OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
THE CANDIDATE'S VADE MECUM.
THE SOMALIS AT SYDENHAM. In the Stables.
OPERATIC NOTES.
THE GREAT POLITICAL COMBINATION TROUPE.
ROUNDABOUT READINGS.
ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
book cover London.
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 83 FLEET STREET,
Also sold by all booksellers
1895
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 109.
December 28, 1895.
A COLLOQUY IN CLOUDLAND.
SCENE—Cloudland, nigh to midnight of the last day of the Old Year. The Incomparable Sage of Fleet Street and "La Mancha's Matchless Knight" mounted on their respective wooden horses.
Mr. Punch (spurring the Spotted One). Yoicks! Tallyho!! Hark forward!!! Something like space-consuming speed this, eh, my dear Don? Who talks now of a Horseless Age?
Don Quixote (turning the peg of Malambruno's magic steed). Only your scientific and sensational journals, who, dryasdust dogs! are, after all, endless leagues behind Merlin the Enchanter, and the magic-aided heroes of old romance.
Mr. Punch. Kim up, my timber-built timber-topper, and spotted space-devourer! As though the much-talked of motor-carriage, auto-cycle, or petroleum-propelled tram-car of these mouthing days of modernity might compare with the Trifaldi's steed, my spotted Pegasus, or even the peripatetic carpet of Persian story! Speed you well, valorous knight!
Don Quixote. Heaven guide thee, undaunted Sage! Hah! How you fly aloft! How you cut the air more swiftly than an arrow!! How you mount, and soar, and astonish the world below!!!
Mr. Punch. Haha! Ours is no imaginary, bellows-blown flight, as was yours, worthy knight, when seated with Sancho on the wooden crupper of Clavileno, pressed aforetime by the valourous Peter of Provence, and the fair Magalona!
Don Quixote. Nay, indeed, Sir Knight of the Spotted Bucephalus—for thou art no chivalry-scorning Trifaldi—we are not now blindfolded, and thy Pegasus, thy Brilladoro, thy Bayarte, thy Frontino, thy Clavileno el Aligero—or Wooden-Peg the Winged—might give a lead even to my renowned Rosinante!
Mr. Punch. Blindfolded? Nay, dear knight, I am the Dazzling Illuminator, not the Bewildering Blinder!
Don Quixote. I plainly perceive that thou art a Progressive.
Mr. Punch. I am a Progressive Moderate and a Moderate Progressive. Badge me not therefore in any less comprehensive fashion, O Knight of the Rueful Countenance.
Don Quixote. I presume, Sir Sage, that those same Progressives, however, who claim to initiate all the forthright movement of the Age, did originate and invent the motor-carriages, auto-cycles, and other the horseless locomotive vehicles of which we spake but now?
Mr. Punch. Who better than yourself should know, my dear Don, that all are not Progressives who make a stir about Progress? Like the circumgyrators in the game of "Giant's Stride," many of them ramp round in a circle, and "get no forrader." I am the only true and trustworthy Progressive, and my auto-motor cuts all records!
Don Quixote. And is it propelled by petroleum?
Mr. Punch. By nothing so crude, flaring, and fuliginous, dear Don. It is "motived" by—Light!
Don Quixote. Wondrous machine! How would I like to mount it! Is it in likeness of a horse?
Mr. Punch. Say not the witlings and wiseacres that we are on the verge of a Horseless Age?
Don Quixote. They do. But, by the bones of my beloved Rosinante, the idea liketh me not. The horse is indeed a noble animal——
Mr. Punch. And will continue to be "useful to man," our current cyclo-and-auto-motormania notwithstanding. The cycle doubtless hath its utility, and even charm, though in certain of its characteristics it seems qualified to give mankind the hump!
Don Quixote. And womankind the wobbles!
Mr. Punch.
When lovely woman stoops to wheeling,
And finds too late that bikes betray,
Beauty, and grace, and finer feeling
She'll see the sex hath chucked away!
Don Quixote. Verily, had my peerless Dulcinea herself bestraddled a spinning-wheel in ungraceful posture and unseemly garb, I, her sworn knight, should have deemed her the victim of diabolic enchantment. Why, even the afflicted duenna, with her fair cheeks beard-begrown by enchantment, she whom Sancho called the Countess Three-Skirts, would not—save under dire compulsion—have donned the modern divided skirt and mounted the man-saddled steed of steel. Art sure, Sir Sage, that after all it is not enchantment that hath so far unsexed your afflicted damosels and duennas, and that 'tis not my duty in their defence to lay lance in rest——
Mr. Punch. Nay, sweet soul of chivalry, Mayfair is not La Mancha, and you may safely leave its fair denizens to the defence—or, if need be, chastening—of that knightly lance of to-day, my own invincible and unerring bÂton. But, verily, 'twere a punishment not ill-deserved by certain of our mannish maidens and male-mimicking matrons did Malambruno clap bristly scrubbing-brush hairs upon them as upon your distressful Duenna of Toledo.
Don Quixote. Verily, Sir Sage, we are mounting skyward, dawn-ward, New Year-ward in a wondrous manner! Thy spotted steed is surely Pegasus itself, for Skyworld is full of myriad voices of wisdom and melody.
Mr. Punch. But my Auto-Motor, comparable only with the Sun God's glowing chariot, shall outsoar and outshine even our present empyrean flight.
Voice (suddenly sounding behind them). Wuff! Wuff! Wuff!
Don Quixote (looking round). Saints preserve us! What is this new marvellous enchantment? Hath Sirius itself broken loose?—doth the Dog Star follow our trail?
Mr. Punch. What seest thou, Sir Knight?
Don Quixote (with awe). I behold, as it were, an aerial fire-wheeled car, shapen in the guise of a Titanic Tome, coruscating comet-like in its career, whereon is mounted—yes, verily—a Dog—a Dog of Dogs! What, Sir Punch, may be this portent?
Mr. Punch. Why, my dear Don Quixote—who seems scarcely the Quixote Quicksight of the nursery rhyme—what should it be but Tobias himself with that promised specimen of my Auroral Autocar, or Mirific Motor-Carriage, self-impelled, self-steered, self-lighted, self-heated, the most peerless outcome of the true Progressive spirit, the true acme of sure and speedy Progress; in other words, dear Don, and at your entire service, my
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
Volume 109, July 6, 1895.
edited by Sir Francis Burnand
A PATH OF PEACE.
(The Baltic Canal, June 22, 1895.)
["Peace reigns over the whole fleet," &c.—"Daily News" Special.]
A work of Peace, whereto from near and far
Gather the iron-bosomed brood of war,
Like new Stymphalian birds, whose claws and wings
The warrior welcomes and the poet sings.
Oh, gentle Peace, how strange in our strange day.
Thy mailÈd retinue, thine armed array!
Those flower-deck'd obelisks, that silken rope,—
Bright illustrations of the Tales of Hope,—
The royal speeches and the loyal cheers,
Disguise misgivings as they silence fears.
But Denmark's memories, and the thoughts of France,
As through the stream that yacht's white bows advance,
Breaking that slender cord from bank to bank,
Might move reflections strange. Yet let us thank
Adventurous skill which gives our ships to-day
A shorter passage and a safer way!
Not war alone, but trade, will take the track
That shuns the wild and stormy Skager Rak;
And may BrunsbÜttel's now familiar name
Be little linked with Empire's big War-Game
May battle-echoes in the Baltic cease,
And the Canal be a new Path for Peace
