Dear Mr. Punch,—My pater reads the Bristol newspapers, but I don't, because there's never any pirates or red Indians in them, but happening to look in one the other day I noticed an awfully good thing. It said that at a place called Stapleton all the parents were very indignant at the way in which the schoolmistress had been treated by the manigers, and to show their symperthy they decided to keep their children from school. The school was nearly empty in consequents. Now I don't think my schoolmaster has half enough sympathy shown him. He does know how to cane, certainly, but he isn't really such a beast as fellows make out—at least not just the day or so before the holidays begin—and would you mind telling parents that they ought to keep their boys at home for a week or a fortnight after next term begins, to show how much they symperthise with him? Poor chap, he has lots of trouble—I know he has, because I give him some.
Yours respekfully,
Bloggs Junior.
Bawbees Thankfully Received.—A National Scottish Memorial to Burns is in the Ayr. "Surely," writes a perfervid one, "Burns did as much for our country and the world as Scott, yet how very different the monuments of the two in Edinburgh and Glasgow! I am sure no Scotchman would grudge his mite, however poor, for such a purpose." Quite so. But it would take a good many "Cotter's Saturday mites" to build anything like the Scott Memorial in Princes Street. And what is this that the Rev. Dr. Burrell, of New York, said in presenting a new panel for the Ayr statue of Burns from American lovers of the poet? "The stream of pilgrims," he observed, "from America to the banks of the Doon was twice as large as that which found its way to the banks of the Avon." Then why should not the stream of dollars follow, and erect a colossal "Burns Enlightening the Nations" somewhere down the Clyde—say, at the Heads of Ayr? Hamlet beaten by Tam O'Shanter, and Avon taking a back seat to Doon! Flodden is, indeed, avenged.
The Wearing o' the Green.—There was a discussion at the Cork Corporation's meeting on a recommendation of the Works Committee, that "a new uniform, of Irish manufacture, be ordered for the hall-porter." What should be the colour, was the difficulty? "Some members," we regret to read, "were in favour of blue"; and then the debate went on thus—
Mr. Bible he thought they should stick to the green
Mr. Farington said that green uniforms rot;
Mr. Lucy denounced such a statement as mean,
And—"never change colour!"—advised Sir John Scott.
So the hall-porter will have a uniform of "green and gold"—the green to be durable," and the gold to make it endurable!