There's my eldest Brother down With a pain all round his head, Ah! I'm the only one who's up-- Oh!... Oh!... I'll go to bed! So--we're all coddlin', &c.
As the Doctor orders Port, Orders Burgundy, Champagne, Good living and good drinking, Why we none of us complain, While we're--all coddlin', Cod, cod, coddlin', While we're all coddlin' At our house at home!
BY A SMALL WESTERN.--Orientals take off their shoes on entering a Mosque. We remove our hats on entering a Church. Both symbolical; one leaves his understanding outside; the other enters with a clear head.
TO THE COUNTY COUNCIL. (_AD REMPUBLICAM._)
New vessel, now returning ship From this thy tried and trial trip, Refit in dock awhile: I fear Your ballast looks a trifle queer.
Your rigging ("rigging" is a word By other folk than seamen heard) Has got a little loose; you need An overhaul, you do indeed.
Your sails (or purchases?) should stay The stress--and Press--that on them weigh: This constant playing to the gods Will scarcely weather blustering odds.
In vain to blazon "London's Heart" As figure-head, if thus you part Unseaworthy; in vain to boast Your "boom"--a cranky boom at most.
We rate you, _we_ who pay your rates: Beware the overhauling fates, Beware lest down you go at last The sport and puppet of the blast.
I always voted you a bore, But never quite so much before Besought you with a frugal mind To sail not quite so near the wind.
MRS. R. AGAIN.--To our excellent old lady, being convalescent, her niece was reading the news. She commenced about the County Council, the first item in the report being headed, "An Articulated Skeleton." "Ah!" interrupted the good lady, "murder will out! And where did they find the skeleton of the Articulated Clerk?"
[Illustration: AN INCOMPLETE BIRTHDAY PRESENT.
_Mamma_. "ETHEL, THERE ARE YOUR NEW GOLF THINGS JUST COME, THAT I ORDERED FOR YOU FROM EDINBORO, AND--ISN'T IT PROVOKING?--THEY'VE ACTUALLY FORGOTTEN _THE LINKS_!"]
PROFESSOR HUBERT HERKOMER has "dried his impressions," and given them to the public in a handsome volume brought out by MACMILLAN & CO. It is all interesting even to a non-artistic laic, for there is much "dry point" of general application in the Professor's lectures. Yet, amid all his learning and his light-hearted style, there is occasionally a strain of melancholy, as when he pictures himself to us as "etching and scratching on a bed of burr." Painful, very; likewise Dantesque,--infernally Dantesque. But there is another and a more cheerful view which the Baron prefers to take, and that is, the word-picture which the Professor gives us of his little room in his Bavarian home, where he says, "Under the seat by the table are my bottles"--ah! quite Rabelaisian this!--"with the mordants, and my dishes for the plates." Isn't this rare! "I should add, there is a stove near the door." O Sybarite! Doesn't this suggest the notion of a delightful little dinner _à deux_! With "the mordants,"--which is, of course, a generic name for sauces of varied piquancy,--and with his "dishes" artistically prepared and set before "the plates," as in due order they should be, he is as correct as he is original. A true _bon vivant_. The Baron highly commends the book, which only for the rare etchings it contains, is well worth the attention of every amateur of Art, and that he, the Baron, may, one of these days, dine with him, the Professor, is the sincere wish of his truly, and everybody else's truly,