FULL MOURNING AND HALF MOURNING.
In this age of costumes, when everybody cries out for a particular dress, from a Puseyite to a charity boy, we think the poor shopmen in the Mourning Depôts have been shabbily overlooked. The Half Mourning Gentlemen should be dressed in the style of the old pictures seen in Wardour Street, one half black, the other white. And the Full Mourning Gentlemen, who have to wait on disconsolate widows, and offer them a choice of weeds, should be black from head to foot, and that effect not produced by art but by the hand of nature. No Ethiopian artificiality, but a real Nigger reality.
New Year's Day.—Now kill your dragon, for the friendly game of snap, and hire your blind-man, only take care he is a good buffer. Now get your needle ready for the purpose of threading, and hunt everywhere for a slipper, only if there is a wood pavement in the neighbourhood, you need not go far to pick up one. Now riddle your company well with conundrums, and bore them with acting charades, till every one is tired of the fun, and fairly gives it up.
The Height of Cowardice.—Kicking a man with a wooden leg.
ODE ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY.
[A LONG WAY AFTER POPE.]
LUMLEY'S TRUMP CARD
NOTES OF THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE.
Descend, great Bunn!—descend and bring
A furnace of poetic fire;
Nib fifty pens, and take your fling,
Boldly of foolscap fill a quire.
In a namby-pamby strain,
Let the tenor first complain;
Let the falsetto sound,
With nasal twang around,
Till in applause 'tis drown'd.
Then in more ponderous notes and slow,
Let the deep bass go down, extremely low.
Hark the shrill soprano near
Bursts upon the startled ear!
Higher and higher does she rise,
And fills with awful screams the flies.
By straining and shrieking she reaches the notes,
Out of tune, out of time too, the wild music floats;
Till, by degrees, the vigorous bawl
Seems to decay,
And melts away
In a feeble, feeble squall.
In music there's a medium, you know;
Don't sing too high nor sink too low.
If in a house tumultuous rows arise,
Music to drown the noise the means supplies;
Or when the housemaid, pressed with cares,
To yonder public-house repairs,
Some gallant soldier, fired by music's sound,
Will order pints of half-and-half all round.
John the footman nods his head,
Swears he'll not go home to bed;
In his arms a partner takes,
As some courteous speech he makes;
And suddenly the joyous pair engage
In giddy Waltz or Polka, now the rage.
But when the violin puts forth its charms,
How the sweet music every bosom warms!
So when the dilettante dared the squeeze,
To hear of Jenny Lind the opening strain,
And in the rush serenely sees
His best coat torn in twain,
Transported simpletons stood round,
And men grew spooneys at the sound,
Roaring with all their wind;
Each one his power of lung displayed
In bawling to the Swedish maid;
While cheers from box to pit resound
For Lind, for Lind, for Lind!
But when through those mysterious bounds
Where the policeman goes his rounds,
The Poet had by chance been led
'Mid the Coal-hole, festive shed,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
How horrible the din!
Toasted cheese,
If you please.
Waiter—stop!
Mutton-chop.
Hollo! Jones,
Devilled bones;
And cries for rum or gin!
But hark! the chairman near the fire
Strikes on the table to require
Strict silence for a song.
Thy tongue, O waiter, now keep still;
Bring neither glass, nor go, nor gill;
The pause will not be long.
The guests are mute as if upon their beds;
Their hair uncurl'd hangs from their listening heads.
By the verses as they flow,
By their meaning nothing though,
Full of tropes and flowers;
By those lofty rhymes that dwell
In the mind of Bunn so well,
Like love in Paphian bowers.
By the lines that he has made,
Working at the poet's trade—
By the "marble halls" so smart,
By "other lips" and "Woman's heart,"
True poetry at once restore, restore,
Or don't let Bunn, at least, write any more!
But soon, too soon, poor music shuts her eyes;
Again she falls—again she dies, she dies.
How will she now once more attempt to thrive?
Ah! Jullien comes to keep her still alive.
Now with his British Army
Quadrille, so bright and balmy,
Or, with four bands meeting,
Two men a large drum beating,
He gives the tone
Of dying groan,
Or soldier's moan,
When at his post
His life is in the battle lost.
With five bands surrounded,
Is Jullien confounded?
No! onwards he goes,
And his arms about he throws.
See: wild as a wild duck the bâton he plies:
Ah! down in the chair he drops, closing his eyes.
My eyes! He dies!
He comes to life—for Jullien all have sung;
The name of Jullien is on every tongue.
The boxes and the pit,
Both they who stand and sit;
With Jullien's name the entire house has rung.
Music the greatest brute can charm,
And savage natures will disarm.
Music can find luxurious ease,
Making what bargain it may please.
A salary it can improve
To any sum that it may love.
This the delightful Lind has found,
And to the tune of fifteen thousand pound.
When the full house enjoys the Swedish bird,
E'en fashion deigns to lend its ear,
So eager 'tis to catch each little word,
That were a pin to drop it must be heard;
And people come from far as well as near!
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,
For Jenny Lind may boast with greater reason;
His numbers he for gold could never sell—
She makes her fortune in a season!
"OH MY PROPHETIC SOUL! MY UNCLE."
A CURIOUS INQUIRY.
BY A MEMBER OF THE ANIMALS' FRIEND SOCIETY.
I wonder with what feelings does a cat contemplate a fiddle? Does the sight of it move his bowels of compassion? Does he look upon it as the hated persecutor of his innocent race for years? Is he vindictive against it? Does some inward voice tell him that on that very spot was murdered perhaps one of his dearest relations? Does he feel prompted to revenge? Does it ever strike him that it may be his own case to-morrow? If a cat feels all this, then the sight of a fiddle cannot be the pleasantest object in the world to him, and I fancy I see in my mind's eye a family of orphan kittens weeping over a violin as the cruel instrument of their father's death. But, alas! it's all fiddle-de-dee. Cats have no feelings, or else every Tom in every village would be a Hamlet!
How To begin the New Year.—The first thing is to take one year off your age. Recollect every year you grow older you are one year younger. Ladies are not restricted to any number. He must be a fine bore indeed who succeeds in piercing a lady's years!
How to put down Repeal in Ireland.—Agitate for it in England.