Page images
PDF
EPUB

1

1

[blocks in formation]

[We print portions of the following poem as a curious illustration of how much can be made of very little. To print the work in its entirety would be to swamp the number, as it runs to two hundred and thirty-three verses. On the whole, it is not good; and having morally cut it up, we find ourselves compelled to physically cut it down. Our contributor explains to us that he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. We can assure him that he won't be allowed to lisp in any more of ours, for fear they should not go.-ED.]

DEAR EDITOR-TEDITOR,-You say you want four columns immediately. Here are twelve. Take them. May they make you happier

than they have made me!

"I ask an ap

Is it zo-
Is it conch-

Is it ge-
'lectro bi-
Meteor-

Is it nos-
Or etym-
P'raps its myth-

Is it the

Palæont

Or archæ

ology ?"

You will observe that some of the lines (And so on, through all the ologies—eighty-four more lines.)

are not quite filled up, just finish these for me, and oblige,

Yours everlastingly,

THE STUDENT.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

This in accents loud I shouted
At the youth across the square,
I never doubted

[blocks in formation]

A SELF-TAUGHT SCHOLAR.-Your "Latin without a Master," speaks for itself. It is quite evident there's no mastery in it. For instance, your translation of the Ode to the Joint-Stock Companies, "pursy Co's, oh die! Poor apparatus," is so close as to be almost suffocating. A-GUSH-TA.-Your "Ode to the Moon" is beautiful, but a little faulty in the paltry matter of rhyme. "As you were" does not rhyme with "lunar." Try "ATTWOOD and SPOONER," it may be a little difficult to bring in, but it is perfect as a rhyme.

A GARDENER.-The society is so very discursive that, as you say

(Here, in twenty-seven verses, follows a list of subjects of which our con- |(though we don't think you intended a joke), it is the Aught-icultural tributor was not thinking.)

For of Mexico I'm weary,

Parliament's a thing of nought,

Trains to me are always drearyTrains of passengers or thought.

Society.

J. W.-Your complaint is a just one. The South Kensington authorities ought not to have closed the miniature collection against photography. Your photograph ought to be admitted because it is in a minute-you're taken.

THOMAS BAXTER (FOOTMAN).-We must gratefully decline exclusive

(Here, in nineteen verses, he explains his reasons for not thinking of the BAXTER'S information about fashionable movements. Such tittle subjects enumerated in the preceding twenty-seven.)

Well, as I was sitting idly
On my pleasant window-sill,
Speculating vaguely, widely,
On my aunt's unopened will,

I perceived a silent student

At a window, quite at home,
Stooping more than I thought prudent
Over a Tremendous Tome.

As I watched the youth pursuing
His *
* I exclaimed,

"Well I wonder what you're doing,
And I wonder how you're named!"
P'rhaps to orders you're proceeding,

P'rhaps I've found a lawyer keen-
Caught an Oxford man at Reading-
Possibly your name is GREEN.

(Here, in thirty-five verses, he speculates on the youth's possible prospects, and suggests a variety of names, all or any of which may be his. He then, rather artistically, changes his metre, and bursts into the following impassioned appeal) :—

tattle is not only undignified, but even ridiculous, unless more than strix-ly accurate, and we have no desire to go a 'owler from mere love of contradiction.

Cheering Election Intelligence.

FUN is always glad to applaud and encourage virtue whenever found —even in the higher classes of society.

THE following letter has just been sent to all the tenants under HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON - Strathfieldsaye, June 1, 1865,-Dear Sir, I think it right to explain clearly to you my feelings regarding the exercise of your vote; it is a trust imposed on you for the advantage of the country, and the responsibility of the proper exercise of it rests on yourself alone. It is committed to you-not to me; and I beg you distinctly to understand that no one has my authority for stating that I wish to bias you in favour of any candidate.-I am, dear sir, yours truly, WELLINGTON."

Bravo! May his Grace the Duke find many imitators. To encourage others to follow his example we hereby announce that his Grace will receive every week a copy of FUN gratis, in token of our approval of his conduct.

NAME! NAME!

THE people of Naus have voted against the introduction of gas into the town. What Naas-ty people!

[blocks in formation]

Said a soldier, on the shady side of forty, to a lady, Who was buckling on his burgonet, his breastplate, and his brand, "By my halidom, I'd rather, as a husband and a father,

Stop at home than go crusading in that blessed Holy Land." "Yes, I know as well as you, dear, it's the proper thing to do, dear; And I'm not afraid of fighting (as I think I said before); But it's not without emotion that I contemplate the notion, Of a trip across the channel in a British man-of-war.

"No, it's not at all a question of alarm, but indigestion;

Not the lances of the Paynims, but the passage in the gale, When the awful cry of Steward' from the windward and the leeward,

From a hundred lips arises, when a hundred lips are pale!"

"Yes, I know you're very sickly," said his lady, rather quickly;
"But you'll take a glass of sherris or a little Malvoisie,
When you get as far as Dover, and when once you're half-seas over,
Why you'll find yourself as jolly as you possibly can be."

So her lord and master started, just a trifle chicken-hearted,
And, it may be, just a trifle discontented with his lot;
But whether he got sick, or felt the better for the liquor
That his lady recommended, this deponent sayeth not.

A Cannibal Conundrum.

THE following was picked up in the Strand the other day between Exeter Hall and Bell's Life office. It had evidently been dropped from some one's pocket; but whether it belonged to a missionary attending the meetings at the one locality, or a betting man looking out for the odds at the other, we know not. Nor does it matter-if the missionary's we will hope it belonged to a good man: if the other's, it clearly pertained to a better. We found it, and hasten to lay it before our readers:

"Why is a cannibal exulting after dining off a missionary' wife, like the finest race horse of the present year? "Answer.-Because he's Glad-he-ate-her!"

The original manuscript, with some real Strand mud still adhering to it, as a proof of the truth of our statement as to where we found the above, may be seen at our office. We make this announcement because we should be sorry to have it thought that the conundrum was

our own.

THE RIGHT PLACE FOR A CHOIR.-The Cathedral of Rheims.

OUR OWN ESOP.

[graphic]

FABLE 1.-THE FOX AND THE GRAPES.

AN artless fox went out for a morning walk, and, casting up his fine eyes quite promiscuous-like, beheld a bunch of grapes hanging just above his innocent little head. He imprudently ate several, but was very soon attacked by a most violent fit of indisposition. "I now begin to perceive," said he, "that I have done something rash. However, I will try to console myself by supposing that those grapes were not at all sour."

MORAL.-Never touch early fruit unless you are quite positive that you have a lively imagination.

FABLE 2.-THE DOG AND THE SHADOW.

A DOG was crossing a wooden bridge, with a slightly underdone mutton-chop in his mouth, when he beheld his reflection considerably magnified in the stream beneath. A common dog might have dropped the solid meat with a vague notion of getting the shadow into his possession; but this was not a common dog, or I should never have taken the trouble to write a fable about him. "Ah," said he, "this is evidently an optical illusion, which will be explained some day by PROFESSOR PEPPER at the Royal Polytechnic Institution. In the meantime, it is clear that although yonder chop is larger than mine, yonder dog is also larger, and consequently stronger, than I am; therefore, it would be imprudent in me to stand the chances of a fight." And he went over and calmly ate his chop upon the other side.

MORAL.-Cultivate the Polytechnic, and never strike a person who is bigger than yourself.

FABLE 3.-THE FOX AND THE CROW.

A CROW, perched on an arbutus cactiflora, held a Dutch cheese in his beak. To him enter a fox, unsuspecting as all foxes are wont to be. "Would you like a piece of cheese?" inquired the crow. "Thank you, not at present," replied the fox. "The fact is, I have been reading a very pretty pamphlet by a party called BANTING, Who doesn't think much of Dutch cheese. Besides, to tell you the truth, I haven't dined yet." "Well, don't go about saying that I never asked you," returned the crow, whose sensitive nature was rather wounded by rejection.

MORAL.-There are some people in the world who prefer Stilton cheese to Dutch. To such people this fable is not addressed, because it would only be thrown away upon them.

HORACE IN LONDON.

BOOK III. ODE IX. "DONEC GRATUS," &c. HE.-I told you I loved you so dearly,

My life was all couleur de rose; But now you're behaving so queerly, That what I shall do, goodness knows. SHE.-Ah, yes, then you cared for me only, Out riding, at picnic, or ball; But now if I'm ever so lonely You never come near me at all. HE.-I met little LETTY at Brighton,

She sings like an angel, I swear; She enters the room seems to lighten, And, oh, how she does her back hair! SHE.-Ah, well! we at Scarb'ro were staying, Where Cousin FRED gave me this fan, He quotes from Toи MOORE-I was saying I thought him a duck of a man! HE.-Good-bye, dear; you know who my pet is; I meet you to-night-don't be hard; Your singing's far better than LETTY'S; You'll keep me a place on your card. SHE.-Oh, yes! you can't guess what I suffer, You knew that my heart's ever true; My cousin's what men call a "duffer; My darling! there's no one like you

Nothing like Leather.

A FIRM of cloth manufacturers is advertising a new tweed as being "a beautiful cuir brown." Those who don't know the difference between tweed (le), dit in French, and English tweed, 'll dumbfoundered be by this rum colour.

HAIRYBELLA.

A MYSTERY.
CHAPTER I.

A

Ir was that which drove me to guilt and misery. What is that? demonstrative pronoun. But I never was demonstrative. Gloom was my native element.

But I loved! Oh! HAIRYBELLA-how-how could you-yet stay, I must not yet reveal that mystery. Light as the footstep of the young gazelle, or the Zephyr coat at ten-and-six, were the curls of my adored one. And the rest of her features were in proportion; for the ratio of her eyes to her nose-but hush! I am rambling. This must not be.

CHAPTER II.

I WANDERED by the brookside, I wandered by the mill. Not that there is a brook with a side or a mill for anything a side in the immediate neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, but the poet has said so and he is ever instinctively right.

I waited for her. She did not come.

CHAPTER III.

So I went.

TOPSY-TURVY PAPERS.

I. THE LAST OF THE WHITE MEN.

BY AN EARLY MOHICAN.

AS CHINGACHGOOK, the 154th Emperor of North America, pushed his way through the thick umbrage of the forest glade that led to Lake Maizena, a scene of marvellous loveliness was outspread before him. On all sides nothing met his eye save the glassy surface of the liquid lake, the cloud-streaked sky of heaven, and the sunlit solemnity of the eternal woods. But these were a good deal! Scarcely could he see an opening into the dense thick covert of the forest that fringed the inland sea; a girdle of vivid verdure, green and glorious, was clasped around the waist of Maizena; and as if to intensify the triumph of the trees, there were long and sombre shadows from aspen, and hemlock, and pine. You would have said that the hand of man had never yet polluted or profaned its sanctity of sylvan solitude. But what an awful fool you would have been to say so!

Crouching on the margin of the lake, idly playing with the broken wires of an electric telegraph, and squatting on his haunches, was the last of the famous tribe of the White Ien! The poor, hapless, and dreary creature was the very picture of abject misery and utter failure door-the mere embodiment of a forlorn fiasco. There is always something pathetic about the extinction of a people; and CHINGACHGOOK the 154th nearly dropped a bitter tear as he saw how the White had been fondly dallying with his former toys.

I CALLED at the residence of my adored one. As I neared the a mysterious individual, if I may be allowed the expression, and his was a most forbidding one, emerged from the mansion. He carried in his hand a small parcel. With the quick eye of love, and through a hole in the paper, I saw one of my adored one's golden tresses! Ha! Agony! This-this individual-I repeat the charge and defy him to disprove it—this individual had been presented with a lock of her hair. He was my rival. He must die!

CHAPTER IV.

I ENGAGED him craftily in conversation. He was artless and confiding. He was anxious, he informed me, to start a new and gigantic jointstock company, with two-and-six pence paid up capital (limited), to be called the House-to-House-Telegraph-and-Hair-Brushing-by-Machinery Company. By the application of telegraph wires to the rotary brushes he intended to apply the electricity evolved by friction from the human head to the conveyance of messages.

It was a noble scheme. And not impracticable, for doubtless the natural philosopher who peruses these pages has rubbed a black cat's fur the wrong way in a dark cupboard. It was a noble scheme.

But he was my rival. That tress! It must not be! He must die. I told him so. He said he did so frequently, and he defied any one to detect any difference from the natural colour. It was evident that in his terror his mind was wandering. I must put him out of his misery.

CHAPTER V.

I BLEW ont his brains with a roll of kamptulicon, and buried him unnoticed at the foot of the Nelson monument. His mangled remains-nay, I err! They were ironed, for his mother had been driven by cruel penury to part with the domestic engine.

CHAPTER VI.

THE effect upon HAIRYBELLA was terrible. In a single night her hair turned raven black. This was, perhaps, partly owing to the fact that the murdered man was her hairdresser, to whom she had given her knot of back hair to do up. And I mistook him for a lover! Rash and irremediable error. But of course he couldn't bring the knot back, for he was buried beneath the base of the Nelson Monument And besides, he was dead. So she borrowed her aunt's wig. CHAPTER VII.

I AM still at a loss to account for his silence. If he had only told me that he was her hairdresser. But it is too late. My HAIRYBELLA's hair is now permanently jet-black, and I am an erroneous homicide. I will erect a gorgeous memento of the injured inventor of the Houseto-House-Telegraph-and-Hair-Brushing-by-Machinery Company. All subscriptions may be addressed to the care of the editor. When I have a sufficient sum I shall deliver myself up to the police. But why -why did he not tell me he was her hairdresser? Dreadful doubt! perhaps I didn't give him time.

Election Intelligence.

We hear from Devonshire that MR. CAVE, the ex-sheriff, is about to contest Barnstaple in the Liberal interest. The motto the Tories of that borough will have to adopt is likely to be "CAVE in." A candidate for Lichfield, named Drorr, has discovered a novel reason for aspiring to represent that city, namely, a desire to gratify his ancestors! We heartily hope that he may be returned before the dissolution. For although from the tone of his address he does not seem to have anything in common with a liberal and constitutional Diet, he is probably well fitted to represent a short Commons.

Not far from the unhappy victim of civilization, a locomotive was deeply embedded in the mud; and the Mohican sighed as he thought of the sad old savage time when people travelled by railway or stagecoaches. But his sorrow scarcely lasted a minute; for high in the air above him he recognised his own, his bright, his beautiful balloon! A hundred idle reminiscenses of former days were evoked by the sight of this one dismal derelict of a ruined race-this horrible example of an almost extinct ethnology. The poor creature wore a black hat, with coat, waistcoat and trousers of the same dismal hue; and, piously faithful to a childish custom of his tribe, his hands were gloved. He had parted his hair in the middle.

How wonderful is that untutored instinct of the savage which invariably leads him to make some rough parodies of our civilised appliances and means! This wretched man, who had never heard of autophotography, had a tawdry old camera by his side, branded with the once familiar name of "MAYALL!" The obsolete "fire-arms" (so called) were also lying near him. It was almost pathetic to watch him as, with eyes dimmed by the filthy reeking odours of Regalias and Moselle, he feebly endeavoured to construct a bow and arrow!

66

Gently and softly the 154th Emperor stepped towards him and patted him upon the back. There was something of barbaric dignity about the way in which the White recoiled from the Emperor's touch. Wagh!" he cried. "Life is real, life is earnest; and the medicine of my red brother is great. Look! these woods, are they thick? Can a hawk swim? Wagh! I wish to goodness you'd keep your dirty old hands off me!"

For an instant the Emperor looked wistfully at the little bottle of arsenicated strychnine which he always carried in his belt; but he could not degrade himself by slaying so weak an enemy. He let the Last Man moon on.

"Wagh!" repeated the White. "Once my people were as numerous as-as-as possible. And they builded cities, and they builded ships-and deuced well they did it too, old cock! Can a hawk swim! This is the forest primæval: the murmuring pines and the hemlocks -ch, twig? Dear, dear, how times do chango to be sure! . . . . I don't see that I'm of much use. Life is real, life is earnest. Tho wilderness is very dreary when you haven't been properly brought up to it. I guess the best thing I can do is just to jump into the blessed There, there, I calculate I've lived too long!"

water.

[ocr errors]

And the heart of the Mohican monarch was touched as he heard the

convulsive querulous sobs of the degraded white; but he sternly remembered the grand aphorism that wherever the Red Man goes the Pale-face must disappear-and (being himself Red) he reverently submitted to the Will of Fate.

"Once," sobbed the White, "there was no one who could beat me in flying the kite or in drawing the accommodation-bill! I failed four times in petroleum and twice in pickled pork: I robbed the haughty widow, and I was firm in my dealings with the indignant orphanthose happy times are gone, to return no more. Only one plan remains!"

CHINGACHGOOK expected that he was about to commit suicide. Faithful to the traditions of his tribe, however, the White Man simply said:

"You haven't got such a thing as a half-a-crown about you, have you, eh?"

OUR FUTURE COMMERCIAL GREATNESS.-By-and-by.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]

[We must apologise to our readers for the very unsatisfactory nature of the following report. Our Lymphatic Contributor who suffers from heat and is very sensitive to the charms of nature, was unluckily sent to Sydenham, and this is the result.]

The Crystal Palace, whether we regard it as a place of recreation for the population of London, or as a retreat for the overtaxed literary servant of the public, is a delightful spot where pleasure

No, I won't; that's flat. Why do they send a fellow down to such a jolly region if he's to be expected to write a report? Why didn't they let me evolve the account in the office, where the mention of the word "pleasure" could not remind one that it is possible to lie down on one's back on the grass, smoke a pipe, and ask oneself feebleminded riddles. Pleasure! As if I were going to make a toil of a pleasure, and bother my head about reports. No, I am not that enterprising greengrocer in the Gray's-Inn-road, who has called his pleasure van (excursions to Epping Forest every Monday) by the clearly erroneous title of " Industry."

The Crystal Palace certainly is jolly, whether you prefer to consider yourself a melon, and wander about inside it, or look upon yourself like a stern moralist, and, because all flesh is grass, lay yourself out as hay on the slopes.

I have lunched like a humming bird. Champagne and a basket of lotus are the sort of thing this weather, and I have been regaled on these-in imagination, first because I'm too lazy to go in and have the former, and second, because I don't suppose they keep the latter. But a vivid imagination with a contented mind is a perpetual feast and a dessert too.

I came down here to report the concert. Well, here's a splendid concert of singing birds here. I'm not familiar with the music but it seems to me like a choice bit from The Creation.

It certainly is very warm, but it is not too warm if you are careful not to move. I am. My only efforts have been mental for the last-oh, bother time! what do minutes matter? I have been fancying myself that purple water-lily in the pool at the further end of the nave. Hang work! The only active employment I could bear now would consist in being a sherry cobbler. Delightful blue that sky! I wonder which of those two white clouds will pass over my head first? I'll

back the right-hand one. No, I won't, though-it's too great exertion wishing he may win.

That small green beetle who has crawled all up my left arm is an idiot. Why on earth should he walk so far this weather? I wonder what species he- -no, I decline to wonder to please any one. Mere existence on a day like this and in a place like this, is so jolly, that if it wasn't so jolly it would be too much trouble to exist even, here. That sounds like a sophistry, or philosophy, or something or other, I shan't try to think what.

The normal position of the human creature is clearly on its back on the grass. Evidently, it is just the opposite of the position of the lower animals. Now, if an act of volition could fill and light my pipe, I might consider it done. The vesuvians are in my left hand vest pocket, the tobacco in my coat pocket. But it is so far to go for them. I'll visit the concert in the spirit-and water; it is too hot to move even mentally, without being diluted and iced. They certainly can sing. I've heard 'em so often it is no trouble to think I hear them now. Go on! "Music is the food of love," as I once said to a young lady who would thrust an extra "spoon" on me as I was taking my jelly at supper somewhere. Where? Oh, I'm not going to trouble myself to remember.

[ocr errors]

How a clever person like PROFESSOR TYNDAL "could consider heat as a means of motion," I can't understand. Did he ever try lying on his back on the grass at the Crystal Palace? It is about the nicest place going. (They'll say at Number Eighty that that phrase is too colloquial. Let 'em. Eighty always was the goddess of strife, and wouldn't enjoy lying down peacefully on the grass and watching the sky and the clouds and listening to the birds-there ought to be another parenthesis here somewhere, but it is really too much trouble to try back and think where. Very jolly things these concerts at Sydenham!

Hawkward Popularity.

THE newspapers inform us that a peregrine falcon has been recently captured alive near the residence of MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. This is the result of fame! See how the Laureate gets hawked about.

Printed by JUDD & GLASS, 80, Fleet Street, and Phoenix Works, St. Andrew's Hill, Doctors' Commons, and Published (for the Proprietors) by THOMAS BAKER, at 80, Fleet Street.-July 1, 1865.

« PreviousContinue »