Cyclist (arguing with Friend on the way home from hunting). "WELL, ANYHOW, OLD CHAP, MINE CAN GO WHEN IT'S PUMPED OUT, AND THAT'S A LOT MORE THAN YOU CAN SAY FOR YOURS! SPORTIVE SONGS. A Playgoer visits Ibsen and meets with an old acquaintance. LAST night I went to see a play, A drama up-to-date, Wherein a woman holds the sway A kind of nightmare on the boards French wit played not on laughing chords 'Twas taken from the Norse. I do not like these dreadful homes Long, long ago-ah me, how long!- A tenth-rate playhouse was the scene, Of how she welcomed back the green I loved-the moral of that song! I loved the symphonies all wrong! I loved the singer's untrained voice! I loved the darling of my choice! And through the blatant farce last night My heart kept time within my breast, At the Fox-earths. Mr. Charley Pug (to Mrs. Charley Pug, on the fifth day of the frost). Don't you think, my dear, we might go and look at the skating on Brittlesea Mere? It would be better than doing nothing! SUBURBAN SENSE.-Mr. GRANT ALLEN says that "Clapham is never dumb." But, lying on an elevated plain, it is, alas! deaf to the voice of the hill-top charmer. Is it this fact which annoys the man who didn't? TA-TA!" ADAM AND AN APPLE. IN the charming performance of As You Like It, at the St. James's Theatre, the banished Duke and his followers appear to live on a diet of raw apples. It is doubtless as good as the Grape Cure, the Whey Cure, or any other cure. But when Adam, a man of eighty, nearly dead from exhaustion, is revived with a large, cold, raw apple, our admiration for the Apple Cure is vastly increased. And when this aged and almost dying man, instead of having a fit or falling dead, walks and talks gaily, our admiration for the Apple Cure is unbounded. The only improvement we can suggest is that Adam should sing the following song in place of the one written for Amiens: Blow, blow, thou winter wind, I've tried the Apple Cure; And after eating these I care not if it freeze, All cold I can endure. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green apple, Warm as graveyard chapel ! As does the Apple Cure I even can grapple. DESCRIPTION OF MR. RHODES BY A LITTLE ENGLANDER. -An amalgamation of high-ways and by-ways. AUGUSTE EN ANGLETERRE. LONDON. DEAR MISTER,-Ah, quel en-tête, what in head I come of to write! London! I have ventured to make you part of my impressions of some towns of province, but until here I have not spoken of London. It is not a town, it is a department, a country, of houses! But in fine, in preparing my guide, je dois aborder, I ought to board this great subject. I go to do it by degrees de temps en temps, of time in time, and I commence at present by some parts of the City, the most great arrondissement of London, and the veritable centre of the commerce of the world. AN Assistant writes:-"In Leaves in the Wind (ELLIOT STOCK) Mr. A. C. DEANE has gathered together some very charming and very clever pieces of verse that have appeared in various periodicals. Light verse is easy and delightful to read just in proportion as it has cost its producer thought and labour. The apparently inevitable words, the happy turns of a sentence, the unforced patness of the rhymes-how simple the whole thing looks when done, how hard it is to do. Now, Mr. DEANE'S technical skill is very great, and his verses ring musically and pleasantly without a single jar or discord. And here and there he strikes a deeper note, but he never forces it unduly. He is to be heartily congratulated on his latest little volume." Hyndman the Hinderer. THE BARON WHO says that British rule is India's curse As me the most part of the voyagers gain the City in going from the "Westend" by the street which calls herself the Strand. As me they think probably to the great town and to her history of thousand years. They come to see the magnificent centre of commerce, the most great and the most rich town of the world, the proud capital of the britannic Empire, the Rome of the nineteenth century. When they are thus impressioned of respect and of admiration, what is this then the first monument which they meet? Is it a statue as that of BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI, which one sole Italian town erected four hundred years before the epoch of the universal suffrage, of the national education and of the official schools of the beautiful arts? Is it a statue worthy of the britannic Empire, thousand times more rich than the ancient Republic of Venise? Saying it at this crisis makes it worse. THE WHALE FOR THE BULL.-We understand that in conse At the entry of the City, in face the Palace of Justice, one searches, one regards, one leans the head in outside of the "handsome cab." What is this that this is that that? Ca? Allons donc, let us go then! Oh, la, la! But, say then, a monument to make to die of to laugh! Planted there, absolutely at the middle of the street, a monument of the most ridicules, of the most divertings! In regarding this droll of dragon, who would can to think of the dignity of London? The most serious of the greek philosophers, who knew themselves without doubt in sculpture, of which they were surrounded of so beautiful pieces, would have burst of to laugh. The most silent of the Red Skins, men still more solemn, and ignoring absolutely the sculpture, would laugh à gorge déployée, at throat unfolded. The English soles are enough serious and enough solemn for to pass this monument without to show the least little smile. As to me, each time that I see him I laugh again. The first time I believed him an announce, a réclame, of some "pantomime." But no! It is an announce of the beautiful arts of London, of the good taste of the municipality. It is the unique pleasantery of the solemn Londonians. At some steps from this monument, Mister Punch, finds himself your rédaction, your office of redactor in chief. May I to say that he is never come from there any pleasantery so enormously droll as this pleasantery in bronze? The Londonians are calm and serious, but at the foundation they must to be one can not more laughers. One would have beautiful-on aurait beau-to search at Paris, town so gay, a statue as that! And of more. A statue of your great and good QUEEN should to be placed on a pedestal as he must, comme il faut. But on the hideous base beneath this dragon of pantomime, in a position absolutely indignant, and splashed of the filthy mud of London, find themselves two miserable statues which represent, one has told me, the QUEEN and the Prince of WALES. See there the respectuous homage of the City of London! However, Mister Punch, I wish not only to blame, I venture also to suggest. This year here the English celebrate the long and glorious reign of Her Majesty. All the world desires to erect some monuments worthy of a sovereign so illustrious and so venerated. The municipality of London could do better than that, in destroying rather than in erecting. It would be the best evidence of their respect towards the QUEEN that of to make to disappear this frightful monument and the two statues. As to the dragon, voilà a beautiful gift for your friend Li HUNG CHANG. Only, as he is aged, and as he laughs never, the view of a dragon so infinitely more hideous than the most frightful dragon of China would could to kill him of horror. He would value better, perhaps, to sell this cauchemar en bronze to the Theatre of Drurylane. Agree, &c., AUGUSTE. Two Ways of Looking at it. quence of recent developments, the name of Boscombe is to be field without thinking of the boundless beneficence of nature in "I NEVER," said the agrarian professor, "look upon a cornchanged to that of Belugachine. the great bread question." "Nor I," chimed in the MACTAVISH, "on an acre o' barley MADE IN GERMANY.-Much of our "British Patriotism" of the but that I joost contemplate the workings o' Providence in the pinchbeck, or German-silver, sort, apparently. matter of whuskey." Jones. "I SAY, MISS GOLIGHTLY, IT'S AWFULLY GOOD OF YOU TO ACCOMPANY ME, YOU KNOW. IF I'VE TRIED THIS SONG ONCE, I'VE TRIED IT A DOZEN TIMES-AND I'VE ALWAYS BROKEN DOWN IN THE THIRD VERSE!" A SHEET-LIGHTNING DESCENT. [On the burning of her house in Grosvenor Street, the Dowager Countess DELAWARR knotted two sheets together, and safely descended from the burning building, January 26.] WE have heard of great pluck in disaster, Of courage in dreadful defeat, But a Countess has known, And in peril has shown, How a woman can yet be the master By means of a sheet-just a sheet ! All praise to the Countess-and thanks to the sheet! Toujours la Politesse. MR. SPAWKINS has placed twenty francs en plein on No. 23 (his own age) at the tables of Monte Carlo. Madame la Comtesse de VIEILLECRUCHE proceeds to rake in the spoil when the coup comes off. Mr. Spawkins. Hi! Madame! confound it all! That was my Nap! Madame la Comtesse. Mille pardons, Monsieur. I am so borgne-blind. Permit me that I return you your stake? [Hands SPAWKINS a gold piece, and vanishes before the Briton has recovered from the shock. TO TOM. A BRAVE BOROUGH BOARD-SCHOOL BOY. (By an Elderly but Earnest Admirer.) ["Oh, he is a good boy-and such a one for readin'! He takes his 'rithmetic books to bed with 'im! That were his only fault-for light is very costly."-Mrs. Pullen, on her grandson "Tom," a Board-School Boy in the Borough. See "Studies in Board Schools," Daily News.] YES, light is very costly, as the wisest find, or mostly, But Toм of Lant Street Board School, you're a brick, and no mistake! A great GŒTHE well might glory in the hero of this story. He cried for "light, more light!" But Томму, can you keep awake With arithmetic in bed, Sir? You must bave a steady head, Sir. And an eager zeal for learning that beats ALEXANDER hollow. He kept himself from drowsing by a brazen ball, arousing Him from nodding by its tumbling. An example good to follow! But you've bettered it! How thorough, my young student of the Borough, Must be your love of knowledge, when you take your sums to bed. I am sure multiplication cannot signify vexation To a boy so fond of book-lore and with such a wakeful head. Why, I do not mind admitting, though I know that study's fitting To a fellow who means business, and intends to make his way, That the Rule of Three at Night, Sir, would have filled me with affright, Sir; For I couldn't always fix my thoughts thereon, Toм, e'en by day! Young TOM PULLEN, you 're a wonner, and at study quite a stunner, And I wish you luck, TOM PULLEN, and may granny never stint The extra bit of candle to enable you to handle O'er your pillow ciphering problems, they're not all "as plain as print," As I happen to remember; though I did not, in December, Take arithmetic to bed with me-'twas mostly SCOTT or DICKENS, Or some story book or novel. But oh! in a Lant Street hovel, Where the sun is ne'er too bright, Toм, and the night-mist early thickens, Though the board school is a boon, Toм, and I trust you'll shine there soon, Том, There would be excuse for nodding o'er your lessons. But you don't! Your granny, Toм, has said it, and it's vastly to your credit, And whoever makes a mull of life, dear TOм, I'm sure you won't! Lacteal Veracity. Squire (to Mr. Pails, the great dairyfarmer). Bad time for the cows during this frost, eh? Mr. Pails. Dreadful, Sir. You wouldn't believe how the ice interferes with the flow of milk. But they recognise the fact in the great metropolis. I'm sorry to say. [And so does Mr. Pails. CON. FOR THAT CONCERT.-What is the use of an "Ottoman" that cannot be "sat upon," or a Porte-however sublime which cannot be "shut up" when needful? |