BUTTERS BUTTERED.
Sir,—I have been deeply thrilled by the suggestion for curing the Agricultural depression which Messrs. Macdougall, of Mark Lane, have made. I am not myself an Agriculturist; still, in—or rather near—the suburban villa in which I reside, I have an old cow, and a donkey on which my children ride. Directly I heard that the way to keep animals warm and comfortable in Winter was to smear them all over with oil, thus saving much of the cost of feeding them, I tried the plan on the aged cow. Perhaps the oil I used was not sufficiently pure. At all events the animal, which had never been known before to do more than proceed at a leisurely walk, rushed at frantic speed into the garden, and tossed my wife's mother into a cucumber-frame. She has now gone home. Undeterred by the comparative failure of this attempt, I smeared our donkey with a pint of the best castor-oil, just before setting out on its daily amble, with the children (in panniers) on its back. It did not appear to relish the treatment, as it instantly broke loose, and was found, five miles off, in a village pound, while the children were landed in a neighbouring ditch. I am writing to Messrs. Macdougall, to ask for particulars of how the oil is to be applied. I am sure it is an excellent idea, if the animals could be brought to see it in the same light.
Yours, experimentally,
Darwin Edison Gubbins.
My Dear Mr. Punch,—Smith Minor, who is staying at our house for part of the holidays, said what good fun it would be to try the Macdougall plan on my Uncle from India. He is always cold and shivering. We waited till he was having a nap after dinner in the arm-chair, and we coated him over with butter that Smith Minor got from Cook. (Cook never will give me butter.) When we got to his hair he unfortunately woke up, so that is probably why the plan did not succeed. We thought he would be pleased to feel warmer, but he wasn't. Uncles are often ungrateful, Smith Minor says. And it did succeed in one way, because he seemed awfully hot and red in the face when he found what we had been doing. Perhaps we ought not to have tried smearing him on his clothes, but how could we get his clothes off without waking him? Smith Minor says it's a pity we didn't drug him. N.B.—I have been stopped going to the Pantomime for this, and Smith Minor is to be sent home!
Your dejected
Tommy.
Sir,—I want to bring an action against Messrs. Macdougall, of Mark Lane. I tried their smearing plan on a horse in my stable that had a huge appetite, and was always getting cold if left out in the wet. I used paraffin, and at first the animal seemed really grateful. In the night I was called up by a fearful noise, and found that the horse's appetite had not got at all less owing to the oil; on the contrary, it seemed to have eaten up most of the woodwork of the stable, and was plunging about madly. The paraffin caught light, and the stable was burned, and the horse too. In future I shall feed my horse in the usual way, not on the outside.
Yours,
Titus Oats.