66 A ND where, Mr. PUNCH, is your Stall?" inquired MERCURY, politely, as his penetrating eye surveyed the spacious spread of the Inventories. "The Ubiquitous is not to be arbitrarily localised, as the Herald-God should know," responded the AT-Pervasive-One sententiously. one that may well make me and PROMETHEUS rather proud of our "It may indeed be called, in a sense somewhat different from the Poet's, to be sure, the Heaven of Invention,'' responded Mr. PUNCH. "This is a marvellous sight," said MERCURY; mortal protégés." MERCURY pointed with his caduceus to the Great Gun department. "Your youthful Dizzy," said he, "for whom I admit I have a strong fellow-feeling, wrote Ixion in Heaven. The Thessalian came to grief. How, I wonder, would GATLING get on there?" "I perceive your meaning," said the Sage. "There are those, however, who consider that in the propaganda of Peace. projectiles will be found to play the leading part, and that such a Devil Fish as the Torpedo will in the end conduce more surely to Universal International Harmony than ARION's dolphin." "Até and Eighty-Ton Guns seem to be rather more 'in a concatenation accordingly,' at present," remarked APOLLO, drily. "Inventions and Music!" ejaculated the Cyllenian Argiphont. "A charming combination, and one in which PaŒBUS and I feel a natural interest. My Tortoise had to be tortured into tunefulness, and perhaps Humanity may eventually torpedo itself into harmony. Anyhow, these new Shows of yours are not at all a bad notion-for JOHN BULL. Characteristic jumble of Shop and Song, Business and Bands, Art and Advertisement, Serious Science and Sham Arcadia, Classical Music and Cheap Dinners!" "Still the Olympian Smart Young Man, MERCURY!" said Mr. PUNCH, smiling. "What an admirable paragraphwriter you'd make, or what a first-rate Member for Woodstock!" "Do you think Lord RANDOLPH will turn out as adroit a Bull-driver, in Britain, as I did in Pieria?" queried "the Saturnian's love-child," archly. "Can't say," said Mr. PUNCH. "Though fresh, as you were, from his ambrosial (political) swaddling clothes,' the artful adolescent has shown some nous in getting the British Bulls-some of them-to follow his meandering footsteps. Whether he'll lead them long, or if so, to a hecatomb, after your memorable example, who can say ?" "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," murmured APOLLO, musingly. "A bit of blind Johnsonian dogmatism!" said MERCURY. "Look at Vivian Grey! Was he bucolic or adipose? No, brain, not brawn, rules the Boeotians. APOLLO, perhaps, was not quite at home among the herds of ADMETUS. Too ideal, uplifted, Gladstonian! But your mercurial Nimblewit makes the best drover, whether hailing from Cyllene, Bucks or Woodstock." "Why, there is RANDOLPH," said MR. PUNCH, "chatting with Sir FRANCIS BOLTON, seeking inspiration doubtless for the coming day when he shall wield the fierce democracy' as easily as Sir FRANCIS with a touch turns on and off his thousands of arcs and incandescents." "When will STRAUSS strike up?" asked MERCURY. "I understand his dance-music makes all the world feel as feather-heeled as myself." "It does," responded the Sage. "STRAUSS would set Olympus tripping it, and get a valse out of VULCAN himself. He'll be at it presently. But meanwhile why don't you two musical gods have a turn? I see you have your lyres with you. Come on!" And Mr. PUNCH waved his bâton persuasively. "Can you conduct?" asked APOLLO. "Don't I conduct my world-renowned Journal? And can't he, who can conduct that, conduct anything, from a concert to a campaign?" laughed the Sage, confidently. There was a soft twangling, as of celestial tuning-up, finger and plectrum set to work, and in a twinkling the whole Inventories was hushed in open-mouthed astonishment at the Olympian strains of a Terpsichorean outburst, sufficiently sweet, soul-stirring, and toe-quickening, to make even "Leedle EDUARD STRAUSS" and his merry men pale their ineffectual fires." " Once more Mr. PUNCH waved his world-compelling wand, and once more the Mighty Three were alone. "Wonderful!" cried APOLLO and MERCURY in a breath. "How do you do it?" "Would you really like to know?" asked the smiling Musician of Fleet Street. "Rather!" "Well, I haven't time to tell you now," said the Sage. "Oh, don't look so dismally disappointed! I can easily put you in the way of learning. I am at once the Great Inventor and the Great Harmonist. My Show is biennial and perennial. It does not cover acres, but it pervades the world. Its Inventions are all original, all first-rate, and all—unlike Torpedoesfor the immediate good of mankind. Its harmonies match the Music of the Spheres, and, like the Angel's voice in Abou Ben Adhem, are 'blent all of sweet accord.' The World's wits dance as gladly to it, as their toes to stringed strains of EDUARD STRAUSS. Sir FRANCIS BOLTON would be the first to acknowledge that, for universal "Instantaneous Illumination," his knobs and generators, his lamps and dynamos, are, compared with it, as a glow-worm's twinkle to Aurora's full flush. MERCURY, you look amazed. APOLLO, you appear puzzled. No wonder! I'll relieve your minds. My Inventions Exhibition' is portable. You can take it with you, and examine it at your leisure. Lolling comfortably on a convenient cloud, or handy bed of amaranth, you, God of Music, and you, Arch-Inventor, can look over it together, and learn a few wrinkles, each in your own line. That's how it's done! Take it, and make Olympus as happy as Earth!" Whereupon Mr. PUNCH handed to the delighted Deities his Eighty-Eighth Volume! PURCH GISSING THE ROD. WE have but now laid our hand upon a few days' old number of the Pall-Mall Gazette, which containeth a piece of wisdom so entirely monumental, that it well deserves to be ære perennius' which we would render, for the moment, into "longer-lived than its own brass." It has nothing to do with the conduct of that bright and many-sided journal, be it said, but merely with a Correspondent who has at least the courage of his opinions in signing his name. The correspondence appears to have begun in one of the endless foolishnesses about contemporary novel-writing which appear to beguile the leisure of so many of our modern Cacoëthics. And "SYLVANUS" and "GEORGE GISSING" are severe upon a Mr. MOORE, who seems to have complained that, in these days of Mudie-cumSmith tyranny, books are sometimes capriciously withdrawn from all the bookstalls of the Autocrats, and the Author left without a remedy. As a matter of fact, that is quite true; and the personalities of "SYLVANUS," who says he is a woman, neither young nor old, and so adopts that eminently female signature (Girtonism is good-but imperfect Girtonism is dangerous), do not affect the position of Mr. MOORE. But "SYLVANUS" is eclipsed indeed by the Correspondent who follows him or her-the great Mr. GEORGE GISSING. Humbly we own that we never heard his name before, though it seems suggestive of a kind of guttural German embrace performed by the nationaliser of the Land. But GISSING should be known. This is what GISSING writes: it is a "hard thing to say." It should have been not only hard but impossible, GISSING. As for our living novelists, they are disgusting GISING by "doing the same every day." Well, they are, GISSING; and speaking with some knowledge of them, we do not altogether regret it. We regret that GISSING cannot get the reading he likes, except by going back to more conscientious days; and we do not wholly love Mrs. GRUNDY. But we like her taste in books better than GISSING'S. We will do all we can to help you to your desired celebrity, GISSING, though we care not to be gissing who can have brought you up. Praised be the gods for thy foulness, GISSING! but also that, as we fondly hope, there are not very many like thee. HOW TO COIN MONEY. (According to Precedent.) As easy as possible. All you want is some paste, a pair of scissors, a number of old Periodicals, and a moderate credit at a Printer's and a Paper-maker's. With these requisites you can commence publishing a new Weekly Paper, which you can call boldly, SWEET STUFF. You will have made it up of cuttings from the Periodicals already referred to. But you want a little original matter, and will advertise in your own Paper that you will give a £10 PRIZE FOR THE BEST ROMANTIC STORY, reserving to yourself, of course, the right of rublishing every Tale you receive. Thus, for a moderate sum, you will obtain any amount of Original Fiction, of more or (generally) less merit. But now you want to advertise the Paper a little, so again offer Prizes, say, SPECIAL PRIZE-A CHRISTENING SILVER GOBLET, "One of the most painful confessions in literature is that contained in the preface to Pendennis,' where THACKERAY admits that since the author of Tom Jones was buried no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a man.'-on penalty, be it understood" (by GISSING) "of a temporary diminution of receipts. If this be not a tradesman's attitude, what is? Let novelists be true to their artistic conscience, and the public taste will come round. In that day there will be no complaint to be given on the condition that the Baby to be named is given the of the circulating libraries. It is a hard thing to say but THACKERAY, when sole title of "Sweet Stuff." Then, to please other tastes, announce he knowingly wrote below the demands of his art to conciliate Mrs. GRUNDY, UNIQUE PRIZE-FIRST CLASS FUNERAL. betrayed his trust; and the same thing is being done by our living novelists every day." 66 The lucky recipient to guarantee, however, that when he is buried his executors shall be directed to inscribe merely "Sweet Stuff" on his tombstone. Other prizes and rewards of a similar character might be awarded. For the rest stick to scissors and paste. Sweet Stuff you will find soon paying its way. Its circulation will increase by leaps and bounds. Before you know where you are, without the assistance of a staff, without the aid of anyone, you will find you have amassed what, of course, you will advertise everywhere, "A COLOSSAL FORTUNE." O ye demigods and little GISSINGS, did anybody ever hear the like of this? Not all the waters of Gissingen can do much for anybody who openly prays that the public taste may come round" again to the open coarseness of Tom Jones; the vice of an age as much as our age has its own, which THACKERAY, one of the cleanestminded writers who ever lived, points out in that same preface to be happily out of date. All the world knows what that preface meant, save and except GISSING, who thinks that THACKERAY's artistic conscience suggested Dirt, and his art demanded it, but that he was afraid of losing money by it!! Had he but been true to his conscience and his tastes, his receipts would have gone up in time, for GISSING would have bought his books. But THACKERAY betrayed TRANSFORMATION SCENES.-Called Back at Prince's changed into his trust (ye gods! THACKERAY!) by being sweet and pure, though Twins. Twins at Olympic changed into Called Back. |