Puck — December 25, 1878 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BONNIE LOUISE. With Apologies to Sir Walter Scott and disrespectfully dedicated to Colonel Littleton, Flunky-in- Chief to the Princess of Lorne and the Marquis Louise. Am—' Bonnie Dundee."* To the Montreal ladies ‘twas Littleton spoke, I trow you will think it a mighty good joke, Unless sick, to have low-necks and dresses cut low, To see the live Princess I've got here on show. Chorus. So alter your garmentsand don’t come too e, Bring with a high bodice a cer-tif-icate, But the Court rules forbid that you venture to sneeze, Hurrah for the low-necks and Princess Louise. For a Court we have founded with real royaltee, Those Yanks o’er the border how jealous they'll be, They can boast of no Marquis nor flunky who frowns At their wives and their daughters in high- neck ed gowns. Chorus—So alter, &c. Consumption, pneumonia, 've no terrors for me, But white necks and shoulders I'd travel to see; I never catch cold, my chest is quite strong, For I'm Colonel Littleton, Royal Aide-de-kong. Chorus—So alter, &c. LET BOARDING-HOUSE KEEPERS BEWARE. +) Y wife keeps a boarding-house. You A mustn’t think any the worse of me for that, for Socrates's wife, the fiery Xan- tippe, ran a coffee and cake saloon, and Alex- ander’s spouse was interested in a lemon-pie foundry. But to my wife. She was summoned to the door the other day by the arrival of a personage who pleaded for bed and board. His shirt-front was wrinkled with hunger, there was a wolfish glare in his eye, and his bony fin- gers kept clutching airy fish-balls. « Please go 'way,” said my joy. «But, madam,” he urged, with subdued fero- city, “I must have where to lay my head and spread the snowy napkin under my chin.” He was young—the age that Talmage warns against the Buckingham and Argyle. He was sad—sadder than a bloated turkey around the holidays. In a throb of pity my wife took him in, When it was delicately hinted that the payment of a week's board in advance would be the proper thing, he laid his hand upon his heart and sighed like a blacksmith’s bellows. My wife relented, though I felt like hurling him to kingdom come with a cast-iron boot and asand-club. I determined to watch him. When he went up-stairs to his room, I noise- lessly followed him in cloth slippers, As he shut himself in, I got a chair and looked through the fanlight. He walked to the wash- stand and began unpacking himself, First he laid down a razor-case, then a Colt’s navy revolver, then a small vial, then a long piece of a clothes-line. My head whirled round. “Murder or suicide,” I deliriously muttered. He began to strip. Heavens! he had no un- dershirt; his legs were wrapped in ingrain car- pet in lieu of drawers, and his feet were en- cased in an illustrated newspaper instead of socks. I could have yelled like a Comanche, but my voice failed me. He went through these performances with great deliberation. Having entirely undressed, he surveyed himself in the glass a moment, and then picked up the razor-case, He unsheathed the glittering steel, and plucking a hair from his moustache, tested its edge. Then he made aslip-noose on one end of the clothes line, circled his neck with it, uncorked the vial and placed it in his teeth, seized the navy revolver—and there he was equipped with steel, bullet, rope and poison. He was throwing the disengaged end of the rope over the closet-door, when the spell that held me was broken. With a mighty voice— no, with my boots—I kicked in the door, and bounded like a tiger upon bim. I butted’ him in the diaphragm, and with a heavenly smile he sank to the floor. My wife came running up-stairs, “There,” said I, in withering tones, “is your pretty boarder, who almost saddled us with the expense of a funeral, when you know I want all the money in the house for a seal-skin over- coat.” ‘The rash youth writhed on the floor, “What did you want to do it for?” I de- manded of him. “T was unhappy,” he moaned. “Oh, you were. And is that any reason why you should be going around trying to spoil honest people's four-dollar-and-a-half-a-yard carpets with your rubescent gore?” I sarcasti- cally rejoined, as I triumphantly set my foot upon his neck. “Oh, let the poor fellow up,” my wife pleaded. “Tl send him up—to the Island!” I thun- dered. “ Does he think we're keeping an ama- teur slaughtering-house here, and that we're go- ing to start a coffin factory to keep ready-made coverings on hand for the loathsome carcasses of baggageless boarders? Never, never, never. Rather had I be peddling tooth-powder on the streets, and you be whanging the tambourine to the antics of an organ-grinder’s monkey.” But I let the fellow up, and compromised with him for all his effects, He thanked me with effusive tears, and I threw him a pillow- case in which to enrobe his form and wander forth again into the wilderness. Some people wouldn’t have done this, but my heart is kind and pitiful. Brix. RHYMES OF THE DAY. On Gertine A First-ctass SHAVE IN A Five CENT SHop. | Full many a gein of rarest razor e’en ‘The dark, unfathomed caves tonsorial bear; Full many an artist’s born to brush unseen, And dull his scissors on the desert hair. M. W. B. Women blush, we've heard it said, When they had and hadn't oughter; But men, like lobsters, don’t get red Till they’re tumbled in hot water. A DAILY HORROR. “Ten days, or ten dollars,” said the judge, and the prisoner, a sullen-looking fellow, chose the latter alternative, paid the fine and was dis- charged. He walked moodily out of the court- room, but when he reached the door turned and showered a wholesale tirade of profane abuse upon the magistrate. Then he ran into the corridor, but before he could reach the street the officers gave chase, he was soon recaptured, and stood again at the bar, “Ten dollars more,” said the court. The money was paid. ‘If you had used more chaste and refined language,” the judge con- tinued, waving the fellow away, “ you would not have been chased and refined.” The prisoner fell down—dead! Dead! my lords and ladies! Dead! Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order! Dead! Men and women born with heavenly compassion in your breasts—and dying thus around us every day from the effects of similar atrocious puns! Peacues contain prussic acid. another peach this year! Shan’t eat Two inventors divide the homage and admi- ration of this generation—Edison and the man who discovered that ‘ rock candy acd whisky” | is good fora cold, Edison, you know, is the fellow who invented the phonograph. “SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS.” “Tf at this moment it has been decided to invade the Ameer’s Terntory, we are acting in pursuance of a policy which in its intention has been uniformly friendly to Afghanistan.”—London Times, November 21. Punch. comicbooks.com