Punch: Punch (97.1889)

208

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[November 2, 1889.

UNTILED: OR THE MODERN ASMODEUS.

“ Tres volontiers,” repartit le demon.

IX.

“Are all scenes sombre in this
Titan town ? ”

I asked, as noiselessly we flitted
down,

My heart oppressed with pity.

‘ ‘ Nay, ” smiled my guide. ‘ ‘ There
is, indeed, no dearth
Of garish glitter and metallic mirth
In the night-curtained city.”

“You mock,” I murmured. “ ’Tis
your metier. I,

For all these scenes of sordid misery
And hollow, heartless glitter,

Have no sardonic smiles, no cynic
quips

Such as so lightly leave your sha-
dowy lips,

0 Spirit keen and hitter ! ”

“ Nay,” said the Shade, “ I seek but truth—
like you;

And if, perchance, I hold a passe-partout
To human hearts and cupboards,

I scoff not at their hidden skeletons,

And some I know—a few—of spectral bones
As bare as—Mother Hubbard’s.”

It was a wet and murky winter night,

Yet through the fog and rain we held our
Unwearied and unwetted. [flight,
“This style of travelling,” I said, “is
strange,

Though pleasant. For such privilege to range,
To what am I indebted ?

‘ ‘ How do you manage it ? Can it be true
That you’re a Brother—a Mahatma?”
“Pooh!”

Cried he, “ don’t be a noddy.

You have been reading Esoteric rot ?

Well, be assured, good friend, that I do not
Possess an Astral Body.

“ ’Tis my one secret ; pray why should you
seek

To fathom it ? That intellect is weak

Which dares not face some mystery.
With mystery the universe is rife,

It forms the major part of human life,

Fills more than half of history.”

His crackling mirth appeared infectious.
“Lo!”

I laughed, “the faces lit with lambent glow
Gathered round yonder table.

It looks like some strange incantation scene,
Some vision of weird gloom and spectral
sheen

From the wild world of fable.”

Grave faces, full of wide-mouthed wonder,
eyes

Dilated in hysteric ecstasies,

White fingers, slender, tremulous ;
Rapt souls in curious raiment, spirits dense,
Enamoured of the charms of the Intense,

Of Mystic Muddle emulous.

And two keen vulpine visages, elate
With power, the strange symposium dom-
inate.

“Is it,” I cried, “ infernal,

Or merely foolish, all this mummery mad,

Its Mumbo Jumbo that fat fox-faced cad,
Wrought amidst shades nocturnal ?

“What is’t they do? A deed without a
name ? ”

“Nay,” scoffed the Shade, “you misdirect
your blame.

Default of terminology
Is not the modern necromancer’s lack ;

In jargon modish Magic, White or Black,
Beats orthodox theology.

“ Yous aimez les tableaux changeans :

je veux vous contenter.”
Le Liable Boiteux.

“What do they, this wolf-shepherded tame
flock

Of Panurge sheep ? Well nothing much to
shock

The conscience of Society.

They add, these callow prophets oiled and
curled,

To the uncounted Credos of the world
One other new variety.

‘ ‘ A sceptic age must multiply its creeds;

’Tis therefore Neo-Nonsense so succeeds !

A Paradox ? Precisely !

In paradox the boudoir Pyrrho finds
The piquant pabulum of muddled minds.

It flavours fog so nicely !

‘ ‘ These quidnuncs, under guidance of a
quack

Founding a new religion ? Earth harks back,
In spite of civilisation,

To the brute epoch of the Medicine Man.

Was any cant-scared squaw more credulous
than

That girl of birth, wealth, station ?

“Mark her tranced awe, as the soft-glosing
knave,

With gleaming eye, and accents blandly
grave,

Mouths out his mystic platitudes.
Observe the quaint-robed, fashionable dames
Hanging upon his maze of nebulous names,

In half erotic attitudes!

“ Effluxion—esoteric—ministrant,—
Absorption—Ego,—all the mystic cant,

_ And all the misty cackle,

With which the spiritual Seingalts strive
Their dupes’ credulity to keep alive,

Their common-sense to shackle.

‘ ‘ That girl has eyes in which there lurks the
gleam

Of soul-delirium ; her hysteric dream
May know a woeful waking.

A sort of pious orgie surfeits now
Her spirit, in a semi-sensuous slough
Its morbid thirst she’s slaking.

“ And what of that blind ecstasy’s sure goal ?
Heart-soilure, an asylum ! She hath soul.

As for the modish midgets,

The fashionable fribbles,—they at best
Aim to give social boredom some new zest.
Frenzy allays the fidgets.

“ This, friend, is Culture’s piety. Now look! ”
—I saw a face above a well-thumbed book
In solemn rapture bending ;

A radiant face that scarce the head-gear
quaint

Could spoil; ’twas half coquette, and half
seemed saint,

There’s charm in that stran ge blending.

A charm equivocal, obscure. “ It won
The interest of suburban shopdom’s son
In a so subtle manner

That he, the Cockney masher, blatant, vain,
Enrolled himself in the enthusiast train
That bore the flaming banner.”

So said the Shadow. “Could you plumb her
thought,

With what wild blend of passions were it
fraught?

Her life was grey, flat, dreary,

Till the wild ecstasy of faith inspired
An eager heart, of sluggish pulses tired,

Of wan monotony weary.

“And now? One hand her sect’s wild
hymnal clasps,

The other holds his portrait. Ennui gasps
For keen excitement ever,

Whether the thrall of empty boredom be
Garbed in the low-born zealot’s livery,

Or quaintly clad, and clever.

“ The end of the queer cants that Caste
enjoys ?

Of the coarse orgies of blind zeal and noise
That move the mob so madly ?

Not so dissimilar, good friend, perchance ;
The Agapemone and the Bacchic Dance
Both finished rather badly.

{To be continued.')

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

Five Months' Fine Weather (Sampson
Low) suggests a brewery to the mind familiar
with Johnsonese. It promises in the climatic
department “potential riches beyond the
dreams of avarice.” Of course it was not
in England that Mrs. E. H. Caubtttt found
this treasure. She crossed the Atlantic,
dashed through Canada to Vancouver, thence
by the Western States to Mexico, and home
by New Orleans and New York. A capitally
devised trip, the every-day incidents of
which are told in this charmingly got-up
volume in a style that makes the journey
almost as interesting to the reader as it was
to the voyageurs. With such opportunities
of seeing interesting places in fine weather,
we regret to observe that contentment was
not universal with the little party. On page
31 it is written of an hotel in Chicago : “The
only place where drink is sold is the bar of
the hotel. On the whole, Edward was rather
disappointed.” Now why should Edward, on
making this discovery, have been plunged in
melancholy ? There are obvious objections
to having drink sold all over a well-ordered
hotel. Edward might, we presume, have
had a cocktail specially conveyed to his room.
If not, he should have manfully borne up
against the trial. The true secret of suc-
cessful travelling is to make the best of
everything, as Mrs. Carbutt does, with the
added gift that she can pleasantly chat about
its episodes.

Mr. Far jeon’s shillingsworth, The Blood-
White Rose, can be strongly recommended
for the hour before dressing-time for dinner.
Ingenious story; quite one of the Skipper
Series; you can hop on from point to point
deeply interested until you come to the finish.
It is dedicated to Mr. J. L. Toole, which is
quite appropriate, seeing that the story is of
a most sensational and melodramatic charac-
ter. Mr. Farjeon would probably dedicate
a light, airy, humorous work to Mr. Henry
Irving.

John Strange Winter, in Buttons (F. V.
White & Co.)—(sounds as if he were a
page-boy, doesn’t it? Doubtless he is a
boy of a good many pages)—is by no means
“the Winter of our discontent.” On the
contrary, though the plot is simple, the
story is charmingly told. While many of