To-morrow'll be the grandest day of all the green New Year;
To-morrow'll be of all the year the maddest merriest day,
For Toil's to be Queen o' the May, brother. Labour is Queen o' th's May!
MODERN TYPES.
(By Mr, Punch's Own Type-writer.)
No. X.—THE MARTYR INCOMPRISE.
The Martyr Incomprise is one who, having in her home erected a stake, ties to it her husband, and then having set alight the faggots which her own hands have piled round him, calls the world to witness the saint-like fortitude with which she bears up under the sufferings inflicted upon her by her lord and master. She will have been married to a man who, though he does not pretend to be above the ordinary frailties and failings of human nature, tries honestly, for many years, to make her happy. Time after time does this domestic Sisyphus roll the stone of contentment up the hill of his wife's temper, and time after time does it slip from his hands, and go clattering down into the plain of despair. The Martyr is a very virtuous lady, yet she is not satisfied with the calm and acknowledged possession of her virtues. She adds them to her armoury of aggravation, and uses them with a deadly effect. Her morality is irreproachable. She studies to make it a reproach to her husband, and, inasmuch as her temper is equally compounded of the most persistent obstinacy, and the most perverse and unaccountable caprices, it is unnecessary to say that she succeeds marvellously in her undertaking.
As a girl, the Martyr will have been distinguished by a keen sense of wrong, and a total lack of all sense of humour. Having been rebuked by her mother for some trifling fault, she will persuade herself that her parents detest her, and desire her death. She will spend the next few days with her breast luxuriously against the thorn of her fancied sufferings. She will weave romances, in order to enjoy the delicious sensation of looking on as she withers under injustice into a premature coffin, and of watching her cruel parents as they water the grave of their victim with unavailing tears. A somewhat lax method of bringing up will have enabled her to read many trashy novels. Out of these she constructs an imaginary hero, all gushing tenderness and a tawny moustache. Having met a young man who fully realises her ideal in the latter particular, she promptly assumes his possession of the former, and accepts his proposal of marriage. After having all but thrown him over on three or four occasions for an insufficient display of romantic devotion at dances and tennis parties, she eventually marries him. Soon afterwards she discovers that he is not a chivalrous wind-bag, but a Man, whereupon she shatters his pedestal, and abandons herself to misery amidst the ruins.