Punch (81.1881)

August 27, 1881.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, 85

"PLETHORA."

Coach. "Dear, dear ! How came you to fail in tour 'Exam.'? I

thought I had crammed tou sufficiently ! "

"Plucked." "Ah—fact is—you crammed me so tight, that I couldn't

get it out ! "

BOUND IN RUSSIA.

(From a Correspondent who has got due North.)

When you travel in Kussia you are supposed to leave "Western civilisation
behind you, and so you do. You leave the Channel-boat, a vessel which a
cynical writer said was constructed to diminish the distance between pitch-and-
toss and manslaughter ; you leave such a triumph of French ingenuity as
Calais Station, which is like a railway terminus of the Middle Ages ; yon leave
such a German Bedlam of lost, stolen, mislaid, Custom-House-worried, and
useless travelling lumber-luggage as Cologne ; and you leave the ill-paved,
overgrown village of Berlin, across which for several miles you have to be
bumped in a hack-cab in order to catch your northern train by the skin of your
teeth. For two days and a night after leaving Cologne you pass through a
country that is like slices of swampy Essex laid between slices of smoky Lan-
cashire, until you reach the frontier of Russia, or rather another part of the
stolen and divided kingdom of Poland. Here the passport and Custom-House
system is a reality and not a sham, and you feel like a criminal as you stand at a
bar and watch a small army of inquisitors examining your papers." A
member of the Secret Police probably walks round you on the platform, or
accompanies you in the train to St. Petersburg. There are few or no news-
papers on the bookstalls, as most of them have been suspended, but there are
plenty of naughty French novels. The stalls, however, are open at all hours
of the night, which is better than the nine to six arrangement in England.

"When you leave Western civilisation behind you, vou find other changes.
The refreshment-stations are like good foreign hotels, and the waiters meet
you in clean, full evening dress, and serve you in white gloves. There is no
bustle and no hurry. The train travels at the express rate of from fifteen to
twenty-five miles an hour. There are few junctions, and no cross traffic. You
seem to pass no trains, and no trains seem to pass you. A child might toddle
across the line in safety. No one perspires ; no one seems flurried. The car-
riages are divided into little rooms for two or more persons, and there is every
accommodation for sleeping. It is only incurably dirty travellers like mvself,
who go round the world with a woollen shirt and two paper collars, who are not
as presentable on a platform after forty-eight hours in a train as they would be
at a Flower Show. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to call it a train ; it is more like

a travelling monastery. The bells at the Stations make
the faintest sounds, being a combination of the English
muffin-bell and the Belgian chimes. They seem to ring
you drowsily to a meditative service, and not to a
journey. You look calmly out of the window, and have
ample time to study the country. You see the peasant
proprietor tilling his ground, and raising patches of pro-
ductive agriculture amidst acres of bog-land and fir-
forest. Some of the low-roofed wooden villages are like
collections of Indian wigwams. There is no excuse for
dilapidated walls and roofs in a country where plenty
of wood can be had for nothing ; but, such as they are,
they are not as bad as the turf huts in the West of
Ireland. It is the old story—drink. A revenue as large
as that of England is drawn even more largely from
spirits. Russian financiers are not the wisest people in
the world; they eat their candle at both ends.

LAYS OF A LAZY MINSTREL.

THE PINK OF PERFECTION.

With manly step and stalwart
stride,

The Minstrel paced the pier at
Ryde!

And as he shook those hoary locks,
He gazed upon the pink, pink
frocks!

And while his merry banjo rang,
'Twas thus the Lazy Minstrel sang!

i.

With frocks and their wearers to

dazzle my eyes
Their glories, I scarce dare to sing
'em:

I timidly gaze and I glance in surprise,

At beauties in cambric and gingham !
A Paris I feel in this Garden of Dress,

And, had I to make a selection—
The Apple of Gold, I most freely confess,

I 'd give to the Pink of Perfection!

n.

It must not remind you of raspberry ice,

Nor cheek of a milkmaid or cotter ;
A lobster-like redness is not at all nice,

Nor feverish glow of the blotter ;
It should not recall a Bardolphian nose,

Nor yet a pomegranate bisection—
Throughout the whole garden you'll scarce find a
rose,

A match for the Pink of Perfection!

in.

A strawberry crushed, almost smothered in cream,

Nearly matches the colour it may be ;
The Jungfrau just flushed with the earliest beam,

The hue of the palm of a baby :
The faint ruddy tone you may see in a shell,

The rose in a young girl's complexion—
All or any of these, it is easy to tell,

"Will pass for the Pink of Perfection !

iv.

This frock when it's made with most exquisite taste,

And fits like a glove on the shoulder ;
With yoke and full pleats and a band at the waist,

Will gladden the passing beholder !
With lace and with buttons of mother o' pearl—

You '11 say, on maturest reflection,
The best of all garbs for a pretty young girl,

No doubt is the Pink of Perfection !

Then if such a dress you meet down by the sea,

And find, when you've carefully eyed it,
In make and in fashion 'tis good as can be,

With a neat little figure inside it;
And a sweet little face peeping over a ruff,

Which laughs at your lengthy inspection,
I think you'll admit I have said quite enough—

You've found out the Pink of Perfection!

vol. lxxxj.

i