Part 1

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

Volume 108. MARCH 2nd, 1895.

_edited by Sir Francis Burnand_

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TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE.

(_By Mr. Punch's own Short Story-teller._)

I.--THE PINK HIPPOPOTAMUS. (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 81.)

In these awful circumstances, with the night air whistling past me, and with my beloved CHUDDAH and her nurse hurtling upwards beside me, it is scarcely necessary for me to say that I never for an instant lost my coolness and my perfect self-possession. That the situation was dangerous, nay, almost desperate, I fully realised, but it is in these very situations that true courage and resourcefulness are always of the highest value. Again and again in the course of my long life have I plucked safety, aye, and that which is higher and better than all safety, namely, reputation, from the nettle danger. Let fools prate as they will; the brave man must always rise triumphant above the stormy waves of envy and detraction.

These thoughts, I admit, did not occur to me at the moment. Our flight was too perilous and too swift to allow me to think of aught save what concerned the immediate necessities of this truly fearful crisis. Poor little CHUDDAH, I observed, being made of lighter material, was gradually outstripping me in this dreadful and involuntary race. First her head topped me; then her shoulders soared beyond me; at last her feet were on a level with my face. As one of them (I forget which) passed upwards, I was just able by leaning slightly forward, to imprint a kiss upon it. "Farewell, CHUDDAH," I sighed, as the lovely foot left my lips. "Farewell, ORLANDO," she murmured all but inaudibly, and fled up, up, up into the dismal night. I never saw her again.

The Ayah, however, a stout and heavy woman, was still beside me, rising inch for inch as I rose. By turning slightly round I could look at her. I did so. Judge of my horror when I realised by the faint light of the stars that the Ayah was no longer alive! The shock of the sudden ascent must have proved too much for one accustomed to the sedate and comfortable life of an eastern palace, and enfeebled, moreover, by advancing age. The explosion acting on such a constitution had snapped the cords that kept life in her faithful body. The Ayah was dead, and I who tell this tale was alone with a corpse in the encircling atmosphere! As I realised this horrible situation, I confess that for the first and last time in my life I turned faint with a feeling almost amounting to fear. In imagination I saw myself speeding for ever, as the æons revolved in their courses, with only a dead Indian nurse to keep me company. Then, by an instantaneous revulsion, the grim humour of the situation struck me. With only my knapsack of provisions and my brandy-flask, it was unlikely, even under the most favourable circumstances, that I should be able to prolong life for more than a week. At the end of a week, then, I too should be a corpse. I laughed aloud as I thought of the last scion of the WILBRAHAMS, the unconquerable ORLANDO, mated in mid-air to the dusky Ayah, a skeleton to a skeleton, and my sepulchral "Ha, ha," went reverberating through the dim spaces of night. The sound roused me once more. Why, after all, should I die? Life was sweet; much remained to be done; there were wrongs still to be redressed in the world below; millions of the oppressed still waited for a deliverer; countless herds of big game still roamed the prairies or made their lairs in the forests of earth. No, I would live if I could, and prove once more the unquenchable fortitude of my race.

At this moment I looked down.

(_To be continued._)

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BAR NONE!

_Monday._--Now that the Law lectures at the different Inns have been "thrown open to the public," _any_ outrage in the way of cringing to the democracy may be expected. They'll be opening Lincoln's Inn Fields next to the mob!

_Tuesday._--They _have!_ And a steam merry-go-round set up within thirty yards of my formerly tranquil Chambers! Oh, why was I ever called?

_Wednesday._--Dinner in Hall to-day. Found two perfect strangers dining at my table! Seems that the Benchers have thrown open dining-hall to the public as well! Asked strangers if they intended being called to the Bar? One of them replied (with a wink) that _he_ didn't--why should he? He could get all the legal training, use of library, &c., without going to expense of a call.

_Thursday._--In Court. Unknown Counsel opposed to me. Seem to recognise his face. _Can_ it be the stranger who dined in Hall last night? It is. New rule has thrown the Courts open to amateur pleaders! What _are_ we coming to? Must say stranger pleads uncommonly well. And Judge _so_ deferential to him!

_Friday._--Wonders never cease. To-day my stranger of yesterday found seated on Bench! Judge ill--has appointed him as Commissioner in his place. New rule allows this sort of thing. What is the reason of this sudden democratising of the Profession?

_Saturday._--Mystery explained. One of the Benchers wants to be made a L. C. C. Alderman! In his Election Address he even stoops so far as to give way to the vulgar delusion that Law is expensive, and recommends a rule that costs should always be "on the lower scale." Perhaps he is right. Everything on the lowest possible scale at Bar nowadays!

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RE-GILDING THE GOLDEN EAGLE.

["The amount subscribed in England for the United States Loan was £120,000,000, or twenty times the sum reserved for London."--_Daily Paper._]

"Why, I was a thinking, Sir," returned MARK TAPLEY, "that if I was a painter, and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?"

"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose."

"No," said MARK. "That wouldn't do for me, Sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for its putting its head in the sand, and thinking nobody sees it----"

"And like a Ph[oe]nix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!" said MARTIN.

_Martin Chuzzlewit._

BROTHER JONATHAN _loquitur:_--

He was prejudiced, that _Mark_, a Eur[=o]pian, in the dark, Concernin' of our Glorious Institutions. _He_ paint our Bird o' Freedom? Lots have tried, but we don't heed 'em; And revolvin' years bring curus retributions. _We_ don't care a brass farden! DICKENS had to beg our pardon, And that MAX O'RELL will eat his words one day, Sir! The real Yankee Eagle is as strong-winged as a Sea-gull, With a beak as sharp as any Sheffield razor.

Still, he's been a trifle pippy, and has looked a little chippy-- By the mighty Mississippi yes, Sir!--lately. Kinder moulty as to feathers, as though blizzards and bad weathers Of every blamed big sort had tried him greatly. Good Jee-rusulum! No wonder! for great snakes and buttered thunder! Our blasts have been fair busters for his pinions. In the words of Mister _Chollop_, all creation he can wallop,-- But tornaders _have_ been sweepin' his dominions!

As to that _Mark Tapley's_ twaddle, why the Peacock ain't the model, _Nor_ the Bantam, _nor_ the Ostrich, I'd be pickin' For the finest fowl in Natur. Better dub him Alligator, A Whangdoodle, or a Cincinnati Chicken! Like the Ph[oe]nix he's immortal, and he soars to the Sun's portal, But--the Ph[oe]nix has sick spells, like lesser poultry. Wants fresh fixing up, I reckon, then the dawn once more he'll beckon, And sprint--from Memnon's statue to Fort Moultrie.

BULL ain't an Eagle builder, but he makes a bully gilder, And I reckon, guess, and calc'late I'll jest try him. If I git from the old fellow a good coat of British Yellow-- A sort o' paint J. B. keeps always by him-- My Bird o' Freedom soaring, where the blizzards are a roaring, And the cloud-bursts are out-pouring, will jest flicker Real rollicking and regal, like a genu-ine Golden Eagle.-- _Wal!--you've fixed him real smart, JOHN! Let us liquor!_

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TRANCEMOGRIFICATION.

Now that hypnotism is in the air, our conversation-books will have to be remodelled, as thus:--

Good morning, have you hibernated well?

Yes, I have had a most successful trance this winter. Have you laid up at all?

Only for a few days at Christmas, just to escape the bills. I had a delightfully unconscious Boxing Day.

Well, you take my advice old man, and rent a private catacomb on the three-years' system. It comes much cheaper in the end, and you save all your coal and gas, to say nothing of clothes.

We've started a Nirvana Club in our neighbourhood on the tontine principle. The last person who wakes gets the prize, unless the first who comes to makes off with it.

It is capital, anyway, when you are taking a tour. Saves all the trouble of sight-seeing. You are just packed up and forwarded from place to place, with an automatic Kodak which records everything you visited. Try it!

Will, some day. By Jove, I must be off! I've got to attend an anæsthetic concert, absolutely painless.

And I've got a mesmeric dinner-party on to-night. All the bores will be put in glass-cases, and fed mechanically.

Good-bye, then. Sleep well!

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* * * * *

OF THE ART OF TOBOGGANING.

_Canton des Grisons, Feb. 10._

For the neighbourhood it is a sultry day; glass up to 5° Fahrenheit and a taint of scirocco, or _föhn_, as the facetious native calls this wind. My toboggan lies idle by stress of drifting snow. "No chance," I say, "of doing a record this afternoon!" This is what I say openly and pompously to my fellows. With my own dear heart I commune otherwise, saying how heaven should be praised for this one blessed day's recess from broken scalp.

If I have asked myself once (as is proper with an enigma) I have asked myself a thousand times, "Why did I come out here, to this resort of invalids and polar athletes?" My right lung is flawless: my left is very perfect. On the other hand I do not show well on ice; my legs are ill-shaped for bandy; curling I find to be but poor sport after skittles; and I have met one wayfarer only, and that a fool, who did not laugh upon my figure-skating.

In a climate where one must either do or suffer something to justify one's existence, there remained this sole thing--to toboggan. I said, "I will surely toboggan!"

"Good!" they said; "but on an instrument of what sort? 'Swiss' for women and children; ordinary 'Americas' for men; 'Skeleton Americas' for heroes."

"I will choose the last," I said; for if I do anything at all I like to do it passing well, and with the best of tools.

There was no lack of willing teachers to illustrate for me the true posture--_ventre à terre_, and to show me how I should go armed as to my Alpine boots with spiked rakes screwed to the forefront of my sole for the better negotiation of sharp angles on the side of a ravine.

One may add that if a pine-tree, or a telegraph post, or an ascending hay-sleigh opposes your career, you learn by the simple interposition of your head to save the delicate machinery of the toboggan from brutalization. It may be that by inadvertence you have attained an impetus so terrific that you overtake a walking horse in possession of the path. Once again your headpiece will protect the instrument from the fiery choler of the beast's hind hoof. After some two miles of fortuitous descent, diversified by such checks as I have here shadowed forth, you will be rounding the final corner at a pointed angle of 45°, travelling perhaps several miles per hour, when a large beer-cart with an upward tendency will dispute the road. Then the banked snow shall be your pall, and your _requiescat_ shall be rendered by the local teamster in German of a bastard order.

Nor is this all. To the beetling edge of the descent you will first have been conveyed by an impetuous _zwei-spänner_, thoughtlessly gay with bells and feathers. Twenty-five candidates having urged their claims for the five seats, some will have need to be content to trail behind on their toboggans. As one wanting in experience, you will have the last place assigned to you, or else the last but one, with a casual riderless machine at the tail-end to give you an unholy spasm as it swings off the track round the corners. At intervals, while your pensive mind is absorbed upon the maintenance of a happy equilibrium, rendered strangely-difficult by the ruthless speed of the sleigh, some two or perhaps three of the tailing-party will fall off in front. The sharp contact of several raked boots with your open countenance draws your attention to the altered condition of things. Over the mangled bodies of friend and foe you are carried forward. The sleigh is tardily arrested, and your innocent head becomes the recipient of fearless abuse.

Or again, from some mountain-hut upon the route issues forth a gross and even elephantine dog, born of unhallowed union between a wolfhound and an evilly-bred St. Bernard. Foiled in his attack upon the head of the caravan he revenges himself upon the outstretched leg of the hindmost. The lacerated calf will be your own.

This is well enough in open daylight, and when you are swathed in buskins from heel to hip, and your rakes are good for retaliation. But in doubtful moonlight with the air at 15° below zero, as you toboggan back to your hostelry in the valley from a fancy dress ball, where you have simulated _Hamlet_ in black silk tights and pumps, the humour lies purely on the side of the dog.

But apart from the lower animal nature, in this barbaric sport you are never confident of your dearest friends. Thus, we had been a pleasant and hilarious party at the international _bal masqué:_ the ardour of the stirrup-cup was still upon us as we attained the brow of the decline. By a happy inspiration I had proposed that my friend Mr. STARK MUNRO, being a heavy-weight and disguised as a _Völsunga Saga_, should proceed in the van to clear any incidental drift or desultory avalanche. He disappeared headlong down the pine-forest track followed by the Ace of Clubs, a Sardinian Brigand, and a Tonsured Benedictine. All the costumes gained in picturesqueness from the Arctic background.

The New Woman of the party, attired as Good Queen BESS, begged me to precede her, arguing that I should go faster on my Skeleton than she on her Swiss. I engaged to do so on the understanding that she should allow me seven minutes' start in case of eventualities, the course being usually done in some 5-3/4 minutes under happy conditions. She was to be succeeded by Antigone, the Spirit of the Engadine and the Mother of the Gracchi.

I do not greatly care to linger over the details of my descent. I had started gaily humming those Elizabethan lines, "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"--out of pure gallantry to Good Queen BESS who had given me a dainty little cow-bell as a favour at the _cotillon;_ and I had been travelling cautiously for 8-1/2 minutes, with my nose, no fewer than six fingers, and all the toes on each foot frostbitten, and a half-moon piece already gone out of my calf at the spot where it had attracted the notice of the St. Bernard wolf-hound, when, even as I was navigating a rotten bridge at a sharp turn, I heard a rushing sound out of the night behind me, and "_Achtung!_" (the terrible warning-note of the tobogganer) rang in my stricken ear.

I had barely time to throw a backward glance of horror and deprecation, when the projecting feet of Good Queen BESS, her toboggan and her spiked steering-pegs were upon me.

The bridge had never been strong in point of bulwarks; the torrent which it spans is rapid and fed from icy heights; its banks do not lend themselves to debarkation.

* * *

When I recovered consciousness by force of exquisitely painful restoratives applied by the _Völsunga Saga_, the Mother of the Gracchi and Good Queen BESS (herself unscratched, though the plush of her toboggan was tarnished with my gore). I was solemnly intoning, "World without end: _Achtung!_" with all the conviction of a cathedral tenor. I am going home the day after to-morrow.

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SUGGESTION.--A certain restaurant not a hundred miles away from the St. James's Theatre advertises, among other attractions, "_Dîner Salon Gobelin, 7s. 6d._" But wouldn't it be more appropriate to spell the last word "Gobbling"?

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THE ECUADOR BONDHOLDER'S SONG.

AIR--"_Toréador._"

["After its recent behaviour, Ecuador cannot be said to have any credit worth talking about."--_Times City Article, February 19._]

Ecuador, contento? Ecuador! Ecuador! You have all our money spent O, Who will lend you more? No one here on British shore Will lend you more, Ecuador! Ecuador!

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FROM H. W. L.'s SUMMARY OF THE DEBATE LAST THURSDAY IN THE _DAILY NEWS_.--"Mr. BARLOW approved the action of the Government in exempting coarser yarns from duties." This is not exactly what might have been expected from Mr. BARLOW, but no doubt Masters SANDFORD and MERTON in the Strangers' Gallery were mightily delighted at the prospect of "coarser yarns"--(which is only another name for men's stories after dinner when the ladies have left the room)--being "exempted from duties." Really our old friend, the preceptor of SANDFORD and MERTON, has deteriorated, and _Mr. Punch_ is severely against him on this point.

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THE BOOT-BILLS OF NARCISSUS.

AN IRRELEVANT BIOGRAPHY.

(_Scraps collected by Richard Medallion._)

SCRAP I.--HORTICULTURE. (_Boot-trees._)

"Ah! old men's boots don't go there, Sir," said the boot-maker to me one day, rather pointedly, pointing to the toes of the boots I had brought him for mending. As I danced home, writing another chronicle with every springing step, the remark filled me with reflection--such reflection, reader, as your mirror shows you when you gaze in it to rejoice in your own beauty.

Have you kept a diary for thirty years? Dear me! And have you kept your gas bills, your water-rates, your Christmas-cards, your writs, your circulars of summer sales? I might never have undertaken to write this biography if I had not chanced one evening--being unoccupied--to break open a private desk belonging to my friend NARCISSUS, and tearing open an envelope (sealed, and labelled "_Compromising Postcards--to be opened before my death_,") came across these old boot-bills, and been struck by the manner in which there lay revealed in them the story of the years over which they ran....

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SCRAP II.--THE HAPPY HOME.

The first night we went to see GEORGE DONKEYSTIR we heard in the kitchen a curious voice--suggestive somehow of the vine-leaves in the hair--singing "_Ours is a Happy, Happy Home!_" In the hall we saw none but a wee boy of four, standing on his head, balancing a billiard-cue on his chin.

"All done by kindness!" lisped the little chap. As we made an attempt to enter the dining-room, what should fall on our heads but a great wet sponge, backed by a ring of laughter from the hidden prompter, and GEORGE appeared, shouting "Bo!" followed by the loving wife, who helped to make the fun possible. What a time we had! From the moment we arrived (and fell over a string adroitly arranged by the dear little children across the little hall) to the moment that we had got into our little apple-pie beds, all was fun, frolic, merriment, and domestic joy. Just as we were falling asleep, tired out with a happy evening, we were disturbed by a chorus, as of _waits_, singing outside our room these beautiful words--

"O! FLO, what a change you know! When he left the village he was shy, But since he come into a little bit of splosh His golden hair is hanging down his back!"

This was more of GEORGE'S loving ingenuity. But we wished he had made it rhyme. His wife had helped him, but she would not take the credit. "That was GEORGE'S idea," laughed along her lips. I threatened "to make copy" of him, and now I have done it. Moreover, I shall further presume on his forbearance by writing no more about him for the present.

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ALL THE DIFFERENCE.--In the programme of the Ballad Concerts given in the _Times_, Mr. BEN DAVIES was advertised to sing SULLIVAN'S "_Come, Come, Margherita_." Now the title of this song is its refrain, _i.e._, "Come, MARGHERITA, come!" which is evidently a lover's passionate invitation, while if it is written as "_Come, Come, Margherita_," it is clearly only an expostulation of a rather commonplace character uttered to MARGHERITA, who has been exasperatingly petulant, and who won't come when asked. For many many years it was the fashion (as it still is with the veteran tenor) for "MAUD" to be invited to "come into the garden," just as the fly used to be requested by the spider to "walk into his parlour." Now it is MARGHERITA who is having her turn (in the garden) with BEN DAVIES.

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"WHITTINGTON REDIVIVUS;"

OR, THE BURDEN OF THE BELLS.

_The new Progressive Dick Whittington, would-be Lord Mayor of London, sitteth on Saturday, March 2, 1895, and meditateth on the probable meaning of the L. C. C. Election Bells:_--

Hear the loud Election bells-- Noisy bells! What a world of wonderment their clatter-clash compels! How they jangle, jangle, jangle, On the air of coming night! Like committee-men a-wrangle, And my thoughts are in a tangle Of mixed doldrums and delight. How they chime, chime, chime! In my head there runs a rhyme, And I wish I were but certain what their shindying foretells, What a future I may gather from the voices of the bells-- The jangling and the wrangling of the bells!