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PUNCH,

VOL. 101.

October 10, 1891.

ATROPOS AND THE ANTHROPOIDS.

CHARITY'S WORD OF COMMAND.--"Present alms!"

OYSTERS FOR EVER!

He was a gentle Fishmonger, and WILLIAMSON his name, No doubt you may have heard before his philanthropic game. The lack of oysters pained him much, for how could people royster And happy be in r-less months without the luscious oyster?

A look of pain was in his face, a pucker on his brow, Long time he pondered very hard to try and find out how. At last he cried, "Eureka! from France I'll go and bring them, And into beds I've got at home without a murmur fling them."

Then they came across the Channel, and he very sweetly said, "So glad to see you looking well, would you like to see your bed? For there, my little dears, you stay; you'll one day know the reason. I'll rouse you when the month of May makes natives out of season."

The Fishmongers, the Worshipful, sent down a man to see, He wrung his hands and shook his head, and said, "Oh, miseree! It pains me very deeply, and it drives me to distraction, You've done what's wrong, and I shall have to institute an action."

They brought that friendly action, and the clever counsel tried To prove to FAUDELL PHILLIPS that the law was on his side. But the oyster-dealer found the law for him was one too many, So he had to pay the piper--to be quite exact, a penny.

And you who love your oyster in the latter end of May, In June, July, and August, too, will sadly rue the day, For philanthropic folk will find it unremunerative To introduce in summer-time this Franco-English native.

"SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS!"

HIDE AND SEEK.

TEA IN TEN MINUTES.

Ten minutes here! The sun is sinking And longingly we've long been thinking, Of Tea, Tea, fragrant Tea!

Now then, you waiter, stir, awaken! Time's up. I'll hardly save my bacon. Tea, Tea, bring that Tea!

At last! The infusion's rayther dark. But hurry up! Can't stay for ever! One swig! Br-r-r-r! Hang the cunning shark! Will't never cool? Nay, never, never! Tea, Tea, scalding Tea!

THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.

One night last winter I had been dining with GIDLING at his Club; after dinner he proposed that we should go round to his flat for a talk and a smoke. GIDLING, being practical, can make coffee, which is a thing that they cannot do at GIDLING's Club, nor, indeed, at many others. So I consented.

We had climbed painfully to the top of Parkington Chambers, and had just got inside GIDLING's outer door, when we noticed a very marked and curious smell. "There's something wrong about this," remarked GIDLING, severely. I agreed with him, adding, out of a nervous politeness, from which I suffer sometimes, that I rather liked the smell, "Then you're an idiot," said GIDLING, who never suffers from politeness at all. He opened the door of his sitting-room, and then we saw at once what was the matter. The lower part of the chimney was on fire; the fire-place was covered with glowing masses of soot which had fallen. "HANKIN's had another nasty touch of that influenza," remarked GIDLING. HANKIN is GIDLING's servant, and at regular intervals becomes incapacitated for work. HANKIN himself says that it is influenza, and speaks of "another of them relapses;" GIDLING thinks that it is as a rule intoxication. As a matter of fact HANKIN would not be a bad servant if his zeal was distributed over him rather more evenly. It is always either excessive or defective. It comes out in lumps. In neglecting to have the chimney swept HANKIN had shown defect; in the way that he had piled up the fire he had shown excess. In subsequently absenting himself from the flat he had shown a certain amount of wisdom, for GIDLING was rather angry.

"Not but what I can put it all right," said GIDLING. "I'm a practical man. Fire Brigade? I thought you'd suggest a few fire brigades. No, not exactly. I'll show you how to stop a thing of this kind." He went into his bed-room, and returned with the water-jug. An iron ladder from the main staircase led through a trap-door in the roof. GIDLING went up this ladder with the water-jug, while I waited to see the result in the sitting-room, I could hear him walking about on the roof, and I looked out for a deluge of water to descend down the chimney into the fire-place. But no deluge came. Presently GIDLING descended and entered the room with the empty water-jug.

"Did it splash much?" he asked. "No, there was no water came down at all."

"Oh? Then I've emptied this water-jug down the wrong chimney. We'd better clear out of this."

At this juncture HANKIN returned, and GIDLING said a good deal to him. HANKIN was left to put out the fire, and we went back again to the Club. GIDLING seemed rather annoyed with me for laughing about his mistake.

"It's a deuced awkward thing," he said. "That water went down somebody's chimney, and it's put somebody's fire out. That means unpleasantness, you know, if he or she finds out who did it."

"Who live in the flats below yours?" I asked.

"An Art-student and her mother in the flat below mine--they are really most charming people, and I hope to goodness it wasn't their chimney that I poured the water down. I'm on rather friendly terms with them. Then on the first floor there's BUDWELL. He's a conceited affected ape. I only hope it was he who got the benefit of that water-jug. It's rather amusing, you know. BUDWELL's very much in love with Miss VANE , and she loathes him--at least I believe so. Poor beggar!" GIDLING laughed, sarcastically. "Yes, I hope that was BUDWELL's chimney, not the other."

BUDWELL went back to his own flat and brooded over his misfortunes. He had now grown still more angry with GIDLING, which was irrational of him; and he determined to take a still fiercer revenge. Late at night he conveyed the bath-can and several jugs, all full of water, on to the roof. There was no fear of his selecting Mrs. VANE's chimney by mistake this time. One by one he emptied the jugs and the water-can, and then descended to his own flat, fiendishly triumphant, as he thought of the havoc he must have made in GIDLING's fire-place.

But when he got to his own flat, he found that he had emptied all that water down his own chimney.

After that he gave up his revenges, together with his affections and his apartments. But GIDLING tells the story with considerable unction; the facts of it were partly derived from BUDWELL's servant and partly from Miss VANE--with whom GIDLING is beginning to be on more than friendly terms.

INTERNATIONAL NURSERY-TALE CONGRESS.

"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"

"Little Father," we have suffered long, and sorrowed, We the "children" of the wonderful White Tsar, Steadfast patience from staunch loyalty have borrowed, Slaved for Slavdom still in Peace, and died in War; We have borne the yoke of power, and its abuses, We have trusted cells and shackles served their turn; Nay, that e'en the ruthless knout had noble uses; Now we starve--and think--and burn.

"Little Father," is your power then so paternal As in pious proclamation is set forth? If the round earth bears a brand of the infernal, Does the trail of it not taint our native North? Ay, we love it as in truth we've ever loved it. Our devotion, poorly paid, is firm and strong; Have our little pitied miseries not proved it, And our weary tale of wrong?

"Little Father," we are hungering now, neglected, While the foreigner shouts praises in our ports; We are honoured, say your scribes, loved, feared, respected, The proud Frank, we fought for you, your friendship courts. The golden price of it you hug most gladly. Well, that price, what is its destined end and aim? The indulgence of ambitions cherished madly? The pursuit of warrior fame?

Your realm is ever widening, Tsar, and lengthening, Though its peoples--your dear children--prosper not; Railways stretching, boundaries creeping, legions strengthening! And the end, O Tsar, is--where?--the purpose--what? The Afghan, Tartar, Turk feel your advancing, The Persian and the Mongol hear your tread, And an eager watchful eye is eastward glancing Where the Lion lifts his head.

BOUILLABAISSE.

Our THACKERAY in ancient days, Wrote of a very famous dish, And said in stanzas in its praise, 'Twas made of several kinds of fish. A savoury stew it is indeed, And he's "in comfortable case" Who finds before him at his need A smoking dish of Bouillabaisse.

And now folks laud that dish again, And o'er it raise a pretty coil, While one rash man we see with pain, Would dare to make it minus oil. Oh! shade of TERR?, you no doubt Would make once more the "droll grimace," At such a savage, who left out The olive oil, in Bouillabaisse.

"THOUGHT-WAVES." --The Theosophists talk mistily about "the concentration of mind-force on a thought-wave"--which seems only another way of saying that such minds are, at the time, "quite at sea."

MONEY MAKES THE MAN.

"It is entirely your own fault," said the intruder, as he put another silver tea-pot in his bag.

"I don't see that at all," replied the master of the house, moving uneasily in his chair.

"Well, I have not time to argue with you," returned the other, as he held up an enamelled ship of beautiful workmanship. "Dear me, this is really very fine. I have never seen anything like it before! What is it?"

"I got it at a sale in Derbyshire. I fancy it must be something like the old Battersea enamel."

"Very fine! And solid silver, too! Well, in all my experience, and I have been in the profession some twenty years, I have seen nothing like it. Beautiful! Lovely!"

"If you had not tied my hands behind my back," explained the master of the house, "I could show you, by lifting that lid, you would see prettier subjects in the interior of the vessel."

"You certainly tempt me," answered the intruder, "to give you an increased facility in moving. But it is against my rules. I always work in a methodical manner, and one of my regulations is, before I open the safe, I must bind the master of the house hand and foot in an arm-chair. But what were we talking about?"

"You were saying," returned the other, with a sigh, "that it was my own fault that I find myself in this painful, this ruinous position. As a man of education I cannot see how you can advance such a proposition."

"What do you mean?" asked the householder.

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