Punch (62.1872)

May 4, 1872.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

181

THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE.

George. "0, I do Love Hampstead Heath so ! I prefer it to Switzer-
land, really ! "

Mabel. " Why, George, you've never been to Switzerland!"
George. " No; but i've seen it on the Map. and I don't Like xhb Look
of it at all."

APRIL FOOLS 11ST FEATHERS.

(Song, Toy Mr. Hawfinch, on a late Vicissitude of the
Weather.)

A purty sight it wuz to view

The yaller primroses appear,
Likewise the vi'luts, white and blue,

So early as they did this year.
Daisy and shiny buttercup

'Twuz pleasant peepun' to behold,
And dandelions blazun up

Wi' leaves bright green and vlowers o' gold,

To show how forrard all things be,

Swallers, this Arjril, dree or four,
A vartnight earlier I zee

Nor ever yet I sin afore.
And just about when they appeared,

A-chevy'n hinsex on the wing,
The cuckoo one fine day I heerd,

And nightingale the night droo sing.

The pigs his tuneful notes mistook,

And woke, some on um, up vrom bed,
'Cause why they vancied " Chook, chook, chook,"

Was callun' of 'um to be fed.
Their disappointmunt, for to squake,

And grunt, the hogs in concert made.
How 'tis, thinks I, to lie awake

And hark to Natur's serrynade !

But all at once to North and East,

From West and South the wind chopped back.
And then the feathery quire, at least,

Fell dumb as mutes in funeral black.
For then come sleet, and then come hail,

And frost o' marnuns on the ground,
And nare a slug, nor nit a snail,

Wuz by them songsters to be found.

Cuckoo and nightingale found out

They'd made a bit of a mistake,
And so did t'other birds, no doubt:

Two swallers don't a zummer make,
Nor twice, nor dree, nor vour times two.

Thee bear in mind that golden rule.
Then one thing April sun wun't do ;

Wun't ne'er make thee an April fool.

TOO HOT TO HANDLE. In otner words, when the Treasury says to King Cole, " Were you

not called accountant, and are not words things? Therefore as
There has been a hitch, or, what is still worse, a hiatus, in the you were called accountant you were accountant, and an accountant
South Kensington accounts. One Simkins, late cashier and ac- is one who keeps accounts, and he who keeps accounts is accountable,
countant, has disappeared, and with him some £8,000 of the public and therefore you are accountable," King Cole says to the Treasury,
moneys due from the department. "Words are not things. I was called ' accountant,' but you knew

Now, King Cole is, in Treasury parlance and papers, styled " Ac- as well as I did, that my hands were full of other business ; any loss
countant" of the South Kensington Department. Of course he is j there may have been is your own fault, and if you had taken my
"Accountant," but only as he is everything else—architect _ and advice it would not have happened."

artist, builder and buyer, catalogue-maker and composer, embellisher Looking to facts as the best evidence of character, weighing the
and entertainer, puffer and prestidigitateur, schoolmaster and show- discredit the Treasury has lately fallen into for meanness, blunder-
man of that mysterious, multifarious, and ever-growing concern, fng, and botching in every form, against the credit won by King
the Hydra of departments, of which every head you cut off is replaced Cole for activity, organising power, and success in his undertakings,
by a dozen new ones, to which every successive Chancellor of the Ex- I we should say the chances are all Lombard Street to a China orange

chequer has determined to be the Hercules, and has been igno
miniously bowled over in the attempt- foiled by the resistance of
that new form of adamant—the Black Diamond—Cole !

But what wonder ? Coal is stored-up heat, and heat is force, and
force is power ; therefore Cole is but power embodied, and to fight

that King Cole is in the right and my Lords in the wrong.

A Die-a-tonic Drink.

Wirru C£LE is to fight w^ P0^er in propria persona. , The Pall Mall Gazette gives us some curious facts of that most

ine Ireasury has dared this unequal conflict, and the result is, as , delightful but deleterious of "bitters," Absinthe, in connection
might have been expected, that the Treasury seems to be getting wit£ tbe history 0f its introduction into France, from Algeria,
very decidedly the worst of it. j wbere it was eriginally used as a "malaria" medicine in default of

Here is King Cole s retort on my Lords :— ; Quinine. Absinthe-drinkers, like Opium-smokers, inevitably carry

" The fact was, the system of combining cashier and accountant was a the indulgence to an excess, and so indulged in, the liqueur ineyit-
vicious one, and he had protested against it. He had pointed to the Clearing- aDry produces nervous stimulus first, then madness or imbecility,
house system, where the paying out of money was not permitted to come in paralysis, and death. With this catalogue of consequences, may
connection with the paying in. He had described the system in the depart- we not translate in our prayers for John Bull, the French Absinthe
ment as cumbrous and costly, and as a system which would be ruinous m and it f u ^t ^ Latin abs{nt f
general business—considered even apart from any idea of defalcation ; but he J
was snubbed for his suggestions. If his alterations had been adopted Simkins

must have been found out at once; but as matters stood it required him to be . „ o,™-™/™-

out of his office, and his books in other hands and thoroughly overhauled, Wanted A Turn-Over at Case —Apply to (jENERAL bCHENCK,
before the defalcations were discovered." Ambassador for the United States, before June loth.