Punch (72.1877)

192 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April 28, 1877-

THE LAY OF THE LATTER-DAY CYNIC.

Since life's a jest, he fares the best

Who makes a trade of jesting ;
And only zanies spoil its zest

By seriously contesting.
'Tis fun to watch the squabbling Schools,

Creeds, Councils, Crowns, and Mitres.
The wise look on, and only fools

Are found among the fighters.

Fight ? "Who would stoop to sweat and dust,

Or handle hilt or trigger,
When he might watch War's cut and thrust,

And, snug in safety, snigger ?
Hot dolts may join the strenuous close—

No choice could well be queerer—
I cock a cool contemptuous nose,

And read the Sixpenny Sneerer.

The dread regime of gush and rush,

To restless Gladstone owing,
Thank Heaven, is o'er. With sleepy hush

Our stream of life is flowing.

he Cynic I Ay ; but d la
mode,
Not as per ancient
sample.
'Tis not the modern
Timon's code
On luxury to trample.
Diogenes was but a dunce
Who scorned the choice
and cosy,
We moderns know that
life's at once
Ridiculous—and rosy.

Ridiculous! Most men are
fools,

Most women food for
mocking.
But Cynics of the ancient
schools
Were coarse, ill-clad,
and shocking.
We dress, and dine, and
dance, and wine,
Smart scoffers, gay and
airy;

For dirt and dulness don't
define

The new Nil Admirari.

! Yes, life is rosy, too,
such as take it rightly ;

eschew the sourly true,
love and labour lightly,
has no abiding sting,
ny binding snare for
mortal who no mortal thing
Too clingingly will care for.

And if there's that beneath which makes

Sour zealots hold their noses,
The course is smooth, and Mirth awakes

To strew the stream with roses.

We've shut the door on Sentiment,

A guest who gave us trouble ;
For glory !—fools may be content

To chase that flying bubble.
Your Cynic-epicure will try

A pleasanter employment,
Combining general mockery

With personal enjoyment.

Not mine Diogenes's rules—

Roots and tubs may suit Vandals ;
Give me my trois plats, togs from Poole's,

And last new thing in scandals,—
These are my joys. Down, dullard Care !

Out, Zeal, thou Simple Simon!
My cane! my weed ! I take the air—

The fashionable Timon !

STRANGE POOD IN THE STABLE.

Peeux Chevalier Punch,

Although a Vegetarian—yet not a Teetotaller—for when thirsty and fatigued, I
can drink my pot of strong beer off at a pull, let me implore you to exert your great in-
fluence amongst the Equestrian Order for keeping the regulation of provender in their
stables strictly and steadily up to the mark of good old English fare. As beef, mutton, and
veal hold their place in the banqueting-hall, so let hay, beans, and corn in the manger.
This sentiment must commend itself to every stable mind.

But, esteemed Sir, there has appeared in several of your contemporaries a statement,
representing a certain French gentleman—so to call him—a M. Le Bian, to have invented
a substitute for oats. . It seems to have answered so well in France, that innovators propose
to introduce it into this country. The fodder designed to supersede oats is—what do you
imagine ? Parsnips ?

Parsnips of all subjects of the Vegetable Kingdom! Roots! What next! Turnips,
I suppose —Swedes, mangold-wurzel, kohl-rabi, food for cattle, including Thokley's,
perhaps, or oil-cake even, who knows ?—materials for the growth of meat. It is easy to
see what all this points to. No doubt, parsnips are highly nutritive in their way.
Everybody knows that they contain a large quantity of sugar, wherewithal they served your.....

great-grandmothers to make parsnip-wine. But sugar is carbonaceous food, simply fat- fair to say, repels with indignation the
tening. It will not support the condition requisite for the hunting-field, or the turf. It testhetic impeachment.

will only qualify a creature for the stall.
Such as the stalled ox is, such will it
render the superior quadruped—degrading
it to a stalled horse. Parsnips are recom-
mended in lieu of oats, mainly because
they are cheaper—four times as cheap as
oats. They are means by which horses can
be fattened at small expense, like pigs.
Presently, perhaps, horses also will be sup-
plied with wash; and education on pars-
nips, comprising an excursion upon acorns,
will conclude with a brief course of barley-
meal.

The plain fact is, Mr. Punch, that if
given to horses, instead of their proper
food, parsnips will be the thin end of tbe
wedge. In France the wedge has been
driven home. Hippophagy has long pre-
vailed there; as, no doubt, anthropophagy
will very soon. Parsnips for British horses
will be the beginning of the end; and that
end will be the butcher's shop. In the
meanwhile you will have Horse Shows,
wherein the horses will be shown as fat
cattle. You will see horses, ere long, near
Christmas, exhibited amongst the rest of
the beasts at the Smithfield Club Cattle
Show, and graziers and meat-salesmen
coming and punching their sides. From the
knuckles of all such connoisseurs defend—
with your cudgel—the ribs of your humble
servant to command in any work according
to his capacity, Houyhnhnm.

Brobdingnag Mews, April 25, 1877.

TAXES IN RESERVE.

Punch hears that the following sugges-
tions for new taxation were struck out of
the Budget at the last moment. He would
suggest the substitution of them for the
Income-tax in a future year.

A Tax on three-volume novels written by
women.

A Poll-tax on rinkers.

A Poll-tax on bachelors over thirty.

A Tax on the sixpenny journals of so-
ciety, which retail scandal and call it news.

A Tax on false hair.

A Tax on photographs.

A Tax on high heels.

And, finally,—a source of large addi-
tion to the revenue of the country,—a Tax
on all the imbecility in the shape of cor-
respondence which Punch has daily to sift
in the forlorn hope of finding the one grain
in the measureless bushels of chaff.

To Sir Henry Hawkins.

{By a Bothered Barrister.)

Twinkle, twinkle Legal star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the Court so high:
Please enlighten us! Do try!

" Nor owns the Flattering Falsehood
of the Brush."

Hebe is a curious, and, so far as Punch
knows, a new offence charged against a
butcher who contracts for the meat supply
of a Metropolitan Union; viz., that of
"painting the head of a sheep, to give it
the semblance of a South Down."

Till now we had thought the painting up
of sheepish heads, so as to give them the
appearance of better blood and breeding
than rightfully belonged to them, was
the work of the portrait-painter, not the
butcher. The accused butcher, it is only