Punch (81.1881)

December 3, 1881.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

253

MISERIES OF LIFE.

Angler (taking a stroll on the day after the last day of trout-fishing). " There-
ah !—'haven't seen 'em rising like that all the Season !"

LINES TO A JAPANESE AIR.

I'have decked my dim-lit bower
With the peacock's plumes I love,

And the dado's dark below,
And the frieze is faint above :
I have decked my dim rich bower
In the last sweet style of Art;

"With pale plates in a row
I have made my chamber smart!

The slender tables stand
On the waxed, the matted floor;

The convex mirrors gleam,
The horse-cloth drapes the door.
'Twas Botticelli's hand
Drew Yenus there, so sweet!

I sit as in a dream
Close huddled at her feet!

Oh, let me be Intense!
I pine, I yearn, I fade,

And my hair hangs o'er my brow,
And my necktie 's disarrayed !
My soul is so immense, immense,
My culture is so vast,

I sometimes fancy, who knows how !-
That I shall burst at last!

NOTICE.

In consequence of the crowded state of the publishing
market and of the Bookstalls, and taking a hint from
the Illustrated and the Graphic, &c, which have now
brought Christmas to the beginning of November, we
beg to announce that

" SUNNY DAYS,"

which is the title of our

Extra Special Summer Number for 1883,

will be published

Early in December, 1881.

Immediate application is absolutely necessary in order to
secure Copies.

THE SOLDIER'S BLACK BOOK.

(Not by Sir Garnet Wolseley.)

January.—As matters was a getting warm down Limehouse way
though it was a fair stand-up fight and if a man stands on the edge
of a wharf with his back to the water and gets knocked in and is
smothered in the mud no one has a call to be astonished least of all
himself and those who said as how he was looking at the water and
I shoved him suddenly from behind are liars and know where to
find me I determined to come up to the West End and join the
Army the Guards for choice as they are the crackedest corpse Her
Majesty possesses Which I did.

February.—I have found a real good lot of old pals in the Guards
more especially Tommy Skelton who used to be described in the
daily papers as " the Terror of the Neighbourhood " till he took to
soldiering and a dirty little scrub of a newspaper man who sat in a
box in the court all by himself and reported my cases villainously
and with much malice took upon himself to apply the egregous
term to me till I met him outside one day and he was in the hospital
for three. months and we are having great larks together There
was a Irishwoman with a basket of oranges and because one night
she wouldnt give us any for nothing we upset the whole lot and her
too and she like the senseless nation to which she belongs must go
and fall on a curb and break her ribs and Lord didnt we step it!

March.—How the Aristocracy pay their servants is a disgrace to
the order and should be treated of severely by the Press. There
was Mary Jane a nice little girl who lived in Eaton Square and I
only borrowed a half-crown off her on the Monday and eighteen-
pence on the Wednesday and ninepence on the Friday hadnt enough
to pay for a pot of cooper on Saturday. I never meant to hurt the
girl and she ought to have dodged the pewter and then the Sergeant
says I have a bad character in the regiment instead of yelping up
for me like one soldier for another. Eancy a Sergeant of Police
saying that one of his men in trouble had got a bad character !

4-prih—Hank beds is a disgrace to a civilised country.

May.—Such a lark ! Mary Jane had apologised and having two
sovereigns about her I accepted her apologies magnificently and me

and Tommy Skelton and two more as proper good fellows as ever I
met and would as soon think of breaking a plate-glass window in a
house when the landlord was uncivil as of looking through it went
to the theatre and added to the enjoyment of the audience by our
remarks on the piece and we made one girl who had never been on
the stage before so they said cry so natural that it was like life.
And as we were being skimmed across the street a covey, an old man
with white hairs remarked " soldiers again" as was his last remark
till the toothmonger has replaced the seven or eight teeth which
Tommy Skelton knocked down his throat where he could keep them
more safe and out of the way of draughts as Tommy said and so all
laughed. Except the old gentleman.

June.—A truncheon is a handy weapon when you can get at it but
give me the buckle end of a belt and to see those two Policemen being
carried away on two stretchers was as good as free beer for a
month.

July.—Those who said we was drunk tell lies for we were four of
us and we had had two pots at the George and two pots at the Pose
and Crown and a quartern of gin at the Pig and Thistle and another
quartern at the Match-Box and a cove at the Cheddar Cheese had
stood us two glasses of rum each and then we tossed three times for
quarterns at the Spotted Cow and then they wouldn't let us into a
music hall They was as near losing their licence for that insult to
the Queen's uniform as be blowed for we knocked over the check
taker in his box and we bashed three waiters and a door keeper and
the proprietor looked on life with one eye for a fortnight and two
policemen went lame through running their shins against boots and
the shoddy stuff of which the force's helmets is.made was shown by
there being no less than seven of them broken.

August, September, and October.—What I have said before about
plank beds I now repeats though with three times the emphasis.

November.—It has done my heart good to read how the proprietors
of music halls was pitched into by the Middlesex Magistrates for
not hallowing soldiers in uniforms into their halls for if I had been
admitted. I shouldn't have been away for three months The Chap-
lain said that if we carried on like winking or words to that effect
the Queen's uniform would never be respected He be blowed.

VOL. IXXXI.

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