THE GULL.

THE DOMESTIC SERVANTS' EARLY CLOSING
MOVEMENT.

A great domestic movement is in agitation, which, it is expected, will convulse the social fabric from the area upwards, and shake our households, not only to their centres, but to the very top of our chimney-pots, our weathercocks, and our cowls. The contemplated measure is a demand on the part of our domestic servants for a general early closing of all private houses at eight o'clock, so that after that hour the cooks, housemaids, nursery-maids, and others in our establishments may go forth in search of moral and intellectual recreation in the open air. It is argued, and with a considerable show of justice, that after cooking our dinners, and washing up our tea-things, the female servant has a right to go and get her mind cultivated, and her tastes elevated, or, as it were, put in soak in the fountain of the Muses, to be rinsed, and send forth its gushings when fitting opportunity might offer.

The Domestic Early Closing Movement will entail on the masters the necessity of limiting their wants, and allowing none to extend beyond eight P.M., which it is contended will be found quite long enough for all reasonable purposes.

The moral and intellectual training will generally be commenced by the policeman on the beat, but as boldness increases, the domestic servant may venture to improve her mind at some of the harmonic meetings in the neighbourhood of her master's residence. Adjacent barracks will be particularly sought after for the culture which it is the object of the Female Servants' Early Closing Movement to obtain.

A PRIZE BAD JOKE.

A gentleman of fortune having offered a prize of 100l. for the best bad joke, we beg he will send the money immediately to Mr. Bogue's, as we challenge the world to produce a better worse joke than the following:—

Why is a cab-stand, the horses of which have the new Patent Inflated Horse Collars, likely to be serviceable to ballooning?

Because it is the latest improvement in air-'os-station!

(Three cheers, boys! hip! hip! hurrah!)

"Saxon—oppression—moral force—dagger—forefathers—revenge—first gem of the sea—trampled upon—oh!—finest peasantry—Cromwell—slaughter—Erin's daughters—blood boil—ah! cruelty—debt of 80,000,000—robbery—sacrilege for 500 years—tyranny—be Irishmen—assert yourselves—pikes—iron bars on the railways—moral force—be patient—repeal—hereditary bondsmen would you be free?—pay in your subscriptions"—(tremendous cheering!)

By filling in any ordinary words to make a kind of grammatical sense of the above (though that is not absolutely necessary), an excellent Conciliation Hall speech, or a Monster Meeting harangue, inculcating peace, quiet, and content, in the true Irish incendiary fashion, may be produced during any month of the year, but if it is in the depth of the winter, the effect, of course, is considerably stronger.—N.B. Patriots' materials made up in the same way on the shortest notice.

SWEET ARE THE USES OF TEARS.

A German chemist has discovered this year that there is sugar in tears. We have been told by poets that there is "sweetness in all things," but we little thought that it lurked in the corner of every squint. We always thought that crying was a sign rather of a sour disposition, but according to this new discovery it would seem that the more a lady cries the more her temper is sweetened by it. By-the-bye, hysterics must be invaluable to a cook on board wages who has to find her own sugar! What a lump of sweetness, too, Niobe must have been,—for she was "all tears." To a grocer of the present day she would have been invaluable, for she would have supplied him all the year round with "the very best moist."

COPY-BOOK TEXTS FOR YOUNG AUTHORS JUST
BEGINNING TO WRITE.

Far-fetched puns corrupt good jokes.

Hate a Scotticism as you would a Printer's Devil.

Beware of Irish mad bulls.

There's many a slip between the MS. and the tip.

Whatever is, don't write.

One purchaser is worth a dozen pressmen.

The best proof of a work is in the selling.

If you wish to know all the errors in your book, get a friend to review it.

Persons who write to see their names in print should recollect that a hundred cards only cost five shillings!

There's but one step from the publisher's to the butter-monger's.

Paternoster Row is the beginning of Amen Corner.

Never pause for a word as long as there is "Finis."

THE LADY BIRD.

An extraordinary flight of Lady Birds distinguished the annals of Margate and Ramsgate last year. They covered the coast for miles, extending all the way to Herne Bay, and even as far as Gravesend. They are supposed to have been brought from London, as the decks of the steamers were completely strewed with them. The piers at all the watering-places, the hotels, the tea-gardens, the shrimp-parlours, were immediately occupied, and it was a matter of difficulty, soon after their arrival, to find a single bed empty. The inhabitants foolishly imagine that these Lady Birds commit a deal of injury, and they do everything they can to drive them away from the place. They lay traps in the windows to catch them, consisting of a piece of pasteboard, on which is inscribed a charm, of two simple words, "TO LET;" or sometimes it is only one word, as "tOLeTt." Directly the Lady Bird sees this, she knocks at the door, and flies into the house; but when once she is inside, she is subject to all the little persecutions which, since the sea-side was discovered, have been showered upon the poor race of Lady Birds. She is teased out of her life; she is not allowed to eat anything in comfort; her meals are taken away from her; till at last her whole enjoyment is poisoned, and she is glad to wing her way back again to London. Naturalists, however, have proved that the Lady Birds do incalculable good to every spot where they settle. Broadstairs has been built by their pretty exertions. Erith has been raised by them out of the sand; and Rosherville would never have been dug out of a chalk-pit if it had not been for the swarms of Lady Birds! It is true they buzz terribly, and make a great noise whenever more than two of them appear together; but this defect is more than counterbalanced by their gay colours, which resemble the richest silks and satins; and their dazzling appearance, which sparkles with all the force of diamonds when viewed by candle-light. Nothing prettier than to watch an assembly of them in the evening. They crowd at the libraries; they fill the ball-rooms, where they mimic the movements of the waltz; they throng Tivoli and St. Peter's, where the fireworks are not more brilliant than they; they sing, and dance, and laugh, and do everything like human creatures, but reason. And these are the poor little harmless creatures whom the inhabitants of the different watering-places delight in persecuting. Why, they carry gaiety and happiness wherever they appear; and as for hurting anybody, there is not a sting amongst a whole townful of them.

It is a fiction to suppose that the age of the Lady Bird can be told by the marks on her back. This provision on the part of nature would in fact be quite superfluous, for it is very curious that no Lady Bird at the sea-side is ever less than fourteen, or more than eighteen.

The Lady Bird visits the watering-places generally about June, and stops there till the winter. The first gale blows them back again to London, where they pass the foggy months in the various shops, theatres, and ball-rooms. When Tom Thumb was in town, an extraordinary flight of Lady Birds might be seen every day at the Egyptian Hall.

THE MARINE APHIS VASTATOR.

Very different to the Lady Bird is the Aphis Vastator, or commonly known as the Sea-side Lodging-house keeper. It is a most ravenous tribe, to be met with at all watering-places. It will eat through anything. It has consumed, before now, a week's provisions in a day. It is always seeking somebody to devour. These vastators, or rather devastators, live mostly on the poor Lady Birds, who suffer dreadfully from their depredations. A Lady Bird, who has taken a lodging in the morning, has repeatedly been eaten out of house and home before the evening, and been obliged to fly for safety. Nothing escapes the fangs of the Marine Lodging-house keeper. It will work its way into locked drawers, and runs through a tea-caddy with as much ease as if it had the key. It will clear a trunk in a day, and empty a work-box whilst the Lady Bird is taking a plunge in the sea. Its fangs are so constructed that they close directly on everything they touch; and their eyes are so sharp that they protrude into every letter and parcel that comes into the house. What they do not consume they hide; what they cannot hide they destroy or else give away; for the male Devastator is just as nimble as the female, though he is rarely seen. He comes the last thing at night, and is off the first thing in the morning; walking off probably—for he has very long legs—with a coat, or a pair of trousers that was found lying about in your portmanteau.

The Aphis has generally a large brood of little Aphises, which she rears in the back kitchen. They all partake of their mother's nature. They crawl about the house in search of stockings and frocks, and from their small size can creep almost into anything. Their appetites, too, are almost superhuman. They will lift the lid of a rump-steak pie, which has been left on the landing-place, and, in less time than you can drink a glass of wine, they will have abstracted every bit of meat out of it. If they settle on a leg of mutton they will not leave it before they have picked it clean to the bone. In fact, their skill in polishing a bone would fill you with wonder, if nothing else. They shrink from no pastry; and the largest tart does not appal them. Their powers of suction, too, are just as great. A bottle is no sooner put upon the table than it is empty; and if there were twenty bottles they would go through every one of them, and the stronger the contents the easier the absorbing process seems to be!

When the winter comes round the Aphis Devastator looks over her stores, and begins to count if her provisions will last her till the summer. Her coals are put away into the cellar; her wine and spirits are arranged in the different cupboards; her candles are measured out; and everything placed upon the save-all system. Woe to her young then, if she catches one of them lifting the lid of a pie, and helping himself to the solids or fluids within! The chances are she would eat him up on the spot. The husband's appetite, too, is put upon a reduced scale, and he is only allowed a glass of grog when there has been stuffing for dinner, or when another Aphis drops in. The voracity of the whole family is kept under during the winter, but then it breaks out with all the greater fury afterwards. The legs and shoulders of the first lodger of the season generally feel this pretty sharply. He has not a joint which, after the first day, he can call his own. A blight invariably follows; for whatever the Aphis Vastator touches is sure to go immediately.

It is difficult to describe the Aphises externally, for they take up so wonderfully quick the habits of each new lodger that they are always changing.

YOUR ROOM IS PREFERRED TO YOUR COMPANY.
AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION OVERHEARD IN BAKER STREET.

Mrs. Armytage, the greatest woman in the world (ringing the bell at Madame Tussaud's)—"Oh, if you please, madam, I have called to inquire if you wanted a 'magnificent addition?'"

Madame T.—"No, thank you; we're quite full."

Mrs. A.—"You might find a spare corner, madam."

Madame T.—"A spare corner? Why, bless me, my good woman, you wouldn't have me turn out the 'Royal Family' to accommodate you!"

BACON'S NOVUM ORGANUM.

What is the greatest obstacle to Jews sitting in Parliament?

The extraordinary quantity of gammon they must swallow.

Advice to Persons tbout to Marry.—Never attempt to buy furniture at a sale, excepting on a Saturday, for on that day only are the sale-rooms freed from the Jews, whose countenances never appear as at an auction so particularly forbidding.

was a chemist, not one of your ordinary men, who put their trust in huge coloured glass bottles, and drive a large trade in lozenges. No, Phipps was an experimental chemist, and he acquainted the public with the fact by means of an inscription to that effect over his door, while he confirmed the neighbours in the belief by occasional explosions more or less violent. On one occasion he went so far as to blow the roof off his house, but that, he said, "was an accident." Moreover, Phipps was a licentiate of Apothecaries' Hall, and jobbed the paupers at 1½d. a head, including pills and plasters. Mr. Phipps's establishment was evidently the home for natural philosophy. Experiments abandoned by every one else were eagerly sought after by Phipps; and he had a valuable auxiliary in his cat.

When science slumbered, the cat might be seen comfortably dozing on the door-step; but when anything new in medicine or chemistry turned up, the cat had an active life of it. The poor thing had taken poison enough to kill hundreds of rich husbands, and antidotes sufficient to restore double the number. It had a stomach-pump kept for its especial use. You might generally guess when anything extraordinary had happened, by missing the cat from its usual place, and seeing Dick, Mr. Phipps's boy, who had the job of holding it during the experiments, with slips of diachylon plaster all over his face and hands. It had become familiar with prussic acid and arsenic in all their insinuating forms, and had some slight knowledge of the smaller operations of surgery; still it went purring about, and was always at hand on an emergency, ready to have any drug tested on its person. Phipps was proud of it. "My cat, Tom, sir," he would say, "has done more for its fellow animal, man, than all the philanthropists that ever taught people to be discontented."

All went on smoothly till the introduction of ether, when Phipps determined to see if he could extract a tooth from a person under its influence. The cat, of course, was to be the especial patient. Dick was summoned, Tom caught, the ether administered, and Phipps selected one of the largest tusks. But the ether could not have taken proper effect; for, with a frightful yell, Tom freed himself from Dick's grasp, favouring him at the same time with severe marks of his esteem, which made him roar, and disappear, À la Harlequin, through the plate-glass window, doing immense damage to the chemicals and Galenicals displayed therein.

But Tom soon came back, for no one would have him. Science, who labels some men F.R.S.'s, or tags half the alphabet to the end of their names, had not forgotten to mark her humble follower, the cat. He had lost one ear in some acoustic experiment; one eye was closed for ever, from having the operation for squinting practically illustrated some dozen times; and he was lame in one of his hind legs, the tendon having been cut to exemplify the method of operating for club-foot; while his coat, once remarkably glossy, had such a second-hand, seedy appearance that it would not have tempted a Jew.

At last he died, a martyr to science. Phipps had invented some wonderful pulmonic lozenge, containing a great deal of morphia, which was to cure coughs at first sight. Tom had been rather asthmatic for some time, owing to inhaling noxious gases; so Phipps gave him a good dose to begin with. Next morning he was found very fast asleep, and extremely rigid in his limbs. Dick suggested that he was dead, but his master indignantly repudiated the idea; so Tom was kept, in the full expectation that he would one day start up quite lively, till at length the moth got into his coat, and Phipps was compelled to consign his furry friend to a grave in the garden. Phipps never had his usual spirits again. His experiments were at an end; for though he would sometimes furtively introduce some drug or other into Dick's tea or beer, that young gentleman soon found it out, and took his meals ever afterwards with his mother, who was the proprietress of a veal-and-ham pie depÔt in an adjacent court. Phipps wanders about the College of Surgeons a melancholy man, and amuses himself dreaming over experiments he would perform if he could only get such another cat! He is not best pleased however, when he meets any young friend of Dick's, who violates private confidence by running after him and inquiring at the very top of his voice, "Who killed the cat?"

HUNTING AN HEIR.

Our pretty little pack of Belgrave Square Harriers had their first winter meeting on Thursday last at Lady Hurtleberry's.

It is impossible to conceive a more desirable place for the sport of their hunting than her Ladyship's. The gorgeous rose-coloured damask hangings give the finest possible tone to the complexion, the purple-flowered tapis sets off the foot to the greatest advantage, whilst a grand piano by Broadwood, and a harp by Erard, afford the most convenient opportunities for the display of accomplishments.

The "meet" took place at nine o'clock precisely, and a better "room" could not be desired.

As each member of the Hunt keeps her own harriers at "Walk," the first Meeting is always interesting from the number of new "drafts." In addition, therefore, to those harriers that hunted last season, with all of whom you are well acquainted, the following new entries were made:—

Lady Browbeater's Lucy Jane; "too short in the head," to my fancy.

The Hon. Mrs. Rattletrap's Julia Rose; a lively creature, and "gives tongue" beautifully.

Mrs. Major Fubbs's Clementina Louisa; very dumpy and dull—sure to be "latter'd."

Mrs. General Rowdedow's Lucidora; all that heart could wish—fine nose, capital mouth, splendid chest, and a forehand and arm of perfect symmetry.

There were one or two others introduced during the evening, but none of them possessed the necessary qualifications for the Belgrave Square Harriers. "The beaters" upon this occasion had been my brother Charles, whose Captaincy, by purchase, depends upon my being eligibly married off papa's hands; young Musparrot, similarly circumstanced; and old Major Muggs with four daughters, aged respectively twenty-six, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and thirty.

They had great fears at one time that our first meet would prove "blank," as they had beat up all the clubs during September and October without "pricking" an Heir either apparent or presumptive. Major Muggs had the good fortune to hit upon a track at last, and a finer specimen I never saw during my short experience. Five feet eleven, Roman nose, D'Orsay whiskers, and said to be worth twelve thousand a year when of age in January next. He was found lying in some elegantly furnished apartments in the Albany, sitting on a beautiful form of velvet. As soon as he made his appearance in the enclosure at Lady Hurtleberry's the pack was laid on. Amelia Frog-morton "challenged" first; I, you may be sure, was not slow in answering her.

The Heir first made for a Polka Quadrille, closely waited on by Amelia, with myself for a vis-À-vis. Having got as far as Pastorale, he "doubled" round by the piano, Mary Warbleton having "turned him" by Jenny Lind's Ran tan plan, from Il Figlia del Regimento. He then "took away" to the card room, but being "headed" by my brother Charles, who was purposely stationed in the doorway, he made for the harp, where I pressed him very hard with Bochsa's Fancies. He doubled again, and ran straight to the supper-room, closely followed by the entire pack, but the champagne coming on pretty briskly, Lady Hurtleberry thought it right to "call us off" for the evening, the Heir being ultimately bagged by the Major and Musparrot, and carried to the —— Club; for what purpose I leave you to guess. The Heir has been "turned down" twice since, and already shows symptoms of distress. I have not the least doubt that in a short time longer, I, yes I, my dear Eliza, shall have the pleasure (but this is entre nous) of introducing you to a real juggled heir.

By-the-bye, I must send you a copy of a song written by that rattlepate Rattletraps. It is to the air of

THE LANGUAGE OF VEGETABLES.

We do not think there is in the whole history of letters anything more beautiful than the two following specimens. Any one acquainted with the vegetable vocabulary cannot fail to be touched deeply by them.

The first was addressed to Sigismond by his devoted wife Toot-sichfootsich, when he was imprisoned by Kalbskopf II. in the impregnable fortress of Dummerkerl, in the SpitzbÜbe mountains, in Moldavia.

The originals, and the monuments of Sigismond's wonderful escape, are still preserved, with the greatest reverence, by the proud descendants of his wife's noble family. Admirers of conjugal affection have been known to journey to the SpitzbÜbe Mountains purposely to look at them. The first letter was scratched with a pin on a large cabbage leaf, and sent into the castle wrapped round a pound of butter:—

"Beloved Greens!—Dry thy Onions. There is Cabbage in the horizon. Suppress thy Spinage, there's a darling Bean. Support thy Haricots with Beetroot, and never let young Radish leave thy dear Asparagus. May Pickled Gherkins watch over thee, and Early Peas strew Mashed Potatoes, with Blessed Chickweed, over thy suffering Turniptop! Where is thy boastod Sourkrout? Have a little Brocoli, my own sweet Bean; and put thy Chickweed in Parsley. There is Tomata yet for both of us, so pray hide thy Cauliflower for a few short Sprouts, and Capers must soon be ours! Confide in Mangel-wÜrzel. I enclose thee a hundred Greens from the bottom of my Green Stuff, and remain, my fondest Beetroot,

The answer, though in a humbler strain, was not less eloquent. It was rolled up in little crumbs of bread, which were made into the shape of pills, and thrown out of the prisoner's window:—

"My sweetest Marrowfat!—My Asparagus is well nigh bursting. My Salad is overflowing, and I cannot rest at night from too much Mustard seed. Send me, an thou hopest hereafter for Asparagus, a Scarlet-Runner, and a small Cow Cabbage. Trust in Sage, and throw thyself fondly on Watercress.