THE UNHYGIENIC HOUSEHOLDER.
After reading the Reports of the Congress.
Tell me not in many a column,
I must pull up all my drains;
Or with faces long and solemn,
Threaten me with aches and pains.
Let me end this wintry summer,
'Mid the rain as best I may,
Without calling in the plumber,
For he always comes to stay.
I appreciate the Prince's
Shrewd remarks about our lot;
But the horror he evinces
At our dangers, frights me not.
Science in expostulation,
Shows our rules of health are wrong;
But in days when sanitation
Was unknown, men lived as long.
If the air with microbes thickens,
Like some mirk malefic mist,
Tell me prithee how the dickens
We can manage to exist.
From the poison breathed each minute,
Man ere this had surely died;
When we see the fell things in it,
On the microscopic slide.
I'm aware we're oft caught napping,
And the scientist can say,
That our yawning drains want trapping,
Lest the deadly typhoid stay.
Even with your house in order,
If you go to take the air,
So to speak, outside your border,
Lo! the merry germs are there.
Doctors vow, in tones despotic,
I must dig 'neath basement floors,
Lest diseases called zymotic
Enter in at all my pores.
PARKES, of sanitation master,
Wanted "purity and light;"
I'm content to risk disaster,
With unhygienic night.
QUEER QUERIES.—HYMENEAL.—I have been asked to attend the wedding of a friend, and respond to the toast of "The Ladies." I have never done such a thing before, and feel rather nervous about it. My friend says that I must "try and be very comic." I have thought of one humorous remark—about the "weaker sex" being really stronger—which I fancy will be effective, but I can't think of another. Would one good joke of that sort be sufficient? À propos of the lady marksman at Bisley, I should like to advise all ladies to "try the Butts," only I am afraid this might be taken for a reference to the President of the Divorce Division. How could I work the Jackson case in neatly? Would it be allowable to pin my speech on the wedding-cake, and read it off? Also, could I wear a mask? Any hints would be welcomed by—BEST MAN.
NOT QUITE POLITE.—The Manager of the Shaftesbury Theatre advertises "three distinct plays at 8·15, 9·15, and 10." Distinct, but not quite clear. Anyhow, isn't it rather a slur on other Theatres where it implies the plays, whether at 8·15, 9·15, or 10, are "indistinct."