Punch (77.1879)

218

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[November 15, 187?;

A REAL HARD-MOUTHED >UN."

The famous White Terrier " Bob" in his great Worrying Act at Grantham.
"The Interests we have harassed before, I would harass still."

OLD RIP PIFTY YEAES HENCE.

{A Protectionist Peep into the Future, from the Chaplin and
Mclver stand-point.)

Rip awoke, and, pulling himself together, wearily descended the
mountain. He had closed his eyes in England—it was in England
that he now opened them, after fifty years' slumher. Sleepy
Hollow, when he left it, had heen a village devoted to agricultural
pursuits. As he came within sight of the spot, he expected to find
the corn-fields or pastures he remembered. Much to his surprise the
land, although unencumbered with bricks and mortar, was quite
uncultivated. Thistles and brambles were growing in rank luxuri-
ance, and there was not a stalk of corn or a blade of grass to be seen
anywhere.

As he descended into the valley he met some children, but they
expressed no astonishment at seeing him. After half a century's expo-
sure to the weather, his garments were naturally dilapidated, but still

they were in better repair than the clothes of these wretched, ragged
little ones. As he passed they held out their thin hands and asked
for a penny. Unable to satisfy their demands, he passed on, won-
dering, and soon found himself in the High Street of his native
village. As he gazed at a row of tenantless cottages, which, he
remembered noisy with industrious inmates and playful children, a
disreputable looking, unkempt and unshorn man, with his beard
and hair filled with sawdust, approached him, and asked him who
and what he was. Rip blushed a little as he remembered the revels
of his younger days, but he replied,

" My name is Rip Van" Winkle, and I suppose I was a British
Farmer, although I used to spend the greater part of my time in
sport."

'' I know. I've heard my grandfather say they all did that m the
olden time," returned the new-comer, dolefully. "Shooting and
hunting, and fishing and playing on the piano-forte ! Ah—they had
fine lives of it in the good old times! Not only the Farmer, but his
missis, and his daughters at the boarding-school, and his sons up at