قراءة كتاب Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 31, 1887

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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 31, 1887

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 31, 1887

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the theatrical perruquier Fox. "Nothing like leather," said the tanner; and judging from the collection of illustrations and notices, it is, in Mr. Fox's opinion, more what is outside the head than what is in it, that insures success on the Stage. The perruquier makes the wig, and the wig makes the actor. There are portraits of various theatrical celebrities, including one or two of Mr. Toole, in various wigs, whose presentments in these pages may entitle the work to be called Fox's Book of Martyrs—willing martyrs, of course, and many of them after they've strutted and fretted for several hours on the stage, quite ready to go cheerfully to "The Steak."

Mr. Frederick Barnard's Character Sketches from Dickens have been republished. They are the work of a true artist; but he should have left Mr. Pickwick alone. Who cares for an artistic Mr. Pickwick? No; let him ever remain the burlesque eccentricity invented by Mr. Seymour, and founded on Dickens's creation. But Mr. Barnard's Mrs. Gamp and Bill Sikes are both quite truly Dickensonian. Baron de Book Worms.


NUGGETS IN NORTH WALES.

There is legends, and traditions told, and narratives, and tales,

Of wealth in mountain crannies, caves, and cells of ancient Wales.

The dens of dwarves and fairies, sprites and goblins, imps and elves,

Where they, like misers, look you, kept their treasures to themselves.

A cockatrice, a griffin, or a wivern watched the hoard,

In the coffers of the crystal rocks, and stone-strong chambers stored,

Breathed fire and flames, and ramped and raved in form to tear and rend,

And scratch and bite, and sting with tail, barbed arrow-like on end.

The lions and the eagles and the snakes together linked,

The cockatrices, wiverns, and their tribes is all extinct.

No dragons could Pendragon, if alive yet, find to slay,

And the dwarves, and fays, and fairies all alike have gone away.

Now Griffiths is the Safe Man, and a griffin guards no more

The secret riches of the rocks—they lie concealed in ore;

The lodes and veins, and minerals, there's quantities untold

In the quarries and the crystals, and the quartzes, full of gold.

It is an El Dorado, found in Mawddach's happy vale;

It is Mr. Pritchard Morgan's, look you, no romancer's tale.

And mines besides Gwmfynydd mine 'tis like there's them that owns;

Peradventure Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Evans, Mr. Jones.

North Wales will be a Golden Chersonesus, though the phrase

Is a little solecisms, indeed, suppose quartz-crushing pays.

And, moreover, in Welsh diggings what if nuggets there be found,

As large as leeks, and weighing from a scruple to a pound?

A Golden Age in Wales, look you, there's goodly ground to hope,

And a theme of song besides to give the Bards unbounded scope,

And prizes at Eistedfoddau for poetry and odes,

On the find of gold in the quartzes and the metal-veins and lodes.


SOCIAL ROMANCE.

A "Fragment," extracted from the "Dim and Distant Future," as imagined by Mr. Frederic Harrison.

It was a delightful summer evening, and East London was looking its brightest. The eight hours of daily toil were over, and the crowds of cheery-voiced and happy-faced working people were returning in merry groups to their respective homes, scattered here and there amid the splendid Co-operative Palaces that reared their decorated fronts to meet the last golden glories of the setting sun, and break the soft progress of the gentle evening breeze laden with the sweet scents of the myriad flowers blooming freshly amid the verdant parterres and winding woodland walks by which they were divided and surrounded. Here a rippling fountain made silvery music in the air, while yonder the noisy brooklet could be traced cleaving its headlong way to the lovely Thames flowing seaward tranquilly beneath, its translucent surface being broken now and again only by the leap from an occasional seventy-pound salmon revelling for very joy in the highly hygienic quantity of the pure and crystal water in which he was existing. Above was the faultless deep-blue glory of an Italian sky. Beneath rare forest trees, amidst which the graceful oleander and wild tamarisk flourished with all their native strength, produced a grateful shade. So sparkling and smokeless was the pervading atmosphere that merely to inhale it was a physical pleasure. Sanitary and social science had indeed worked their wonders here. East London had become to all those who dwelt amid its fairy labyrinths a veritable earthly Paradise. And as he cast his shapely but workmanlike frame with an elegant ease on to one of the hundred comfortable lounges that at intervals fringed its green swards throughout their entire length and breadth, no one in the full flush of this glorious summer evening appreciated the fact more keenly than did Jeremiah Halfinch.

"Ah! this is delicious!" he cried, with enthusiasm; "just a few moments' rest here to solve this problem, and then—pour me rendre chez moi!" He spoke with all the easy grace and perfect ton of a West-End raconteur, and as he opened his basket of tools and produced from it a translation of a new work on German Philosophy, in the pages of which he was speedily engrossed, it was impossible not to be struck by his general appearance. His frame was that of an Herculean Apollo, while his head, with its finely-chiselled features and long tawny moustache, nobly set upon his shoulders, might have belonged to a Captain in the Guards. There was in his eyes something of the look of an intelligent Chief Justice, and whenever he moved it was with all the commanding dignity of a Lord Mayor. In short, it needed only a glance at Jeremiah Halfinch to set him down for what he was,—a fair specimen of the average type of the working-man of the day.

He was not, however, destined to be long in solving his philosophical problem, a light step on the gravel-path caught his ear. He looked up. "Ah! Miss Betsy Jane," he said, rising with a courtly grace as his eye rested on the trim neatly dressed form of a girl of nineteen; "so you, too, are enjoying the Elysian fragrance of this lovely evening?"

The fair girl blushed slightly. She was very lovely. Her golden hair crowned her beautifully shaped brow in broad deep bands. Her mouth had that indescribable sweetness that is often met with in those in whom a marvellously active intelligence is united to a strongly poetic temperament. Her eyes were like two exquisite saucers of liquid blue, from whose sapphire depths light and laughter seemed to sparkle up unbidden with every variation of her mobile and ever changing countenance. Yet she was only a poor work-girl making her £2 16s. 6d. a week, under the new scale of prices, by button-holeing.

"I am enjoying the evening, for who would not, Mr. Halfinch?" she answered, half demurely, with a pretty pout, "but I have just come from my Hydrostatic Class, and was thinking of looking in at the Opera on my way home. They are doing "Tristan und Isolde," and a little Wagner is such a pleasant close to the day. Do not you think

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