Punch (74.1878)

240

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHA.RIVARI,

[Mat 25, 1878.

DREAM-GROUPS AT THE ACADEMY.

Victims, Fallen amongst Thieves—Nausicaa, Zenobia, and Mrs-
Langtry, Shopping in Constantinople, in Gusty Weather, on a
Showery Day, in the Time of Roses.

Lord Coleridge on a Flaw in the Title of the Laird, Sedge-cutting
in Wicken Fen, in the Glow of Morning, Fifty Years Ago.

The Marquis of Bath and the Marquis of Waterford Tipping the
Princes in the Tower, at a School Treat, in Smithfield.

Sir Henry Hawkins asking a Member of the Long Parliament—
"When did you last see your Father?" In Newgate, Under a
Cloud; at the Trysting Tree on the Road to Ruin ; or with the
Chinese Minister at a Country Cricket Match in the Bernese Alps ?

An Anxious Moment—Right Hon. Robert Lowe, Four Miles from
any Town and Sympathy, on the Heath, in Solitude, with the
Lowing Herd and Cornish Lions.

St. Martin's Summer—Right Hon. W. H. Smith (Westminster
Union) Shrimping, with the Coral Fisher and Britomart and her
Nurse, in a Social Eddy, in a Salt-Water Marsh, and thinking of
an Eastern Question (an Eastern Puzzle), Conditional Neutrality,
Trial by Battle, and the Post Bag.

Convocation, As Dry as a Limekiln, with Separate Interests—
Bishop Claughton, Dean Howson, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, Earl of Shaf-
tesbury, Professor Huxley, Rev. Newman Hail, and Rev. James
Martineau.

j v.A Dream of Ancient Egypt—the Gods and their Makers, and the
Pasha, with the Tibia and Loot.

The Hour After an Entomological Sale—A Colorado Beetle ?

A Love Missile from the Study of a Nautch Girl, Ready for the
Heir come of Age, after Childhood in Eastern Life.

Lieut. Cameron's Welcome (Home, Sweet Home) from his Explora-
tions in Africa, by the Three Graces, the Lively Polly, the Lough-
borough Nuns and the Lady Mayoress.

To Our Next Merrie Meeting All Among the Barley in Reaping
Time, in Sherwood Forest, with Lieut.-Colonel Loyd-Lindsay and
Major Browne Winding the Skein, in the Evening Light, for La
Gloire de Dijon, and the Wayward Daughter.

AN AMENDE HONOURABLE.

Punch has no quarrel with anything about Queen Anne's Man-
sions except their ugliness. He had inferred from a statement in
the City Article of the Times that an attempt—not the first—had
been made to convert an unsuccessful private speculation into a
limited liability company. He is glad to stand corrected by Messrs.
Qttilter and Ball, the accountants, whose statement puts a diffe-
rent face on the matter, though it cannot on the Mansions. Ugly
they are, and must remain ; but though heavily burdened, it seems
that there was nothing "fishy " or unfair in the contemplated trans-
fer of them by their projector and proprietor, Mr. Hankey, to a
limited liability company.

To complete and carry on this gigantic and amorphous pile, this
rudis indigestaque moles, requires more capital than its projector
can command. But there is no " hankey-pankey " about his pro-
posed operation for bringing fresh financial blood into the big body.
The Mansions have been fairly valued, the charges on them fairly
made out, and after the debts and assets had been set off against one
another, a considerable balance would have been payable to the
vendor, whose only fault, besides the original sin of having built—
we won't say " planned"—the ugliest pile of buildings in London,
seems to have been too great eagerness to complete his gigantic
caravanserai, and his too great liberality to his tenants. But what

loss there was, was mainly due to working an incomplete under-
taking with the staff of a complete one.

The creditors mean to carry out, and carry on, Mr. Hawkey's
design, with less liberality, we presume, and so as to make it pay its
way, but not, we fear, with less defiance of the laws of architecture.
That must be past praying for. In all other respects the Mansions
may yet be as sound financially as we trust they are structurally ;
and as those who live in them like them, and, above all, as the
tenants speak well of their landlord, and declare that his only
fault has been giving them more than money's worth for their
money, Punch is but too glad to withdraw all he said, or thought,
to the discredit of the Mansions and their master's plans for bringing
more capital into the concern. He seems to have shown himself a
model landlord, if he is the reverse of a model architect.

MUMPKINS ON MAY.

What a marvel of a May!
Why, unclouded sunbeams play,
As of old, upon the herbage and the flowers;
And the wind, so wont to rest
In the East, blows South and West,
And the husbandman is blest
With mild showers.

Ne'er a morn with rime is white ;
Not a leaf droops nipt with blight,
Nor do birds with cold shiver cower and hush;
Hark ! they whistle, chirp, and sing,
With the Nightingale for King ;
Cuckoo, Skvlark on the wing,
Blackbird, Thrush!

But the plains in May that smile,
Now and then, about this Isle,
Will be ploughed soon or built on, every one;
Model farms will intervene
Close and crowded towns between,
Where now glows the spangled green
In the sun.

For fifty years, folks swear
They've not known a May so fair.
In fifty more, dear friends, where shall we be ?
Ah, in your time and in mine,
As our waning years decline,
When another May so fine
Shall we see Y

We are frail as blades of grass ;
Like Spring flowers away we pass.
Even now I want a piU—I don't feel well.
I by no means mean to croak;
But our end is dust and smoke,
And each clock, in every stroke,
Sounds a knell.

Chelsea and China.

" Sairet," said Mrs. Harris to Mrs. Gamp, "as well be out of
the world as out of the fashion. I'm a thinkin' of where would be
the best place to go to for a blue tea-service and some plates and
dishes."

" Chelsea, in course, my dear," Mrs. Gamp answered. "Cheyne
Walk. An' it's there as Mr. Whistler lives, too—which it's only
nateral."

Gout and its Cure.

" The last new cure of Gout in Bohemia is the sting of three bees placed on
the foot."—Daily News, May 13th.

He came in on the Bee's wing;
He goes out in the Bee's sting.

a preferable policy.

Appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober ? Not if you want
to get anything out of him. Appeal from Philip sober to Philip
drunk.

Oh, If We Could!—The best way to suppress the "Irish Ob
structives." To Scotch them.