Punch (71.1876)

January 6, 1877.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

iii

IHAD been looking over Kelly's last and greatest of Annuals, and had become absorbed in thought over that Business
Man's Bible. Tooley Street had been the last street under my eye, and its famous Three Tailors the last thought in my
mind. Then—did I sleep and dream, or was I spirit-rapt a la Slade, or levitated a la Guppy ? I know not, but there I
found myself by Golden Horn, instead of Thames, with the Three Tailors of Tooley Street transfigured into the Nine Tailors
of Stamboul, in full Conference!

The Nine Tailors looked pale and puzzled; every brow was dark with doubt and distrust. But at sight of Punch
they brightened.

" Land at last! " shouted Ignatieff, the heariiest and halest of the Nine.

" A Beacon, when our own Beacon's field is in utter darkness," exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, the young man from
Salisbury—the last taken on for the job.

" Une Ponche flamboyants ! Ah que nous en avons besom—d'un flambeau ! " whispered the cautious Chaudordy to
the serene De Bourgoing.

" Witz unci Blitzen ! " ejaculated Baron Werther, as if he saw a way out of his Sorrows.

" Himmel unci Schdn-wetter! " sighed Count Zichy, the embarrassed but amiable mouthpiece of Austria, to Baron
de Calice, his chum.

" Benvenuto! " burst out Barbolani, with Italian brio, but musically as an Italian organ should, and does at
Stamboul, whatever it may in London.

Never did a gang of Tailors on an East-End Sweater's shop-board more joyfully hail the advent of a foaming pewter,
than this untuneful Nine of the Stamboul Conference-room the apparition of Punch.

" You have come," exclaimed Ignatieff, " to help us in cutting out--"

"Anything but each other," I replied, significantly.

" Please, if you'd tell him you know he thinks of nothing but cabbage--" querulously whined the Mis-Repre-
sentative of Great Britain.

The new hand from Salisbury shut him up with a grave but authoritative look of remonstrance.

"A truce to recriminations ! " I cried. " We've had a great deal too much of that sort of thing already. You've a
job in hand, my good fellows, that might puzzle the sharpest set of diplomatic dodgers that ever paraphed a protocol."

" You may well say that, mon cher," growled Ignatieff, holding up a nondescript garment, to whose "looped and
windowed raggedness" it wrould be vain to seek for a parallel in the rags of Ireland as they used to be, or the tatters of Scare-
crowdom as they are.

"The Ottoman Empire!" chorussed the Nine, as I held to the light this unsavoury ruin, this rotten, moth-eaten,
and vermin-haunted garment, that had once been stout in stuff, bright of colour, rich with embroidery, and heavy