Punch (71.1876)

November 25, 1876.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 223

SOLVING THE DIFFICULTY. (?)

First Soldier. "So they say we've a chance oe Fighting the Roosians
agin ! "

Second Soldier. " Blow the Roosians ! Why don't we go and take Con-
stantinople, and a' done with it ?"

RUSSO-ENGLISH WORDBOOK.

By a Contributor of Leading Articles to the Fall Mall.

Armistice—A lull before a storm.

Atrocity—A Christian virtue or an Oriental vice.

Autonomy—Ruling by an Autocrat.

Bulgarians—Catspaws.

Brag—Russian hide.

Charity—Begins at St. Petersburgh and pervades the
East.

Christianity—Holy Russia.

Christian—Wholly Russian.

Diplomacy—The Father of Lies.

Duplicity—A two-edged sword.

English—Weak enthusiasm.

Feat—No equivalent in English.

Honesty—Bear existence.

Ignorance—The crest of the serf.

India—Moscovite Eldorado.

Pacification—Making peace a stalking-horse.

Peace—A reverse after war.

Russian—A Bear in Sheep's clothing.

Servian—A Sheep in Bear's clothing.

Sanctity—An imperial cloak.

Turkey—A dish to be cut up a la Russe.

War—A Bear-pit.

An Uncertain Bird.

The stipulation with the Prussian Government for the
payment of £1000 down, insisted on by the Inventor of
the Flying Machine as the necessary condition of his
attempt to ascend with it, has been plausibly accounted
for by the supposition that he wants to raise the wind.
The Prussian Ministers' refusal, on the other hand, to
concede his terms, may be ascribable to an'apprehension
that the engagement of Da)dalus might result in the
performance of Diddle-us.

william the penman.

It will not fail to be recorded in the biography of
our active-minded ex-Premier, that when he had retired
from the Leadershix) of the Liberal Party he betook
himself to Letters.

Sixes and Sevens.—The Franconia Judgment.

A SHADE ON PBOGRESS.

I am what was a 'Squire of ancient line ;

This Manor-house, and Manor once were mine.

Here in my time I kept a pack of hounds ;

And my whole heart was in my house and grounds.

Still to this dear old place in death I cleave ;
My home, though left behind, I cannot leave.
No better place I knew, nor do I know:
Here I remain, unable hence to go.

I bear the semblance of the garb I bore,
Such in time past as England's gentry wore.
Yon picture which appears from out its frame
On point of stepping down, reveals my name.

Mine were the days ere Trade had all o'ergrown ;
When they who held the land could hold their own.
No Company durst private grounds invade,
And aggravate their sometime owner's shade.

With scorn and anger thus I 'in forced to mark
A Railway cutting my ancestral Park;
Crossing the Avenue of elm-trees old,
Where once the family Coach serenely rolled.

Now telegrams and signals vex my sight:
Annoyed by coloured lamps I walk the night.
And every train brings crowds of Cockneys down,
Profaning the still scenes I haunt, from Town.

These rushing Railways, on whose borders spring
New stucco'd villas, populations bring
For beef and mutton swelling the demand,
Raising the price of meat on every hand.

Hence oysters soon will cost as much or more,
As though a pearl inside each oyster wore ;
All shellfish rise beyond poor purses' pale,
E'en crabs and lobsters have begun to fail.

A dozen prawns to one-and-sixpence reach,
Shrimps, doubtless, will be soon a penny each ;
Good things are rising till extinct they fall:
Prosperity and Progress spoiling all!

Go on ; consume ; exhaust the Earth defaced ;
And take no measures to repair your waste.
Use up the produce of the land and sea,
Until all's gone—revenge in store for me !

TIME'S TRACKERS—OLD AND NEW.

" How noiseless falls the foot of Time,
That only falls on flowers."

And never before was such a flowery carpet arranged for Time's
gouty old feet to fall on as now-a-days, with Delakije and Marcus
Ward blossoming into floral calendars, and cards bright with
blossoms, and posies of song as well as chlorophyll. As natural
flowers are hardest to come by in winter, these art-gardeners wisely
take care to have their parterres in lushest and brighest bearing about
Christmas-tide. We have among their productions even cards that,
besides their flowers, bear double acrostics ! The old sun-dials broke
out at most into aphorisms. And much as an aphorism to a double
acrostic is a sun-dial to a Delarue's Card-Calendar—more solid,
doubtless, but infinitely less showy, while the card has the great
advantage over the dial, for England, that it is independent of the
sunshine. _•

An Unsettled Bill.—W. E. G.

VOL. LXXI.

Y