Two bad endings! Abolition of the Board of Works, and abdication of King Milan of Servia. Both can be well spared. But Bright, brave belligerent John, true, tenacious, trenchant,—no, we could ill spare him. What, Punch wonders, would the fighting Apostle of Peace have said of the "Naval Defence Bill" hard by? Well, we know what the Country said of it. And the escape of that Kane-Captained Rennie-engined Calliope,—England has not forgotten that yet, if the Admiralty has.
Opening of the Great—the Colossal, the Titanic, the World-witching, Republic-saving French Exhibition! As "Big" a thing as—as the Tour Eiffel itself! Can even Mr. Punch say more? It must have a paragraph all to itself. Well done, Lutetia! Well may you pro tem. at least, kick out politics.
Sandy "takes the floor," and his "Scotch Local Government Bill!" Hope he'll like it. He generally does like big things, be they Bills or Cabers! Better anyhow than Paddy relishes "Balfour's Battering-Ram," which comes next. And then, Gentlemen, the match at Brummagem between those two political pugilists, Churchill and Chamberlain! Fight unfinished, result as yet uncertain. National Portrait Gallery to be fitly housed at last. Then the picture takes us "across the herring-pond" to the great Washington Centenary. Four Millions more money for Ships, the opening of the Opera Season, the raising of the Rates; all matters of interest, painful or otherwise, to most of you, Gentlemen.
Abandonment of the Sugar Bill! Not one of the much-talked-of "sweets of office" this, eh? Ask Baron de Worms! Raid on the Betting Clubs! But the great Demon of Gambling, like the objects of the great Curse in Ingoldsby, "never" seems "one penny the worse." Opening of the Spanish Exhibition. Equipment of our Volunteers. Bravo, Lord Mayor Whitehead!
The Johnstown Floods, Gentlemen; too terrible to talk lightly of. Here is symbolised the discreditable Parachute Mania, which was a disagreeable feature of the dead year. May it die therewith! I hear a stir, a silken amongst my fair auditors. Yes, Ladies, the Marriage of the lucky Duke of Portland, lucky, as I said at the time, with both Bridal and Bridle. Another Dropped Bill, Gentlemen; this time the Land Transfer Bill, "knocked out" in the Lords by the "Sluggers" of Legal Privilege. Westward Ho! goes the ubiquitous, inexhaustible G. O. M. on party thoughts intent; whilst near him is shadowed forth the rise of that Irreconcileable, Socialistic new "Fourth Party," the avowed purposes of which probably sometimes "give him pause."
Great Show of the "Humorists in Art." Hope you all went to see it. If you didn't, 'twas your loss. Then—strange juxtaposition!—the Great Turf Libel Case! Can one "libel" the Turf? Mr. Punch wonders. Anyhow, "Donovan"—that Lucky Duke again!—wins the Derby. "Donovan" was evidently "on the job," not "out for an airing," eh? Visit of the Shah of Persia. You will not want me to say anything more about that threshed-out subject. The Labour Congress in Switzerland was less talked of, but probably quite as important, whilst the appointment of Her Most Gracious Majesty as President of the Royal Agricultural Society is of even greater home-interest.
Next comes the Great Event of the Year! Mr. Punch's Visit to the Paris Exhibition, already celebrated by him in proper time and shape! You all of you have its record, of course. If not—get it!!! That Balloon bore a happy party, and needed no parachute.
The Delagoa Bay Railway business, Mr. Punch's pictorial comment on which so infuriated mischievous Master Portugal! The Whitechapel Woe! Not a matter for words, Gentlemen, but deeds.
Hooray! Another Royal Marriage! The Wedding March, with a Fife accompaniment! And—quite "in a concatenation accordingly," though at t'other side of Panorama—the Golden Wedding of the G. O. M. Prospect and retrospect, both pleasant. Was it the tender association of sympathy which made the G. O. M. so eloquent in favour of the Royal Grants? Who knows? Anyhow, his more rampant "followers"—Labby among them—would have liked, for the moment, to "muzzle" the "old man eloquent"—as Monro did the London dogs. The Naval Review, and the German Emperor's brief visit, "synchronised," as the saps say; and then, as another "Big Thing," they made Chaplin Minister of Agriculture! "Capping the Climax," that! Hard-by another Great—or Big—Man, hews away at the Tithes Bill. Go it, Harcourt!
Following the example of another really Great Man, Mr. Gladstone goes to Paris, sees the Exhibition, mounts the Eiffel Tower, perorates pleasantly about the Two Republics, France and America. Or should we say, America and France? Arcades ambo? And the G. O. M. orating on them was very Arcadian indeed.