On board the Shand, coolie immigrant ship, from Calcutta to Demerara, died in a passage of 123 days, ninety-eight out of 458 coolies, while thirty-six were landed more dead than alive. Some fifty of these, the surgeon reports, were in a low state of health when shipped, and would never have been embarked if he had joined the ship when they came on board. Of these a large proportion would probably have died under any circumstances. But the rest of the sufferers died of scurvy, a disease that is impossible, if the Government regulations as to provisions are observed. How comes this? Marry, easily, thus : "When lime-juice and fresh vegetables were required, the lime-juice was found to be bad, and the whole of the onions and potatoes taken on board at Calcutta were rotten." Now, onions and potatoes, good when shipped, may rot from heat and bad stowage: not so lime-juice. We have immigration agents, inspectors, and protectors of emigrants at Calcutta. What have they to say to this? And what have the owners who bought the bad lime-juice, or the cheaters who sold it, to answer to this wholesale murder? Punch begs to echo, as loudly and emphatically as he can, the words of the Demerara Colonist of January 7: "What facts it is possible to ascertain here will no doubt be disclosed before the Commission of Inquiry to be appointed; and we hope that the result of that inquiry will form a ground-work for vigorous action on the part of the Indian Government. Apart from the direct loss to the planters, and the great commercial importance to this colony of having immigration conducted on the most humane principles and in the most perfect manner possible; it is not to be tolerated that the lives of our fellow-creatures shall be ruthlessly sacrificed, in order that dishonest contractors for ships stores may make large profits, and, possibly, out of their unjust gains, pay handsome douceurs to inspectors, in consideration of the official examination not being inconveniently minute." One thing only can not be tolerated. That those whose business it is to inquire into the crime of killing coolies, and to enforce responsibility for it, should be allowed to take it coolly in a case like this. A CHANT TO THE COUNCIL. AIR-" Sam Hall," with a needful variation. NINTH PIUS is my name, Is my name, is my name. Is my name; NINTH PIUS is my name, On all who doubt the same I own St. Peter's Chair, I own St. Peter's Chair, I own St. Peter's Chair, Be they, deny who dare, If any man shall say, Man shall say, man shall say, If any man shall say, Man shall say; If any man shall say That Church should State obey, Anathema! THE Tories have always claimed to be Britons, par excellence. What wonder they should imitate the funeral practices of the race, and raise up CAIRNS over the grave of a lost leader? NEW BOOK. As Grave as a Judge is He. By the Author of As Red as a Rose is She. SHILLING TELEGRAMS. ROME AND RAMSBOTHAM. DEAR MR. PUNCH, WENTY Words for One Shilling, will have plenty of employment. south-country prophet has it. Yes, dear Mr. Punch, to quoit again- Already the telegrams are more Home-not even Rome, which rhymes to it. If the Consul is dull (and is the case with me; for wherever I wonder there's no place like what can you expect? for sitting every day for so many hours must be very mutinous), sport is lively, and hunting tracks all the nobility and gentry here. before his readers a few of the messages which have been flashing about the last ten days, not one of which, it will be observed,-and it seems necessary to say something on this score, exceeds twenty words. The first is given in the spaces prescribed by the official form; the rest, out of humane consideration for the compositors, will be set out in the ordinary manner : Festers, a name I don't like at all. For instance, there was a great The Italians, and all here, call The Great Holydays of the Church Fester the other day, and a large gathering in St. Peter's and other Churches, when every one carried candles at the different funguses. It was a very beautiful sight, and the wax must bring in an enormous profit to the Chandler of the Exchequer. Praps in Rome there is a tax on Wax. I am fond of seeing Factories, and so shall take the first opportunity of seeing the Waxworks here, which of course would be unlike MADAME CRUSOE's in London. I recollect a Waxworks years ago done by clock-works, where a Roman wax shoulder in armour was lost in the snow, with a Lion and his family, and would ring a bell and pull corns out of his feet. You looked down at it from a gallery above; but I'm not quite sure, now, if it wasn't Scriptural, and NATHANIEL in the Lion's Den. Talking of that, what a deference between Pegging Rome and Babel Rome of to-day! I have lately been reading all about it-that is, about Ramilies and Rompus, and Nimrod, with the lovely Miss Diphtheria. Of course that's all falibus. But Rome must have been grand under the Trumpers and Decembers. I remember a lovely Influenza, or the Last of the Tributes. novel by SIR EDWARD BULLER LITTLE, now LORD LITTLE, about Later on, the Romans became very feeble and effervescent (I don't think that's the word I want, but it means weak and womanly), and were overrun by Moths and Sandals. You'll see all this in GUBBINS'S Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire, which was written while the monks were singing their hymns. However, you don't want me to tell that; only laterally there has been nothing to tell you about the Economical Consul, for on this subject all the Roman Candlesticks are Miss Minnie has left her doll behind her. Send it by the first train. It is as close as wax. in my top drawer. 4. From Miss Ridgley, Combermere Cottage, St. Leonard's-on-Sea, I request that this Telegram may be forwarded by horse express from the Terminal Telegraph Office of the Post Office, and I have deposited six shillings for that purpose. Arabella Maria Ridgley. 5. From George Henry Mablethorpe, Rev. Horace Cribbe, To Mrs. Mablethorpe, 1, Upper Brummel Place, London. Some of the undersappers, the clerks of the Consul, did let out a few things they oughtn't to, but they were immediately oiled over the coals, as the saying is, and were warmed by the Residing Carnaval against nition. As I do not portend to write about what I don't know, and ever doing it again; so I have no doubt they will profit by this ammuwhat nobody else can know, though there are clever people who, being tention and rivet imagination for anything which is all guess and not paid to say something in the papers, rely upon their own brilliant intrue. You may always depend upon me, whenever, that is, you hear Yours sincerely, from LAVINIA RAMSBOTHAM, JUN. The Hamper is not come, and my birthday is to-morrow. Do send it. very confucious, as the Chinese say. 6 From J. Cornblower, Mark Lane, To Mrs. Cornblower, Odessa House, Dantzic Road, Regent's Park. Uncle Splaydes dines with us to-day. Roast the mutton. Get whiting and widgeon. Children must not notice his nose. N.B. In one or two instances the intelligent Post-Office Clerks have altered, for the better, the spelling and grammatical construction of the messages. LINES ON A WEAK PIECE WITH A SHORT-SKIRTED BALLET. THIS piece is like TOM NODDY- HERE WE ARE AGAIN! Or what violent Reformer are London powdered footmen probably the followers ?-JOHN KNOX. . PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. MORE HAPPY THOUGHTS. I VISIT the Cathedral again, and I am confirmed in my first im- On going into the Cathedral, High Mass is just commencing. I struggle into a good place. We are all standing, and seats are an impossibility. Duchesses and draymen elbowing one another, but this by the way; only I do approve of this religious equality, and think it worth noticing. Before mass, all the canons, choristers, deans, and precentors walk into the body of the church, and commence versicles and responses. What they are I do not know, nor can I attend to the service, for, to my utter amazement, I find that, from the chief dean or head canon, or whatever he is, to the smallest man chorister (not boy) all are tho roughly well known to me. Yes, I recognise every one of their faces. They are as familiar to me as possible. Yet I have never been to Aachen before. Never. I have never been inside this Cathedral prior to this occasion. No. But I know every one of the ecclesiastics here by sight. I find myself staring at one in particular. He is short and sharp-shelves, but with a skylight above. looking, with a large mouth. He catches my eye: he can't help it; nor can I help keeping mine fixed on him. We are mesmerising each other. I feel that he is chanting his verses mechanically, and, as it were, addressing them chiefly to me. I wonder whether he is too much mesmerised to move with the procession when it gets in motion again. But who is he? Who are they? I have known only one foreign priest in my life, and he was a Frenchman, and not a bit like It breaks upon me, on my second visit, all at once. any of these. They are all well-known theatrical faces, some familiar to me from childhood, and indelibly engraved on my memory, and others known to me in later years. This small mesmerised priest (a minor canon he is), in a short surplice and a tippet, is MR. DOMINICK MURRAY-neither more nor less. The Chief Dean is MR. PAUL BEDFORD, in a cope, assisted by MR. BUCKSTONE of the Haymarket, and MR. ROGERS of the same company, who hold two candles for him to read small print by. MR. BARRY SULLIVAN, in a collar with lace, is scowling at his breviary; and MR. HONEY, with his hair cut, is chanting, hard at it, at the bottom of his voice. The others are all well known to me, only I can't remember their names, except, by the way, MR. HORACE WIGAN, who stands out from the rest, because he has lost his place in a large book he is carrying, and has got into difficulties with his spectacles. In this closet is the case of, as it were, a small quaint old-fashioned He won't hear of such a thing. I don't like being left alone. He Hence my theory of Moulds. I find MR. DOMINICK MURRAY (let us say, for example, as he was my chief attraction: he did sing so I have forgotten the Ants. Who was it, BRUCE or WALLACE who energetically, and knew his part without a book!) in Germany as a Minor Canon, in England as an excellent comedian. The same with scientific discovery about the pendulum while watching a church-lamp MR. BUCKSTONE, WIGAN, &C. Well, why not in India find the same type of man among the Brahmins ?-that is, another lot out of the same became King of Scotland by watching a spider? GALILEO made a mould. Odd: the Vapour Bath doesn't seem to be taking anything out of DR. CASPAR has just called in late at night, and finding me at during a stupid sermon. These Ants might lead me to turn my attenmy notes (above) on my new theory, has ordered me not to write any tion to natural history, if I stay here long enough. more for a day or two, and to go to bed at once. CASPAR is an excelBath-man's head again, "Nice varm? Time, no?" and disappears. lent fellow, and really takes a personal friendly interest in a patient. me. I thought it would be something fearful, and that I should yell, At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he enters with a warm He is much struck with my theory of "moulds," and says he will call half suffocated and parboiled, for help. in and talk it over in the morning. In the meantime (that is, between this and breakfast) I am to go in for a hotter bath up to 28° Réaumur. be very careful in diet, rely upon Friedrichshallerbitterwasser, and not linen mantle. He unpacks the box (I could have travelled from here watch-box or something is struck by harlequin's wand and out steps a write a line about this new theory till he gives me permission. Should to London in this case, labelled "with care," and "this side upperboy dressed like NAPOLEON (only I'm dressed like nobody), and am like to telegraph to my wife and tell her. Have sent to POPGOOD AND most") and I come out, like a character in a pantomime, when a immediately clothed in the warm garment. GROOLLY a telegram to this effect: Great Idea. Write "New theory. Moulds. Upset everything. Great Idea. again. Will you publish?" DR. CASPAR insists on seeing me into bed. He says "the sulphur is doing its work well." Something is coming out of me. What? DYNGWELL looks in. "Well, old Cockalorum, got the papsylalls, after all, eh? Doctor given you something golopshus. Rub it in." This is his general idea of a prescription. "Good night." DR. CASPAR prescribes douche and vapour baths. It'll be all out of me, whatever it is, in another week or so. I ask him if I may employ my leisure in writing Typical Developments and the Theory of Origination, for POPGOOD AND GROOLLY. That instead I must devote myself He says "No, decidedly not.' to kagelspiel-Kagelspiel is skittles. I remember that DR. WHATELY used to relax his mind by swinging on the chains of the post in front of the archiepiscopal palace. CASPAR is right. Baths in the morning, dinner mid-day, kagelspiel in the afternoon; tea in the evening, and attendance at a concert or any musical meeting. Plenty of music in Aix. I have now been here long enough to obs erve that my first impressions were remarkably superficial. I note down that for recovery of health, and generally for getting anything out of you, there is no better place, I should imagine, than Aachen. Then I follow Bath-man back to bed-room. "Heiss," I reply. "So 66 Der Here I am tumbled into a hot bed at once. Bath-man savagely "Nice varm?" he asks again. tucks me up. ist goot," he answers. He surveys me in bed. I am helpless. He says this in an encouraging tone, as much as to impress upon andere Mann," he informs me, "take dampf bad to-day." me that in all matters connected with the baths I can't do better than follow the example of Der andere Mann. THE ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER an advocate for mob-law ! A THOROUGH holiday for a man of business ought not to be marked in his calendar as a Red Letter-day, but as an Unread Letter-day. "SEE THEM Two COVES WITH THE RUMMY 'ATS ON? WELL, THEY'RE PARSEES. THAT'S WHAT THEY CALL 'EM; AND THEY WORSHIPS THE SUN!" "WORSHIPS THE SUN, DO THEY? WELL, I SHOULD SAY THEY 'AD A PRECIOUS EASY TIME OF IT IN THIS COUNTRY!" THE ROYAL MESSAGE PARAPHRASED. MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, As proxies for our Queen to-day, But ill-health bars this happy meeting, With foreign powers all is peace; For choosing those whose boast should be MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, A Bill to deal with Irish land And all the fabric made secure, Some legal topics now to mention- Is quite a subject worth debating; "Tis hard to turn to crime again, She must be taught the sterner way. MR. PUNCH is very happy to announce that the ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT will be shortly resumed. |