X

him. In the end the dun was usually baffled, and the undergraduate went home light of heart and lighter of pocket, leaving his sitting-room table littered with bills thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.

BUT the day of reckoning, of course, was only deferred. In the end a stern but forgiving parent was appealed to, and all the bills were settled. In my time this was called " going a mucker" probably the term is still the same. One man I remember used to be pointed out with a certain amount of respectful awe as having gone a mucker" (ie., appealed to his father, and had his debts paid) three times in one year. In fact, the payment of one's just debts, not by means of one's allowance, but by the interposition of a parent, was looked upon and spoken of as the very crown of disasters. And now there is no going of muckers for most of us. We are turned into clergymen, barristers, doctors, business-men; two of us (with one of whom I, moi qui vous parle, have rowed a race in the same boat) are bishops; we have wives, families, houses, and we pay our debts with a sober regularity which seems to preclude the existence of a past when duns were avoided, and unopened bills were left to look after themselves. Yet the days of duns and of debt were the happier, in spite of occasional disaster.

PUNCH TO MR. W. D. HOWELLS.

THE QUEEN'S LETTER TO THE GERMAN EMPEROR. [We publish with all reserve the following letter, which has, we understand, been despatched from Osborne Castle to Berlin. From internal evidence we should judge that it was not written but suggested by the exalted lady by whom it purports to be signed. There is a nautical breeziof Y-RK.-ED. Punch.] ness about it that inclines us to attribute the actual authorship to the Duke

MEIN LIEBER WILLY,-Dies ist aber über alle Berge. Was bedeutet eigentlich deine Depesche an den alten KRÜGER der für Dich doesn't care twopence. Solch eine confounded Impertinenz habe ich nie gesehen. The fact of the matter is that Du ein furchtbarer

Schwaggerer bist. Warum kannst Du nie ruhig bleiben, why can't you hold your blessed row? Musst Du deinen Finger in jeder Torte haben? Was it for this that I made you an Admiral meiner Flotte and allowed you to rig yourself out in einer wunderschönen Uniform mit einem gekockten Hut? If you meant mir any of your blooming cheek zu geben why did you make your Grandmamma Colonel eines Deutschen Cavallerie Regiments? Du auch bist Colonel of a British Cavallerie Regiment, desto mehr die Schade, the more's the pity. Als Du ein ganz kleiner Bube warst habe ich Dich oft tüchtig gespankt, and now that you 're grown up you ought to be spanked too. Wenn Du deine Panzerschiffe nach Delagoa Bay schickst werde ich sie aus dem Wasser blasen, I'll blow your ironclads out of the water ehe Du dich umkehren kannst, before you can turn round. And look here, if you'll come over to this country werde ich Dich annehmen, I'll take you on, und ich wette drei gegen eins dasz ich Dich in drei Runden ausklopfen werde, Queensberry rules, three minutes to a round. Also ich schnappe meine Finger in your face. Du weist Well, we too have at times experienced that sort of emotion, and teach you. Is BISMARCK quite well? Das ist ein kolossaler Kerl, nicht wo Du bist, you dunno where you are, and somebody must like you we figure it all so dramatically that we do not fancy our-nicht wahr? So lange! Don't be foolish any more. selves taking any part personally in the difficult and perhaps dangerous work. We delegate it, as you did, to the poor fellows who are to fight and bleed, and continue to be poor fellows while we reap the honour and glory of it. Like you, we imagine our own exemption from all sorrow and suffering, "and the devotion of the sort of people who have mostly in all ages of the world been butchered for every cause, good or bad." Here, too, are golden words:

MY DEAR SIR,-I have been reading an article from your pen in Harper's Weekly of January 4. It will give me genuine pleasure if you will count me henceforth as one of your devoted admirers, your servant to command in any matter in which it may be possible for me to oblige you. How temperately, how wisely, how humorously, with how broad and generous a humanity do you write of this difficulty which threatens to set our two peoples, the British and the American, into hostile camps. "I was greatly stirred the other day," you say, "in reading the President's Message concerning the Venezuela boundary dispute. I did not like his having four relative pronouns in one sentence towards the close of his message, and upon the whole the literature struck me as turgid and clumsy, but I accounted for that by the excitement he must have been in when he wrote it, and I felt a responsive thrill, which I took to be a patriotic emotion, as I read it.... I pictured England reduced by land and sea to the last extremity through the powers of our army and navy ... and the grass growing in the streets before the offices of the London newspapers which had noticed my books unfavourably."

"What I chiefly object to in our patriotic emotion, however, was not that it was so selfish, but that it was so insensate, so stupid. It took no account of things infinitely more precious than national honour, such as humanity, civilisation, and

'the long result of time '

which must suffer in a conflict between peoples like the English and the Americans. For the sake of having our ships beat their ships, our poor fellows slaughter their poor fellows, we were all willing, for one detestable instant at least, to have the rising hopes of mankind dashed, and the sense of human brotherhood blunted in the hearts of the foremost peoples of the

world."

But is there, as you say, "in the American heart a hatred of England, which glutted itself in her imagined disaster and disgrace when we all read the PRESIDENT's swaggering proclamation, in which he would not yield to the enemy so far as even to write good English?" Is there to be no forgiveness, are we never to cancel old scores and begin our international book-keeping, if I may so term it, on a clean page? I do not think our people hate yours. Your dash, your pluck, your humour, your keen common-sense, your breezy and inexhaustible energy, your strength and broad capacity for government, all these qualities command and obtain from us a sincere tribute of admiration. If you hate us, we must submit to that melancholy condition, but never submit in such a fashion as to cease from honest effort to abate and in the end to remove all hatred. Blood, as one of your naval captains said on a memorable occasion, is thicker than water. So saying, he dashed in to the help of our sorely-pressed ships. Let us then call a truce to petty and malignant carping, and join hands in an alliance dependent not upon written treaties, but upon the noble sympathy of two great nations engaged in the same work of civilisation and progress. You, Sir, speaking for others, I trust, as well as for yourself, have set us an example. I grasp your hand, and wish you well in all your undertakings. PUNCH.

Believe me yours in all cordial friendship,

Deine Dich liebende

GRANDMAMMA.

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN FAMILY TREE.
["After all, the English people are our people, and we are theirs."
New York "Morning Press," January 9.]

WELL said, Morning Press! 'tis the root of the matter
You've got at-your race and our race are the same;
Flung wide o'er the earth though our branches may scatter,
They spring from one stock, from one sapling they came.
'Twas a thousand long years, ere the trunk was divided,
Since Saxon in Britain first planted the seed;
Slow growing through storms and compact it abided,
The Oak-tree of Freedom-no wind-shaken reed!
Not as mother to child, but as brother to brother,
In age as in stature our nations are twin;
Side by side, not in anger confronting each other,
In face of the world let us show we are kin!
Yours and ours are King ALFRED, and CHAUCER, and BACON,
And SHAKSPEARE, and RALEIGH, and DRAKE, and Queen BESS;
Our heirship in common can ne'er be forsaken-
The glorious past we conjointly possess.
Nowadays, too, we share with you athletes and actors,
And Trilby we share, and affairs of the heart:
Each day of fresh ties o'er the Pond we're contractors-
There's no MONROE Doctrine in marriage or art!

If Teuton with Russian and Gaul were preparing
To fly at our throat, we would face them all three !
But attack Brother JONATHAN P-No, we're forbearing
To rend thus asunder the Family Tree!

LEGAL AND MEDICAL.-The time of the year is a troublesome one for those subject to gout and kindred complaints, but would it be correct for a lawyer to describe his symptoms as livery of seisin ?

THE KAISER'S FAVOURITE SONG.-" William's sure to be right."

Housekeeper (who has been describing the fire in the country house, and the destruction of all the books and family picture, &c, &c.). "YES, MY LADY, EVERY SINGLE PICTURE BURNT TO ASHES ! BUT I'VE ONE THING TO TELL YOU THAT WILL PLEASE YOU:-I MANAGED TO SAVE ALL LAST YEAR'S JAM!"

CHARLEY is prime. Must get more of him. When a semi-piratical flag seemed unfurled, Spend a bob on Pickwick. Why ain't there He the honour and faith of our country main-penn'orth o' Sam Weller? Sam is prime, tained,

"COME THE THREE CORNERS OF THE WORLD IN ARMS,

AND WE SHALL SHOCK THEM: NOUGHT SHALL MAKE US RUE,

IF ENGLAND TO ITSELF DO REST BUT TRUE."-King John, Act V., Scene 7.