Punch (80.1881)

July 2, 1881.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAJRIVAEI.

" TTTELL, Gentlemen, I'm very glad to see you both," said the genial and sportive Sage, pushing a box of picked
T' Tremendidos towards his distinguished guests, "and I shall be delighted to hear your best news. How have
things been going with you?"

The host eyed his visitors benignly as he addressed them, and Toby sat up all attention. The visitors looked at
each other with a smile, and there was a short pause.

Then the American spoke.

" Wal," he said, stretching himself out with comfortable satisfaction, " 1 am inclined to think, Sir, that the
business I have been doing is not burstin bad. That there hoes I sent to your Epsom Downs I guess would do credit
to a Greased Lightning Company, of which the Chairman had not been officially got at."

" He would," said Mr. Pdnch, heartily. " Iroquois is a fine creature, and his form at the finish on the cele-
brated First was splendid."

Toby wagged his tail approvingly.

" You air a generous people, and no mistake," replied Uncle Sam, acknowledging the high compliment with an
affable bow.

"And I think we are not less so," interrupted the Frenchman, with a placid smile. "Did we not greet your
Foxhall with oorahs, unmixed with the chagrin natural to defeat ? "

" You air the politest nation of cusses outside Wall Street on settling day that I have had the pleasure of meeting,"
returned the transatlantic courtier gracefully, with a sly twinkle in his eye.

" We are," replied the Frenchman, with confidence.

" And what is more," threw in the Sage cheerily, "you have among you, Monsieur, those to whom defeat not only
brings, to use your own phrase, no chagrin, but to whom it is positively salutary."

" Yes, Bitters is real grit; that's sure," continued the American, reflectively; " and the worst-mannered Opossum
that I ever knew intimately, had had his training mostly on neat Molasses."

" There was not much stay in that crittur, I calculate," rejoined Mb. Punch, relapsing into the purest Bostonian
accent, with good-humoured urbanity; "yet the best judges will sometimes put their money on strange brutes—eh,
Monsieur le President ! "