A MYSTIFICATION.

So my FREDDY will shortly be married-
In a fortnight? So early as that!
But say, has some project miscarried?
Remember that care killed a cat!
Why wear an expression of anguish,
Of anxious and harassing thought?
You may sigh, or seem absent, or languish-
But not look so wildly distraught.

This trouble, FRED! Come, do not hide it,
To tell it will lighten your care.
To the bosom of friendship confide it,
It shall not be breathed I declare.
You've surely not changed your opinion
About her perfections, my FRED!
Or have you a doubt of her chignon,
Or anything else on that head?

Do you fancy a hare-foot's the scrubber
That raises the bloom on her cheek?
Do you think that that ear's india-rubber

To which your soft nothings you speak?
Do you question her taste-temper-trousseau-
The settlement JONES is to draw?
Or deem of all married cares few so
Oppressive as mothers-in-law?
What! Have I not found the solution,
'Mid guesses so crafty as these?
Well, owning my mind's destitution,

I beg you'll enlighten me, please! . . .
Ha! you'd ordered a suit to your liking,
But SLEEVEBORD has written to say,
On account of his journeymen's striking,
You can't have your clothes on the day!

HONOURED AND RESPECTED SIR,-Considerable surprise have been expressed at the absence of NICHOLAS from your columns in the last number of the New Serious, and which I have no doubt but what such must have inflicted a bitter pang of disappointment on many thousands of the public breasts.

Considerable surprise have also been expressed, in the commercial circles of Belgravia, at the absence of NICHOLAS from his home for a protracted period, during which all attempts to extort money from the Old Man, no matter how ingenious the plea or plausible the pretext, have been, and will be so, entirely futile that it is the odds of the National Debt to a midshipman's half-pay, as they will not get a single sixpence out of NICHOLAS until his circumstances are very, very different.

You may remember, dear Sir, that the Prophet vaticinated the victory of Cambridge over Oxford in the aquatical computation on the Thames;-in fact, as you probably lost money by backing my selection, it is more than likely, as the fact may still be vividly impressed upon your mind-a mind, Sir, than which I may truly say none more cultivated and vivacious, if so much so.

It may also, dear Sir, be within your affable recollection that Nicholas prophesied Plaudit for the Two Thousand, and stuck to him with a consistency which he do not often exhibit such with regard to any public animal whatever.

Nor, my dear and venerated benefactor, is it likely as you have forgotten that, several weeks ago, I unhesitatingly declared that the Chester Cup would be won by the game little Lecturer.

Perhaps, as it is highly desirable we should arrive at some clear and definite understanding, I had better put the matter into a tabular form,

If some of your contemporaries, Sir, would act with equal candour, it might be good for the public, though bad for the prophets. Well, no man can stand three such facers in such quick succession. After hovering about especially at Sheerness, which I will say a word or two about it presently I came back into the old neighbourhood of Bermondsey. MRS. CRIPPS, would, I daresay, have been delighted, for many reasons, to behold her once-loved lodger; but, as one of those many reasons is that there is still a little pecuniary trifle outstanding between us, I have curbed my natural anxiety for to visit her. Horselaydown, however, is in the immediate vicinity; besides being near the River Thames, so that by taking a wherry I could quickly cross from one county to another, if a set of malignant creditors should really push the prophet hard. Besides, I shall be in a favourable position for picking up aquatic intelligence, to which I feel that you have not hitherto done justice in your otherwise well-conducted periodical publication.

And now I am going, Sir, for to have a friendly word or two along of The East Kent Advertiser, and Sheerness, Sittingbourne, and Faversham Guardian, which his title is ever so much more dignified than that of FUN, and I respect him accordingly. Sir, he seems to be a very wellconducted paper, and he has a leading article about the Luxembourg question, which it is very much in my own style when he says:——

"Even this would be little to fight about, but for the old motives of ambition, national jealousy, lust of territory, and the desire to be the stronger against future quarrels shall arise, which it is foreseen that not even developed nationalities will avert while States are aggregations of human nature."

But the Old Man, Sir, would have let him alone the Old Man being peaceable-if he had not ventured to begin the struggle. He have done so; may his blood, supposing such to ultimately flow, be on his own head, and which I wash my hands off of it! Tremble, ye East Kent Advertiser, and Sheerness, Sittingbourne, and Faversham Guardian!

The E. K. A., a. S., S., a. F. G., says as follows:

"We were amused' only this week to see a reference made to Sheerness in a popular comic periodical in which, after other things of a non-complimentary character, the writer urges on the friend to whom he writes, dating from Sheerness,-P. S. The sherry wine here is beastly. You might send me some down.' Whether the public trade of Sheerness will see the Fun' of this observation, we cannot say, but there it is in print, and this is but a fair specimen of the light in which Sheerness, and not only its Sherry, but everything else here is viewed by a very large section of our fellow-countrymen at a distance. The same writer, we presumes, ironically mentions Sheerness as this happy village.' Evidently his notions of it are drawn from Ireland's History of Kent, or some other standard topographical authority of some fifty years ago. He doubtless only visits Sheerness in imagination, and, like many other travellers of greater pretension, takes his observations from the very remote stand-point of some Grub-street lodging7," Now, Sir, if this provincial writer, than whom EDITORIAL NOTE. The remainder of the Prophet's commentary is, we regret to say, unfit for publication. ED. FUN.

SONGS.

I CANNOT Sing the old songs,

Because they're out of print

*

Each shop where once they sold songs

I liked, has not one in't.

I cannot sing the new songs,
They are such awful trash.

And yet I'm told it's true, songs
Like these, make lots of cash.

I do not think they're nice sengs
That please the music-hall.
I'd buy at any price songs
That one could sing at all.

THE TAILORS' STRIKE.

INFLUENTIAL MEETING OF AMALGAMATED CUSTOMERS.

AN influential meeting of Amalgamated Customers was held in the Arcade of the Albany, Piccadilly, on Monday last, CH. CHARLEY, Esq., in the chair.

After an appropriate anthem, " Socius est, lepidissima capita !” The CHAIRMAN remarked he wasn't going to stand this sort of thing any longer. Haw. To paraphrase (hear, hear!) MR. SAM Weller, battledore and shuttlecock was a very good game when you were not the shuttlecock, and master tailors and journeymen the battledores. Haw. He begged to propose a scheme by which amalgamated customers might place themselves entirely beyond the influence of tailors' strikes. Haw. His notion was, to discontinue the use of male costume altogether, and to substitute for it the garments hitherto considered to be peculiarly the property of the female sex. Haw. (Hear.) He meant in short, bonnets and frocks, and petticoats, and, haw, that sort of thing. (Hear, hear.) He, for one, intended to act upon his own suggestion. IIe had ordered a costume from a fashionable milliner's, which he believed was, haw, the right thing. It consisted of a red velvet frock, a merino bonnet with a rep feather, gauze boots, guipure gloves, a green silk shawl, a pair of Valenciennes

MR. SPURGEON here rose to order. The CHAIRMAN, without noticing the interruption, continued-stockings and book muslin stays. He begged to suggest that every member present should pledge himself to adopt a similar costume without delay. (Cheers.)

The proposal was duly seconded and carried unanimously. After another appropriate anthem (Carolus Campanus est nomen meum) The meeting separated.

H. W. L.-We fear not.

I. B. D., Walham Green. Under consideration.

G. D. S., New Wandsworth, is referred to the notice at the head of this department.

F. J. A., Lonsdale-square, might have had better taste than to try to jest on such a subject.

O. D. V.-That joke is brand (i)ed by the hand of time.
SCRATCH.-Not up to the mark.

BEER-We don't see the p'int.

PAT.-Doesn't come so.

A. E. B. To quote your own words, "rather impossible.”
JACKASS.-Bray, don't.

R. M. B., Upper Norwood.-Subject not as good as sketch.

Declined with thanks,-J. K., Kilburn; H. E. V. D.; A Reader; LUM. N.; W. M.; W. L. G.; H. G., Liverpool; A. L., Barnstaple; Acworth; J. M.; H. P. H.; Pet; J..R.; Notes; Initial; T. of D. H; Quaker; Omicron; A. H. G.; H.; J. T. F.; Archipelago; A. M.; Clifton; A. S., Bedford-row; D. M., Sittingbourne; J. J.L; P. J., Wincanton; E. P. R.; Allen; H. B. H., Notting-hill; R. M. B., Upper Norwood; A Constant Subscriber, Coventry; R. R., Upper Holloway; Flower Star; A. B. C.; J. O., Kentish Town Road; C. B.; C. H. S.; Dionysius Dryasdust; B. G.; L. W. Q., Liverpool; R. B.; F. B., South

ampton.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

THE Natural History Collection at the British Museum must be looked to for amusement rather than instruction. The student will

not gain much information from creatures stuffed-like a pet lapdog beyond recognition. But the philosopher will find food for smiles in the beasts, which may be described as ex-straw-dinarily well stuffed without any departure from truth, for they generally overflow with corn-stalks at every seam and shot-hole. It is possibly because he is loth to deprive thousands (at an average of twenty weekly) of the harmless amusement of laughing at the monstrosities, that PROFESSOR OWEN, a knowin' professor, does not take steps to replace them with something more like the real animals. The hippopotami are set up in such an extraordinary manner, and are so unlike the real article, that we can scarcely wonder at the broad grin in which each specimen indulges. They, in common with the elephants, tapirs, and other thickskinned animals, have had their hides obtrusively mended in so many places, that we have met with students of natural history and frequenters of the British Museum, who believed this order of mammals to have been called "patch-yderms" on this very account. Poor Pachyderms, they have need to be thick-skinned when their rags and tatters are made such an open exhibition!

Altogether owing to the so-so way in which the sutures have been made in the process of stuffing, the animals bear small resemblance to the living creatures to be seen at Regent's-park:-their seaming, in short, is anything but lifelike.

Rumours have been set afloat from time to time that the Natural History Collection is to be removed to other quarters, but the repcrt is generally contradicted. We are inclined to think that it will stop where it is, as it seems to be stationary, if not retrograde, in character. One of the advantages of the Natural History Collection at the British Museum is to be found in the opportunities it offers for young people to conduct their courtships. Many a happy swain can date his felicity from the fortunate moment when he stole his first kiss from the object of his worship, having carefully put the hippopotamus between himself and her parents. Offers have been made and accepted under the shadow of the abnormally elongated hat-stand known to the custodians of the collection as the giraffe. An intimate friend assures us that his present wife, then a wealthy widow, to whom he offered consolation in exchange for Consols, first found courage to give him a

word of hope while concealed from the gaze of the world by the bulky Portmanteau on four posts which does duty for an elephant in the neighbourhood of Russell-square.

Museum to the parents of refractory children. There are one or two We can also recommend the Natural History Department of the cheerful crocodiles and some other specimens which, properly managed, will frighten a naughty boy into fits. In the Entomological Division there are some nice hairy spiders that will make anybody feel very uncomfortable, and may be applied, morally, to the backs of dieobedient daughters with great effect.

THE HERMIT.

O SOLITARY Eremite,
Thy cell is low and dim;
And yet that glance so merry might
Approve a jestive whim.

But, no! thine eye belieth thee,
Thou art a solemn wight,
And fast or penance trieth thee
By day and eke by night.
This grot, how still and lone it is,
It must be very dull!

Thy sole companion bone it is-
A brown and fleshless skull.

"It's nothing of the sort, you hum!"
Said he, with cheerful tone,
"My only caput mortuum,

A hogshead-is of Beaune!"

Another New Fashion.

WE see it stated in the Lady's Own Paper that "a new fashion in ladies' bonnets has made its appearance-the long ribbons which depend from them down the back being fitted at the ends with little gold bells." This is a tolerably broad hint on the part of the ladies. They wish those who are after them to know that they have no settled objection to a ring.

WE have been bitterly disappointed in the last Haymarket comedy, A Wild Goose: the name of DioN BOUCICAULT led us to expect something of a far different character. He only edits the piece, it is true; but his editorship makes him responsible for a very dreary and conventional play. The fourth act closes with a tolerably effective situation-the recovery of a stolen heir from gipsies by the aid of the military: this incident is worth keeping awake to see. The remainder of the piece-as far as regards plot-is only worth falling asleep to avoid. Some broadly farcical business between a comic squire and a coquettish old frump of a housekeeper has been introduced, we imagine, as a graceful relief to the melodramatic part of the story. In our own critical bosom it aroused feelings of inexpressible sadness. The gallery shrieked with delight when MR. BUCKSTONE came out of a cupboard with an unnecessary quantity of jam upon his cheeks; when the comic squire came rushing into the gipsy encampment with a large pistol, and very nearly spoilt the artistic effect of a tableau, the gallery shrieked again. Well, well; the piece is capitally mounted, and the view of a ruined abbey by moonlight is admirable. MR. SOTHERN, as the daredevil hero, plays with plenty of spirit, but reminds us now and then of Lord Dundreary by a pensive way of uttering things that signify nothing in particular. MR. BUCKSTONE does his best for a very weak part; and MR. ROGERS makes a sullen and ferocious chief of the gipsies. Of the other gentlemen we can only say that they would probably be more interesting if the author had given them the chance. MISS MINNIE SIDNEY gives much pathos to the character of a gipsy girl; the quiet simplicity of her acting makes it singularly effective. MRS. CHIPPENDALE is a picture of geniality, MISS IONE BURKE is alternately vivacious and sentimental, and MISS CAROLINE HILL looks as pretty and piquante as usual. The "waits" are commendably short, and the music which fills them is well selected and well played. MR. WALLERSTEIN has composed, by the way, some very picturesque music to

VOL. V.

Are these not subjects t'were better to drop? No, on my word, for the fashions Parisian,

For fair and for dark and for short and for tall, Whims for the plain-braided head and the frizzy 'un Were attractive as ever at Heatherleigh Hall. Spooning, of course, was most strictly forbidden us, That is, you know, by the rules of the game, No moral precept has yet over-ridden us, Stealing its fair and legitimate aim.

Take away whispers and sighs and the rest of it,
Really the game is worth nothing at all,
Prejudice, well, I will grant, gets the best of it,
But that's not the croquet at Heatherleigh Hall.

Ask little LILLIAN, AMY, and MABEL, too,
MILLICENT ask with the eyes and the hair,
Just make them tell you, I'm sure they are able to,
If they think personal spooning is fair!
Judge by the pledge of the honour and word of us-
Judge by the eyelids just raised ere they fall-
Say, if you like, it was very absurd of us,

Or come down to croquet at Heatherleigh Hall.

accompany the action of the drama. But, in spite of its accessories, A Wild Goose is very tiresome; and the sooner MR. BUCKSTONE'S company returns to its speciality, old comedy, the better. We cannot leave the Haymarket without a sigh of regret for the charming face of MISS NELLY MOORE.

A DAY FOR WISHING.

(By a Bard with a wishy-washy mind.)

I CANNOT mind my wheel to-day-
The weather is as hot as blazes;
I wish that I could get away
To anywhere you like, and play
Among the buttercups and daisies.

I wish I had a silly book

(Most easily fulfilled of wishes)
To read beside a crystal brook-
Or else a rod, a line, a hook,
And lots of gentles for the fishes.

I wish that I were lying, prone
And idle, where the trees are shady-
Contemplative and quite alone,
Or talking in an undertone

To some beloved and lovely lady.

But, though I feel to-day a call

For reading silly books, or fishing,
Or idling where the trees are tall,
Or making love-yet, most of all,

I wish I knew the good of wishing.