Punch (58.1870)

76 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [February 26, 1870.

WOMEN'S WORST DISABILITIES.

' ^ ^^'^ ^ ^ ^ era^

touch that horrid me-
dicine." " I can't go about in those old things." " I can't dress under so much
a year." " I can't do without a carriage." " I can't live any longer in this house."
" I can't manage without so many servants." " I can't eat this." " I can't drink
that." " I can't do"—anything whatever that implies the least degree of self-
eommand. Unhappily no legislation can relieve women of their most grievous
disabilities; those which all come under the general head of disability to act in

any way against the bidding of their unreasoning incli-
nations. If it could, and the House of Commons would
pass an Act to abolish all those female disabilities, poor
Paterfamilias would immediately have the pleasure of
seeing his wife and daughters, habitually independent of
cabs, walking to the theatres and to evening parties as the
Pall Mall suggested the other day, in sensible short
dresses and mud-proof goloshes of India-rubber.

EIGHTY MILES AT A STRETCH.

The following paragraph, extracted from a contempo-
rary, must be supposed to have originally appeared in an
American paper:—

" A Match.—Two daughters of a thrifty farmer in Illinois,
fifteen and seventeen years old, completed on the 17th of January
the task of walking eighty miles within twenty consecutive hours
for a prize of 100 dollars. They had one hour and thirty minutes
to spare."

Never be satisfied with driving your nail through your
board ever so far. Clinch it. The statement that two
girls under eighteen walked eighty miles within twenty
hours running (as we may say without Irishism) is a good
whack with the hammer. The assertion that they had
one hour and thirty minutes to spare is a clincher.

One would like to know the name of the "thrifty farmer
in Illinois" whose daughters are said, as above, to have
shown themselves such wonderful pedestrians.

If they are truly said to have done so, and take after
their father, he is appropriately named if the name he bears
is that which was borne by the author of the Pronouncing
and the Rhyming Dictionary. It is a name which, at any
rate, the foregoing story of a long walk will have occa-
sioned many men to pronounce on reading it—Walker.

A Long Step in the Right Road.

Punch begs leave to congratulate the Right Honour-
able W. E. Forster on his bold, wise, and comprehensive
Education Bill. He has taken a longer stride, by that Bill,
towards securing the schooling of every child in England
than two leagues—or seven leagues either.

RA.RE NEWS PROM ROME.

The lively Correspondent of the Post at Rome, describing certain
ecclesiastical evolutions performed by the Fathers on their way to the
Council, presents us with the following brilliant sketch in pen-and-
ink :—

_ '' Groups are thus formed of endless variety, both as to attitude, expres-
sion, and colour, for the flaming Cardinal kneels down (on a cushion presented
bya sumptuously liveried flunkey) beside a snuff-coloured unattended Capu-
chin (on the bare stones), and a gorgeous Nestcrian, with pictured robe and
flowing locks, groups well with a Hungarian patriarch, a couple of French
bishops, and an Irish Dominican abbot."

This is a vivid picture, and comprises one peculiarly striking object:
the " gorgeous Nestorian." He is a lion indeed, a lion lying down
with lambs, unless he may rather be considered a wolf in the fold, but
then how can the sheep-dogs let him remain there ? Perhaps, however,
the Nestorians, heretics ever since the fifth century, have quietly re-
nounced their heresy within the last few months, and squared it with
the Holy See,

A Lesson for Ireland.

Some ignorant Irish, old England to fire,

Elected O'Donovan Rossa, Esquire ;

But this Fenian bold is a felon de se.

And, civilly dead, has no life as M.P.

'Tis a maxim, the truth whereof each one allows here,

That you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear :

Of a similar truth, too, there needs no debater,

That you can't make an M.P. out of a traitor.

A Liberal Measure.

LITERARY SMASHERS.

Another villainous case of word-coining is reported from America.
A person there is spoken of as having " suicided." The coiner of this
verb no doubt belongs to the vile gang who lately issued the word
" burgle," meaning to commit a burglary, and the still more hideous
terms " excurted" and " injuncted," which have recently been
suffered to pass current in the States. In the same false mint, we
doubt not, have been coined such words as " cabled," " wired," " do-
nated," "deputated," "interviewed," "orated," "reliable," "rendi-
tion," "walkist," "eatist," and the like, with which the Queen's English
has lately been in Yankeeland defaced. Such wretched counterfeits as
these for genuine sterling English are, with scarcely an exception, first
uttered in the newspapers; and if editors declined to pay for any article
wherein they detected this false coinage, the literary smashers would
be literally smashed.

NEW STYLE.

The Times, in its notice of Mr. Bellew's Hamlet (to which Mr.
Punch heartily wishes much success), has the following remark:—
" There are so many persons in this country who run after everything
theatrical, save a theatre itself, that this approximation to a theatre,
which may be compared to the position of an asymptotic curve, may
prove powerfully attractive to a large class."

" An asymptotic curve!"

If this sort of writing is coming into vogue, it will be necessary for us
all to go through a course of mathematics before attempting to master
the dramatic criticisms in the papers.

An Uncertain Title.

Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., wishes to compel all Railway Companies to j So confused and complicated were the interests involved in the
provide hot-water bottles for Third Class passengers. A working man, recent litigation about the revenues of St. Paul's School, founded by
not yet in Parliament, says that he would move as an amendment, that i Dean Colet, that it had at last come to be described as the What-d'ye*
after the word " hot" be inserted the word " brandy." ! Colet foundation.