Punch: Punch (76.1879)

January 18, 1879.]

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON -CHARIVARI.

13

MANNERS.

Discontented Pauper {on the Christmas Dinner). "Well, this is the wust
Chris'mas Dinner as ever we 'ad since I've been in the 'Ouse ! I

THINKS AS WHEN WE 'AS A DlNNER PARTY, THE MASTER OUGHT TO AX US
WHETHER WE LIKES IT WELL DONE AND WHETHER WE TAKES FAT, AND NOT
CUT THE YlTTLES AND SHOWL IT ON OUR PLATES ANYHOW ! "

THE .OLD, OLD STORY!

The following has not yet been sent to Mr. Punch from the
India Office for 'publication.

From Yiceroy, January 18, 1879.

Smith reports from Jones continuance of harassing
attacks. Troops have behaved splendidly. Defences
all taken at point of bayonet, and enemy only prevented
from being driven over crown of pass through rations
for three and a half days not having been given out
owing to an oversight.

Accounts from Robinson encouraging. Troops sleep-
ing in open without great-coats. Thermometer far below
zero. Only 72 per cent, frost-bitten. Spirit excellent.
Means to move forward as soon as supply of great-coats,
boots, and dhoolies to hand.

Brown advanced to within sixteen miles of Muckerabad.
Waiting for transport. Had to eat artillery elephants
and horses of personal staff. Enthusiasm of troops re-
markable. 117th and 153rd (Duke's Own) Native Regi-
ments, without any officers at present, owing to casualties.
Have directed advertisements in local papers. Native
chiefs still respectful.

Jenkins reports issue of following order of day on
eve of advance:—•

'' Soldiers,

To-morroAV, without baggage-waggons, commis-
sariat, ambulance, doctors, lint, rations, or boots, you
will move forward to do the behests of your Yiceroy,
the mouthpiece of your beloved Empress. Owing to
one of those departmental mistakes which are among
the fortunes of war, your recent camping-ground has
been more cold and damp than was pleasant at the
late exceptionally low temperature. Forward, soldiers
of the Expeditionary Force ! If behind you lurks marsh
fever, before you lies the enemy ! Remember that what-
ever England may do herself, she expects every man
to do his duty. Think then of Assaye and Netley!
Your country looks towards you! Whether charging
without shoes and rations, or returning to your native
shores laden with honours and bent with rheumatism,
England is still proud to own you as her sons! For-
ward ! "

The above, printed in English, Pushtoo, Persian, and
Hindustani, was posted in camp yesterday, and produced
an excellent effect.

An easy feeling prevails in official circles at Calcutta.

EDISONIANA.

As an infant, it is now distinctly remembered by his old nurse,
and by ''his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts," that lights,
whether in the nursery or the parlour, the ship's gloomy cabin or
the lonely beacon far away on a ledge of rock in the solitary ocean,
had an irresistible attraction for the youthful Edison ; and it is
related by his biographers that once when his Mother undertook a
long railway expedition in the depth of winter, and took her baby-
boy with her, he never once removed his gaze from the lamp in the
carriage, and was " good " from the beginning of the journey to the
end. The germ of some great discovery in the future may have been
latent in that prolonged stare.

As he grew older, his favourite toys were miniature lamps and
candlesticks, and little speaking-trumpets, and tiny telescopes, and
he was never tired of playing at telegraphs with his brothers and
sisters and their young companions.

"The child is father of the man"—so before he was eight, the
future inventor of the phonograph, the micro-tasimeter, the mega-
phone, and the aerophone, had devised considerable improvements
in the ordinary pea-shooter, whereby its range was greatly extended
and its momentum increased, and had added more than one note to
the compass of the Jew's harp.

At the age of fourteen he took out a patent for an ingenious con-
trivance to enable persons of an obese habit to pick up things^ from
the -floor without undergoing the inconvenience of stooping. His
instantaneous hat-peg was also widely adopted, and universally
appreciated throughout the Western States before he left off jackets.

The Great Wall of China will probably be the scene of Mr. Edi-
son's first public display of the Electric Light on any extensive scale.

A plan for the illumination of the Great Desert has also been
under consideration, but some difficulty having arisen with the
Government about the lamp-posts, this project is for the present
abandoned.

A Submarine Tunnel between Liverpool and New York, as light
as day and as warm as summer, is now regarded as an unquestioned
certainty, only awaiting Mr. Edison's leisure to attend to the details.

His ordinary dinner hour is six, but as it is his inflexible rule
never to sit down to table until he has produced some new invention
or improvement, however small, for the benefit of his contemporaries
and the advantage of posterity, it frequently happens that it is mid-
night before he can partake of the family meal. _ _

Some of the greatest men have set a different estimate on their
productions from that entertained by the outside world.—Milton,
for example, it is said, thought more highly of his Paradise Regained
than his Paradise Lost—and in Mr. Edison's case it is well under-
stood that his most cherished invention, and the one on which he
rests his surest claim to fame and fortune and the future Presidency
of the United States, is his Electric Pen-wiper.

Thomas Alva Edison is a young man, but little over thirty,
and a great future lies before him, in which he may be expected to
electrify both the Old and New World with his inventions.

A Hint to the Midland Directors.

Their object is to cut down expenses. Suppose, with this laudable
object, besides reducing the salaries of guards, porters, and such
small deer, they reduce those of directors, managers, station-masters,
clerks, and, in'short, all their employes, high and low, great and
small, all rmmd—pro rata—on the "sauce for goose sauce for
gander " principle.___

extremes meeting.

What a subject for a historical picture! Bismarck and'the
Pope contending with the same Hydra, whose heads are free
Thought, free Speech, free Press, and free Parliament! Punch will
have to try his hand at it one of these days.

vol. xxxvi.

c