Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, November 13, 1841

Master Smith took an airing on the 5th, accompanied by a Guy Fawkes and a very numerous suite. In the evening there was a select circle, and a bonfire.

Mr. Baron Nathan and family are still at Kennington. The Baron danced the college hornpipe, last Wednesday, on one leg, before a party of private friends; and the Honourable Miss Nathan went through the Cracovienne, amidst twenty-four coffee-cups and an inverted pitcher, surmounted by a very long champagne-glass. Upon inspecting the cups after the graceful performance was concluded, there was not a chip upon one of them. The champagne glass, though it frequently rattled in its perilous position, retained it through the whole of the dance, and was carefully picked up at its conclusion by the Baroness, who we were happy to find looking in more than her usual health, and enjoying her accustomed spirits.

Bill Bunks has a new feline provisional equipage ready to launch. The body is a dark black, and the wheels are of the same rich colour, slightly picked out here and there with a chalk stripe. The effect altogether is very light and pretty, particularly as the skewers to be used are all new, and the board upon which the ha'porths are cut has been recently planed with much nicety.

The travelling menagerie at the foot of Waterloo-bridge was visited yesterday by several loungers. Amongst the noses poked through the wires of the cage, we remarked several belonging to children of the mobility. The spirited proprietor has added another mouse to his collection, which may now be pronounced the first--speaking, of course, Surreysideically--in (entering) London.

"The variable climate of our native land," as Rowland the Minstrel of Macassar has elegantly expressed it, like a Roman epicure, deprives our nightingales of their tongues, and the melodious denizens of our drawing-rooms of their "sweet voices."

Vainly has Crevelli raised a bulwark of lozenges against the Demon of Catarrh! Soreness will invade the throat, and noses run in every family, seeming to be infected with a sentimental furor for blooming--we presume from being so newly blown. We have seen noses chiseled, as it were, from an alabaster block, grow in one short day scarlet as our own, as though they blushed for the continual trouble they were giving their proprietors; whilst the peculiar intonation produced by the conversion of the nasals into liquids, and then of the liquids ultimately into mutes, leads to the inference that there must be a stoppage about the bridge, and should be placarded, like that of Westminster, "No thoroughfare."

It has been generally supposed that St. Cecilia with a cold in her head would be incompetent to "Nix my Dolly;" and this erroneous and popular prejudice is continually made the excuse for vocal inability during the winter months. Now the effect which we have before described upon the articulation of the catarrhed would be, in our opinion, so far from displeasing, that we feel it would amply compensate for any imperfections of tune. For instance, what can be finer than the alteration it would produce in the well-known ballad of "Oh no, we never mention her!"--a ballad which has almost become wearisome from its sweetness and repetition. With a catarrh the words would run thus:--

"O lo, we lever beltiol her, Her labe is lever heard."

Struck with this modification of sound, PUNCH, anxious to cater even for the catarrhs of his subscribers, begs to furnish them with a "_calzolet_," which he trusts will be of more service to harmonic meetings than pectoral lozenges and paregoric, as we have anticipated the cold by converting every m into b, and every n into l.

A SONG FOR A CATARRH.

_B_y _B_ary A_ll_e is like the su_l_, Whe_l_ at the daw_l_ it fli_l_gs Its golde_l_ s_b_iles of light upo_l_ Earth's gree_l_ and lo_l_ely thi_l_gs. I_l_ vai_l_ I sue, I o_l_ly wi_l_ Fro_b_ her a scor_l_ful frow_l_; But soo_l_ as I _b_y prayers begi_l_, She cries O _l_o! bego_l_e. Yes! yes! the burthe_l_ of her so_l_g Is _l_o! _l_o! _l_o! bego_l_e!

_B_y _B_ary A_ll_e is like the moo_l_, Whe_l_ first her silver shee_l_, Awakes the _l_ighti_l_gale's soft tu_l_e, That else had sile_l_t bee_l_. But _B_ary A_ll_e, like darkest _l_ight, O_l_ be, alas! looks dow_l_; Her s_b_iles o_l_ others bea_b_ their light, Her frow_l_s are all _b_y ow_l_. I've but o_l_e burthe_l_ to _b_y so_l_g-- Her frow_l_s are all _b_y ow_l_.

A grand gladiatorial tongue-threshing took place lately in a field near Paisley, between the two great Chartist champions--Feargus O'Connor and the Rev. Mr. Brewster. The subject debated was, Whether is moral or physical force the fitter instrument for obtaining the Charter? The Doctor espoused the moral hocussing system, and Feargus took up the bludgeon for physical force. After a pretty considerable deal of fireworks had been let off on both sides, it was agreed to divide the field, when Feargus, waving his hat, ascended into a tree, and called upon his friends to follow him. But, alas! few answered to the summons,--he was left in a miserable minority; and the Doctor, as the Yankees say, decidedly "put the critter up a tree." Feargus, being a Radical, should have kept to the root instead of venturing into the higher branches of political economy. At all events the Doctor, as the Yankees say, "put the critter up a tree," where we calculate he must have looked tarnation ugly. The position was peculiarly ill-chosen--for when a fire-and-faggot orator begins to speak trees-on, it is only natural that his hearers should all take their leaves!

The Herald gives an account of two persons who were carried off suddenly at Lancaster by a paralytic attack each. We should have been curious to know the result if, instead of an attack each, they had had one between them.

To which Mrs. Waddledot replied,

"Vaccination, indeed!--as though the child were a calf! I'm sure and certain that the extreme dulness of young people of the present day is entirely owing to vaccination--it imbues them with a very stupid portion of the animal economy."

As Agamemnon could not understand her, he again ejaculated--"Vaccination!"

"But, my dear," rejoined Mrs. Applebite, "Mama has had so much experience that her opinion is worth listening to; I know that you give the preference to--"

"Vaccination!" interrupted Collumpsion.

"And so do I; but we have heard of grown-up people--who had always considered themselves secure--taking the small pox, dear."

"To be sure we have," chimed in Mrs. Waddledot; "and it's a very dreadful thing, after indulgent and tender parents have been at the expense of nursing, clothing, physicking, teaching music, dancing, Italian, French, geography, drawing, and the use of the globes, to a child, to have it carried off because a misguided fondness has insisted upon--"

"Vaccination!" shouted pater Collumpsion.

"Exactly!" continued the "wife's mother." "Now inoculate at once, say I, before the child's short-coated."

Agamemnon rose from his seat, and advancing deliberately and solemnly to the table at which his wife and his wife's mother were seated, he slowly raised his dexter arm above his head, and then, having converted his hand into a fist, he dashed his contracted digitals upon the rosewood as though he dared not trust himself with more than one word, and that one was--"Vaccination!"

Mrs. Waddledot's first impulse was to jump out of her turban, in which she would have succeeded had not the mystic rolls of gauze which constituted that elaborate head-dress been securely attached to the chestnut "front" with which she had sought for some years to cheat the world into a forgetfulness of her nativity.

"I was warned of this! I was warned of this!" exclaimed the disarranged woman, as soon as she obtained breath enough for utterance. "But I wouldn't believe it. I was told that the member for Puddingbury had driven one wife to her grave and the other to drinking.--I was told that it would run in the family, and that Mr. A.C. Applebite would be no better than Mr. I. Applebite!"

"Oh! Mama--you really wrong Aggy," exclaimed Theresa.

"It's lucky for you that you think so, my dear. If ever there was an ill-used woman, you are that unhappy individual. Oh, that ever--I--should live--to see a child of mine--have a child of hers vaccinated against her wish!" and here Mrs. Waddledot (as it is emphatically styled) burst into tears; not that we mean to imply that she was converted into an explosive jet d'eau, but we mean that she--she--what shall we say?--she blubbered.