Punch (58.1870)

April % 1870.]

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

137

POOR HUMANITY !

Bride. " I think—George, beak—I should—be better—if we Walked
about-"

Husband (one wouldn't have believed it of him). " You can Do as you likf,
Love. I'm very "Well (!) as 1 am!!"

LITERARY ICE-STACKS.

A newspaper report concerning the University Crews
states that, both of them, one day last week, for practice
pulled up the river, "regardless of the pitiless pelting of
the storm," and, in particular, that " Oxford rowed up
to Mortlake during a heavy fall of snow." Would it not
be a good plan to cut passing allusions like these to the
inclemency of the_ season out of the papers, and keep them
to refer to when it is hot ? The notices of "The Weather
and the Parks," which our contemporaries are wont to
publish in the winter months, might in like manner be re-
served for June, July, and August. Such frigid intelli-
gence would form nice cool Summer reading. It is true
that nobody can "hold a fire in his hand" merely " by
thinking upon frosty Caucasus ;" but still imagination may
be cooled or warmed by appeals to it suggestive of tem-
perature high or low; imagination accordingly can cool
or warm the frame : and surely reminiscences of ice, snow,
sleet, frost, and cold, bitter easterly and north-easterly
winds would be found rather refreshing in the dog-days.

We have lately been shivering—in two or three months
more we may be perspiring, and then the mental reproduc-
tion of wintry cold, accompanying iced champagne, or
claret-cup, will at least be an aid to refrigeration.

A PRESERYER OF PROPERTY.

Some hundred yards from where the Eleet

Was wont to roll his turbid tide,
Whilst walking up a narrow street

With stores of wealth on either side,
1 marked a stout policeman there,

Performing his appointed use;
Each window-bar he passed, with care

He pulled, to try if it was loose.

I am not of gregarious mould,

1 cannot shout, do never cheer,
But at his work when I behold

A. hero, noiselessly revere.
" Brave Robert," L in thought exclaimed,

" Well done ! WThat owe we not to thee ? "
His number may as well be named ;

Eour hundred 'twas and forty-three.

" Hoese Latitudes."—Those allowed, in the way of
lying, to horse-sellers.

A FEARFUL RITE AT ROME.

Sir,

You know that, about the date of the suppression of the
Knights Templars, strange rumours were current of indefinite horrors
supposed to be perpetrated in the secret Chapters held by that myste-
rious brotherhood. Read this telegram from Rome, dated March 22,
being the day after that whereon the Pope had held a secret Consis-
tory :—

** Among the prelates preconised in the Consistory yesterdav were the
Archbishops of Armagh and Toronto, the Bishops of Savannah,
Ariiidale, and St. Augustine."

Preconised ! That word doubtless means something as dreadful as
any one of the ordeals which the members of the Order whose latest
Grand Master was Jacques De Molai had to undergo at their dark
seances. The Holy Father may excommunicate Freemasons, because
they refuse to confess their secret, but they, how closely soever they
may be tiled in their lodges, are none of them ever preconised. Sir, I
should like to have the person of one of these preconised prelates ex-
amined soon after he had undergone the operation of being so served.
1 warrant you he would be found to bear a mark worse than that of the
actual cautery merely, not to say red-hot puker. What mark ? Sir,
the mark of the Animal. To be preconised means to be marked with
that. Ask Dr. Cumming if it doesn't, unless you are content to take

the word of Yours truly,

Peterborough, All Sages' Lay. G. H. W.

Our Emancipated Neighbours.

BRAGGARTS AND THEIR MONEYBAGS.

Dating from Berlin a Foreign Office-r reports that:—■

" A good deal of the present dearness of living is attributable to the number
of Americans, who are accustomed to the high paper prices of their own
country, and are too apt to observe that everything is very cheap, which
induces shopkeepers to raise their prices accordingly."

Saying to a shopkeeper that his goods are very cheap is another way
of telling him that you have lots of money, and in fact of boasting idly
of your wealth. Nothing is more snobbish than to brag about the
fulness of one's purse. Mea who do so hardly can be said to make an
empty boast, although it is quite true they make an empty-headed one.
It is worse than for a lord to brag about Uj3 title, for such a braggart
act can scarcely hurt his neighbours ; whereas, by raising prices,
boasters of their riches much injure poorer folk. The game of brag is
popular in the United States, but when played in the above way on
this side of the Atlantic, it thoroughly deserves to be indicted as a
nuisance.

"What's in a Name ?

" The net result of the year's balance-sheet is, that the income of the
twelve months exceeds the expenditure bv something like eight millions."—

" Times " article on the Finances of the Year.

Herein Finance's irony is shown—
Lowe's surplus is the highest ever known!

a ben lvolent thought.

The new Senatvls Consultum seems to have approximated the French ; Mrs. Malaprop, understanding that women can act as Commis-
Senate pretty nearly to our own Upper House of Parliament. His I sioners of Sewers, says she knows a great many poor seamstresses
Majesty the Emperor Napoleon's subjects may now almost say, also, who would be very glad it' ladies could give them work at better wages
" Thank Heaven we have a House of Lords." i than they are now earning.