MERRY MILESTONES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3195, 20 September 1917, Page 7

MERRY MILESTONES

THROUGH TIME WITH "PUNCH" (By Jessie Mackay.). 111.' lsei.. Who does not delight in 'Tiun&'s" , prefaces? Here lies too twentieth open , before us, .a triumph of- its kind, in mat i it links tho ostentatious .letter oil Old , World scholar/nip -with ttie new and ■ simple fietion of pioneer adventure. .41l ready tho ponderous<tales of fc'enimore t Cooper have been obscured by (ho lighter, • crisper writing o£ a clever young Irish • adventurer, Captain Mayne Keid, whose '• Indian stories nave begun to attract at- | teution. "liabelais in iieet Street" tells 1 how the nublo I'unchagrucl is accosted ' by the admiring Deeri'ool, champion run- ; ner of the Seneca tribe, who craves leave to display, his powers before tho hero. "Thou may'st not run before me," said Punchagruel affably, "but thou may'st [ run after me. Go it, thou cripple!" -, J.n the bland discursive mode of ilen- , don the narrative continues:— , "Then new oft' tho Indian like an arrow . from the bow of Ulysses,' or a Yankee of ; the north when he. hears that a Govern- ■ meut post is to bo given away. He van . with all his might, yet the calm Puncha--1 gruel stirred not. but. stood relating to ' his followers tho most recondite accounts 1 of all the great runners in history, and \ discoursing so sweetly of .-Ualanta, Cam- ; ilia, and I know not what others that [ the hearers fell asleep with ecstacie* of ' admiration and delight. All this while . the Indian kept running like unto that j hour on the dial that is signified I)}' a unit, or. ,as if he had received a pedal J- impulse remitting him into the centre . of the proximate hebdomadal period. ; . "Ha!" said the wise Punchagruel, "it L is said that ho who runs can read. Let i us show this benighted Indian that he [ who reads can run." And darting forth ' with one measureless ' or inconceivable I. rush, that clove the air like the wind 1 of an Armstrong shell, and. caused in- • numerable birds to fall from the celes- ; tiai azure, the swift Punchagruel (lew along like the whirling chariot of Phoebus when that god has lost lime by ; flirting, on the road, and pufcteth an I steam lest "he keep the limner table of , Olympus waiting. , A number of small literary paragraphs . arrest the eye in turn:— "The first edition ..of 'Corinne' did r.ot pay. Tho disappointed publisher, when asked''his opinion of tho work, exclaim- '. Ed, 'Psha! Stale, flat, and nnpro&t- . able!'" •- "A new journal is announced under . the title of 'The Queen.' The godfathers i wero bunglers, and the name is against i the success .of the publication. A little harmless cheating of the 'Government (especially in the matter of rectifying . income tax) may be overlooked, but who ■ save, a disloyal wretch would think of taking in the Queen?"i AppaVently the tide of journalistic en- ' terpnse set full in 1661, for a month or ' two later Mr. Punch discourses with ' grandfatherly heat on the first appearance of the "Quiver," ostensibly, ■ it appears, as the mirror of cultured parentn hood. Tho Fluent Family bulk largely in "the new magazine, setting out with the appalling maxim that no child must be allowed to talk nonsense:— "One Mrs.. Browning," says ' Mr. Punch resentfully, "has theorised upon the subject . of chilcJ-nonsense—theories which would shock the judicious parents in the 'Quiver,' for the lady (but what do women know of. education ?). censures —it is in a lovely passage in 'Aurora Leigh'—men who- have not the wisdom to talk nonsense with-children." , Ah, happy Penini, "goo'd" and "pop•peted" in his cradle by the pundits who wrote "Sordello" and the "Vision of the Poets"! Far other was the fate, of the Fluent children,' whose parents were wont to write on slips appropriate bubjects of cultured conversation and put them in a vase—though, as Mr. Punch explained, a common jug or even a common nat would have done as .well at a pinch—from which the children drew in due season, and discoursed something like this on the result:— Polly: "The word which, has to-day been withdrawn from our ' vase, dear parents, is Patience. As 1 am to speak first, let me remark that this a.iiuality apt to be recommended by those who do not always evince the possession of any remarkable 6hare of it." Jacky: "It is a very desirable quality, because it enables us to endure misfor-. tune with fortitude." ■ Louisa: "It 'is like a lamp because— because—because it .throws a soft light on our sorrows." Stern Male Parent: "You may add, Louisa, because it requires to be supplied with the oil of charity." Stern Female Parent: "Let me also add that Louisa's simile would be improved by introducing the word 'camphine,' for. patience shows a very pure spirit';" Stern Male Parent: "Admirable, dear mamma. Proceed, Harry". Harry:. . . "Patience should, like a polished razor ' keen, . • . ' ' ■ Wound with a touch that's hardly felt or seen. "No, I mean satire, but I got the wrong quotation .in-my head." Stern Male Parent: "As a forfeit for your inadvertence, Harry, repeat to us the first hundred lines' of 'Paradise Lost.'" ,' Harry: "Of man's.first disobedience eating fruit." etc. All this really passed for juvenilia six decades ago. .Curious.how long the world, has. hung .back with Lyly, father of Elizabethan prigs and Euphuists, and how rapidly it has now swung.forward with that sweet Roman, Madame Montessori.. Quite late in the year, we meet the theological reviewer on his walks abroad. A new book of travel brought in ment from Professor Owen on "a Continental tour, that he had examined the bones of the eleven thousand martyred virgins piously guarded at' Cologne, and found them largely the remains of lower animals, horses, sheep, and so forth. Tho reviewer piously repeats the. orthodox confession:—' f £verybody knows that the relics which have been preserved at Cologne are the osteological remnants of so many British maidens, all bound from Cornwall to be married in America, carried by tempests up the Eliine to Cologne, and.there murdered by tho Huns under Attila." "ffiiy, then, this untoward discovery? Light comes with the theory of a very profound theologian, posing as "Cogitans" in a religious journal, and suggesting, regarding "certain geological facts which ought not.to be, that during the formation of tho world, the remains of the ichthyosaurus, megatherium, etc., may have been transported from some other planet by the devil, and interpolated by him in the strata constituting the crust of the earth. This theory, which so commends itself to common sense, could very well account for tlte osteological substitutions at Cologne." - Passing to the world of reality', the , following'"extract from "Essence of Parliament" shows that if the hours did not trip on rosy feet for the youthful members of the Fluent Family, they went 1 yet more leaden'ly with children of lower grade:—"Lord Shaftesbury finished his work: for the session by ono of those deeds > which incline Mr. Punch often to. forgive him for his spiritual tyranny over Lord Palmerston in tho bishop-making lino. He obtained an address for inquiry into conditions of child-employment in a variety of trades not yet under restriction. When it is known that in some of these trades, infants of four or I've years old are worked 12 and 11 hours 'a day, it would be thought that it-is time to protest." "Not yet under restriction!" And this 11 whole years after the commission on child slavery -ihat called forth Mrs. .Browning's. "Cry of the Children !' Truly the Courts of law are well studded with tho rat holes of evasion! If tho souh of an age is clothed upon by its fashions, acstheticism was dead in 18G1. For. women it was an iron age of colossal hoops, of waspy waists, of'metallic little pork-pio hats. What softness: there was depended on the shawl, Paisley or India, which, bado defiance to every lovely lino.that hnd Ken Greek or Roman. ,Courorsely with these hard contours ran the langour and limpness of the raasouliue exquisite. Dundreary had set [ho weeping fashion of fide whiskers) tho funereal top-hat, and a

general sartorial floppiness.- Unthinkable that any of tlie=e languishing i.yttonians had stormed Bobastopol or takeu the heights of the Alma live years before this. ' . . Changes, dynastic and other, were shaking tlie Continent:— "What is the difference between the late and the present Sulian of Turkey? Abdul Medjid is Abdul as was: the new Sulian is Abdul Aziz." What a prophetic note is founded here:—"So Greece is no go. An indis- ' putablo statement of its finances and i no-progress is before Europe. And it t is shown that the Hellenic speculation 1 does not answer. AVe fear that the next 1 European problem will be, 'How to take - Greece out of Maps." b The ghost of Scharnhorst was ]\ist be- ■, ginning to walk in 1861,-when "Punch' I says:— e "Wo understand that the Germans are . taking the most active and energetic meas sures to increase the fleet. It is repon- [ ed on the authority of Messrs. Searle, . tub great boat-builders, that a four-oared s cutter will bo launched in a very few u days. Wo have not yet heard whether it is the intention of the Courts of ht. . James and the Tuilories to domand of : the Prussian Government auy explanation of this extraordinary measure." , It is not Prussia and Saxony but Aus- " tria and Italy which fill these worn pages. The pacifists who are now shriek- *' ing at the brigandage which proposes to * rive colonies and provinces from the " gentle Hun and the mild-mannered Turk II wero then wiping the blood of Hungary • and Poland off Austria's hands with an 0 obsequious towel, led by John Arthur s Roebuck, M.P., scourged hero as "The i Emperor's faithful dog, Teareni. - "Punch" and tho people were for the t new Italy, clear of Austrian chains at f- last, and voting for A'ictor Emmanuel of e Sardinia to be her king. t . King \ 7 ictor is soon in his kitchen adn monishing his cook, Mrs. Pope, and 1 threatening dismissal on account of undee sir-able followers. Mrs. Pope, confronted with Hie obvious heels of a French t soldier hiding below the table, sobs bet hind her apron, ) e "It's only my cousin!' b ' For the shadow of coming Sedan was e already upon France, in the Machiavel- ] lian policy of Louis Napoleon, who wlsh- . Ed to found a subtler hegemony than ttte ■ empire of blind force imposed on Europe „ by his uncle. A professed Liberal and liberator in his dreamy youth, he wa* .. now/in blase age, tho armed protector of \ the hierarchy that was bound Tip with t the old regime. AVhat "Punch t nought of the' Emperor's. sincerity was summed g up in this "Lay of a Ladder":- , Louis Napoleon, is it true t What Koebuck has declared, that s ou a Have struck a oargain to call l;ome - Your red-legged garrison from Home, Getting fo'r Home's evacuation Sardinia as consideration? r A ladder Fancy views you in s fhe act of poising on your cilia, t The Holy Father at the top 9 Of that uncomfortaWu prop, t A zany of tho lower class , Thus sometimes balances an aES. I Thaf'-clown. ero ho at last u'prears ■ r The creature of extensive ears. To coax whnt cash" he can from out - The pocket of expectant lout, p Keeps crying, "Twopencp more and then i Up goes the donkey, gentlcmcu. You, whilst yon show that ladder feat, " Seem to prepare another treat " To Italy's . impatient eye. f "Another cession," is your cry, i Hi then you'll c>-own her eager hope; t down goes The Pope!" (To be Continued.), ', i '-