Punch: Punch (54.1868)

174

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[April 18, 1868.

A SUBTERFUGE!

Papa. “ A Letter from yoor Brother, Louisa—Declines to Stand God-
father TO THAT DEAR CHILD ; SAYS HE ISN’T A RITUALIST ! MTOW, DID YOU
EVER ? ! ! ”

WOMAN’S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.

What makes Miranda laugh or cry
Without apparent reason why,

Mow fixes her in spasms fast bound,

Mow bids her kick and stamp the ground,

While standers-bv around her close,

These try to hold her down, and those
Apply ammonia to her nose ?

Hysteria.

By what is she, at times, possessed
With cunning not to be expressed,

Whence to no purpose, for no gain,

All sorts of things she’s apt to feign ?

What, in her, feigns, without her will.

Almost all modes of being ill.

Which baffle, oft, the doctor’s skill?

Hysteria.

What is it, as we read at school,

That Pythoness, on three-legg’d stool,

Out of her ordinary wits
Did drive into prophetic fits ?

She that is mesmerised obeys
What influence, in these modern days ?

What in the female “medium” plays?

Hysteria.

What cause the softer sex inclines
To maudlin converse with divines ?

Whence do the various clergy bear
So vast an influence o’er the fair ?

Whereby has Ritualism increased ?

What works for Rome; has never fceased
To serve the purpose of the Priest ?

Hysteria.

I may get married if I find
A maiden suited to my mind,

One that would be, with ornament
That pleased her husband’s eye, content.

Should such an one my fancy seize,

Heaven I shall beg, upon my knees,

To avert from her that dire disease,

Hysteria.

A Page always Growing.—The Page of History.


A COMPANY LIMITED BY LORD JOHN MANNERS.

To the Editor of Punch.

Sir,

I takes in Punch reglar—upon my word—so beg you’ll lend
the assistance of yer powerful pen to turn out the present obnoctious
Government. I’ll give you a specimen of ow they’ve bin interferin
with a most promisin commercial enterprise. If you won’t believe me,
veil then read the Pall Mall Gazette vere the facts is related—only in
an unvorthy and ostile spirit to the aggrieved Party.

A gent in this vicinnity—a very intimate friend of mine—come into
possession of them two lanes leading to the Roehampton Gate, or
Paget’s Gate, as ’tis sometimes called, of Richmond Park, along with
other property earabouts vich he vanted to improve. The lanes ad
bin, up to then, open to the public on sufferance; to all foot passengers
and to sitch carriage people as ad the right of ongtray. They was
considered pretty sequestered lanes, green and flowery and all that,
vith daisy and buttercup medders about ’em, oss chesnuts in bloom at
the proper season, and sich. Along a bank at the side of one of ’em
growd flowers vich I’m told was vild strawberries, but is now done
away with by the improvement of the Main Drainage.

Now ven this ere cove, this partickler friend of mine, got old of this
ere property, thinks he, “ It would be a capital spec to set up toll-gates
at the hentrances of them two lanes, and charge so much an ead for
everybody vantin to go them ways into Richmond Park.”

Accordinly vat does he do but starts a joint-stock concern, under
the name of “The Clarence Roads Company (Limited),” and puts up,
at the openins into the lanes from Roehampton and Sheen, notices
statin that for the future the Public (except them as vas duly privi-
leged) vould be altogether excluded from them there ways to the
Park.

Yereupon vat d’ye think that Lord John Manners goes and does ?
He writes my friend vord as the Paget Gate of the Park was open
only on condition that the public vas allowed free way to it by them

lanes, and, if that vas in any vay restricted, he’d shut up the gate.
Vy, it’s only 100 yards from my friend’s ouse, and the nearest other
gate at Sheen is 3 miles off by an ard dusty road !

A crueller trick vas never played at a cove’s expense. It reminds
me ow my feelins vas urt vunce in my early days by an artless impos-
ter vat sold me an old goodfornothin vescat for two shillins by avin
put, to seem as if it had bin left, in the pocket a farthin vitch I thought
vas arf a sovrin.

Sir, if yer doesn’t turn out Dizzy and his ole lot, anyow, I opes
yer’ll insist upon his dischargin that Chief Commissioner of Yorks of
his’n, that Lord John Manners, by vich, vith the despotic power vat
he vields vith sich an eye and, a cove—1 von’t name no names—as
bin regularly Plummuxed.

Clarence Villa, April 1, 1818.

“ The Parcel of a Reckoning.”

Por a reason which it might be uncivil to assign, we have no great
distaste for seeing commercial folks at logger-heads. Just now the
Great Small Parcels question is up. A tradesman desires to pay the
railway for carrying one big parcel, which is made up of lots of small
parcels, to be delivered by his agent. The railway says that every
parcel is a parcel, and ought to be paid for. If Mr. Punch were a
great London grocer he would support the former, if a Railway Share-
holder, the latter; but as it is he is like the American lady who,
beholding her husband fighting with a bear, remarked that it was the
first time she had ever seen a fight without caring which licked.

A MENDED SAW.

“ As Safe as a Church.” If you wish to convey the very opposite
notioD, of insecurity, alter this proverbial expression into—as safe as
the Irish Church.