Punch (62.1872)

April 20, 1872.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAKIVAEI.

159

CRITERIA OF CLOTHES.

Methought mine overcoat was growing old
With five years' wear, but, walking with it on,
1 met a boy the other day, to me
Who, mind, he could not see my watch through it,
Said, "Please, Sir, what's the time?" He said

"Please, Sir,"
And he concluded that I had a watch
From data which were, save mine overcoat,
Below it but my trousers' legs and boots,
My billycock above. Both it and they
Were somewhat seedier than the sack which did
Between them intervene. Then, to that sack
I yet will wait before I give the sack,
And in another vestment cash invest,
Maybe some thirty bob, or more. Besides,
The beggars have not ceased to beg of me.
"Gentleman, jjlease, would yer," they cry, "relieve
A poor man ? " Poor P Why, then, 1 do look rich,
And mine exterior yet is gentlemanly.
Then underneath what matters how I go,
Whilst upper Benjamin makes outward show ?

VOTERS OF VALUE.

A clause in the Ballot Bill provides that the presiding
officers at an election may cause the vote of an elector,
incapacitated by blindness, or any other physical cause,
from voting in the manner prescribed by the Bill, to
be secretly marked on a ballot-paper, and the paper
placed in the ballot-box. It has been suggested that
this provision should be extended to electors who can
neither read nor write. But would they be incapacitated
by a cause merely physical ? Should they not also be
presumed to lie under an intellectual incapacity, and is
it really desirable that a vote should be given (not to
say recorded) by every illiterate fool in the kingdom?

SOUNDINGS !

The Living down at our Village falling vacant, Lord Pavondale left it to the

Parish to choose the new Rector.

Influential Parishioner. "Then am I to Understand, Mr. Maniple, that
you object to Bury a Dissenter?"

The Rev. Mr. Maniple (one of the Competitors). " 0, dear me, No, Mr. Jinks ;
<iuiTE the Contrary ! ! "

Green Park v. Black Moor.

They are resolved on running a railway through the
finest people's park in England, and, what is more, in
the very'midst of the Black Country, where park scenery
is most wanted and most welcome. This park is at
Sutton Coldfield, but the wish to turn " Coldfield " into
"coal field," however natural to the region, is not a
transformation those who wish well to its workers will
be inclined to favour or to forward. (Lords' Committee
on the Wolverhampton and Leicester Railway Bill,
please make a note.)

SEBIOUS INTERJECTIONS.

If you were asked what you considered to be the chief character-
istic of the Great Transatlantic Branch of the Anglo-Saxon Family,
would you not mention a peculiar gravity, manifested in the frequent
combination of the affairs of common or political life with devo-
tional solemnities, and undisturbed by any idea of their incongruity

MACFIE'S LAST—LET US HOPE.

Ma. Macfle shows a wonderful capacity, even among unwise
M.P.'s, for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. He is the
sage lawgiver who, because patent law is unsatisfactory, patent
cases sometimes scandalous, and patent rights occasionally incon-
venient to those who want to eat the fruit of other men's brains

or dissociation by unfitness of things ? This it was which enabled ; without paying for it, would do away with all legal protection to the
the Chaplain of the Massachusetts Legislature, upon the opening of 1 inventor, and make all machinery, processes, and published matter,
its session the other day, in offering up the customary prayer, to once given to the world, public property in perpetuity. This notable
introduce a special petition for the guidance of the members' hearts project of plunder is worthy of the logician who m Sir. Thomas

in the direction of bestowing the suffrage upon women. The Speaker,
however, having been appealed to against this kind of praying,
ruled that the chaplain must in future refrain from such admixture
of secular and spiritual matters, whereupon the Pall Mall Gazette,
congratulating the Legislature of Massachusetts on having cut short
what might otherwise have proved a very inconvenient precedent,
remarks that:—

_" The peculiar advantages which the position of the chaplain would give
him in setting forth, through the medium of prayer, his political opinions,
were not likely to be meekly borne by his opponents. It is true that
the party whose views were shared by the chaplain would not be per-
mitted to mark their approbation by cheers or cries of ' Hear, hear!' But they
might freely interpolate ' Amen,' whereas the expression of 'Oh, oh!' and
other Parliamentary signs of dissent, would be absolutely forbidden to those
who had the misfortune to differ from the omciator."

Very probably, as sounds of Parliamentary dissent, "Oh, oh!"
would be interdicted. But, as sounds of Parliamentary assent and
spiritual yearning, " Oh, oh! " would be quite in order. There is a

sense in which " Oh, oh ! " are sounds of both assent and dissent, as The American Constitution. — Mal-d-propos of the Alabama
the writer of the note above quoted will acknowledge, if he has ever Claims, Mbs. Malapeop remarked that she had no patience with
sat under the Reveeend Me. Stiggins in Ebenezer. those over-reaching Yankees, they were so unscrophulous.

Chambees's silly Sunday Trading Bill—ignominiously and de-
servedly kicked out on Wednesday week—could see an attempt of
the House of Commons to perform "its sacred duty of protecting the
working-man's day of rest from being sacrificed to the rapacity of
the capitalist."

Such was Me. Macfie's account of the measure. Considering that
it is the working-man who insists on the Sunday market, that it is
his purveyors, the costermongers, who chiefly supply it, and that the
only capitalist concerned is the small shopkeeper, who would fain
see all Sunday trading squashed, that he might put up his shutters
on the seventh day, and be off with the old 'ooman and kids on an
outing to 'appy 'Ampton or umbrageous Epping,—in the way of
foolish misrepresentation and distortion of fact, one would think
even Me. Macfie could not go beyond this last. How if we were to
clap a tail to the name, and dub this egregious gentleman for the
future Me. Mac-fie-foe-Shame ?