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"A MOST BECOMING WREATH, MY LADY !-ALLOW ONE OF MY YOUNG PERSONS TO PUT IT ON. THERE! YOU CAN NOW SEE HOW

WELL IT WOULD BECOME YOUR LADYSHIP!"

NEW CAB REGULATIONS.

FURTHER improvements in our Street Cabs are understood to be contemplated at Scotland Yard, and the Home Office. The following are a few of them :

1. The Tickets to be printed on toned paper, and scented like playbills. When presenting them to ladies, Cabmen always to wear gloves -white Berlin in Summer, buff dogskin in Winter. 2. Foot-warmers to be provided in cold weather. Sunblinds to be affixed to the windows. The floor to be covered with a handsome

carpet.

3. Cabmen to supply themselves with the daily papers and weekly comic periodicals for the accommodation of passengers; but not to demand more than the stated prices.

4. At the annual inspection, Cabmen to appear in their best clothes, with boots nicely blacked, and a flower in the button-hole.

5. Cabmen to be encouraged to mount flags of elegant shape and aesthetic design, and to wear ornamental badges on their persons. Decorative patterns to be prepared by the Students at South Kensington.

6. When Children are carried, Cabmen always to assist them to alight, and to be very particular with the baby.

THIS IS TO GIVE NOTICE.

IN "Evenings from Home" last week, in the course of an account of Chilpéric at the Lyceum, the name of the popular French dance cancan was spelt cançan; that is, with the cedilla, instead of without it. humour which only one enlightened person discovered (and he proudly This was no clerical error, but was intended to convey a profundity of wrote to say so)-that the cancan is so much softened down at the Lyceum as to merit the order of the Cedilla. In fact it is a drawingroom Cancan (we hope it is drawing without the room, as SHERIDAN said-ahem!), and it would be well if, henceforth, without further exwords cancan and cançan, as respectively expressing the impropriety or planation, theatrical advertisements, or notices, should adopt the two the propriety of the celebrated French dance.

ALL WELL EMPLOYED.

His colleagues, it is understood, have been similarly occupied.
MR. GLADSTONE, we are told, has been felling timber in the recess.
MR. LOWE has been cutting down the Estimates.
LORD CLARENDON has been lopping off excrescences in the Foreign
Department.

MR. CHILDERS has been hewing away at the Staff of the Dockyards.

7. Every Cabman to be provided with a Map of London and MURRAY'S Handbook for the information of foreigners, and each Stand to have at least one Cab with a driver familiar with the French Language. 8. In case of a dispute as to the legal fare, the Cabman not to be allowed to remain out in the cold, but to be asked into the Hall, and offered a seat. One of the boys always loitering about in the streets, to be employed to stand at the horse's head while the driver is inMR. AYRTON has been using the pruning-knife; and the whole of doors. Boys engaged in this service will be required to wear a badge the Ministers, Mr. Punch hopes, have been busy rooting up abuses.

or plate in their caps, on which a reasonable charge is to be legibly inscribed, either in black letters on a white ground, or in white letters on a black ground.

9. MR. BRUCE, COLONEL HENDERSON, and Mr. Punch always to ride free.

INSTANCES OF WRETCHED LEGISLATION.-Our Pe Laws.

The LORD CHANCELLOR has been busy amongst the branches of his profession. MR. CARDWELL has been retrenching.

One Good Turn Deserves Another.

JAMES CLIFFORD, a clever ex-artilleryman, has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for an offence well known to the Criminal Courts in old days, but new in our own, "sweating" sovereigns. He might plead "reciprocity." Don't the sovereigns sweat us?

MORE HAPPY THOUGHTS.

WHAT can you do in a bath? How slowly the time goes! Forty minutes in 26° Réaumur. You can't read with comfort. You can't talk, unless to yourself, which is, I believe, the sure forerunner of madness. If you have some one in the next bath, you can talk to him, if you're acquainted; but even then your conversation is heard by everybody else. No, it's the sulphur silent system and water. But one can't positively lose forty minutes of the day. What can one do in a bath?

Happy Thought.-Think.

This reminds me of the celebrated Parrot. Besides you can think

just as well out of the bath; better. Might learn German in my bath.

Might, and also mightn't.

Fifth Bath Day.-Der andere Mann is in the bath every day. I hear him. I never see him. He comes in either just before me, or just after me, and leaves in the same relative proportion of time.

Happy Thought.-The Bathing Box and Cox. Similar in situation, except that we never meet anywhere. I discover that this is one conare the only two remaining to bathe in the New Baths. Other bathers sequence of the Season being terminated. Der andere Mann and myself go to the Kaiserbad, or to other springs; for there are sulphur springs everywhere in, out of, and round and about Aix. Sunday.-Visit the Cathedral in the morning. It is crammed full, as, by the way, are all the Churches, apparently at any hour, in Aachen. I am here struck by a most

It is a Theory of Origination. It comes to me all at once. It will Tremendous Happy Thought.-A new idea for PorGOOD AND GROOLLY. The Bath is a good place for "wondering." You can wonder what astonish COLENSO, upset DESCARTES, scatter Darwinian theories, and good it will do you? Wonder what's the matter with you? Wonder perhaps create an entire revolution in philosophy and science. who's in the next bath? Wonder what the time is? Wonder, if Happy Thought.-Perhaps become a Heresiarch. New sect: Happy you had a fit, whether you'd be able to seize the bell in time? Wonder if it isn't all humbug? Wonder if it is? Wonder if the Bath-man flew at you with a knife and attacked you, what chance you'd have? Wonder if you might sleep in the bath? Wonder what possible pleasure the Romans found in always bathing? &c., &c., &c.

The Bath-man suddenly looks in. "Time," he says, as if I were going in for another round at a prize-fight. 1 look at my watch: no, I don't think so. "Nein." I add, with courage, "Fünf Minuten mair," I mean five minutes more: mair being, of course, Scotch.

He understands me. I am sure there is nothing like dashing boldly into a language.

The gentleman either in the bath next me, or a few doors off, doesn't find any difficulty in amusing himself in the bath. I never heard such a row as he makes. He sings snatches of songs, chiefly Operatic, and never correct, in a stentorian voice. Wish I could silence him. I now have something to do in my bath; to silence this dreadful noise.

The question is, hasn't a man a right to do what he likes in his own bath? Yes. If I may think, he may sing; but, on the other hand[I always like to put the other side of the question fairly to myself: by the way, I generally see the other side better than my own] he may not sing to the obvious prevention of my thinking. My thinking doesn't interfere with anybody; his singing does. Stop, though; if I interfere now, the result of my thinking is evidently that I do interfere with his singing. This assumes quite a casuistical appearance. He is beginning an air from Norma that I know by heart. When I say singing, I mean roaring. He gets to the seventh bar, and then pauses, evidently in doubt.

Happy Thought.-To finish it for him.

I do so, with diffidence, and not so loudly as he has been giving it. Pause. This will evidently lead to a struggle, unless he has caved in at the first shot from my battery-I should say, bath-ery. I am allowed to think in peace for about a minute. Then he breaks out again. I believe he has been collecting a répertoire during the silence. "Voici le sabre, le sabre, le sabre!" &c. He gets into difficulties at the high part-about the fourteenth bar, I should say.

Happy Thought. His weakness is my opportunity. I come in at the finish, whistling this time. Without waiting, he begins, “Ah, que j'aime les Militaires!"

Happy Thought-Puzzle him. Sing the quick movement in Itano in Algeria, slightly adapted by myself, on the spur of the moment, to the occasion.

He now sings Largo al factotum hoarsely, but not merrily; for I detect a certain ferocity in his voice. I must be careful; because, if he is a Prussian officer, he will call me out when he meets me outside. Happy Thought.-Can say what the Clown does when he's caught by a shopkeeper, "Please, Sir, twasn't me."

me.

Bath-man appears with towels.

"Fünf Minuten," says he. I should say rather say it was; twenty; five minutes, more likely. "Towel: nice varm," he continues, and having dried me carefully in one, he wraps me in another, and leaves Classic dress this. Think of SOCRATES. The Singing Man has holloaed for the bath-attendant, and is evidently preparing to leave. Happy Thought.-Ring for Bath-man, and (after consulting Conversation-Book and combining my question) ask him who the singing bather is. Can't find "singing" in Conversation-Book. I find " a song:" i.e., ein Lied. Der Herr is “the gentleman."

Happyhought.-Recollect having seen in playbills the part of Soand-So, Mr. Blank (with a song). That's the idea. The Bath-man enters. "You ring?

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"Yah. Wer ist der Herr mit ein Lied?"

Triumph! only I wish he wouldn't answer me in German. However, I make out that he doesn't know. He merely speaks of him as "Der andere Mann;" that is, with a concession to my language, "the other man." There are two men, then, in the bath; one is myself,

and the other is Der andere Mann.

Thinkers, not Free-Thinkers. Be condemned by the POPE, be collated
(or something, whatever it is) by the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
denounced by the Chief Imaum, held up to execration by DR. ADLER
and the principal Rabbis, pronounced contumacious by the Alex-
andrine Patriarch, and be anathematised as dangerous by the
by the Roman Congregation.
Grand Lama of Thibet; and, finally, the Book placed on the Index

Book, just published, on the Index. Might get Typical Developments
Happy Thought.-Splendid advertisement: in large type. New
on the Index; and then, if both could be excluded from MUDIE'S
Circulating Library, its fortune and mine, and POPGOOD AND
GROOLLY'S, would be made.

Happy Thought.-Write to them, or telegraph at once. Shall give up my baths, and run over to England. Tell DOCTOR CASPAR SO. He says, "No; on no account. We must get it out of you." I tell him I feel that it is coming out of me: apparently in the shape of a new heresy, but I don't add this.

DR. MANNING'S FAITH PILL.
(Warranted Infallible.)

SAYS DOCTOR MANNING, in rebuke of Reason,
Appeal to History from the POPE is treason.
All's Gospel that a Pontiff ever said,

But so as the live POPE explains the dead.
Say the dead POPE said two and two make five,
The live POPE says, Read four." Believe the live.
Suppose a Council e'er called something white,
He rules they named it black, and he is right;
And when he's dead he'll still be never wrong,
Though the next POPE say ""Twas white all along."
Rule inexpugnable, which supersedes

All formularies, articles, and creeds,

Thus summed. Inquiring minds, no longer search
To know what doctrines holds the Roman Church.
The papal judgment nothing can deceive;
Whate'er the existing POPE believes, believe.
To him submit your intellect and will;
Give him a blank cheque on your faith, to fill,
And cash it when presented, any day,
Explicitly, or else as best you may.

There's Life in the Old Doctor yet. LIVINGSTONE cut up and burnt for a wizard! Punch doesn't believe a word of it. He's no more cut up than SIR RODERICK is at this second edition of the Doctor's melancholy catastrophe. No; the Doctor will survive the Congo witchfinders, as he has survived the Mavite marauders; and expose the lies of the Portuguese traders as he has those of the Johanna men. Depend upon it, a Living-Stone is worth two dead men yet, and will comport itself as a Living-Stone should-survive to write its own epitaph.

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