Punch (80.1881)

Januaey 22, 1881.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 33

Confidential Friend (to cMcrly and not unattractive Spinster). " So, Dear, you 've

given up advocating women's rights ? "

Elderly Spinster. "Yes, I now go in for Women's Lefts."
Confidential Friend. " Women's Lefts ! What's that ? "
Elderly Spinster. " Widowers, my Dear ! "

THE CORRUPT PRACTICES BILL.

Sir Henry, you 're Lard on the British. Elector ;

In future a vote will be not '' worth a rap ; ''
Of bribery you 're a ferocious detector,

And publicans even must turn off the tap.
If this Bill should pass, a man 's out!of his senses,

Whoever a Candidate's views may/promote ;
Why, hang it, you won't allow pay or expenses,—

So, pray, what's the use of an Englishman's Vote ?

The days are all fled when the free, independent

Elector gratuitous grog could imbibe ;
His law-ridden son and unhappy descendant

Will go off to prison for giving a bribe.
Time was when the Candidate's affable manners

Were nought without gold, and a vote was a boon.
No more can we charge for our poles and our banners.

Earewell in the future to " Men in the Moon."

No more will elections be festival seasons,

But dull as the water that lies in a ditch ;
And Members won't bribe, for the best of all reasons-

Your penalties—making the poor like the rich.
Oh, England, my country ! in silence and sorrow

I blush for your state, and your woes I bewail.
I '11 give up my right to the franchise to-morrow,

For what's a Yote worth if it isn't for sale ?

For Value Received.

From The Academy we learn that Lord Suffolk's
famous La Vierge aux Rochers by Leonardo, has been
secured for the National Gallery for £9,000. Bravo!
Exactly one thousand less than Messrs. Longmans are
said to have paid for Endymion. What will be the
value of Lord Beaconsfield s work when it attains the
age of Leonardo's picture ? Give it up : incalculable.

juvenile offenders.

As the clause concerning flogging has virtually dropped
out of the Whiteboy Act, Sir W. V. Harcourt's new
Bill, into which such a clause, must be introduced for
the benefit of the dirty mischievous gamins,_ might be
called, for all purposes of allusion and quotation, "The
Blackboy Act,"

SCHOOL-BOARD PAPERS.—No. 3.

The object of all education, as you are doubtless aware, is to
soften your manners and suffer you not to be brutal. The kind,
good, and patient ratepayer, who finds the money to refine you, is
under the impression that he or his children will reap the benefit of
this refinement in a decrease of criminality, or rather illegality, and
its consequent expenses. Let him not live and die under a false
impression. Soften your manners to the consistency of pap. Never
let your angry passions rise beyond the level of genteel indignation ;
never let your more or less little boots, and the more or less little
feet that are in them, be found jumping on a sister or a mother.
Check unruly speech. Your little tongues were never formed to
make disrespectful observations about each other's eyes.

I say check unruly speech. I may go further, and say never use
language that is not largely diluted with water. Never say you
loathe a thing, when you have such a harmless word as dislike.
Never call people vicious when you can describe them as faulty.
Never accuse a man of impudence when you can say he has a little
too much confidence; never say he is headstrong when you have
such a word as venturesome. Remember that nothing is atrocious,
it is only notorious ; that no one is callous, he is only unsusceptible.
Remember that no one cheats, he only beguiles; that no one is
criminal, he is only iUegal; that no one commits a blunder, he is
only guilty of an error of judgment. Things that coarse people
would call trash, you must speak of as trifles; things that coarser
people would call filthy, you must speak of as dingy ; things that
both would call gaudy, you must speak of as glittering. Never
forget that people are not fools or foolish, they are simply simple ;
that they are not vulgarly fat, but pleasantly adipose ; that no one
gorges, but only fills himself; that murder is softened into despatch ;
that lies must always be called fibs, and the man who creates lies
must be called a fibber.
This is only general politeness, which you will show to all sexes

and all classes ; in the case of ladies you are bound to be even more
careful. Let me impress upon you that a woman is never ugly, she
is only homely. If she is accused of being forward, you must say
she is progressive ; if they go further and say she is free and easy,
you must alter these words to liberal and unrestricted; and when
the Poet (I think it is Shakspeare) insists upon giving her the name
of frailty, you must alter this offensive word to imperfection. Do
all you can to so regulate your speech that no one will notice or care
to remember what you say ; and, above aU, avoid the abusive lan-
guage which I am sorry to say is creeping even into once respectable
journals. I need do no more than allude to the disgraceful attacks
which have been made in Punch on that great and good man the
Duke of Mudford.* When such an ornament of the vegetable
kingdom is held up to unmerited ridicule, we naturally ask what
next, and next ?—and pause for a reply.

* And may be made again.—Ed.

The Conspirators in Bombay.

When the Professional Magicians employed by the Indian Con-
spirators failed to bring up money out of the earth by their charms
—they were evidently not young lady magicians—they very wisely
recommended another way of raising money, i.e., by subscription.
They would have proved themselves better conjurors had they begun
with this method, which the cookery books would call " another and
a shorter way."

New Phrases—"Boycotting a Landlord" is now accepted. To
describe the means used to prevent citizens from serving on a Jury,
or to intimidate them when they had once been sworn, the phrase
" Em-parnelling the Jury " might be used. For a witness perjuring
himself under intimidation, we might have as an expressive phrase
"taking his Half-a-Davitt,"