Mr Punch Afloat Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: "VIDE UT SUPRA"

"The sad sea waves"]

LEST MEN FORGET;

_Or, A Girl's best Friend is the River_

[This is to be a river season. Father Thames is an excellent matchmaker.--_Lady's Pictorial._]

Oh, what is a maid to do When never a swain will woo; When Viennese dresses And eddying tresses And eyes of a heavenly blue,

Are treated with high disdain By the cold and the careless swain, When soft showered glances At dinners and dances Are sadly but truly vain?

Ah, then, must a maid despair?

Ah, no, but betimes repair With her magical tresses And summery dresses To upper Thames reaches, where

She turns her wan cheek to the sun (Of lesser swains she will none); Her glorious flame, Well skilled in the game, Flings kisses that burn like fun

And cheeks that had lost their charm Grow rosy and soft and warm; Eyes lately so dull Of sun-light are full As masculine hearts with alarm.

For jealousy by degrees Steals over the swain who sees The cheek he was slighting Another delighting, And so he is brought to his knees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT THE UNIVERSITY BOAT-RACE

_Extract from Miss X's letter to a friend in the country_:--"Mr. Robin Blobbs offered to take us in his boat. Aunt accepted for Jenny, f.a.n.n.y, Ethel, little Mary, and myself. Oh, such a time! Mr. Blobbs lost his head and his scull, and we were just rescued from upset by the police.

'Never again with you, Robin!'"]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE AMATEUR YACHTSMAN

(_A Nautical Song of the Period_)

I'm bad when at sea, yet it's pleasant to me To charter a yacht and go sailing, But please understand I ne'er lose sight of land, Though hardier sailors are railing.

If only the ship, that's the yacht, wouldn't dip, And heel up and down and roll over, And wobble about till I want to get out, I'd think myself fairly in clover.

But, bless you! my craft, though the wind is abaft, Will stagger when meeting the ripple, Until a man feels both his head and his heels Reversed as if full of his tipple.

In vain my blue serge when from seas we emerge, Though dressed as a nautical dandy; I can't keep my legs, and I call out for "pegs"

Of rum, or of soda and brandy.

A yacht is a thing, they say, fit for a king, And still it is not to my liking; My short pedigree does not smack of the sea,-- I can't pose a bit like a viking.

It's all very well when there isn't a swell, But when that comes on I must toddle And go down below, for a bit of a blow Upsets my un-nautical noddle.

Britannia may rule her own waves,--I'm a fool To try the same game, but, believe me, Though catching it hot, yet to give up my "Yot"

Would certainly terribly grieve me.

You see, it's the rage, like the Amateur Stage, Or Coaching, Lawn-Tennis, or Hunting: So, though I'm so queer, I go yachting each year, And hoist on the Solent my bunting.

A HENLEY TOAST.--"May rivals meet without any sculls being broken!"

OF COURSE!--The very place for a fowl--Henley!

THE JOURNAL WHICH EVIDENTLY KEEPS THE KEY OF THE RIVER.--The _Lock to Lock Times_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OF MALICE AFORETHOUGHT

_Cheery Official._ "All first cla.s.s 'ere, please?"

_Degenerate Son of the Vikings_ (_in a feeble voice_). "_First cla.s.s?_ Now do I _look it_?"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE"

Next to the charming society, the best of the delightful trips on our friend's yacht is, that you get such an admirable view of the coast scenery, and you acquire such an excellent appet.i.te for lunch.]

ROBERT ON THE RIVER

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It was ony a week or so ago as I was engaged perfeshnally on board a steam Yot that had been hired for about as jolly a party as I ewer remembers to have had on board a ship, and the Forreners among 'em had ewidently been brort for to see what a reel lovely River the Tems is. I must say I was glad to get away from Town, as I 'ad 'ad a shock from seeing a something dreadful on an old showcard outside of the Upraw which they tells me is now given up to Promenades. So we started from Skindel's, at Madenhed Bridge, and took 'em right up to Gentlemanly Marlow, and on to old Meddenham, and then to Henley, and lots of other butiful places, and then back to Skindel's to dinner. And a jolly nice little dinner they guv us, and sum werry good wine, as our most critical gests--and we had two Corporation gents among 'em--couldn't find not no fault with. But there's sum peeple as it ain't not of no use to try to sattisfy with butiful seenery--at least, not if they bees Amerrycains. They don't seem not to have the werry least hadmiration or respect for anythink as isn't werry big, and prefur size to buty any day of the week.

"Well, it's a nice-looking little stream enuff," says an Amerrycain, who was a board a grinnin; "but it's really quite a joke to call it a River.

Why, in my country," says he, "if you asked me for to show you a River, I should take you to Mrs. Sippy's, and when we got about harf way across it, I guess you'd see a reel River then, for it's so wide that you carn't see the land on either side of it, so you sees nothink else but the River, and as that's what you wanted for to see, you carn't werry well grumble then." I shood, most suttenly, have liked for to have asked him, what sort of Locks they had in sitch a River as that, and whether Mrs. Sippy cort many wales when she went out for a day's fishing in that little River of hers, but I knows my place, and never asks inconvenient questions.

However, he was a smart sort of feller, and had 'em I must say werry nicely indeed a few minutes arterwards. We was a pa.s.sing a werry butiful bit of the river called a Back Water, and he says, says he, "As it's so preshus hot in the sun, why don't we run in there and enjoy the shade for a time, while we have our lunch?" "Oh," says one of the marsters of the feast, "we are not allowed to go there; that's privet, that is."

"Why how can that be?" says he, "when you told me, just now, as you'd lately got a Hact of Parliament pa.s.sed which said that wherever Tems Water flowed it was open to all the world, as of course it ort to be."

"Ah," said the other, looking rayther foolish, "but this is one of the xceptions, for there's another claws in the hact as says that wherever any body has had a hobstruction in the River for 20 years it belongs to him for hever, but he musn't make another nowheres."

The Amerrycain grinned as before, and said, "Well, I allers said as you was about the rummiest lot of people on the face of the airth, and this is on'y another proof of it. You are so werry fond of everythink as is old, that if a man can show as he has had a cussed noosance for twenty years, he may keep it coz he's had it so long, while all sensible peeple must think, as that's one more reeson for sweeping the noosance clean away." And I must say, tho he was a Amerrycane, that I coodn't help thinking as he was right.