A WYLDE VADE MECUM.
(By Professor H-xl-y.)
Question. What is rest?
Answer. Unperceived activity.
Q. Which is the best way of keeping awake?
A. By falling off to sleep.
Q. What is sleep?
A. Concealed consciousness.
Q. What is strength?
A. Weakness in excess.
Q. What is pessimism?
A. Optimism developed to its utmost possibilities.
Q. What are possibilities?
A. Impossibilities carried into action.
Q. What is selfishness?
A. Pity in the concrete.
Q. What is the summit of civilisation?
A. The commencement of barbarism.
Q. What is nature?
A. Art in its initial form.
Q. What is the survival of the fittest?
A. The Romanes Lecture.
Q. What was its comparative commencement?
A. Mr. Gladstone.
Q. And what has been its absolute end?
A. Positive ... bosh.
"The World's Fair."—Yes, so it is, perhaps, occasionally, to some people; but "The World's Unfair" to those on whom it chooses to sit in judgment.
MANNERS.
[Some indignation has been expressed at the manners of many of the "well-dressed mob" at the Prince of Wales's Reception at the Imperial Institute on Wednesday night last, manners displayed in rudely "mobbing" the Royal party, and hissing, hooting, and shouting "Traitor!" at Mr. Gladstone, one of the Prince's guests.]
Eh? Indignation? Why such passion waste?
Gladstoneophobia has destroyed Good Taste;
And rowdy rudeness does not shock, but please,
"The mob of gentlemen who hoot with ease.
As for the ladies, bless their angry hearts!
They've Primrosed into playing fish-wife parts;
And now 'tis one of Patriotism's tests
That you should hiss and hoot your fellow-guests.
Should they dare don a rival party vesture;
Billingsgate rhetoric and Borough gesture
Invade the (party) precincts of Mayfair—
To express the vulgar wrath now raging there.
We are Mob-ruled indeed—when Courtly Nob
Apes, near his Prince, the manners of the Mob!
The hoot is owlish; there are just two things
That hiss—one venom-fanged, one graced with wings.
Anserine or serpentine, ye well-dressed rowdies?
Dainty-draped dames, or duffel-skirted dowdies,
They who in rudeness thus their spite would slake,
Have plainly head of goose, and heart of snake!
So why indulge in indignation blind
'Gainst those who hiss or hoot—after their kind?
