Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 1 October 23 1841 by Various

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Surely were not October retrospectively associated with the grateful magnificence of ale, none would be so unpopular as the chilly month. There is no period in which so much of what ladies call "unpleasantness" occurs, no season when that mysterious distemper known as "warming" is so epidemic, as in October. It is a time when, in default of being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity becomes more than proverbially numb.

In twenty days how different an appearance will things wear! The magic circle round the hearth will be filled with beaming faces; a score of hands will be luxuriously chafing the palpable warmth dispensed by a social blaze; some more privileged feet may perchance be basking in the extraordinary recesses of the fender. We shall consult the thermometer to enjoy the cold weather by contrast with the glowing comfort within. We shall remark how "time flies," and that "it seems only yesterday since we had a fire before;" forgetful of the hideous night and the troublous dreams that have intervened since those sweet memories. And all this--in twenty days.

AN APPROPRIATE GIFT.

NOT A STEP FATHER.

A MALE DUE.

The Post-office in Downing-street has been besieged by various inquirers, who are anxiously seeking for some information as to the expected arrival of the Royal Male.

CURIOUS SYNONYMS.

HAPPY LAND!

Six young girls, inmates of the Lambeth workhouse, were brought up at Union Hall, charged with breaking several squares of glass. In their defence, they complained that they had been treated worse in the workhouse than they would be in prison, and said that it was to cause their committal to the latter place they committed the mischief. What a beautiful picture of moral England this little anecdote exhibits! What must be the state of society in a country where crime is punished less severely than poverty?

Old England, bless'd and favour'd clime! Where paupers to thy prisons run; Where poverty's the only crime That angry justice frowns upon.

THE NEW STATE STRETCHER.

The latest case of monomania, from our own specially-raised American correspondent:--A gentleman who fancied himself a pendulum always went upon tick, and never discovered his delusion until he was carefully wound up in the Queen's Bench.

"VERY LIKE A WHALE."

ARRIVED AT LAST.

EPIGRAM.

THE PICTORIAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT.

A was King ALFRED, a monarch of note; B is BURDETT, who can well turn a coat.

C is the CORN-LAWS, that famish'd the poor; D is the DEBT, that will famish them more.

Here, for the imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences--purse-proud, plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt, famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt--that hideous thing begotten by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from a nightly conning of the terrific theme!

We have neither poetic genius nor space of paper to go through the whole of the alphabet; we merely throw out the above four lines--and were we not assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found in BULWER'S SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we do--to give an idea of the utility and beautiful comprehensiveness of our plan.

That we may have painted all these things, Mr. BARRY offers up one thousand feet. Oh! Mr. B. can't you make it ten!

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

It is at this point of his studies that the student commences a steady course of imaginary dissection: that is to say, he keeps a chimerical account of extremities whose minute structure he has deeply investigated , and received in return various sums of money from home for the avowed purpose of paying for them. If he really has put his name down for any heads and necks or pelvic viscera at the commencement of the season, when he had imbibed and cherished some lunatic idea "that dissection was the sheet-anchor of safety at the College," he becomes a trafficker in human flesh, and disposes of them as quickly as he can to any hard-working man who has his examination in perspective.

He now assumes a more independent air, and even ventures to chalk odd figures on the black board in the theatre. He has been known, previously to the lecture, to let down the skeleton that hangs by a balance weight from the ceiling, and, inserting its thumb in the cavity of its nose, has there secured it with a piece of thread, and then, placing a short pipe in its jaws, has pulled it up again. His inventive faculties are likewise shown by various diverting objects and allusions cut with his knife upon the ledge before him in the lecture-room, whereon the new men rest their note-books and the old ones go to sleep. In vain do the directors of the school order the ledge to be coated with paint and sand mixed together--nothing is proof against his knife; were it adamant he would cut his name upon it. His favourite position at lecture is now the extremity of the bench, where its horse-shoe form places him rather out of the range of the lecturer's vision; and, ten to one, it is here that he has cut a cribbage-board on the seat, at which he and his neighbour play during the lecture on Surgery, concealing their game from common eyes by spreading a mackintosh cape on the desk before them. His conversation also gradually changes its tone, and instead of mildly inquiring of the porter, on his entering the school of a morning, what is for the day's anatomical demonstration, he talks of "the regular lark he had last night at the Eagle, and how jolly screwed he got!"--a frank admission, which bespeaks the candour of his disposition.

Careful statistics show us that it is about the end of November the new man first makes the acquaintance of his uncle; and observant people have remarked, as worthy of insertion in the Medical Almanack amongst the usual phenomena of the calendar--"About this time dissecting cases and tooth-instruments appear in the windows, and we may look for watches towards the beginning of December." Although this is his first transaction on his own account, yet his property has before ascended the spout, when some unprincipled student, at the beginning of the season, picked his pocket of a big silver lancet-case, which he had brought up with him from the country; and having, pledged it at the nearest money-lender's, sent him the duplicate in a polite note, and spent the money with some other dishonest young men, in drinking their victim's health in his absence. And, by the way, it is a general rule that most new men delight to carry big lancet-cases, although they have about as much use for them as a lecturer upon practice of physic has for top boots.

Thus gradually approaching step by step towards the perfection of his state, the new man's first winter-session passes; and it is not unlikely that, at the close of the course, he may enter to compete for the anatomical prize, which he sometimes gets by stealth, cribbing his answers from a tiny manual of knowledge, two inches by one-and-a-half in size, which he hides under his blotting-paper. This triumph achieved, he devotes the short period which intervenes before the commencement of the summer botanical course to various hilarious pastimes; and as the watch and dissecting-case are both gone, he writes the following despatch to his governor--

Your affectionate son,

JOSEPH MUFF.

As soon as the summer course begins, the Botanical Lectures commence with it, and the polite Company of Apothecaries courteously request the student's acceptance of a ticket of admission to the lectures, at their garden at Chelsea. As these commence somewhere about eight in the morning, of course he must get up in the middle of the night to be there; and consequently he attends very often, of course. But the botanical excursions that take place every Saturday from his own school are his especial delight. He buys a candle-box to contain all the chickweed, chamomiles, and dandelions he may collect, and slinging it over his shoulder with his pocket-handkerchief, he starts off in company with the Professor and his fellow-herbalists to Wandsworth Common, Battersea Fields, Hampstead Heath, or any other favourite spot which the cockney Flora embellishes with her offspring.

SOME THINGS TO WHICH THE IRISH WOULD NOT SWEAR.

MR. GROVE.--This insufferably ignorant, and, therefore, insolent magisterial cur, who has recently made himself an object of unenviable notoriety, by asserting that "the Irish would swear anything," has shown himself to be as stupid as he is malignant. Would, for instance, the most hard-mouthed Irishman in existence venture to swear that--

If "the Irish would swear" to the above, we confess they "would swear anything."

COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE THEM.

SIR JAMES CLARK is in daily attendance at the Palace. We suppose that he is looking out for a new berth under Government.

HOSTILITIES IN PRIVATE LIFE.

"Mrs. Smith's compliments to Mrs. Brown, begs to return the teapott to the latter--in consequence of the ill-usage it has received in her hands."

Mrs. Brown, being a woman who piques herself upon her talent at epistolary writing, immediately replied in the following terms:--

This note and the teapot were forthwith sent upstairs to Mrs. Smith, whose indignation being very naturally roused, she again returned the battered affair, with this spirited missive:--

"P.S.--Mrs. S. expects to be paid 10s. for the injured article."

Again the teapot was sent upstairs, with the following reply from Mrs. Brown:--

"Mrs. Brown thinks Mrs. Smith a low creature.

"P.S.--Mrs. B. won't pay a farthing."

There is no telling how this unhappy difference will terminate; for though at present matters appear tolerably quiet, we know not at what moment we may have to inform our readers that

GEOLOGY OF SOCIETY.

THE WAPPING DELUGE.

Father Thames, not content with his customary course, has been "swelling it" in the course of the week, through some of the streets of the metropolis. As if to inculcate temperance, he walked himself down into public-house cellars, filling all the empty casks with water, and adulterating all the beer and spirits that came in his way; turning also every body's fixed into floating capital. Half empty butts, whose place was below, came sailing up into the bar through the ceiling of the cellar; saucepans were elevated from beneath the dresser to the dresser itself; while cups were made "to pop off the hooks" with surprising rapidity.

The dairies on the banks of the Thames were obliged to lay aside their customary practice of inundating the milk; for such a "meeting of the waters" as would otherwise have ensued must have proved rather too much, even for the regular customers.

Why is it impossible for a watch that indicates the smaller divisions of time ever to be new?--Because it must always be a second-hand one.

NATURAL HISTORY .

THE OPERA-DANCER .

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