Punch: Punch (56.1869)

February 20, 18G9.]

PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHAPIVAPL

PROVOKING !

“ That’s it, Gttv'ner ! Go it ! ! GIVE it ’im ! !! Yer Hour’ll soon be up ! ! ! !

A LITTLE PLEA FOE LAEGE APPETITES.

People who have suffered from a plethora of turkeys, and who, with
all their frolicking and feasting this last Christmas, may have found it
hard some days to get an appetite for dinner, are likely to forget that
hunger really is a most unpleasant feeling, and becomes indeed distress-
ing when carried to excess. To a gourmand who is daily gorged with a
good dinner, hunger may appear a sensation to be wished for; and
envy, more than pity, may be the inward feeling with which he may
regard a child halt starving in the streets. A boy stuffed to repletion
with plum-pudding and mincepie may awaken his compassion in a far
higher degree than the little hungry urchins who crowd about the pie-
shops, and flatten their small noses against the dirty glass.

But we are not all gourmands, and Christmas feasts are over, and we
most of us know what it is to have a healthy appetite after a day’s
work. So we most of us can feel real pity for the little ones, with
whom appetites are far more plentiful than dinners, and whose limbs
are lean and stunted by paucity of food. But something more than
pity it is in our power to give, and how to give that something usefully
may be learnt from this :—•

“ Last year the Committee of the Refuges for Homeless and Destitute
Children commenced, in December, a system of providing 500 children with a
good dinner weekly. These dinners were regularly given during the months
of December, January, and February last, the whole number of dinners pro- ,
vided having been 6,682, at a total cost of £196 Is. Id., or at a very small I
fraction beyond the sum of Id. per dinner.”

Sevenpence per dinner ! and here are hundreds of us Christians
dining pretty often at some three guineas a-head ! At one meal we
consume the cost of giving dinners to above a hundred children, who
need a dinner far more than we do ourselves. If you have any doubt
on this point, listen to what follows :—

“It is impossible to calculate the value of these meals to those who ate
them, hut it may be safely estimated that this one good meal in seven days
has saved many a little child from fever, lung disease, or some other malady
such as would be almost certain to attack the little frame wasted and weakened
by a lack of nutriment. Many of those little ones are the children of very

poor parents. Their fathers have probably no regular employment: and when
work fails, food, as a matter of course, fails also. 4 You are not as quick as
usual,’ says the teacher of the ragged school. ‘ Teacher, I have had no
breakfast, and I feel very weak,’ is the reply.”

Starving often leads to stealing, ana a good dinner once a week may
save a child from growing to a ruffianly thief. Think of this, please,
you, whose selfishness is really the mainspring of your charity; and
reflect that the more dinners you subscribe for in the Refuges, the less
likelihood there is that you will be garotted by some hunger-bred
street-ruffian a dozen years, say, lienee.

BROTHERLY, BUT A BORE.

We read in the Pall Mall Gazette—

“ The inspectors of weights and measures for St. Pancras have again in-
flicted penalties on a large number of tradesmen for having defective weights
and measures. Amongst others they have fined a vestryman 10s., but accord-
ing to the system adopted by the vestry under the local Act of Parliament the
names of the vestryman and other tradesmen who have been fined are kept
strictly secret.”

Punch considers this latter course rather noble and brotherly on the
part of the Vestrymen. Each is willing: to bear his share in the dis-
j grace. But it is also rather a bore for tne public, who have to procure
| a list of the Pancras Vestry, and carefully abstain from buying anything
at the shop of any vestryman who sells by weight or measure.

To Authors and Managers,

We wish to suggest a suitable name for the first new Burlesque o*.
Pantomime that shall be brought out with decent dresses. Let it be a
pastoral Watteanesque piece, and let it be called, out of compliment to
the Lord Chamberlain, Arcadia, Sydney’s Arcadia.

Leg-itimate Successes.—Modern Extravaganzas.