Punch (57.1869)

October 23, 1869.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

155

A POINT OF VIEW.

Chatty Traveller {at our watering-place). " Much Company down here, my
Boy ?"

Paper Boy. " Oh yes, Sir, plenty ; and Fust-Rate Co'pany, too."
Chatty Traveller. "How do you Tell that ? Eh ? "

-Boy. " Allus Know 'em, Sir. Won't Look at nothin' but the Three-
pennies and Punch."

THE CAWING SOCIAL CONGRESS.

Tn Autumn time, when, sere and brown,
The leaves begin to tumble down,
To roam, at evening, in a wood
Of reverend old oaks, is good
For pilgrims, fog-proof who can rove
Through rising mist, the dusky grove.

Abroad when shard-born beetles fly,
Hum in the ear, hit nose and eye,
The wanderer at that hour will mark,
In forests—can in Richmond Park—
Great flocks of rooks, which, dense as bees,
Swarm in the air and in the trees.
They cloud the sky with rustling wings,
The forest with their clamour rings,
As cawing, cawing, still they keep
Till night falls, and, at roost, they sleep.

With clack of garrulous jackdaws,
Of those rooks cawing what's the cause ?
The faculty of imitation.
A National Association
They 're holding, or a Social Science
Congress, with usage in compliance ;
And do our spouters' annual jawing
Match with a correspondent cawing.

But then there's music in the raucous
Cries uttered by the corvine caucus.
Pleasant to hear for one out walking
Unlike all that confounded talking :
Those platitudes, like snores sonorous,
Which papers, by reporting, bore us
With several columns of a speech—
Hardly a single thought in each,
And that you seek for as you may
A needle in a rick of hay.
The cawing to a purport reaches
Full as momentous as the speeches.
Let those who like to hear them sit;
I '11 walk, more edified with it.

Certainly.

In the list of contents of a new monthly periodical,
under " Reviews of Books," occur these two entries—

Under Lock and Key.

Six Years in the Prisons of Efiffland.

Should not these titles have been transposed ?

TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.

{Private and Confidential^)

My Dear, Bob,

You know how I have always stood your friend—painting your
measures in the most rosy of lights, and yourself in the most nattering
colours that my limitation to black and white admitted of.

On the principle of like to like, I have always relished your point,
admired your pluck, gone along with your straight-hitting from the
shoulder, sympathised with your good-natured contempt for a fool, and
your genuine hatred of a knave, especially of the more sanctimonious
and pompous order of wind-bag, and enjoyed, as a kindred spirit only
could, your calling of spades spades in the House and out of it. I will
not go along with you in velocipede practice, for I am not so short-
sighted as you are, and no doubt, as being less used to tumbles, I
dare say I do care more for bruises. But most of your other little
games, so far as I know them, I am ready to back you up in.

I was quite in favour of your plan for collecting the year's assessed
taxes within the year. But I did not expect to have any more of those
nasty, and only too familiar, blue-ruled papers, beginning with "the
charge within referred to," and ending with the address of the collector,
and " attendance on Fridays from ten to four o'clock, p.m.," after what
you told our worthy friend Sir George Jeukxnson on the seventeenth
of June, that assessed taxes were abolished from and after April 1869.
I felt all the more satisfied of this, after your emphatic declaration on
the fourth of August last, when Sir George produced one of these
disagreeable papers, and asked you the meaning of it. "You told him
that the printed demand he had read was an error—that assessed taxes
werje, as you had assured him in June, abolished; and that you would
issue instructions at once for the recall of all such erroneous printed
demands, so as to prevent the needless annoyance to the public of

having to appeal against a demand for assessed taxes, which have been
abolished and therefore could not be due.

I need scarcely say how disgusted I was when, within a fortnight ot
this assurance of yours, I had handed to me one of the old offensive
blue papers in question, headed " Assessed Taxes for the Year 1869-70,"
mulcting me in the usual amounts for all my little luxuries—my pony-
chaise, my Toby, my hair-powder, my armorial bearings, my gardener,
Mrs. P.'s Alderney, &c, &c, informing me, with the usual parade ot
precision, that the first moiety will become due on the 20th of Septem-
ber, I8G9, and the other moiety on the 20th of March, 1870, and adding
that " the day of appeal is fixed," &c, &c, &c.

How is this ?

You say assessed taxes are abolished from and after April, 1869,^ and
here is a demand headed " Assessed Taxes for the Year 1869-70." 1
can't understand it for the life of me. Can you ? Has somebody blun-
dered P And if so, who is it ?

If I am to expect, in January, 1870, a demand for the taxes payable
in respect of all taxable articles then in my possession, and after that,
in March, 1870, a demand for the other moiety of the demand m the
paper I am now complaining of, it seems to me that I shall be paying
five quarters of assessed taxes in one year ; and that not all your clever-
ness, my dear Bob, can extricate me from this predicament. I remem-
ber, when you converted a deficit into a surplus of three millions by
that wonderful coup of your first budget, you strenuously denied that
this would be the consequence of your coup de bourse. I should like to
hear what explanation you have to offer me and our poor dear friend
Sir George on this point; and, pending that explanation, I remain (m
spite of all demands),

Your attached friend and admirer,
The Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P., $c, $c.