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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 105, July 8th 1893 By: Various |
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LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET, AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1893. [Illustration: PREFACE] " Vox, et præterea nihil! " murmured
Somebody in the background. "Who made that stale and inappropriate quotation?" exclaimed Mr.
Oracle PUNCH, looking severely around the illustrious group gathered
in his sanctum about the brazen tripod which bore his brand new
Phonograph. Nobody answered. "Glad to see you are ashamed of yourself, whoever you are," snapped
the Seer. "Rather think the a Spook spoke," muttered a self important looking
personage, obliquely eyeing a shadowy visitor from Borderland. "Humph! JULIA may use your hand, but you will not trump mine ,"
retorted the Oracle. "If revenants knew what nonsense is put into
their spectral mouths by noodles and charlatans, they would never
return to be made spectral pilgarlics of." "A ghost is a good thing in a Christmas story!" laughed the jolly old
gentleman in a holly crown. "Elsewhere it is generally a fraud and a
nuisance." "Right, Father Christmas!" cried Mr. PUNCH. "But the Voces from
my Oracular Funograph are not ghostly nothings, neither are they
ambiguous, like the oracles of the Sibyl of Cumæ, to which, my
eloquent Premier, some have had the audacity to compare certain of
your vocal deliverances." The Old Oracular Hand smiled sweetly. " Nescit vox missa reverti ," he
murmured. "Would that EDISON could invent a Party Leader's Phonograph
whose utterances should satisfy at the time without danger of
being quoted against one fifty years later by CLEON the Tanner, or
AGORACRITUS the Sausage Seller, to whom even the Sibylline Books would
scarce have been sacred. But you and your Funograph as you neatly
call it have never been Paphlagonian, have never had to give up to
Party what was meant for Mankind." " And Womankind, surely, Mr. GLADSTONE?" subjoined the Strong minded
Woman, glaring reproachfully through her spectacles at the
Anti Woman's Rights Premier. "I wish I could say as much of you ,
Sir!" "Labour and the Ladies seem to have small share in his thoughts,"
began the Striker, hotly, when Lord ROSEBERY touched him gently on his
fustian clad shoulder, and he subsided. "Am I not a lady?" queried HIBERNIA, with an affectionate glance at
her aged champion. "Golly, and me too?" added a damsel of dusky Libyan charms, clinging
close to the stalwart arm of Napoleonic CECIL RHODES. "Yes with a difference!" said the Oracle, drily. "' Place aux dames '
is a motto of partial and rather capricious application, is it not, my
evergreen Premier?" "A principle of politeness rather than of politics or Parliament at
present," murmured the G. O. M. "Pooh!" sniffed the Strong minded Woman. "It will spread . Read Mr.
H. FOWLER'S Bill, and Dr. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE'S Woman and Natural
Selection ; put this and that together, and perpend!" "The Penny Phonograph," pursued Mr. Oracle PUNCH, "is now prodigiously
patronised. For the popular penny you can hear an American band, a
Chevalier coster ballad, the 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' a comic
song by 'Little TICH,' or a speech by the Old Man eloquent. No;
for the latter I believe they charge twopence. That is fame, my
Pantagruelian Premier. But in my Funograph charge the unchangeable
Threepence you can hear the very voice of Wisdom and Wit, of Humanity
and Humour, of Eloquence and Essential Truth, of Music and of Mirth!" "Hear! hear! hear!" chorussed everybody. "You shall hear!" said the Oracle. "Stand round, all of you, and
adjust your ear tubes! DIONYSIUS'S EAR was not an aural 'circumstance'
(as your countryman would say, CLEVELAND) compared with this. Vox, et
præterea nihil , indeed!" " Nihil or Nihilism," growled the Trafalgar Square Anarchist, "is
the burden of the vox populi of to day " " Vox diaboli , you mean," interrupted the great Funographer, sternly.
"And there is no opening for that vox here... Continue reading book >>
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