Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 101 October 10 1891 by Various

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Ebook has 99 lines and 11524 words, and 2 pages

"What do you mean?" asked the householder.

"Why, this, that if you had paid more to the School Board, I would have received a better education, and have never been a housebreaker. As it is, I am only making up the difference between the sum you have paid, and the sum you should have expended."

And the burglar, helping himself to another silver tea-pot, continued his lucrative work.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

"THE MAN FOR THE POST."--Sir JAMES FERGUSSON.

TALK FOR TRAVELLERS.

Mein Herr, will you do us the honour to descend from the railway-carriage? It will be merely a matter of form. We need not disturb those gracious ladies, your wife and daughters.

This is the best way to the Customs. You will notice that we have swept the path that leads to the door.

Certainly, these arm-chairs are for the use of passengers. We have placed them there ourselves, and can recommend them.

Is it asking too great a favour to beg you to lend me the keys of your boxes? A hundred thousand thanks.

Your explanation is absolutely satisfactory. You are bringing these sixteen unopened boxes of cigars home for your grandmother. It is a most proper thing to do, and, under the circumstances, the duty will be remitted.

And these three hundred yards of lace of various makes and ages? An heir-loom! Indeed! Then, of course, the packet must pass duty-free.

As we have found nothing of consequence in this portmanteau of yours, it will be unnecessary to search the nineteen boxes of that gracious lady, your wife. No doubt she has obeyed your instruction not to smuggle. We are absolutely satisfied with your explanations, and are greatly obliged to you for your kindness and condescension.

This is the way to the carriage. We have placed steps before the door, as without a platform it is difficult to ascend.

No, Mein Herr, it is utterly impossible! We are forbidden by the EMPEROR himself to accept a gratuity.

Yes, Madam, it is indeed without charge. Do not tempt us. Instant dismissal is the penalty.

Certainly, Mein Herr, you could get the same politeness before the EMPEROR issued his Imperial instructions.

But then the charge was a thaler!

THE GREAT TWIN BRETHREN.

KEEP WATCH!

Paradoxical portent! Most worthy of rhyme Is this fortunate angler who tried to kill time. Fate made him the offer, and, wisely, he book'd it; He not only killed time, but he caught it,--and "hook'd it."

BOULANGER.

So high he floated, that he seemed to climb; The bladder blown by chance was burst by time. Falsely-earned fame fools bolstered at the urns; The mob which reared the god the idol burns. To cling one moment nigh to power's crest, Then, earthward flung, sink to oblivion's rest Self-sought, 'midst careless acquiescence, seems Strange fate, e'en for a thing of schemes and dreams; But CAESAR's simulacrum, seen by day, Scarce envious CASCA's self would stoop to slay, And mounting mediocrity, once o'erthrown, Need fear--or hope--no dagger save its own.

THE NEW EVANGEL.

"ZOLA on War," intensifies the "Hola!" Of purists who are all for "war on ZOLA!" Well, he whose pen is touched with tints from Tophet, Is the right man to pose as Red War's Prophet!

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

Your obedient servant,

AN A.R. IN THE B. DE B.-W.'s OFFICE."

A STRAIGHT TIP TO CANADIAN "CROSS COVES."

JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE.

TENTH ENTRY.

DICK FIBBINS, my more or less "learned" instructor in practical law, goes out to a good many evening parties, I find. Casually remarks that he "danced three square dances, the other night, with old DAVIS's ugly daughter, the Solor , in Caraway Street." It's DAVIS himself, not the daughter, that is the Solicitor, and, it seems she introduced the gay FIBBINS to her Papa. Hence another brief, a rather complicated one, on some dispute about a mortgage.

On the morning when the case is to come into Court, DICK the Brief-hunter, who has promised to take me there, seems nervous. Yet he is still confident that, if "old PROSER" is the judge, he will "pull the thing off." It will be, apparently, a case of "Pull FIBBINS, pull PROSER."

"Old PROSER," appears to my untutored gaze to be rather a dignified occupant of the Bench. I don't know whether he cherishes any personal or professional animosity against DICK FIBBINS, but directly the latter opens his mouth to begin, PROSER seems inclined to jump down it.

I have no time to consider this interesting point, as FIBBINS is again in difficulties about some precedent that he wants to quote, but which he has forgotten, and turns sharply round on me, saying, in a fierce whisper--

"Where is the case you mention?" suddenly asks the Judge who was staring at me a moment ago. He is now engaged in first looking at my instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that there was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined to probe to the bottom.

"Page?" snaps PROSER.

"Page 184, m'lud. As I was saying, the Court there held that the right to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away--"

This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively sane.

I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of "authorities" I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given ROGERS & Co. my valuable Opinion gratis.

Over the subsequent scene in FIBBINS's Chambers I prefer to draw a veil. It is sufficient to say that I was obliged to leave FIBBINS, and thereafter received a solid half-year's instruction in the Chambers of a learned Counsel who was not a briefless impostor.

I heard afterwards that he had added the story to his fund of legal dining-out anecdotes, and had considerably amplified it. It came out in a shape which made FIBBINS a hero, myself an imbecile of a rather malicious kind, PROSER helplessly cowering under FIBBINS's wealth of arguments, and the other two Judges reduced to admiring silence. I take this opportunity of stating that if anybody "cowered" in Court on that memorable occasion, it was certainly not poor old PROSER.

THE "DISAPPOINTMENT OF DECEMBER."

Behold, I know not anything,-- Except that if I write two Acts in verse, And two in prose, I might do worse Than having a Four Act song to sing.

If I have over-writ, and laid, It may be here, it may be there, The fat too thickly on,--with care To cut it down be not afraid.

But oh, if here and there I seem To have half-said what I should say, Give me the start--I'll fire away, And keep up the poetic steam--

Ay! keep it up in lines that run As glibly from the Laureate's pen, That I shall by my fellow men Be greeted with "That's TENNYSON!"

A MYSTERIOUSLY MASONIC LINE.--"Oh, for a Lodge in some vast wilderness!"

NOTICE.--Rejected Communications or Contributions, whether MS., Printed Matter, Drawings, or Pictures of any description, will in no case be returned, not even when accompanied by a Stamped and Addressed Envelope, Cover, or Wrapper. To this rule there will be no exception.

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