may seem odd,

But Punch, unlike to Homer, doth not nod.
Again in thy Black Book,

Certain of truth, we look
For the twin rolls

Of those whom graceful Chelmsford now controls.
Helped by the bearer of the Sable Rod:

And those whom gentle Denison
Invites to hear the benison
Pronounced upon his venison,

Likewise his salmon, turbot, soles, and cod.

For six-and-thirty Sessions
The large and stout professions,

Also the sad transgressions
Of our law-making Swells hast thou enshrined,
Again thy handy tome
(Wanted in every home
Where Politics are talked) we gladly find.

Thy namesake—with two D’s—

Whose exit, pendulous, seems cruel now,

Victim to him who taught us how to bows
Lie, flatter, fawn, and please,

“ Beauties of Shakspeare ” in one volume placed,
And though the luckless parson showed some taste,
’Twas thought he more deserved his fate
For leaving out the other eight.

Than for the deed that brought to grief his neck,
The counterfeit of Chesterfieldian cheque.

Into no kindred error thou dost fall:

Thou givest All.

All Beauties of the Parliament are here.
Temporal and Spiritual Peer,

From the vice-royal Abercorn, L.L.,

To Zetland, darling of the Mystic Cell:

And all who in the Nether House give tongue,

From T. Dyke Acland unto Richard Young,

All now preparing for The Talk. 0 dear!

Punch thanks thee, Dod,

And, tying up a rod

Which down on sundry he will shortly bring,

Looks to thy pregnant print
For many a valued hint

How that well-pickled birch may smartest sting.

COMMON SENSE ON WHEELS.

SUPERNATURAL IMPUDENCE.

They still “manage some things better in France,” and among them
may be mentioned road-making and cookery. In these respects we
might with profit take a lesson from our neighbours, and perhaps the
time may come when French rollers here will be as common as French
rolls, and a vol au vent be served as well as a Welsh rarebit. What
fools the French must think us, when they see us strewing lumps of
granite loosely in our roadways, and wearing out our carriage-wheels
in grinding it to slush. A road so formed is never firm, but quickly
becomes rotten; and the saving of steam-rollers is a short-sighted
economy, for narrow carriage-wheels make ruts and cannot bind the
stones together. Thus they are kicked aside and wasted, and, as the
road is not rolled evenly, holes are very quickly made in it, and carriage-
springs are broken, and horses are tripped up, and are broken-kneed or
lamed.

We Britons continually boast that we are a “ practical people,” and
this is ever our excuse when charged with being inartistic. Our build-
ings may be clumsy, our statues hideous burlesques, but we don’t profess,
you know, to be an ornamental nation ; our talent is for business, and
all sorts of useful works. Yet few things are more useful than good
thoroughfares and roads, and with these we either are too stingy or
too stupid to provide ourselves. If every business man would calcu-
late the time he loses daily, to say nothing of the temper, by reason of
the roughness and the badness of our roadways, there would surely
before long be held a public meeting somewhere, and somebody would
propose that somebody should do something which somehow should
• help somewhat towards the mending of our ways.

NEW VERSION.

It was the reflection of a thoughtful hall-porter that the self-
denying man must be the man who says he is not at home when he is.

These are awful times, Mr. Punch. Strange spirits are abroad.
J. W. K. writes to the Times an account of a street robbery, with brutal
violence, of which he was the victim Having stunned him, the ruffians
who had knocked him down made off with his watch. He says :—

“ I afterwards saw two policemen, who treate the matter very calmly, saying,
‘ I was not the first who had been robbed on the same road this week.’ ”

Not the first! Why this is the very language of the mocking fiend.
“ She is not the first.” Your readers are also, many of them, readers
of Goethe, and know who said that. Two British policemen were
never capable of such a sneer. It was the chaff ot Mephistopheles, and
his companion—Asniodeus, perhaps; possibly Modo and Mahu himself
—who knows ? Strange spirits, I say, Mr. Punch, are abroad, to say
nothing of those spirits which seem to be so intimate with spiritual
“ circles” that they may be called familiar. None of them have told
us, however, where to find the Rev. Mr. Sfeke.

But I say. Sir, what a pass we have come to when robbery is so
rampant, for want of policemen, that we have Mephistopheles^ and
another roaming the streets in the disguise of two of those deficient
Guardian Angels, and saying to a man who has been plundered and
maltreated, “ You are not the first.” For never could that jocular but
unfeeling observation have proceeded from the mouth ot a beneficent
creature whose popular name is the fond and playful diminutive ol

Robert.

Suggestions for Hippophagists.

The best horses for the Hippophagist’s table would be “ Coursers;”
arranged in the bill of fare as First Coursers, Second Coursers, &c.

Why was horse-radish omitted in the menu at the Langham F And
horse-chestnuts were wanting. Where, too, among the sweets was the
Rfe-bald F