DEAR MR. PUNCH,-Now that the country-house season is commencing, would you grant me space to suggest certain improvements on the present system of entertainment? I would say to the hostess: everyone foregathering later on in the drawing-room, to be bored Dolce far Niente Club, W. JOHN LAZIBOHN. P.S.-I could refer to other phases of the question, but all the clauses of a reform bill cannot be carried at the first attempt. We must have a beginning. VOTES AND VOX POPULI. DEAR MR. PUNCH,-Now that the Municipal Elections are in full swing, may I venture to suggest certain Golden Rules to those who intend to cast their shells into the urn? They are as follows: 1. Always vote for the candidate who objects to lowering the local rates, for as a rule he is an honest man, and has not got a brother-in-law or cousin interested in the house-building, roadmaking, or plumbing business, which the blatant Economist invariably has. 2. Sign the nomination papers of as many philanthropists as you are legally entitled to support. This will gain you immense respect. N.B.-You need not poll in favour of these gentlemen. On the contrary, give them the kick out of the ballot-box. They will never know, and be eternally grateful. 3. Studiously inquire whether the whole-hearted individual who solicits your vote has any ambition to become Mayor. If so, discover whether it be likely that a knighthood be lurking in the immediate future in consequence of some Royal Visit to the borough. 4. On the polling day walk about with your voting-paper conspicuously exposed till a late hour in the evening. If discreet, you will have an enjoyable time at the expense of other citizens, and be able to light your pipe with the document when you are smoking your post-prandial pipe at night. 5. Cultivate the local wire-pullers, and ask them to lend you the use of a carriage to drive about the borough. 6. Never give yourself away, or your vote. Without bribery or corruption a voter may, on such an occasion, revel in otium Your obedient servant, cum dig. at Bumbledom. HERBERT HIEAWAY. 13, Blue Green Chambers, Little Thisleton. In the first place, let breakfast be a moveable feast, varying from 9.30 A.M to, say mid-day, and let that horrible custom of A VOICE FROM NELSON'S COLUMN. calling everybody beforehand at the same time be abolished for (Heard on the occasion of the Anniversary.) ever. Also let the housemaids be forbidden to clatter about the passages with brooms and pails during the earlier hours of the could they not do a little more? Quite right to keep my YES, it is all very well to cover my column with leaves, but day. I can't precisely fix which are the earlier hours; but what I mean, wait till I am up and out. Order the cook (never mind memory green, but my fame ought to be protected with equal her grumbling) to have hot and hot dishes ready during the entire is abused. I daresay that the good fellows I see beneath me have care. I suppose I ought not to complain. Nowadays, everybody forenoon. If a man likes lying in bed, don't bother him to go out all been subjected to criticism. No doubt NAPIER has been shooting, or riding, or driving. Don't expect, as a matter of course, called incompetent, GORDON a bigot, and HAVELOCK a slowto see him at luncheon, and if he doesn't put in an appearance at coach. But some league or other is sure to look after our that melancholy meal, avoid making sarcastic inquiries as to the pedestals. Even His Majesty CHARLES THE FIRST is afforded a state of his health when you do see him. Give the butler instruc- bouquet or two. They took years to build my column; more tions to have whiskey, brandy, bottled beer, and soda-water perpetually laid out in a convenient spot, for instance, on a table years to cast my lions; more years yet to remember my anniin the billiard-room or smoking-room, where a thirsty indi-versary. Well, they have got the date at last, and my pillar is vidual can quietly slake his mouth without going through the in the hands of blue-jackets vice steeple-jack superseded. absurd and semi-public ceremony of ringing the dining-room know is, why I am attacked about my battles? Thanks to my All this is quite right and proper. But what I should like to bell. Never get up afternoon excursions to the celebrated places friend Admiral Sir VESEY HAMILTON, my fame has been proin the neighbourhood, Castle Glorious, the seat of the Duke of tected. All honour to the Service Magazine that printed his SPLENDOWER, or the ruins of Crackmedown Abbey, or the Weasel-vindication." But the leaves that called it forth are not like gutter Waterfall. On such occasions, in nine cases out of ten, the guests in the conveyances are shaken together in as unsatis- those around my plinth. Those I see below me are Nature's factory fashion as are travellers in an American railway car. Let handiwork-green and pleasant. After all, they are more inthe coachman, however, understand that he is to be prepared to structive of the appreciation in which I am held by my country send out carriages and pony-carts without any orders from the than those other leaves-made of paper. host or hostess. Have "five-o'-clock" by all means, but don't expect your male guests to wander about with cups and plates of bread and butter and cake, like waiters out of place. Before dinner, don't pair off the company, but let each man select his own partner. Avoid inviting any of the neighbouring big-wigs to a grand repast, and strictly abstain from giving a county ball. Don't let the children come down to dessert, and don't insist upon At the Pig and Poleaxe. Jobbinson. You 're down in the mouth! What are you think. ing about, old man? Quarter day? Dobbinson (wearily). No, my boy, no quarter day, when my landlord puts in an execution. Teddy (come to see pheasants shot (but they decline to rise to the occasion), to the head keeper). "I SAY, MR. WHITE, OF COURSE YOU KNOW THE NAMES OF ALL YOUR PHEASANTS? OUR HUNTSMAN KNOWS THE NAMES OF ALL HIS DOGGIES, AND I KNOW SOME OF THEM!" DARBY JONES ON THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE. HONOURED SIR,- Having provided you and your friends with Winter Coals, I now venture to essay to supply you and yours with sundry Luxuries by naming the Winner of the Cambridgeshire Stakes, a race which some of the Greenhorns of Turf Commerce appear to compare with the Cesarewitch, quite forgetting the difference in distance and weight. It is indeed astonishing how these Neophytes (an expression freshly culled from the excellent Webster's Dictionary) imagine that an animal that can do over two miles in proud style, is equally useful at about half the distance. You might just as well ask a long-distance Human Plodder to win a hundred yards competition. True it is that more than once, as in the case of Plaisanterie, the same quadruped has caught the Judge's Eye on both occasions, but how rare have been these Freaks of Fortune, and how carefully planned has been the coup de grace? (Tarver's AngloFrench Dictionary). Cesarewitch nag is not a Cambridgeshire crock. And this should be remembered when the lowlier sort of punters are sending their Post-Office Orders to the Exiled Bookmakers of Holland, with the expectation of a Double Event. This, by the way, is an exceedingly difficult manoeuvre to accomplish, and yet I have succeeded in bringing it off quite recently with Diakka in the Duke of York Stakes, and Merman in the Cesarewitch. A Noble Earl (I need not say whether of British birth) who is beholden to me for satisfactory advice on the subject, has, in addition to forwarding me a substantial cheque, sent me a basket of Norwegian Ptarmigan. Inasmuch as I am strictly forbidden by my Medical Man to touch this Scandinavian Fowl, I have directed the L. P. D. C. to convey the hamper to your palatial residence, with a request that you would pay the carriage. Your thanks I accept beforehand, and now proceed to celebrate in metrical lines the present great Equine Handicap of Newmarket: The Balsam gent I don't admire, A Yankee Saint expect to see, Her one of the two don't neglect, Sir. Well aware that I have thrown priceless chances to those Winds which blow about the Cape of Good Hope, I write myself down as usual, honoured Sir, Your devoted minion, DARBY JONES. P.S.-At the same time remember that a millionaire is not above picking up a pin. * We were not taking any in.- ED. Night" would represent the husband going out to a bachelor dinner; "Morning" his return therefrom; "Truth," which he murmured indistinctly to himself; " Welcome," what he received from his wife; "Fidelity," the way in which he kept his promise not to do it again. The SASSOON statues will give a fine moral lesson to Brightonian husbands. May they profit by it! A CREATURE WHO LEFT THE OASIS OF PLENTY FOR THE DESERT OF DISTRESS.Believe me, honoured Sir, and I speak The Kew Gardens Pelican-killed by some with the authority of that fine sportsman, one who ought never to have been trusted Sir JOHN ASTLEY, better known as "The with a gun-October 19, 1897-far, far from Mate," that, in nine cases out of ten, a home. BOTANICAL BOOTS. [According to an interview in the Daily Mail, the ultra-vegetarians consider it against their principles to wear foot-gear made of leather, and substitute therefor materials of non-animal origin, such as flax, paper, cotton, or some other product of the vegetable kingdom.] To make vegetable boots, You must go and grub up roots In your private kitchen-garden, if you own a cabbage-patch; Else at your next-door neighbour's You should prosecute your labours, Or at Kew, perhaps, when no one's by, some odds and ends you'll snatch! For no longer must you wear That are made of cow-hide, porpoise-skin, or cuticle of pig; You must shun them altogether And endeavour to encase your feet in vegetarian rig. Then very soon you'll feel You can boil your beetle-crushers, or convert them into stew; And, when you 're in a hurry, You can dine on slipper-curry, And say with truth, "I'll eat my hat if I don't eat my shoe!" The Early Bird. Ir seems that a curious zoologist has been sitting out at night to check the times at which birds begin to sing. The April dawn commenced to break at 2.30 A.M., though a sparrow had already anticipated matters by chirping at 2 A.M. The following, however, is a still more important observation, and one may perhaps be pardoned for addthe italics of admiration: ing. At twenty-seven minutes past three o'clock"-to quote the Westminster Gazette -"larks began to soar and sing all round, although there was scarcely light enough to read by." Came without their notes, we suppose. FUR-CONE.-A daily paper states that, wing to the mild weather, furs are dropping rapidly." Evidently a change of hair is required. A GIFT OF ARGUMENT. LEWIS BAUMER 165 "GIVE ME A RIDE ON YOUR BACK, DADDY." "No, DEAR; NOT HERE." "WHY NOT, DADDY?" "OH, THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE ABOUT." "BUT IF YOU TOOK ME ON YOUR BACK THERE WOULD BE ALL THE MORE ROOM FOR THE PEOPLE!" "A WEIGH THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY." ["By the new regulations, it is now necessary that Army candidates for commissions should not only possess the chest measurement and height prescribed, but that they should also be of a certain minimum weight.' Daily Press. "I CAN assure you, Sir," said the lad, "that I have studied hard to make myself proficient." "That may be," replied the examiner, "but I fear, from your appearance, that one necessary acquirement has been sadly neglected. Pray do not say so," cried the youth in a piteous tone. "I am so anxious to become a soldier. I come of a race of warriors. My father was at Inkermann, my grandsire took an eagle at Waterloo, and the founder of our race (we are of Saxon origin) was the only general who made any serious stand at Hastings." "With such a pedigree," observed the examiner, "it is strange that your physique should not be stronger." "Possibly it comes of over-study," continued the youngster. "I have worked day and night for years. I know all that can be known in military history, and am up to my eyes in the minutia of the profession. As for drill-in all its branches-I have learned it backwards, forwards, and side-ways. Test me, Sir, and you will find I am up in everything." The examiner good-naturedly put a few questions, which the candidate answered with the greatest ease and precision. 66 'Yes, you appear to know the technical part of the necessary But you apparently neglected athletics." 'Neglected athletics!" exclaimed the excited youth. "My dear Sir, you cannot have read the papers. Did you not see how I broke the record of the five mile race, equalled the longjump, and carried all before me in a novel competition knownpresume tentatively-as hurling horses?" I I "Yes, I have heard something of this." "And it is not for me to speak of it, but I wear, concealed under my waistcoat, this medal, which was presented to me for saving lives from drowning. And if I may say so without laying myself open to the charge of self-laudation, I might suggest that was not called at school 'Courageous CHARLIE for nothing." Still, you know the new regulation. It must be enforced." "I have done my best. I have eaten porridge, a popular food for cattle, oil-cake, everything. And yet I dread the test." "Be brave," replied the examiner. "Take a seat. It will be over in a moment." 66 The lad obeyed the instruction, and eagerly waited for the verdict. "Nine stone exactly!" said the examiner. "You are not fat enough for the army." "This is thin, indeed!" cried the youth. And although there was a certain play upon words in the remark, the unsuccessful candidate was too sad to smile at the witticism. The Chinese Navy, according to the " Daily Mail":"A Board of Admiralty is to be established to legislate under the advice of a Europ an organiser." THE FIRST BOARD MEETING, BY OUR PROPHETIC CHINESE ARTIST. LETTERS TO THE CELEBRATED. No. I. TO VISCOUNT ESHER, LATE MASTER OF THE ROLLS. MY LORD, It would not be right that an event so momentous as your retirement from the Bench, that for so many years you have adorned, should pass unnoticed by Mr. Punch, your friend and admirer. Our judicial system is to-day poorer by the loss of a real man. Time and again has he who pens these lines watched you as you burst your way with masculine force through the tangled web of sophistries that too often passes for legal acumen. What were precedents to you if precedents told against your view of what was right? You could always distinguish, as the lawyers say, and if your distinctions toppled over for ever the decided cases in which the unwisdom of your musty predecessors had had full scope, so much the worse for the decided cases and so much the better, it may be added, for good sense and sound law. wheedled: no man can say that he ever succeeded in humbugging you, or that, if he tried to, he brought anything but sorrow and bruised bones out of the conflict. But being a man you liked a man, though he might be your temporary opponent, and the robust energy that urged you to a bout of mental fisticuffs caused you to treat as a mere nothing any blow that might descend on your own skull during the encounter. You forgave and were forgiven; you respected and were respected. honoured as you were, you preserved ever a happy memory of And through all the turmoil and the conflict, highly placed and the days of your youth when BRETT of Caius was a name to conjure with in the world of oarsmen. brother Judge sang of him :BRETT of Caius, who, as a They said you were rough in your speech, that you did not check in time the crushing remark provoked by boredom, stupidity or perversity. It may be so. Osric was never your model of manners, and, in truth, an Osric on the Bench would be a melancholy sight. And sometimes the animal spirits that have carried you vigorously from your stalwart undergraduate days, through the rough and tumble of a barrister's and a Judge's life, up to the moment of your retirement, would break out irrepressibly amid the pompous gloom of your Appeal Court, and you would revel in a wordy contest with all the zest of a Caius man belabouring a Barnwell bargee. They still do these things at Caius, I am told, when the occasion requires, and I warrant that you, the noblest Caian of them all, would be the last to blame the happy diversions of youth. But, rough or otherwise, you were sterling to the core, and as ndly as you were sterling. Others might be cajoled or - rowed seven to STANLEY, Every inch the Judge-the man; Upright, downright, comely, manly, Beat him, Oxford, if you can! And I cannot doubt that the ancient medals that bore testimony to your aquatic prowess on the tideway, and at Henley, are still amongst your most cherished and delightful possessions. Others might stiffen and totter and forget, but with you the athlete's delight in conflict, the joyous spirit of abounding vitality that bore you on when your sinews were cracking and your breast was heaving in the fierce stress of a boat-race, the fighter's determination to win or to die-these were and are yours still as when you sat behind STANLEY and helped to snatch victory from the men in dark blue. How genially, too, and with what tact and humour have you presided over the Boat-race dinners. The youngsters who had rowed rejoiced in your speeches, and always cheered you to the echo. Once, as I have heard, when having temporarily vacated the chairman's seat you were strolling round the tables, you paused behind a lad, who, somewhat inspired by Bacchus, was lustily shouting, "Good old ESHER," a call which, though it showed |