Punch (63.1872)

September 28, 1872.1

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

127

SOMETHING NEAT.

Customer (demurely). " Half a Quarter]* of ' Old Tom,' if yoxt Please !
And could •sou Oblige me with a Bit of Sugar?"

Gallant Boniface. " Very Sorry I can't Serve you, Miss! But the New
Act is very Strict : we are not Allowed to serve Young People appa-
rently under Sixteen ! ! "

(TEA) DRINKING SONG.

Mr brethren all,

Come drink with me.
Both great and small,

Sip off your tea.
Fill up the pot.

This draught, my dears,
Inebriates not,

But only cheers.

Your nectar brown

Then freely pour
By spoonfuls down,

And call for more.
Your Gunpowder,

For all its name,
Fear not to stir;

It won't inflame.

When not too strong,

0 nice Pekoe!
0 rare Souchong!

0 choice Kaisow!
How fond I am

Of right Chinee!
But with Assam

Content can be.

Dull care we '11 kill;

Blend black and green.
We '11 sit and swill

Till all's serene.
Whilst they who choose

In beer delight,
And "Barton" booze,

Until they 're tight.

We won't go home

Till bedtime's near.
Hence we '11 not roam.

But we '11 stay here.
The gas may waste ;

Who fears, may flee:
But we will taste

The old Bohea.

Force of Habit.—Recently two Bankers met abroad.
They at once began to Compare Notes.

VACATION LABOUBS.

"Why, 'tis my Vacation, Hal! 'Tis no sin for a man to labour in his
Vacation ! "—Falstaff {with a difference).

Mr. Gladstone is indulging in unusual relaxation; so much so,
indeed, that, after the accustomed labours of the day, he spends as
much as half an hour, three evenings in the week, in his favourite
game of spillikins.

Mr. Goschen is improving his nautical mind by going through a
course of nautical reading. His studies have extended through a
wide range of literature, embracing Dibdin's Songs, The Pilot, Les
Travailleurs de la Mer, and Mr. Midshipman Easy.

Mr. Ayrton has been moving, as befits him, in the most polite
society, and fostering his love of Art by reading, for the tenth time,
Mr. Eusrtn's noble work on Modern Painters.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is engaged in a momentous
and minute calculation of the saving which, he thinks, might be
next year effected in the Estimates, by making Government officials
all use sand instead of blotting-paper, and employ common pack-
thread in lieu of costly red tape for tying up their letters.
_ Me. Bruce is fully occupied in framing such a code of extenua-
ting circumstances as will in every probability suffice for the con-
donement of all capital offences.

Mr. Whalley is engaged in writing the Lives of the Popes,
whereof the manuscript, as well as a presentation copy, he will pro-
bably crave leave to deposit in the Yatican.

Sir Wilfrid Lawson has been making a tour among the hop-
pickers, to persuade them to abstain from gathering a crop which is
grown well nigh entirely for the use of the concocters of intoxicating
liquor.

The Attorney-General has employed the greater part of his
vacation in compiling such a series of instructions to our Magistrates
as shall prevent a brutal wife-beater from being punished with more
leniency than a petty larcenist.

Mr. Cardwell, to keep up his military knowledge, devotes, in
his vacation, above an hour a day to practising the goose-step. _

Lord Shaftesbury, being ordered to take more active exercise, is
learning, under the eye of a competent professional, to play the
noble game of skittles.

Mr. Disraeli is busily employed in perfecting his notion of a
"Comprehensive Church," which shall comprehend the Moslemites,
the Buddhists, the Hebrews, and the Christians.

Mr. Gilpin has given up the wearing of "Suspenders," and, in
his vehemence against hanging, has taken down the pictures that
hung in his dining-room.

Lord Elcho has been volunteering his suggestions to the War
Office, with a view to their adoption at the next Manoeuvres.

Mr. Miall has spent a great part of his vacation in dream-
ing of the day when a motion may be made to disestablish the
Dissenters.

And finally, Mr. Punch has, as usual, nobly sacrificed his holiday
in devoting the best part of it to the interests of his readers.

EQUALLY COMFORTABLE.

In an account of an interment of which the circumstances were
remarkable, a reporter states, in a newspaper, that a special funeral
and a private grave were paid for by a lady, '' and but for this the
poor girl would have been buried on Friday last with the parish
paupers." Her lot would then have been no more and no less envi-
able by a philosopher, even if an Epicurean, than that of anybody
buried in Westminster Abbey. In any sensible respect, to such
citizens as those of a necropolis, it is all the same everywhere under-
ground. It is not to be numbered and associated with dead paupers
that a thinking person would dislike, but with living.

The (Y)eastern Question.—Will the Bakers rise ?