ANILINE.
(After Tennyson's "Adeline.")
All around one daily sees
Dreadful dyes of Aniline.
Worn by women fat and thin,
Bonnet, bodice, back and breast.
One can hardly call thee fair,
With thy fierce magenta glare,
With thy green, the green of peas,
Violet, and all the rest.
What appalling tints are thine,
Showy, glowy Aniline!
Whence did modern women get
Such a gorgeous array?
Dear to 'Arry's 'Arriet
On a 'appy 'oliday,
'Owlin', out on 'Ampstead 'Eath,
From the 'ill to 'im beneath.
Also dear to girls who sell
Flowers in the London street,
They have always loved thee well
In their frocks and feathers neat.
Why revive those tints of thine,
Antiquated Aniline?
Thou hast almost made us blind
Under England's cloudless skies;
Low-toned tints of Orient,
Such as Turkish rugs adorn,
Would be better for our eyes—
Now upon the pavement bent
Since such blazers have been worn.
Say, has Paris sent to us
Dyes so dreadfully defined?
Do the tyrant modistes bring
Colours so calamitous,
Mixed in ways more fearful still,
In this strangely sunny spring?
Oh, before thou mak'st us ill,
Take away that glare of thine,
Unæsthetic Aniline!
KINDLY MEANT.
Mr. Macmonnies (an old Friend). "Well, look here, Old Man, I'll tell you what really brought me here to-day. The Fact is my Wife wants her Mother painted very badly—and I naturally thought of You!"
Sale of the Clifden and High Price Pictures. —"The Wife of Burgomaster Six" went for over £7000. This wife of Burgomaster Half-a-dozen was a marvellous specimen of a woman. The Burgomaster was so faithful a husband that "Six to One" has long since become a homely proverb.
A Useful Toole.—Mr. Punch was much surprised one day last week to see on the evening newspaper placards:—
Toole in the Box.
A Lucky Dog.
Was "the Box" a new piece to be put on at the distant period when Walker, London, fails to attract? No! The hero of Homburg had only been helping in the Lucky Dog Fight—merely a case of Verbum Sapte et Alport, or a Word for Sapte and Alport.
The Shortest Passage on Record.—Aberdeen to Canada at a pen-stroke.