PREPARING FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY PANTOMIME. THEATRE ROYAL, ST. STEPHEN'S. PARTY COLOURISTS AT WORK ON THE PROPERTIES, TO JULIA'S POCKET. [The ideal lady's pocket, that shall at once be accessible to its owner and defy the footpad's art, has yet to be invented.-Wears of Tautologus.] MY JULIA'S chaste and winsome cheer, In that it passeth human wit Though JULIA's self therein dispose Not if she search with heavy pain To him alone of mortal clay As certain maids, I well believe, But though her purse not suffer rape, Let her not make essay to bring Lest, sitting down with weary stress, She make a right unseemly mess! Certes a man purblind may see For these offences needs must be Some comfortable remedy; Whoso deviseth such an one, I trow that his invention Shall soothly pouch the peerless bun. Gertrude. "MY DEAR JESSIE, WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT BICYCLE SUIT FOR?" NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. Perplexed.-You are entirely in error in Jessie. "No; BUT I'VE GOT A SEWING MACHINE!" supposing that the member for Otley, Yorks, has, in accepting a baronetev, descended labour is increasing. There is a well known | Nevertheless, we are not without suspicion from a higher estate. You have been deceived case, cited in Littleton upon Coke, where a that Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT shares the pecuby similarity of sound. The hon. member man was not able to see the Spanish fleet liarity of CARLYLE, of whom you will rewas not of the same rank as a statesman (who "because it is not yet in sight." For analo- member his wife shrewdly remarked that we observe has just repaired to his country gous reason you have not lately heard any-his love for silence is platonic." If you seat at Pinley Park, where he will entertain thing of the CHANCELLOR OF THE EX- keep your ears open and your mouth shut, His Serene Highness the Duc DE SEIDLITZ-CHEQUER. He has not been speaking. The you may probably, before long, hear the POUDRE) to whom Sir ROBERT PEEL used to fact is, the SQUIRE OF MALWOOD-to use a familiar voice resounding from a public allude in the House of Commons as 64 the title by which he is locally known, and in noble Baron." In becoming Sir JOHN BAR- which he most rejoices-was cut out for a BAN, Bart., the member for Otley gains a distinct step in the social ladder. Blind, Deaf, and Dumb. We are pleased to be able to reassure you. The fact that you have not lately heard or read speeches by Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT is no evidence that the treble disability under which you unhappily rustic recluse. Circumstances have, unwil- platform. A Shakspearean Student.-We had not before heard of the incident. It is, however, quite possible, as you have been informed, that when the Marquis of SALISBURY, K.G., heard of the defection of the Earl of BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, who has joined the Liberal forces, the only remark he made was with his head." Off OVERHEARD FRAGMENT OF A DIALOGUE Lord Illingworth. My dear GORING, I assure you that a well-tied tie is the first serious step in life. Lord Goring. My dear ILLINGWORTH, five well-made button-holes a day are far more essential. They please women, and women rule society. Lord Illingworth. I understood you considered women of no importance? Lord Goring. My dear GEORGE, a man's life revolves on curves of intellect. It is on the hard lines of the emotions that a woman's life progresses. Both revolve in cycles of masterpieces. They should revolve on bi-cycles; built, if possible, for two. But I am keeping you? Lord Illingworth. I wish you were. Nowadays it is only the poor who are kept at the expense of the rich. Lord Goring. Yes. It is perfectly comic, the number of young men going about the world nowadays who adopt perfect profiles as a useful profession. Lord Illingworth. Surely that must be the next world? How about the Chiltern Thousands ? Lord Goring. Don't. GEORGE. Have you seen "Full of good WINDERMERE lately? Dear WINDERMERE! I should things!" like to be exactly unlike WINDERMERE. Lord Illingworth. Poor WINDERMERE! He spends his mornings in doing what is possible, and his evenings in saying what is probable. By the way, do you really understand all I say? Lord Goring. Yes, when I don't listen attentively. Lord Illingworth. Reach me the matches, like a good boy-thanks. Now-define these cigarettes-as tobacco. Lord Goring. My dear GEORGE, they are atrocious. And they leave me unsatisfied. Lord Illingworth. You are a promising disciple of mine. The only use of a disciple is that at the moment of one's triumph he stands behind one's chair and shouts that after all he is immortal. Lord Goring. You are quite right. It is as well, too, to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be learnt. Lord Illingworth. Certainly, and ugliness is the root of all industry. Lord Goring. GEORGE, your conversation is delightful, but your views are terribly unsound. You are always saying insincere things. Lord Illingworth. If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out. Lord Goring. Perhaps. The sky is like a hard hollow sapphire. It is too late to sleep. I shall go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses. Good-night, GEORGE! I have had such a pleasant evening! THE CHRONICLES OF A RURAL PARISH. IX.-OF COAL. THE County Council has solved the great Mudford mystery by deciding in favour of Mrs. ARBLE MARCH, who is in the seventh heaven at being the Seventh Councillor. A wise Legislature had it in contemplation that possibly when the great measure came to be worked, it might not be found to act, however much you pulled the string, and it was accordingly left to the County Council to set on its legs any poor little Parish Council which might have been brought into the world without its full number of members. Thus it came about that Mrs. MARCH got elected. The actual circumstances of her election gave rise to some comment. She was proposed by the Primrose League Ruling Councillor of one adjoining parish, and seconded by the Knight Harbinger of another. Our County Council is a strongly Tory body, and she was easily elected. There was a great outcry against this, as an act of political partisanship. It was. But when it became known that Mrs. LETHAM HAVITT's friends and supporters were all avowed Radicals, popular indignation seemed suddenly to flicker out. DEATH IN THE CUP. ["The social duty of paying calls, refreshed, as it necessarily is, by frequent cups of tepid tea, is apparently little better than a process of slow poisoning."-Daily Graphic.] OH, here's a pretty state of things! Whenever you go calling, catastrophe appalling, Your mirth is as the little lamb's, unmindful of the mint. And when your entertainer, who seems so sweetly placid And quite unlike a criminal, suggests "Another cup ?" might as well be offering a dose of prussic acid, And the Public Prosecutor ought to take the matter up! She "The cup that cheers" - that hackneyed phrase is "A word to you, Amanda mine!" There lurks within its fatal draught a more efficient terror, A word to you, AMANDA mine. Unless your cruel kindness, THE TIME OF DAY.-Good, after NEWNES to find the style "Bart." The bestowal of the baronetcy quite a Tit-Bit for the Strand. But there is no truth in the report that the event will be followed by the establishment of a new morning paper to be called The Dragon, and edited by Sir GEORGE. It may be, however, that the indignation only transferred itself to me, for I my self have got, in a most extraordinary and unexpected fashion, into a great hobble. It arose in this way. Having been elected on to the Parish Council at the top of the poll, and having, moreover, been subsequently the recipient of innumerable congratulations from my fellow-parishioners, I not unna- For the Man whose Collar comes turally-so I still venture to think-desired in undone every time he tries to do up some way to show my appreciation of the kind his Tie. SYMPATHY WANTED treatment I had received. I accordingly determined to make to every elector a present of coals, and to carry out that intention issued the following circular: To the Electors of Mudford. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-For your kindness in electing me at the top of the poll, I can find no terms sufficiently warm to express myself. In commemoration of the great occasion, and as a small thankoffering for my return, I beg your acceptance of the enclosed Coal Ticket, which will entitle you to 2 cwt. of coal from any of the village coal dealers. Your obliged and obedient servant, TIMOTHY WINKINS. I sent this to every elector, high or low, rich or poor. I hardly imagined that the Squire would want coal, but he was a constituent of mine, and he had his ticket. What has been the result of my generosity? This. Whilst almost every coalticket has been used, I am denounced right and left in unmeasured terms as an unscrupulous briber. Miss PHILL BURTT (who, as might be expected, has been most kind and sympathetic about the whole thing), tells me that even the Squire said it was a very ingenious way of wishing myself Many Happy Returns to the Parish Council. A poor joke, I think, but an undeniably excellent sneer. BLACK BOB is, as might be expected, much more plain and direct in his denunciation. He says, that if I stand for re-election-in April, 1896-this ought to be enough to unseat me. A pleasant prospect. I can do nothing. My boats, like my coal, are burnt. What happened at the Parish Council meeting last night I must leave-till my next. TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE. (By Mr. Punch's own Short Story-teller.) I. THE PINK HIPPOPOTAMUS. momentarily separated from the main body of my men. Seizing the opportunity, and noticing, too, that in the previous melée I had been unhorsed, two gigantic artillerymen made at me. My sword was broken, my revolver was empty! What was I to do? But little time for reflection was left to me. With savage shouts the two dusky Titans sprang upon me. I gave myself up for lost, shut my eyes, thought of my poor mother, saw in a flash my happy country home, the thatched roofs of the cottages, the grey old church, the babbling stream, the village school, the little shop where my infant mouth had first become acquainted with the succulent bull's-eye-in short, I went through all the symptoms that are understood to accompany the imminence of a violent death. Suddenly, however, the desire to live awoke once more. The smaller of my two foes had outstripped his companion. He was just about to seize me, when, lowering my head, which was encased in a spiked helmet, I bounded at him. Fair and full I caught him, and so terrific was the force alone, but the helmet and the head too, pierced him through and through. Down on his back he fell crashing, bearing me with him as he went over and fixing the spike firmly in the earth, pinned like some huge beetle by a human pin. As my legs flew up they encountered the second giant, and, winding round his chest, crushed every vestige of life out of him and flung his mangled body full twenty yards to the rear. I had escaped, but my position was still uncomfortably awkward. By this time, however, the rout was complete, and four of my men, by dint of tremendous exertions, succeeded in extricating me from my curious entanglement. My pinned foeman turned out to be the Ranee's brother, HADJU THÂR MEEBHOY. We bore him back with us to camp, where, marvellous to relate, after a prolonged illness, he eventually recovered. THE island of Seringapatam is without exaggeration one of the fairest jewels in the imperial diadem of our world-wide possessions. Embosomed in the blue and sparkling wavelets of the Pacific Ocean, breathed upon by the spicy breezes that waft their intoxicating perfumes through endless groves of gigantic acacias, feathery fern trees, and gorgeously coloured Indian acanthoids; studded with the glittering domes of a profusion of jasper palaces beside which the trumpery splendours of Windsor or Versailles are but as dust, and guarded by the loyal devotion of an ancient warrior race noted not less for the supreme beauty of its women than for the matchless courage and endurance of its men, the Kingdom of Seringapatam offered during a period of more than one hundred years a stubborn engendered by my spring and the foeman's rush, that not the spike resistance even to the arms of the all-conquering Britons. So great indeed, was the respect extorted from the victors by the vanquished that when, owing to the marvellous strategy of my old friend Major-General Sir BONAMY BATTLEHORN, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., the island was finally subdued, it was agreed that in all but their acknowledgment of a British Suzerainty and the payment of an annual tribute of fifteen hundred gold lakhs, the proud islanders were to maintain their independence and to continue those forms of government which long tradition had invested in their eyes with all the sanctity of a religion. I had been present with my dear father at the great battle of the Dead Marshes by which the fortunes of the islanders were finally shattered. Never shall I forget the glow of exultant gratitude with which towards the end of the day gallant old Sir BONAMY came cantering towards me on his Of course he has never been elephant. "Thank you, thank quite the same man since. He you a thousand times, my dear has to be careful about his diet, ORLANDO," said the glorious vetebut with the childlike simplicity ran as he approached me; "it of an Oriental he finds a constant was that last charge of yours at pleasure in opening and shutting the head of your magnificent the little aluminium doors which Thundershakers that has conour dear old surgeon, TOBY verted defeat into victory, and O'GRADY, constructed to replace assured Westminster Abbey to the the KHAN's stomach and the bones of BONAMY BATTLEHORN. small of his back. I came to be All that is now necessary," he con"Fair and full I caught him." great friends with him, and it tinued, rising in his stirrups and waving his sword, "is that you was through him that I gained the knowledge which prompted the should complete the work that you have begun. Dost see that adventure I am now about to relate. battery of fifty guns still served by the haughty remnants of the Seringapatamese bombardiers? Let them be captured, and nothing will stand between us and the Diamond City of the Ranee." I needed no further incitement. Gathering round me the few Thundershakers who had escaped unscathed, I bade the standardbearer unfurl the flag of the brigade. In another moment we were upon them. Cutting, slashing, piercing, arrying, trampling, crushing, we dashed into the midst of the foe. Far over the field of carnage sounded our war-cry, the famous "Higher up Bayswater!" which was to our horses as the prick of spur. In vain the doughty bombardiers belaboured us; in vain did they answer with the awful shout of "Benkcitibenk," which none hitherto had been able to withstand. The work was hot, but in less than three minutes the battery was ours, and the broken host of the Ranee was streaming in full flight down the slopes from which so lately they had dealt death amongst the English army. In another moment we had limbered up-two men to each gun, except the largest, which was assigned to me as the chief of the band and helter skelter down the hill we went, and so, with shouting and with laughter, deposited our spoils at the feet of the British General. (To be continued.) A WORD ABOUT THE ST. HENRY JAMES'S THEATRE. THERE is something in a name, especially when it happens to be the title of a play. At the St. James's, Mr. ALEXANDER's latest venture has been Guy Domville, by the American novelist HENRY JAMES, who if he knew as much about play-writing as he does about novel-writing would probably be in the first flight of dramatists; and he would not have chosen so hopeless a name for his hero and for his play as Guy Domville. For the anti-James jokers would delight in finding that Guy could be" that "a first night audience vill dom' the play.' guy'd," and to say as to "Domville" For all that, if ALEXANDER be the sagacious commander in the dramatic field that he has hitherto shown himself, it is not likely that he should have been completely mistaken in accepting a play which a portion of the public has refused to accept. Of course, a manager cannot afford to keep a play going until the public come en masse to see it, and therefore, unless there is " a turn of the tide" (and such things have happened before now, and a condemned piece has had a long and prosperous career), Mr. ALEXANDER will himself be obliged to do to the play what those who ridicule and chaff it have already done, i.e. "take it off." I do not recount this incident in order to magnify my own exploits. My deeds themselves are my best record, those deeds which a factious majority in successive Parliaments has, to its everlasting shame, refused to recognise, but which not even the voice of malice, always busy in the task of depreciating genuine achieve- MRS. R. admits that she has always been very fond of sweets at ment, can rob of one particle of their brilliant and immortal lustre. dinner. What she is especially fond of is, she says, "a dish of But the fight is indissolubly connected with the stirring story which pommes d'Ananias;" and she always adds, "But, my dear, why I have here set out to relate, and for this reason alone have I the French choose such awful names for such nice things is what I mentioned it. During the brief struggle round the guns I became never can understand." QUITE ENGLISH, YOU KNOW!" Abdurrahman Khan (to himself). "I THINK THIS 'LL FETCH 'EM!" ["Should the Ameer happily accomplish the visit to this country on which he has set his heart, he may be assured of the warm welcome due to jone who, since his accession to supreme power in Afghanistan, has been the steady friend of Great Britain."-Times.] |