PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 62.

January 6th, 1872.

LONDON:

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

"GENTLEMEN Arbitrators, I salute you in the concrete," said Mr. Punch, walking up to the table of the Hall of Congress at Geneva. "I also salute you specially. Count Sclopis, una voce poco fà; M. Staempfli, my Merry Swiss Boy, point d'argent, point de Suisse; Baron Itajuba, I hope your sangre azul is cool this hot weather."

"Really, Mr. Punch," said the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn——

"And really, my dear Sir Alexander," was Mr. Punch's lightning-like repartee. "How are you? and Davis, my Bancroft, how are you? Have you seen Mrs. Bancroft in Caste? Capital, isn't she? And now to business, and after that we'll go for a row on the Lake, my Allobroges. Know they settled here, Davis?"

"I know several things," said Mr. Davis, "and one is that you have no business in this chamber."

"Rem acu tetigisti, my Occidental. My visit is strictly on pleasure. And I reckon to have the pleasure of sticking these here Negotiations in a greased groove before I quit."

"Porter!" exclaimed the Count Sclopis, angrily.

"Not a drop, I thank you," said Mr. Punch, smiling. "We should not get it good here. A bottle of Seltzer, if you please, with a slight dash of the liquid named after yonder lake, but unsweetened."

His exquisite good-temper—he associates with Granville and Disraeli—was too much for the dignitaries. They all shook hands with him, said he was welcome, and begged that he would go away until dinner-time.

"Not a bit of it, my Beamish Boys," said Mr. Punch. "I am going to earn that dinner."

"But, dear Mr. Punch," pleaded Mr. Davis, "we can't admit another British Representative, especially so omnipotent a one as yourself."

"You are polite, and I'm cosmopolite, my dear Davis. Non ubi nascor, sed ubi pascor, and being asked to an international repast I shall behave internationally."

"You will have to let him speak," laughed Baron Itajuba.

"You open your mouth to drop Brazilian diamonds, my Baron."

"He'd better remain, for I don't think he'll go," gaily carolled the Chief Justice, with a reminiscence of a burlesque written at a time when burlesques were comic.

"Take your brief, and belabour away," sang the Merry Swiss Boy.

"Come, Mr. Punch," said the Count, "you and I have a common Italian ancestry. Do us credit."

"Con rispetto parlando, Count, you ought not to doubt that I shall. Arbitrators! Have you all read Rabelais?"

"There's a question!" shouted Everybody, indignantly. "Have five great nations sent clowns to represent them?"

"I will soon see about that," said Mr. Punch. "When the good Pantagruel was asked to decide a most tangled, knotty, and vast law-suit, over which a hundred lawyers had wrangled and fattened for years, what was his first order? Nay, answer me not in words, but let me take my cooling draught, and see whether you know Rabelais."

As with one impulse all sprang up, delight in each face. Secretaries and porters were summoned, and every scrap of paper, from the smallest Note to the most gigantic Case was removed into the court-yard. In five minutes all the painted glass in the windows was richly illuminated, and the flames roared like Vesuvius.

"In these circumstances," said Mr. Punch, "and as thinking of the 'frozen Caucasus' will not enable one to bear roasting, M. the Count, you might order me some ice."

"Icebergs to Mr. Punch till further notice," said the magnificent Italian, in a style worthy of Cosmo himself.

"You have studied Rabelais," said Mr. Punch, when the fire had subsided, "and I am sure that you will continue to be guided by his wisdom. Do you accept my sentence, in this Anglo-American business, as final. No 'understandings,' mind. Swear it, with good mouth-filling oaths."

They all sent out fervent voices, but Mr. Davis (who has had the advantage of knowing Mr. Greeley) discharged a kuss so terrific that it tore all the other sounds to tatters.

"Hear, and record the oath, immoral Gods!" exclaimed Mr. Punch, in a manner like that of John Kemble, only superior in impressiveness. "And now I shall give you a judgment like that of the good Pantagruel. Stenographers!"

Then said Pantagruel-Punch, "and the pauses amid his speech were more awful than the sound:"

"Not having read one word of the cackle just combusted, and knowing and caring nothing about the matter in question, I hereby give sentence that England shall pay to America, on the first of April last, nineteen thousand bottles of hay with a needle in each. Shall, on the very first Sunday in the middle of the week, further pay to America eleven millions of pigs in pokes; and finally, and without fail, Shall, in the next Greek Kalends, remit to Washington two billions of bottles of smoke, and one thousand casks of the best pickled Australian moonshine, deodorised and aërated.

"But seeing that America, in her turn, has reparation to make, I hereby give sentence that she shall send to England, on the day of the election of the first Coloured President, twelve thousand barrels of the best pearl-oysters, the pearls to be set with emeralds and rubies. Shall, on the day of celebration of the utter and entire extinction of Bunkum, further pay to England eighty thousand barrels of Columbian Hail, and as many Birds o' Freedom, potted with truffles; and lastly, Shall, on the recognition of the Independence of Mormonism, remit to London a hundred boxes of the letters of which the United States have robbed the Queen's English; a thousand of the ropes which ought to have been used in accelerating the quietude of Fenianism, and finally, and without fail, shall pay 30 per cent. on the profits of 'annexed' English literature.

"And this I give for final judgment and decree indissoluble."

Everybody remained wrapt, in speechless admiration at the ineffable wisdom of Pantagruel-Punch, who had thus