Punch (63.1872)

244

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[December 14. 1872.

I^uncf) at 3Lund).

o£^±^-*-^ O the railway from Yeddo to Yokohama has been
■i opened by the Mikado. There is some comfort in.

A^^s§^#/ railway travelling in Japan. If an accident, through
!_ wwt^^ negligence, happens, the Board of Directors is
chopped to pieces, and its wives and children are
sold to pay damages to survivors. Here, a Company abuses the
sufferers, via. the Secretary. As Tom Hood wrote about another
sort of folks: there's a fire, and "the streets with loud voices are
Med"-

" 0 ! it's only the firemen a-swearing
At a man they've run over and killed."

" A Bank of England note is practically a Mint Certificate," said
the Times. It speaks well for the good sense of our young ladies,
that a man wants a good many of such things to get at a Marriage
Certificate.

Does the study of Phrenology make folks mean? I heard of a
phrenologist who was very anxious to inspect some poor man's
head, so got him to shave it. Having examined the lumps and
bumps, he dismissed the man, who, being too needy to buy a wig (the
scientific person utterly declining to pay for one), had to wear a red
nightcap for months.

A criminal requires great interest to get himself hanged in these
days. When Doctor Dodd was condemned, the jury, the City of
London, and 23,000 other persons petitioned for his life—and in
vain.

"'Tis not a day or two shows us a man," remarks Mrs. Emily
Iago. Or a woman. I know a family in which there was an old
maiden lady, who by the united voice of everybody was declared
"the sweetest old lady in the world." Yet the family did nothing
but quarrel. When she became extinct, so did all the quarrelling.

Mr. Disraeli said, in the House, that Hansard, instead of being
the Delphi of Debate was the Dunciad of Politics.

Mistletoe time is approaching, and the fact reminds me that an
engaged young gentleman got rather neatly out of a little scrape
with his intended. She taxed him with having kissed two ladies at
some party at which she was not present. He owned it, but said
that their united ages made only twenty-one. The simple-minded
girl thought of ten and eleven, and laughed off her pout. He did
not explain that one was nineteen and the other two years of age.
Wasn't it artful, Tobias f

What bad handwriting comes to me, incessantly! A person has
no more right to send you a letter which you cannot easily read than
to talk to you in a mumbling voice which you can't easily hear.
However, at the second difficulty the letter, long or short, goes into
the fire.

The " valiancy" of some of those Gas-Strikers in writing to abuse
There is rather a good picture in the Charivari. A ruffianly the Home Secretary for assisting to supply labour, was noteworthy,
prisoner brought before a Judge, takes off his cap with exquisite ; considering that everybody hopes they will have to write to him
politeness, and observes, " Ah, M'sieu, I have not seen you for at again asking for remission of their sentences—and asking m vain,
least two months. 1 trust that Madame is quite well."

At dinner the other night a lady remarked to me, in reference to
I read in the Pall Mall Gazette that a farmer has discovered that1 this grand new sea-bottom exploration, that of course it was very
to let oxen, when indisposed, devour apples, is an excellent method , delightful to learn that invisible shells could be found at awful
of cure. Dear me I When I was seventy or eighty years younger, ! depths, but that it would be much more delightful to hear that the
there was a " nonsense song," highly popular, and two lines were, , dredgers had brought up some of the real Treasures of the Deep,
" Thev don't feed cows on anole-tarts 1 tte " reflecting gems," and "wedges of gold," and 'heapsof
Poor people have a right to sneeze." \ Pearl" that Shazbmsam (who knew everything) says are lying
_____ about m every direction. 1 said 1 would mention ner idea to my

„,,.._„ T , , „ . . . friend Mr. Lowe, but that I feared she was worldly.

Extrusion of me H may, I think, be called exaspirating.

Something, I forget what, that has lately occurred, reminded me
Mr. Gladstone (m his beautiful valedictory address to the Urn- ! 0f the story 0f a Judge who, alluding to an unfortunate match, said
versity of Edinburgh) mentioned that among the Greeks ugliness that marriages between "January" and "May" were seldom
was regarded as a kind of sin. _ I have heard strong-minded ladies j lucky. He received a letter from Scotland asking his reason for
assert that iu England there exists a similar superstition. I fixing those particular dates.

" One ought, every day," says Goethe, " at least to hear a little
song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, speak a
few reasonable words." I always do this. I sing and read some-
thing of my own, look into my glass, and remark how very superior
I am to the rest of creation.

Alderman Kelly, the publisher, gave a very good reason for
preferring deceased, authors to living ones. He said that the former
never kept him waiting for copy.

What do you think, my Tobias? This detested weather—well,
well, we won't talk about it. But the Registrar says that it is most
healthy, the rains cleanse the sewers, and mortality diminishes. To
insult us with statistics, when we can hardly speak for colds, is
cold-blooded officialism.

There is a vacancy in the School Board. Why not put a School-
boy in it ? He would give the theorists some wrinkles.

The Saturday Revieio points out that the advertisements of the
Hoftheater, at Dresden, are habitually composed in bad German.
This is very sad. Look at the exquisite English of the modest and
simple announcements by our own Managers. However, do not let
us be proud.

Bother about not buying things at the Co-operative Stores. I just
shall buy there. Perpend. I wanted a porcelain slate on which to
inscribe daily my electric inspirations. I saw just the thing in an
elegant window in Oxford Street. The price was four shillings. I
bought quite as good a one at the Stores for two and threepence.
There it is before you. Whereby I am, by one and ninepence, abler
to purchase bon-bons for my little friends at Christmas than I should
have been had I gone to the shop. Now one fact's worth a hundred
arguments, and it will take at least a hundred to make my little
friends see why I should have paid four shillings for the porcelain,
and given them fewer bon-bons.

In the North they are getting up another memorial to Burns !
Our friends there seem shockingly afraid that he will be forgotten.
But he will not. His less objectionable works have been mentioned
favourably in several leading " Cockney" magazines.

Sycorax, the blue-eyed hag, Caliban's mamma, was a witch, and
was transported. They would not put her to death " for one thing
she did." What was this? is the question again agitating the Shaks-
pearian world. Nobody seems to have remembered that she came
from Argier, which is Algiers. What would be a good, redeeming
deed in the eyes of cruel African savages ? The idea is too shocking
for anything but a Christmas fireside story.