[Professor HUXLEY, at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, suggested that in the future imaginative speaking at their dinners might be stimulated by the drinking of liquid oxygen, _bien frappé_.]
Take hence the bowl; though beaming Brightly as bowl e'er shone, With Fizz sublimely creaming, Or Port or Zoedone. There is a new potation To warm the hearts of men, And wake imagination-- In Liquid Oxygen!
Each cup I drain, _bien frappé_, My tongue pat talk can teach; It helps to make me happy In after-dinner speech. At banquet, or at gala, I match such mighty men As GLADSTONE, CARR, or SALA, On Liquid Oxygen!
A fig for Mumm or Massio, Falernian and such fudge; (Thin stuff those tipples classic If I am any judge.) But burning thoughts come o'er me And fire my tongue, or pen, When I've a bowl before me Of Liquid Oxygen!
When fun needs stimulation, Or fancy fails in fire; When lags the long oration, Or tongues postprandial tire; Then take the tip Huxleyan, And one long swig,--and then You'll promptly raise a pæan To Liquid Oxygen!
"There is nothing in Italy more beautiful to me than the coast-road between Genoa and Spezia." Remember these words of DICKENS, in his _Pictures from Italy_, as I start from Pisa to see that lovely coast, and the Mediterranean, for the first time.
Pisa is sleepy, but the railway officials are wide awake. The man who sells me my ticket "forgets" one lira. This answers capitally with innocent old ladies from England or Germany. The old lady counts her change, and if she has carefully ascertained the fare by reading the price marked on her ticket, she finds at once that there is a halfpenny wanting. She never learns that this is the Government tax. "If you please," she begins; or, "_Bitte_," and then she goes off into--not hysterics, but French, and murmurs, "_Seevooplay, je pongse vous devays avoir donnay moi un sou_--er--er--more, _vous comprenny?_" or, "_Il y a encore_--er--er--_fünfzig, vous savay, à moi à payer._" Then the official answers, also in French, "_Ah nong, Madame, ceci est la taxe doo gouvernemang sul biglietto, capisce?_"
Whereupon the old lady is so agitated by the thought that she has wrongfully accused him of stealing a soldo, that she never notices that he has withheld a lira. If she counts her money later in the day, she will blame those nasty lira notes, which stick together so, that she must have given two somewhere instead of one. But the railway clerk is also prepared for any more exacting stranger, and holds the extra note ready for him. The clerk at Pisa does so, handing it to me, without a word of objection or explanation, as soon as I ask for it. The system is as perfect as it is simple. Having obtained my change, I start for the Mediterranean.