Punch: Punch (89.1885)

95

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[August 22, 1885.

SONG OF A SLOW MOVEMENT

[By a Suburban Citizen.)

S,

My omnibus ere I can cheek,
I dash, at hazard, o'er and o'er.

It suits the classes who can pay
£ Cab-hire, to have—I envy not
^ The millionnaires their happier
lot—

A cab at elbow all their way.

waiting for my
'bus, I stand,
About five-thirty,
frequent, fast,_
The vehicles whirl
westward, past
The southern kerb-
stone of the
Strand.

In matting-basket
borne, I fetch
Down home, per-
chance, a bit of
fish,

And serve, mean-
while, againstmy
wish,

Some lively limner
for a sketch.

A 'bus all red and
gold comes on!
Mine likewise
bears those co-
lours bright.
Cab following cab
impedes my
sight—

I fail to read—the
'bus is gone!

'Twixt lazy craw-
lers, and before
The heads of
horses, risking
wreck,

But let blue Robert intervene.
So far as is in fairness meet,
And bid the Crawlers on his
beat

Crawl on with gangways clear
between.

CAEDSTEPS JOTTINGS.

De Mortuis.

The Cardsteps Chronicle was very badly_ in want of a smart
Reporter when young Style appeared in the littletown. Cardsteps
is not a town wherein much interest is taken in anything ; all
England rang with the massacre of Berber before we learnt the news,
ana when it arrived there were so few of us aware of the locality of
Berber, that it faded into nothing before the bellman's announcement
of the discovery of a purse on the sands the previous evening.

But even in Cardsteps it was thought that the Chronicle was
behind the times. Garden, who was Editor, Reporter, and Adver-
tising Canvasser, was universally allowed to be brilliant, but
eccentric. Strangers might ask in vain for proofs of the former, but
as a sign of his eccentricity he could be pointed out sound asleep
under alcoholic influence on a bench on the parade six afternoons of
the week. On the Sunday he remained in bed all day, exposing him-
self thereby to the awful penalties of an excommunication, that is if
a certain Norfolk Parson were his rector. Then the landlord of the
"Gunboat" stopped his credit, alleging that his account had run quite
long enough. Unluckily, he took this step on a publishing day, and.
Garden, smarting under his wrongs, and suffering from an unquench-
able thirst, denounced the " Gunboat" as the home of smugglers,
and spoke of the landlord as being the most dangerous foe the Coast
Guard had to contend with.

It was a spirited article, and sent the journal up no less than ten
copies, but if it hadn't been for the proprietor promptly ordering
three dozen bottles of soda-water, a demand which for a while utterly
paralysed the resources of the "Gunboat," an action for libel could
not have been avoided.

The climax came when the grocer's daughter was married to a
lawyer from London. Everybody put on their best clothes, and
attended the ceremony; everybody yearned to see their names in
print as having been present at the smartest wedding known for
years; and with this aim everybody treated Garden with such

liberal cordiality that he fell that night into the hands of an
alien policeman, and was ensconced in the lock-up, when he should
have been at his desk. The paper appeared without a word as to
the marriage. Public opinion then unmistakably said that Garden
must go. He went, and. a complimentary banquet was given to him
as a fellow-townsman, and a man of letters. The evening ended
with four fights, and to this day the purveyor of the feast does not
know whom to sue for the meal.

Style drifted into Cardsteps at the very nick of time. The Mayor
of the adjacent town of Tugsdom was just dead, and Style, in a
humble way, had been a personal friend of the deceased official, and
was necessarily well qualified to write his obituary. Moreover, his
coat was singularly shiny, his linen was particularly frayed; and
although his boots were scarcely calculated tiD keep the water out, it
was astonishing, on a wet day, what a quantity they retained.

It was with a light heart that the proprietor left his young recruit
to write a two-column article on the late Mayor, and to bring out
the current number of the Cardsteps Chronicle. He was less cheer-
ful when he read his own paper the next morning. Dubiousness
changed to positive certainty, when he encountered his subscribers ;
and when the Mayor's relatives—the deceased was a wine-and-spirit
merchant, in a large way of business, and always good for half a
column a week—sent over a letter brimful of rage, withdrawing the
firm's advertisement for ever, absolute wrath seized the proprietor,
and he sent for his subordinate. Style apologetically said that what
he had written was entirely from his personal knowledge.

" But you have said that ' to shock his personal vanity it was only
necessary to allude to the wart on the left side of his nose.' "
" Perfectly true ; it used to make him mad."

" But you oughtn't to have said so. And then you remark 'his
ostentatious liberality in public was only equalled by his private
niggardliness.' "

" That's also true; he used to pretty nearly starve his family and
servants.'"

" But such things should never be printed. "What right have you
to state that' though the ostensible cause of death is given as bron-
chitis, it is an undoubted fact that it was in the main due to excessive
consumption of his own goods' " ?

"What right? The doctor told me so himself. It is eighteen
months since he said the old fool was drinking himself to death."

"Now, once and for all understand me, or else you'll follow
Garden. Attack the living as much as you like, when they deserve
it, when they don't agree with our views, or don't advertise in our
paper. But remember De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Style accordingly set to work on the de mortuis line, and his
eulogy on the village idiot would lhave been excessively fulsome if
applied to a Burns or a Bykon. And he did not scruple to attack
the living. His description of his proprietor's foremost opponent on
the Local Board as " a verminiferous black-beetle wriggling on the
point of a pin," was considered a masterpiece of delicate humour by
all save the gentleman of whom it was written, who, meeting the
proprietor of the Chronicle at the Railway Station, first knocked his
hat over his eyes, and then kicked him down the steps with such
vigour that he was in bed for three weeks. During this period Style
had full control over the paper, and upheld his master's views with
such loyal zeal, that on every publication day little crowds used to
waylay the doctor, and shake thick sticks with a scornful air when
they gathered that his patient would not be yet out and about.

But it was kindness that caused Style's downfall. The city which
domineered over this part of the country, the City of St. Precincts,
had, in addition to one of the noblest cathedrals in England, an
elegant and commodious county gaol. Great had been the excite-
ment, even the pulse of Cardsteps had fully throbbed, over a local
murder, and when the doer of the deed had been sentenced to be
hanged, great was the rivalry, and fierce the competition to obtain a
view of the execution. By some means the Chronicle got a ticket,
and Style naturally undertook the task of reporting the scene. His
article was really admirable. His description of the gloomy fastness,
of the doomed man's walk to the scaffold, of his frightened eyes, of
his blanched face, was a model of word-painting.

Ably, too, had Style retold the story of the murder; the mad-
dened ruffian's beating his wife's head in with the poker, his holding
his infant baby on the fire, his cutting his three elder children's
throats from ear to ear, and his smothering his aged mother, were all
gems of crime-pictures. And then Style concluded—"But let us
throw no stone at the man who this morning expiated for his crime
with his life on the scaffold. Those who knew him best will long
miss his hearty genial ways, his honest ringing laugh. An admirable
son, a devoted husband, and a loving father has passed away from
us. Let us remember his best qualities, and forget his little faults
and weaknesses. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.'"

That brought the proprietor from his bed, and sent Style out of
the county. We hea,r nothing positive of him now at Cardsteps, but
it is rnmoured that he is either attached to the poetry staff of a great
tooth-powder-making firm, or engaged on making the fortune of a
London newspaper.

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by a Stamped and Directed Envelope or Cover. Copie3 of MS. should be kept by the Senders.