Punch (99.1890)

ss PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [August so, 1890.

OUR YOTT1NG YORICK.

Oh dear! oh dear! What perils I have been through! You '11
see me again shortly; but there have been momentums in my career
when I said to myself, " Shall I ever aller out of this alive 1" I
escaped the Petersburg police ; they punched out your Cartoon, and
all the lines about the Czar and the Jews; that's why I was so
persecuted, and why I was watched. I wish to Heaven you wouldn't
have Cartoons about Czars and Jews just when I'm at Peterborough,
I mean Petersburg; same name, different place. But there, that's
all over now, and jamais will I go and put myself within the clutches
•^^J^SSS?**^ of the Russian Bear again. The midnight sun must do without me in
future. I send you a sketch I made of a gargle—I think that's the
name—on a church-door in Lapland. Isn't it really droll ? You're
one touch of n'ay^e . always bothering me for something droll, and now you've gotit. Then,

Mr. Punch, riding a reindeer at half-a- crown an hour. Then here are
the little Lapps offering our sailors a lap of liquor; and I said to
myself, " One touch of Nature," which struck me as just the very
motto for the picture. I roared with laughter at it. '' This '11 do
for 'em at home," I said, and so here it is. And look at the
" Lapps of Luxury " ! You know that " Lap of Luxury " is a pro-
verbial phrase; and, as you told me to make some comic sketches
of the manners and customs of the country, why, I've done so ; and,
if they ain't funny, I don't know what humour is. Voild !

But you really must not expect me to grimace and buffoon.
You must take me seriatim or not at all. I can't stand on my
• head, to sketch. I can't do it. I nearly did do it, though,
for when I had my sketching-book in my hand on board, the
spanker-boom, or some such thing, came over suddenly and hit me
such a whack on the head, that for two minutes I lay insensible, and
i thought I should never become sensible again. Eightly is it called
i " spanker-boom,"—that is if it is called so, or some name very like
i it,—for I never got such a whack on the head in all my life before.
' I hear the Booming still in my ears.

You can't expect a fellow to be funny, however funny he may feel
(and I did feel uncommonly funny, you may take your oath!), under
such circumstances. However, as the song says, " Home once more,"
and many a yarn shall I have to tell when I gather myself round the
fireside, pipe all hands for grog, and sing you an old Norse song with
real humour in it—though I dare say you'll say you don't see it—
YOTT1NG JOTTINGS. and so no more d present from yours seasickly (I am quite well, but I

mean I'm sick of the sea), Flotsam, Y.A.