PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET,

1886.

LONDON:

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS

PREFACE.

S the Old Year neared its ending, Mr. Punch a vision had,

Strangely mingling many matters, old and new, and grave and glad.
Dreamland's ways are mad and motley, and the vision ebbed and flowed
Shifting as the shapes of Fashion, or a rural J.P.'s code.

Then-O Gates of Horn and Ivory! is your world without a plan ?-
Stretched upon a cosy couch there lies, and smiles, a Fasting Man!

He is sleek and he is rosy, no emaciated Shade,

Like MERLATTI, JAQUES, or Succi, members of the strange new trade.
"Bah! Competitive Starvation is unmitigated trash!"

Muttera humbug-hating PUNCHIUS, and his ardent optics flash.
"Ugly Ugolino business, gathering morbid gobemouches round,
Making suffering a show, all for gate-money,' I'll be bound.

"Could they now, the charlatans, contrive to teach the famished poor
How in these distressful times to keep the grim wolf from the door;
"How to starve with ease and comfort, whilst the Poor Law Guardians prate
As to whether Hunger's harrying is exceptionally great,'

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"Then the dolts might do some service. But their abstinence from grub ?-
Purposeless as Channel swims or shooting rapids in a tub!
"Yet this fellow's gills are rosy, he's as plump as Christmas suet.
Starving seems to suit you, Mister. How the dickens do you do it?"
Then the Faster's ruddy visage corrugated with a wink,

And he showed a flask in which a liquor bright did bead and blink.
"This is my Elixir Vita!" And he popped it on the table.

"PUNCH'S SPIRIT-ESSENCE" gleamed in golden letters on the label.

"Yours is such a Christmas Present as no man save you could give!
When our tonguesters' all are silent, Locksley Hall, my Lord, shall live;
"Sweet with all your springtide's sweetness, strong with all your summer's force,
Minstrel, a mellifluous marvel, crowning well your royal course!

"Yet an undertone too hopeless mars the music's golden chimes,
And a noble rage' o'erhasty rings along its rolling rhymes.
"Keep up your poetic pecker! What we want is patient pluck.

Punch, though often shocked and saddened, is not down upon his luck.
"Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.'

I'm not given wholly up to rhapsodies of wild regret.

"Still I doubt not through the ages one unceasing purpose runs,'

Still, though you have turned it up, I hold we're better than the Huns. "They had not a PUNCH,' my Poet, nor a Laureate like you. Bard, your latest lay, though lovely, is a bit too black and blue. "Hopeless, because placemen babble, and some men are merely brutes? Bah! The Corybantes' clangour should not drown Arcadia's flutes. "AMY maddened you when young, DEMOS distracts your riper age. Must you grip the scourge of RUSKIN, ape CARLYLE's dyspeptic rage? "Cast the poison from your bosom, cast the madness from your brain,' Read your PUNCH and puff your pipe; ALFRED will be himself again. "Take the tip from this plump Faster! Pure Punch-Essence is enough. It will quicken life and purge the bosom from all perilous stuff. "With its sweetness wet your whistle. And, lest short of it you run, Take, and both your stores replenish, PUNCH's

Volume Ninety-One!!!