Punch (88.1885)

142

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAEIYAEI. [March 21, 1885.

MRS. LYON HUNTER AT HOME.

Tommy Hunter (who ought to be in bed—to Ms Friend, ditto). “ I say—let’s

Change all the Numbers!” \_Thcy do it!

H.M.S. “STAGNATION.”

Admiralty Duet.

Sung Nightly, with the greatest enthusiasm, by the present
First Lord and his Chief Secretary.

Do ye want to know what’s a first-class craft
For a home or a foreign station ?

Why then, come give a look, Mates, fore and aft,

At Her Majesty’s Ship Stagnation.

Every inch of her hull’s our own design :

Her plates are as thick as a wafer;

While her belt, just down to the water-line,

Makes her cheaper, my Mates,—and safer!

Then her bow and stern are planned with a skill
That should rouse an enemy’s wonder;

For as soon as they ’re hit they ’ll quietly fill,

Come off in a lump, and go under.

No matter :—the moment peril she spots,

She can heap on her coals in plenty.

And make, at high pressure, her thirteen knots,

While the foe that’s in chase makes twenty.

And if through her boilers a shell goes clean,

And she’s forced to offer resistance,

She ’ll run out her guns,—when the fact she ’ll glean
That they won’t carry half the distance.

What ’s the odds ? Old-fashioned, useless, condemned
On inquiry, searching, judicial,

Let them burst! Why not P Don’t they serve their friend,
The permanent Woolwich Official 1

“ With ships and with guns,—not as these, of yore
Did Nelson make all Europe caper ? ”

That’s true ; and these here, by which we set store,
Exist only yet, Mates— on paper !

But contracts are placed ; and, fifty years hence,

If work goes on fairishly steady,

Should ten be required for sudden defence,

It’s possible one may be ready !

And she ’ll be, my Mates, quite a first-class craft,

And a credit to this here nation;

So let the salt breezes three stout cheers waft
For “ Her Majesty’s Ship Stagnation ! ”

PUBLIC GRIEVANCES.

[By Our Own Inspector.)

No. TIL— Music, that hath no charms.

Perhaps the mo3t surprising fact that I have learnt during my
three months’ experiences of the grievances under which the Public
labour in the Metropolis, is, that one of the most irritating, if not
maddening, of them is caused by a superabundance in quantity, or
a feebleness in quality, or an enforced endurance, of the beautiful
art of Music. From almost every condition of life, the cry is the
same, “ Save, oh save us from this awful infliction ! ” To mo3t of the
other grievances of life the weary soul seems to become somewhat
reconciled by constant iteration, but in this particular instance the
increase of torture seems to grow by what it feeds on.

I subjoin a few selected specimens :—

Sir,—1 read your reports with much interest, hut smile bitterly at
what vour correspondents consider grievances when compared to
mine. " I am a man of quiet and regular habits, somewhat addicted
to study, and an occasional contributor to some of our scientific
periodicals. Ten years ago I bought myself a house, which, I venture
to say, is as perfect a specimen of a single gentleman’s residence as
can be found anywhere. My next-door neighbour, for all that time,
was a very old friend, with similar tastes to my own, and, our houses
being semi-detached, we were enabled to live in a perfect rapture of
repose. My poor friend passed to his peaceful rest six months ago,
and his house was almost immediately taken possession of by a
large, a robust, a gushing, musical family. What I have had to
endure since then I can never fully describe. The three sitting-
rooms have each an instrument of torture in the shape of a Piano
Forte, in all three eases I should say a Forte rather than a Piano—
and one or other is always thundering out some fearful specimen of
what is called the Music of the Future—oh! would it were !—some-
thing chaotic, without form and void, and apparently without end,
for I hear the heavy fat fingers pounding away from an early hour of
the morning, when what I believe is called “practice” begins, till

quite a late hour at night, by which time some two or three brother
or sister lunatics have dropped in to join in the merciless infliction
on their half-maddened neighbour. Then begin the Glees that
bring no glee to me, the Part Songs with all parts had alike, and
Choruses that seem to shake the very thin walls of my sober dwelling,
till I rush to my lonely couch to try to find in sleep that peace denied
to me in my waking hours. C. P. B.

SiRj—I umbly begs pardon if I am. thort for to be intruding, but,
as we all knows as Waiters rushes in where Pleacemen fears to tread,
so posserbly, wot many of our Paytrons thinks as great a greevance
as we does, none on ’em has the pluck for to menshun. I eludes to
the singing at our grand City Bankwets. One would natrally fancy
that arter having dewoured a jolly good gratooitus dinner, with
nothing to pay, excep the Waiters, and drunk as much fine old gine-
rous Wine as prudence dicktates, sumtimes jest a leetle more, and
on the same liberal terms, that, as a kind of indoor releaf to the
hawful speeches—as seems a sort of purgatory to go thro’ as neces-
sary for to condone the hoffence of having so artily injoyed oneself—
that the Songs, and setterer, as was sung, would be of a nice cheerful
karacter, such as would raze your sperrits and send you home smilin
and appy. But what do we find, or rayther, what do we hear ?
Why, the werry saddest, and meloncollyest, and art-breakingest
songs as can possibly he found outside a lunatick Asylum, such as
“ The children a dying in the garden,” and “ the Hash Grove,”
where sumboddy’s Hashes is laid, and “ the lost Cord,” as will never
he found ’till we goes to Evans’s, and “ the 3 Fishmongers ” as goes
to the West End and. gits drownded, and the young woman as says
as it’s all along of her Mother as she married the wrong man, and
“ the Hart bowed down,” poor thing ! and such like gloomy drawlin
dismal things, ’till the Company al) looks as meloncolly as if they’d
got a Bill cuming dew to-morrow, and me and the other Gents in
atendance is obligated to take 2 or 3 hextra glasses of summut strong
jest to keep up our Sperrits. Brown says as the Chairmen won’t
allow no cheerful songs, coz the contrast to the speeches wood he too
great. But that’s jest like Brown. Be that as it may, all I can say
is as it spiles the whole baking, and the gests fleas away, as if they
was took suddenly hill, in the middle of everything, leaving the