Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, February 13, 1892

Sturdy saint-militant, stout, genial soul, Through good and ill report you've reached the goal Of all brave effort, and attained that light Which makes our clearest noontide seem as night. How much 'twill show us all! We boast our clarity Of spiritual sense, but mutual charity Is still our nearest need when faith grows fierce And even hope earth's mists can hardly pierce. You were much loved; you spake a potent word In the world's ear, and listening thousands heard With joy that clear and confident appeal. The lingering doubts finer-strung spirits feel, The sensitive shrinkings from familiar touch Of the high mysteries, moved you not. Of such The great throng-stirrers! And you stirred the throng Who felt you honest and who knew you strong; Racy of homely earth, yet spirit-fired With all their higher moods felt, loved, desired. Puritan, yet of no ascetic strain Or arid straitness, freshening as the rain And healthy as the clod; a native force Incult yet quickening, cleaving its straight course Unchecked, unchastened, conquering to the end. Crudeness may chill, and confidence offend, But manhood, mother wit, and selfless zeal, Speech clear as light, and courage true as steel Must win the many. Honest soul and brave, The greatest drop their garlands on your grave!

Mr. H. Kemble. "My dear Tree, I ought to have played Hamlet. First, my name--Kemble. Secondly, Shakspeare's authority--'Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,' and again, 'Fat and scant of breath'!"

Mr. B. Tree. "All right, my dear Kemble. Quite true what you say; and, any night I am unable to play, you shall be my double!"

The Whip, he writes to me to-day, Not, as his wont, in tones pacific, But in the very strongest way, And using language quite terrific.

He hopes to see me in my place, And woe betide the sad seceder, Whose absence helps to throw disgrace Both on his Party and his Leader.

I throw my hat up to the sky. At taunts of treason or defection I flip my fingers. What care I? For I do NOT seek re-election!

"THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH."--According to the Times of Friday last, February 5, Cardinal MANNING died practically a pauper. He had given everything away in charity. He was a "Prince of the Church," and his gifts to others were, indeed, princely. In the wills and deeds of how many of our Very Reverend and Right Reverend Lordships shall we find nothing gathered up and bequeathed of the loaves and fishes which have fallen to their share? Such a testament as the Cardinal's would be in quite a New Testamentary spirit.

"Hang the Prussian Education Bill!" interrupted PETER F., testily. "You should see the English Education Bill I've had for my boy's schooling last half!"

[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of the QUEEN, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield, Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the steamship Eider.]

Your hand, lad! 'Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has sodden your hair, And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the struggle out there; But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton, sometimes, As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the bee-haunted limes.

Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest effeminate charms To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks and alarms, When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger and strife; And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is life.

That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth of the thundering tiger-maw'd waves, And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour that saves. They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the floods but for you! And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion! We knew 'twas not true.

The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare, The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share, Claim much--oh so much, from rough manhood,--unflinching cool daring in fray, And selflessness utter, from toilers with little of praise, and less pay.

Her heroes to get "on the cheap" from the rough rank and file of her sons Has been England's good fortune so long, that the scribblers' swift tongue-babble runs To the old easy tune without thought. "Gallant sea-dogs and life-savers!" Yes! But poor driblets of lyrical praise should not be their sole guerdon, I guess.

On the coast, in the mine, at the fire, in the dark city byeways at night, They are ready the waves, or the flames, or the bludgeoning burglar to fight. And are we quite as ready to mark, or to fashion a fitting reward For the coarsely-clad commonplace men who our life and our property guard?

A question Punch puts to the Public, and on your behalf, my brave lad, And that of your labouring like. To accept your stout help we are glad: If supply of cheap heroes should slacken, and life-saving valour grow _dear_-- Say as courts, party-statesmen, or churches--'twould make some exchequers look queer.

Do we quite do our part, we shore-goers? Those lights could not flash through the fog, And how often must rescuer willing lie idle on land like a log For lack of the warning of coast-wires from lighthouse or lightship? 'Tis flat That we, lad, have not done our duty, until we have altered all that.

Well, you have done yours, and successfully, this time at least, and at night. All rescued. How gladly the last must have looked on that brave "Comet Light," As you put from the wave-battered wreck. Cold, surf-buffeted, weary, and drenched, Your pluck, like the glare from that beacon, flamed on through the dark hours unquenched.

Nor then was your labour at end. There was treasure to save and to land. Well done, life-boat heroes, once more! Punch is proud to take grip of your hand! Your QUEEN, ever quick to praise manhood, has spoken in words you will hail, And 'twere shame to the People of England, if they in their part were to fail.

["The last of the old Mail-guards is about to disappear from the service of the Post Office. Fifty-six years have elapsed since Mr. MOSES NOBBS--for such is the venerable official's name--was selected to undertake the duties of Guard to one of the Royal Mails."--_Daily Telegraph_.]

Historical Muse! are you sober? Is he, the old Mail-guard, alive, Who probably swigged sound October From flagons, in One, Eight, Three, Five? When PILCH went a-slogging, and CLARKE Was a-studying slow underhand lobs? Hooray for that evergreen spark, The veteran Guard, MOSES NOBBS![1]

Why, MOSES, thus bring to a close Your fifty-six years on the road? Do you yearn, after all, for repose, Who with zeal half-a-century glowed? The Muse makes her moan at your loss, And Sentiment silently sobs. Ah! Time, friend, will play pitch-and-toss With all of us, even a NOBBS!

One sees your Mail-Coach all a-blaze, A masterly hand on the rein, In those rollicking, railway-less days, Which never shall greet us again. That tootling tin-horn one can hear; The old buffers, with breeches and fobs, One can picture; they doubtless were dear To the bosom of brave MOSES NOBBS.

That blunderbuss, too! Good old Guard! At what Knight of the Road has it shot? And do you remember the bard Who gave us "_The Tantivy Trot_?" Mr. EGERTON WARBURTON's gone, No longer the Highwayman robs; And silence now settles upon The Last of the Guards--MOSES NOBBS!

Yet oblivion shall not descend On that name till a stave hath been sung. The Muse is antiquity's friend, And in praise of the past will give tongue. If CRACKNALL, the Tantivy Whip, Claimed song, they're but parvenu snobs Who say that the lyre should let slip The memory of stout MOSES NOBBS.

The Mail-Coach, my NOBBS, is no more What it was when you put on the man; We've Mail Trains, all rattle and roar, And that portent, the Packet Post Van. A Pullman, and not the Box-seat, Is the aim of our modern Lord BOBS; But the old recollections are sweet; And Punch drinks to your health, MOSES NOBBS!

[Footnote 1: The Telegraph gives the gentleman's name both as "NOBBS" and "NOGGS." As "NOBBS" comes first, Mr. Punch adopts it, he hopes without misnaming the illustrious veteran.]

I may be a Duffer, but I hope I am neither an idiot nor a cad. I have never collected postage-stamps, nor outraged common humanity by asking people to send me their autographs. With these exceptions I have failed as a collector of almost everything. To succeed you need luck, and a dash of unscrupulousness, and careful attention to details, and a sceptical habit of mind. Even as a small boy I used to waste my shillings at a funny little curiosity-shop, kept by a nice old lady who knew no more about her wares than I did. Here I acquired quite a series of old coppers, which Mrs. SOMERVILLE said were ancient Bactrian. We asked where Bactria was, and she replied that it was a "country beyond Cyrus." We answered that Cyrus was not a territorial but a personal name, "A fellow, don't you know, not a place," but the old lady's information stopped there. I wonder where my Bactrian Collection is now. Certainly I never sold it; indeed, I never sold anything; not only because nobody would buy, but because, after all, one is a Collector, not a tradesman. Birds' eggs I would have collected if I could, but you had first to find the bird's nest (almost an impossible quest for a born Duffer), and to blow the eggs, which, let me tell you, needs nicety of handling. I did once find a thrush's nest, and tried blowing an egg, but it was not wholly a success, and the egg (the contents of which I accidentally absorbed) was not wholly fresh. Then it is awkward when you are at the top of a tall tree, with an egg in your mouth, for safety, if the other boys make you laugh, as you try to come down. It is the egg which,--but enough! Everyone who has been in that position will understand what is meant. It is not difficult to collect shells on the seashore, but it is extremely difficult to find out what shells they are, after you have collected them.