Punch (102.1892)

94 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI [February 20, 1892.

AN INCOMPLETE BIRTHDAY PRESENT.

Ethel. "What's the matter, Mamma?"

Mamma. "Ethel, there are your new Golf things just come, that I

ordered for you from EdINBORO, and—isn't it provoking?—they've
actually forgotten THE LlNKS ! "

IN THE SEAT OF WISDOM.

At a meeting of the Drury Lane Lodge of Freemasons,
said the Daily Telegraph, "with all due solemnity was
Mr. S. B. Bancroft installed in the Chair of King
Solomon." This, whether an easy chair or not, ought
to be the seat of wisdom. Poor Solomon, the very much
married man, was not, however, particularly wise in his
latter days, but, of course, this chair was the one used by
the Great Grand Master Mason before it was taken from
under him, and he fell so heavily, " never to rise again."
How fortunate for the Drury Lane Masons to have
obtained this chair of Solomon's. No doubt it was one
of his wise descendants, of whom there are not a few in
the neighbourhood of Drury Lane? who consented to part
with this treasure to the Masonic Lodgers. So here's
King Solomon Busy Bancroft's good health! " Point,
left, right! One, two, three ! " {They drink.)

A Ouery by "Pen."—There was a " Pickwick Exam."
invented by Calverley the Inimitable. Why not a
"Pendennis" or " Vanity Fair " Exam. ? Apropos, I
would just ask one question of the Thackerayan student,
and it is this :—There was one Becky whom everybody
knows, but there was another Becky as good, as kind, as
sympathetic, and as simple, as the first Becky was bad,
cruel, selfish, and cunning. Where is Becky the Second
to be found in W. M. Thackeray's Works ?

Her Note and Query.—Mrs. R. was listening to a
ghost-story. "After all," observed her nephew, "the
question is, is it true ? True, or not true ' there's the
rub!'" "Ah! 'there's the rub!'" repeated our old
friend, meditatively. "I wonder if that expression is
the origin of the proverb, ' Truth is stranger ^than
Friction P'" _

Local Colour.—" 1 should like to give all my creditors
a dinner," quoth the jovial and hospitable Owen Orl-
round. "Where shall I have it?" "AVell," replied
his old friend Joe Kosus, "have it at Duns Table."

City Men.—" Hope springs eternal," and the motto for
a probable Lord Mayor in the not very dim and distant
future must be " Knill desperandum."

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

Professor Hubert Herkomer has " dried his impressions," and
griven tbem to the public in a handsome volume brought out by
Macmillan & Co. It is all interesting even to a non-artistic laic,
for there is much " dry point " of general application in the Profes-
sor's lectures. Yet, amid all his learning and his light-hearted
style, there is occasionally a strain of melancholy, as when he pic-
tures himself to us as " etching and scratching on a bed of burr."
Painful, very; likewise Dantesque,—infernally Dantesque. But
there is another and a more cheerful view which the Baron prefers
to take, and that is, the word-picture which the Professor gives us
of his little room in his Bavarian home, where he says, " Under
the seat by the table are my bottles —ah I quite Rabelaisian
this!—"with the mordants, and my dishes for the plates." Isn't
this rare! "I should add, there is a stove near the door." 0
Sybarite! Doesn't this suggest the notion of a delightful little
dinner d deux! With "the mordants,"—which is, of course, a
generic name for sauces of varied piquancy,—and with his
'dishes" artistically prepared and set before "the plates," as in
due order they should be, he is as correct as he is original. A true
bon vivant. The Baron highly commends the book, which only for
the rare etchings it contains, is well worth the attention of every
amateur of Art, and that he, the Baron, may, one of these days,
dine with him, the Professor, is the sincere wish of his truly, and
everybody else's truly, TnE Baron de Book-Worms.

" Stuff and (no) Nonsense ! "—" Begorra, 'tis an ill wind that
blows nobody any good," said The 0'Gorman Dizer, when he heard
that on account of the Influenza there was a Papal dispensation from
fasting and abstinence throughout the United Kingdom.

Dogs and Cats—(Correspondence.)—Sir,—A recent
letter to the Spectator mentions the case of a man who
"barked, like a dog in his sleep." The writer would like
to know if anyone has ever had a similar experience.
Well, Sir, I knew a whole family of Barkers, but I
never heard them bark. I knew three Catts, sisters,
who kept a shop, and came from Cheshire; _ yet they were very
serious persons, and never grinned. Since this experience I have
doubted the simile of the Cheshire specimen of the feline race being
founded on fact.—Yours, &c, Cato.

LEGAL IMPROVEMENTS.

The Chancery Judges will be expected to take the Infant
Suitors out for an Airing in the Park. N.B.—After 4 p.m.