Punch (72.1877)

January 13, 1877.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

3

HOW WE ARRANGE OUR LITTLE DINNERS.

Mistress. " Oh, Cook, we shall want Dinner for Four this Evening.
What do you think, besides the Joint, of Ox-tail Soup, Lobster Pate-*,
and an Entree—say, Beef ? "

Coolc. "Yes, 'M—Fresh, or Austr-?"

Mistress. " Let's see ? It's only the Browns—Tinned will do ! "

SOMETHING LIKE SUNDAY AND WEEK-DAY
SERVICES.

Our Life-Boats', are they not ? Here is a summary
of them for 1876. Close on five hundred lives saved,
and eighteen vessels rescued from the very jaws of des-
truction ; and out of the twelve hundred men afloat
during the year in the 256 hoats of the National Life-
Boat Institution, only a single man lost, to the 498 saved
by their aid—aid rendered at what danger to life and
limb, at wbat cost of exposure, hardship, calm courage,
and skilled self-devotion, no record can tell.

Organisation the Institution gives. Courage, strength,
and skill, our gallant English sea-faring coast popula-
tion finds in abundance. But money it is for England
to contribute, for the establishment of stations, the pro-
vision of boats and apparatus, and the payment of the
rewards bestowed by the Institution on those who aid in
its good work of life-saving at sea, in the shape of
medals and money—968 medals and £50,000 having been
granted since its foundation, in recognition of such ser-
vice.

Need Punch say more in furtherance of bis call not to
"Man the Life-boat"—that is done already—but to
money it. This may be done through any banker in
the United Kingdom, or directly through the Secretary,
14, John Street, Adelphi, London. " Adelphi " means
" brothers." What quarter so fit for the head-quarters
of a Society doing, if ever Society did, a work of Chris-
tian and, wider, human brotherhood, among those who
"Go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their busi-
ness in great waters."

How about those Buttons ?

There are few things more wonderful, in Da.
Scheie ji Ann's wonderful "find" at Mycence, than the
enormous quantity of buttons he has come upon in
these mysterious graves. It has been hitherto supposed
that the chieftains of the heroic age had souls above
buttons. But we know that in the earlier obsequies of
chiefs slaves were sacrificed to the manes of their owners.
The most probable explanation which we can offer of the
Mycenian buttons is that they belonged to the garments
of the pages who, no doubt, were burned in numbers
round the bodies of their buried masters and mistresses.

Dirt Chepe.—Cheapside in this weather.

Meanwhile we govern India, 'fore all, for India's good ;

To teach and rear her chieftains to rule as rulers should.

To teach and rear her people to the fair arts of peace,

So to leave a self-ruled India when our Viceroy-rule has ceased.

PROM THE STYE.

[A Protest from our Learned Pig.)

Dear Mr. Punch,

Hrujiph ! I am a well-meaning animal, with a liberal
appetite and an unprejudiced taste. Man is a stingy brute, with an
unscrupulous conscience and a squeamish stomach. Hinc illce
lachrym.ee ! (I am a learned pig you will perceive.) Give a pig a
bad name and—eat him ; abusing him afterwards for daring to dis-
agree with you ! That's human justice all over. We porkers call
it ungracious gluttony. Hrumph.' I have no particular ambition
to be eaten at all, but if post-mortem deglutition is my destiny I
would fain die with a good dietetic reputation, and escape posthu-
mous prejudice. Were the ban of Moses and Mahomet made uni-
versal, I should not repine. A pig—like the Premier—is pachyder-
matously imperturbable under spiteful pin-pricks, particularly if
they_ serve a useful purpose ; he will not fume at misrepresentation,
provided he thereby escape the pot. But to feed on us, and_ then
flout us, is a little too bad. I am nice—oh, yes, I am emphatically
and indisputably nice. Trust Epicurean humanity to discover that,
even without the lambent light thrown on Roast Pig by the Essay
of Elia. Bo-bo, the swineherd's boy,—(ah ! I should like to,have
had the roasting of him! I would willingly fire my stye for the
purpose ; they say " Long Pig," even with a Chinese flavour is tooth-
some and succulent)—Bo-bo, I say, was representative of his race.
I am admittedly delicious. But I am unwholesome forsooth!
Bosh! ! I Has any one yet proved that pig as pig is not as salubrious

as savoury ? Diseased, of oourse, I play the dickens with the dupes
and the duffers who strive to digest me. And serve them right!
But why should I be diseased ? I have been listening to my Echo,
Mr. Punch, and this is what I hear :—•

" Two hundred and fifty pounds of diseased pork had been seized (in Glas-
gow) by a Sanitary Inspector. In the course of the trial it transpired that
the pigs before slaughter ' seemed dropsical.' A butcher who was examined
—and seemed to look on the matter with great nonchalance—considered that
this might have been caused by the pigs having been fed on the putretied
stomachs of diseased horses. "When horses became dropsical it was common to
give them spirits of nitre or antimony, and if the pigs were fed on the flesh
of Bueh diseased animals, the disease might be communicated to them.
The witness added that, 'it was just in the way of business to dress such
carcases.'"

There!!! In the way of business! ! And then they blame me ! ! !
Hrumph! It is disgusting ! Why not brand the conscienceless brute
who feeds his unsuspicious porkers on such foul offal, dealing out
death at third hand from luckless horse to deceived pig, and from de-
ceived pig to gulled humanity! T have a somewhat undiscriminating
appetite. It is my weakness, and I confess it openly. I have the
misfortune to be carnivorous rather than eclectic. But I have no
preference for disease-gendering garbage, I am not the Reynolds of
my race. Give me wholesome food and plenty of it,—I am not parti-
cular, anything from acorns to " hotel tub " will suit me for a change,
—and " the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure " shall not
suffer post-prandially from me. But diet me on rotten fish, diseased
potatoes, or putrid horse, and if Nemesis takes the form of Trichi-
nosis, or other disgusting disorder, who is to blame ? Not I, but
the money-grubbing miscreants whom it were indeed base flattery
to call " greedy as a pig." Hrumph ! Down on them, dear Punch,
and exonerate your much maligned correspondent,

Toby.

{Before the Name was usurped by your'own Puppy of a Dog.)