Punch: Punch (81.1881)

November 12, 1881.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 227

Very Small Boy (to Stout Aunt on Cob). " I say, Auntie, don't you try for a Gate ! come along with me ! I 'ye found a capital

little Hole we can creep through, and be even with the best of 'em !"

CHRISTMAS IS COMING!

Isn't he, rather! and don't the publishers let us know it too—bless
'em, and bless everybody, or some such Tiny Tim sentiment as that,
neat and appropriate to the occasion.

Here's little Master Edmund Routledge with Mother Goose, by
Miss Kate Greenaway, a gem of a production—only we don't
believe in the authenticity of these nursery rhymes—(Look at the
small.dog, p. 23.)—for whoever heard this-

" Eide a Cock-horse
To Banbury Cross,
To see little Johnny
Get on a white horse."

No, no—we used to " go a Cock-horse " to see "A fine Lady ride
on a White Horse ; Kings on her fingers, And bells on her toes "—
(how exquisite ! How Intense ! How too utterly symphonious !!)—

And she shall have music "— (She shall! She shall!)—" Wherever
she goes ! "—and she may go where she likes.

Miss Greenaway's text maybe correct. "May^e" we'say—but we
are afraid it looks like a " Revised Version." Touch one nursery
rhyme, and down comes the glorious constitution. Again. Regard
"Humpty Dumpty!" He was an Egg, wasn't he? Of course,
therein lay the whole point of the riddle, probably invented by
Christopher Columbus. Yet this is not an Egg, it is a Boy! Only
a Boy! 0 Eggony ! Then we '11 trouble you, Miss Greenaway, for
" Tom, Tom, the Piper's son." Well, any infant properly brought
up will inform you that Thomas Bar-piper, or the Son of the Piper,
having become unlawfully possessed of a pig—whose property it
really was has never been ascertained, but, anyhow, it wasn't Tom's
—"run away" not ran away, if you please, Mr. School-Board In-
spector, you 're not on in this scene— The pig was eat, and Tom
was beat, and Tom went roaring down the street," — quite "A
rantin' roarin' boy " as Robbie Burns would have called him "for
a' that."

_ But what says Miss Greenaway ? Why, her revised version
gives it thus—

" Tom, Tom, the Piper's son,
He learnt to play when he was young,
He with his pipe made such a noise,
That he pleased all the girls and boys."

Oh! oh! oh!—why the American version of this is far better :—

" Ping Wing, the Pieman's son,
Was the very worst boy in all Canton;
He ate his mother's pickled mice,
And threw the cat on the boiling rice:
And, when he' d eaten her, said he,
' Me wonder where that mew-cat be.' "

Which has been set by Mr. Frederic Clay to a characteristic
Chinese accompaniment, and can be sung with great effect by any
one with half a dozen manageable notes in his voice.

Next, the best of Miss Lizzie Lawson's_ illustrations to Old Pro-
verbs with New Pictures are the frontispiece, "Lightly Come,
Lightly Go," and "The Toad and the Wooden Horse," where,
though it has escaped the Artist, the horse is being tow'd. In every
Englishman's house should be his Cassell—Petter, & Co., by which
firm this is published.

Goody Two-Shoes.—Goody, Bettery, Best, Two-Shoes. Facsimile
reproduction of the edition of 1776, with an introduction by Charles
Welsh,—as if anyone wanted an introduction to so old a friend as
little Goody ! A very quaint little book, published by Griffith
and Farran.

N.B.—Why are there usually two publishers, to every book ?
Does it take two to " make " a book as it docs to make a quarrel ?
Either publishers are not publishers, or the old proverb about
" Two of a trade never agreeing " is utterly and hopelessly wrong.

VENICE UNPRESERVED.
" Steamers have been started on the Grand Canal at Venice."—Globe.

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand.
I saw from out the wave black funnels rise

Whence clouds of densest smoke I saw expand,
And common steamboats, at a penny a mile,

O'er the canal—saw many a person land
Upon the piers. 0 Anguish ! it does rile

The Bard to see all this—and what a smell of ile!

" I want to see you 'tickly," as the Fly said to the bald-headed man.