You are here
قراءة كتاب Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891
contrived to raise
"Enthusiastic cheers."
The villagers come flocking in
From all the country through,
To hear Your Lordship speak his mind
And tell them what to do.
You did it well, you told them how
You'd have them understand
A lucky chance has made you own
A quantity of land.
Though very fond of shooting, yet
Your love of shooting stops
At letting rabbits have their way
At decimating crops.
And so, if you a labourer were,
(The which of course you're not),
And saw a rabbit in your ground
A-nibbling—on the spot
You'd go for him with spade or fork,
At which, so it appears,
There rang throughout the crowded room
"Enthusiastic cheers."
A Peer's advice is always good,
So doubtless they will grab it,—
But no one will be happier than
The cabbage-nibbling rabbit!
A LITTLE STRANGER.
["At the meeting of the Bermondsey Vestry, the Medical Officer reported that water drawn from the service-pipe of a house in the Jamaica Road, had been submitted to him. The water was clear, but it contained a live horse-leech."—Daily Paper.]
Oh, into our domestic pipes
They crawl and creep by stealth,
The gruesome creatures known unto
An Officer of Health!
Harken to him of Bermondsey,
Think what his murmurings teach,
"The water seemed quite limpid, but—
It did contain a Leech!"
The service-pipe was sound and good
In the Jamaica Road;
The cistern there had harboured ne'er
Microbe, or newt, or toad;
No clearer water softly laved
A coral island beach;
So thought the householder, until—
He found that awful Leech!
Perchance he was a temperance foe
To alcoholic drink,
And from all dalliance with Bung
Did scrupulously shrink.
Yet now to forms of fluid sin
He'll cotton, all and each;
He does not like such liquors, but—
Prefers them to a Leech!
Our pipes will not be pipes of peace
If such things hap, I trow;
And as for Water Trusts, 'tis hard
To trust in water now.
Oh, Co. of Southwark and Vauxhall,
We ratepayers beseech,
Double your filtering charges, but—
Remove the loathly Leech!
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
There is a judicial review of GEORGE MEREDITH's work in the Quarterly for October—masterly, too, quoth the Baron, as striking a balance between effect and defect, and finding so much to be duly said in high praise of the diffuse and picturesquely-circumnavigating Novelist through whose labyrinthine pages the simple Baron finds it hard to thread his way, and yet keep the clue. When the unskippingly conscientious peruser of GEORGE M.'s novels is most desirous that the author shall go ahead, GEORGE, like an Irish cardriver, will stop to "discoorse us," and at such length, and so diffusely, and with such a wealth of eccentric word-coming and grammar-dodging, that at last the Baron gasps, choked by the rolling billows of sonorously booming or boomingly sonorous words, battles with the waves, ducks, and comes up again breathlessly, wondering where he may be, and what it was all about. "Story! God bless you, I haven't much to tell, Sir!" says the luxuriantly fanciful novel-grinder. And he hasn't much, it must be owned, for essenced it would go into half a volume, or less, and all over and above is pot-fuls of rich colour, spilt about almost at haphazard, permutations and combinations, giving the effect of genius. Which—genius it is; but a little of it goes a great way, in fact, a very great way, wandering and straying until at length the Baron calls for his Richard Feverel, and says, "This is the best that GEORGE MEREDITH has written, as sure as my name is
Bard v. Bard.


