Punch (62.1872)

February 24, 1872 J PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 77

CHAFF."

AvpU-Stall Keeper (to the Boys). "Now, then, what are you Gaping at?
What do you Want ?" Street Boy. " Nothin ."

Apple-Stall Keeper. " Then Take it, and be Off ! "

Street Boy. " Very Wexl : Wrap it up for us in a Piece o' Paper ! " [Bolts.

A LARK TO THE LATINS.

What a joke, ye Latin Nations,

What a spectacle for you,
That of British complications

Grave, with Yankee Doodle Doo !
See those Anglo-Saxon races,

Bloodshed much as they abhor,
Flying at each other's faces,

Like enough to go to war.

They who scorned your laurels gory,

Deemed your blood-won prestige Tain,
They, who will not fight for glory,

Are prepared to fight for gain.
Not for Cause, or Faith, or Colour ;

No, those men of common sense !
But for the Almighty Dollar ;

Yes ; for base pounds, shillings, pence.

Hard as working bees toil, honey

Hoarding, so completely they
Gave their minds to making money,

Which in war will flee away.
To make money of each other

Striving still, they disagree.
Brother at the throat of brother,

For his money may we see !

Plutus is their god of battle,

Money is their battle-cry,
They for money slave like cattle ;

Wolves, at strife like, let them die.
Heretics and blood-relations

Then, more brutal and more blind,
Than the faithful Latin Nations,

More will also shame their kind.

An Extensive Concern.

For comprehensiveness, for enterprise, for pleasing
variety, for an amiable desire to suit different tastes, we
can confidently recommend a new company just an-
nounced, with the elastic title of " Church Bank Mill
Cotton Spinning." A Society which embraces in its
operations a Church, a Bank, a Mill, and a Cotton
Spinning concern cannot fail to be appreciated, and to
command the success which attends all undertakings
based on broad and liberal principles.

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.

In the 3fedhim, Spiritualist paper, the following story is related
by a lady in a letter attested with her name. A certain clergyman
being her guest, she says :—■

"Every time we sat at dinner we had not only spirit-voices talking to us,
but spirit-hands touching us ; and last evening, as it was his farewell, they
gave us a special manifestation, unasked for and unlooked for. He sitting at
the right hand of me, a vacant chair opposite him began moving, and, in
answer to whether it would have some dinner, said ' Yes.' I then asked it to
select what it would take, when it chose croquets des pommes de terre (a
French way of dressing potatoes, about three inches long and two wide. I
will send you one that you may see it). I was desired to put this on the
chair, either in a tablespoon or on a plate. I placed it in a tablespoon, think-
ing that probably the plate might be broken. In a few seconds I was told
that it was eaten, and looking found the half of it gone, with the marks
showing the teeth."

This, in our great-grandfathers' time, would have been said by
buffoons, of whom there were some even then, to have been a "bite"
indeed. In a still worse vein of ribaldry, the chair's potato-eating
will perhaps be represented as the act of some invisible chairman, or
charwoman, notwithstanding that the latter would naturally, even
though in a supernatural way, have asked for plain 'taturs, if she
had not preferred fried onions. But, seriously, may not the morsel
of savoury potato, eaten in a chair and under a table, have possibly
been eaten by the cat ? Many of our readers, if not of the Medimn's,
will peradventure discern a confirmation of this surmise in the con-
clusion of the letter which contains the above anecdote :—

" Should any party have a gentleman's hat, liqueur bottle with silver
stopper, also a small china tea-pot, which do not belong to them, I should be
very glad to receive them, as they were taken from my house last Sunday
evening.—Yours faithfullv " Cath Berry"

Every housekeeper, if not every lodger, well knows that the eat is
capable of running away with lobsters—or anything. Mrs. Berry
may consider whether the spirits are really so likely to be snappers-
up of unconsidered trifles as the cat is. At some future seance she
will perhaps find that the cat has walked off' with a walking-stick or
an umbrella, or if not the cat, that Something has, or Somebody.
If, instead of Somebody, it is some spirit out of the body, that dis-
appears with property, of course it can be of no use for her to count
her spoons before sitting down with a " circle " to a seance. Looking,
however, to the probability of missing some of them thereafter, she
might do well to secure the attendance of a Detective in plain
clothes, because although the spirits who "know all mortal conse-
quents " would penetrate his disguise and elude his grasp, for the
incorporeal is not to be collared, yet seances, some of them, do seem
attended with manifestations which might constitute cases for
Sessions.

A Part for the Premier.

It is not generally supposed that Mr. Gladstone has any peculiar
aptitude which, were he a comedian, would especially qualify him
to play Sir John Falstaff. But there is one speech of Falstaff's
which it may be imagined that our Premier, with certain late pro-
motions and a particular remonstrance on one of them, in his mind,
would deliver with full expression :—" Happy are they which have
been my friends ; and woe unto my Lord Chief Justice ! "

Foreign Affairs.

Mrs. Malaprop is anxious to know whether this Don Juan
Question between England and America has anything to do with
poor Lord Byron.

Vol. 62

3—2