Punch (78.1880)

January 31, 1880.]

PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

OUT OF SIGHT, NOT OUT OF MIND.

Stout Gentleman (whistling). “ Phew—phew—Lion !—Lion !—where the

DEUCE HAS THAT LlTTLE IjKAST GOT TO? PflEVV ! —PHEW ! ”

JEMIMER JANE ON JIMCRACKS.

Dear ’Lizer,

Yes, it’s all too true ; I’ve bin and lost my sitivation,

Wus luck, in winter time and all! Life’s jest a round of botheration.

I'he nobs ’as all the plums, my dear, they leaves ns ’ardly a Sultaney.

1 left quite suddent, all along o’—wbat d. ’yer think ?—a bit o’ cbaney.

Drat crockery, I sez, and most pertikler drat them there blue-and-white Chineses.
Why did they go inwenting stuff as is the ’ousemaid’s wust o’ teases ?

’ Twas had enough when crockery’s right place was the kitchen dresser;

But now it’s all the go upstairs it’s wus. 1 pities my successor!

I saw her ’Lizer, sech red hands, and nubbly-like about the knuckles,

Same as my own. /know the sort, and—piaps ’twas wicked, dear—I chuckles ;
Thinks I, “ them fingers will go blue and slippy, ’tain’t no use their trying
To holt on jimcracksjwhen they ’re cold, and won’t there soon be Bob’s-a-dying?”

Fingers is curous ; mine ’ll holt a broom with any gal in Brixton,

But when it comes to knicknacks, lor ! you think yer grip is firmly fixed on,
When slips they goes, and there you are, athout the least o’ warnings,

Which fingers will go perished in cold water o’ winter mornings.

In course, there’s no allowance made, and wot’s the use o’ glycerining.

Or warming of ’em at the gas ? Corns, and the cold and constant cleaning,
Would spile the lily ’ands o’ them as treats theirn in a different manner,

With fluff-lined gloves and Kallydore, and twiddling on a grand peyanner.

It’s chaney, chaney, everywhere, a source o’ constant shines and rackets,

They ’angs it all about the walls, and perches of it up on brackets,

Till if you moves your elber sharp, or whisks your skirt, down flops a something,
Which this new fad for crockery is what I calls a downright rum thing.

Nasty ill-shapen smudged old pots, cracked sarcers, cups athout no ’andles,

Jugs as won’t hold, and candlesticks in which they never sticks no candles,
Goggle-eyed Hidols, ogious things, as seems to me a sin to store ’em,

But bless yer! toffs bid ’igh for ’em, and swell young ladies jest adore ’em.

TvuSee 'em Pa^n? ’em F°ft like baby’s cheeks, is quite disgusting,—

'a hy that there hidjus little god I went and smashed as I was dusting

They reglar kissed ; and when I told Miss Cynthy as I’d
gone and dropped it,

The scolding, blubbering scene there was! I thought
they never would a stopped it.

They called me, oh ! the frightful names, a Bohea-Moth,
and a Philistian!

At last I ups, and sez, sez I, “ This ain’t no way to treat
a Christian.

It may have b’longed to Pompey Door, and bin uneek,
soopreme, and so on:

Yet ’tis but clay, which flesh and blood can’t stand the
way you Ladies go on.

“ Orkurd,” sez I, “ I may be, which I*m sorry for, but
more by token,

If folks with jimcracks go and stuff the blessed place,
some must get broken :

’Ousemaids ain’t got no call in a curosity shop jammed
hup with crockery.

Dustpan and broom m this ’ere room, I sez, is reglar
right down mockery!”

That settled me ; but there, I couldn’t a ’elped it if
they’d ’ung me for it;

And so you see poor ’ousemaids now is wictimised by one
more worrit,

Just as if caps, no followers, and beetles wot you
squosh in vain.

Wosn’t enough! Well, sech is life!

Yours, out of place,

Jemimer Jane.

A WORD FOR THE W1YES.

Mr. Justice Brett has been speaking his mind from
the Bench on the decay of the rude chivalry of fair-play
in England since fighting with lists went out, and kicking
and knifing came in.

The learned, and athletic judge—in his time, like
Punch's excellent friend, Mr. Justice Denman, he pulled
a good oar at his ’Varsity—declared his intention of deal-
ing mercifully with death or damage brought about in
fair fight.

This seems to indicate that he holds in some degree with
the opinion that the Prize-Ring tended to inculcate the
unmanliness of hitting below the belt, or striking a man
when he was down. Perhaps these rules came less from
the Prize-Ring than from the Saxon blood, in which the
spirit of such rules, as well as the noble art of self-defence,
was bred.

At all events, Englishmen both practised and insisted
on the laws of fair lighting before there icas a P. R.,
and when cudgel play and quarter-staff were the rustic
forms of the duello instead of fisticuffs. The P. R., it
is to be feared, was the growth of a brutal time, and the
concomitant of coarse and dissolute manners, as its
decline and fall have kept pace with an improvement
in general decency, education, and refinement.

All the same, whether fisticuffs brought the love of
fair play, or faith in fair play engendered fisticuffs.
Justice Brett is right in denouncing the brutality of
foul hitting, and, above all, of kicking. Fists are—if
not refined—at least manly weapons. Not so feet—
especially feet with boots on. But most brutal of booted
feet are those used to kick not only men but women,
and not women only, but wives!

When are we to see our Judges making up a common
mind to punish wife-kicking as it deserves, and no longer
to allow the murder of a wife by sheer brutality to be the
form of homicide which a man may commit with the
surest prospect of a light punishment ?

Not Quite Such. A False Prophet, Perhaps.

What Sir William Haecotjrt did prophesy—and
whether the prediction prove false or true, he finds a great
many ready to back it—was that the first day, not of the
next Session, but of the next Parliament, would be the
last of the present Government. May that last arrive,
and may Punch be there to see it.

Summary of Present Entertainment at the
Olympic Theatre.-—Righton and Brighton.