Volume 103 — IN THE MONKEY-HOUSE;
Reading edition
Or, Cage versus Club.
PROFESSOR GARNER goes to the Gaboon To garner Monkey talk; a dubious boon! Stucco Philistia shows in many shapes The babble of baboons, the chat of apes. Why hang, Sir, up a tree, in a big cage, To study Simian speech, which in our age May be o'erheard on Platform or in Pub, And studied 'mid the comforts of a Club? And yet perchance your forest apes would shrink From Smoke-room chat of apes who never think, But cackle imitatively all round, Till their speech hath an automatic sound. Put the dread name of GL-DST-NE in the slot SMELFUNGUS calls his mouth, and rabid rot Will gurgle forth in a swift sewer-like gush Of coarse abuse would make a bargee blush. SMELFUNGUS is a soldier, and a swell, But—the Gaboon can scarce surpass Pall-Mall In vicious, gibbering vulgarity Of coarse vituperation. Decency, Courtesy, common-sense, all cast aside! Pheugh! GARNER, in his cage, would open wide His listening ears, did Jacko of the forest So "slate" a foeman when his head was sorest. Strange that to rave and rant, like scullion storm, Like low virago scold, should seem "good form" To our Society Simians, when one name Makes vulgar spite oblivious of its shame! "Voluntary and deliberate," their speech, "Articulate too"—those Apes! Then could they teach Their—say descendants,—much. Does Club or cage Hear most of rabid and unreasoned rage? "Apes' manner of delivery shows" (they say) "They're conscious of the meaning they'd convey!" Then pardon, GARNER! Apes, though found in clans. Are not, of course, political partisans. Tired of the Club-room's incoherent rage, One pines for the Gaboon, and GARNER's cage. For what arboreal ape could rage and rail Like him, with fierce Gladstonophobia pale, That Smoke-room Simian, though without a tail!
THE PICK OF THE BASKETS.
The Daily Graphic published a specific against cholera, alleged to have been invented by Doctor PICK, a German. Evidently "Our pick'd man of countries." As it is something to drink, and not to eat, the inventor is under no necessity to be known henceforth as Dr. PICK-AND-CHEWS. His remedy is to treat the bacilli to Rhine Wine. The result of experiments has been "so much the worse for the bacilli." Substitute for the first vowel in "grapes" the third of the vowels, and it is of that the poor bacillus suffers, and dies. As the poet GROSSMITH sings of the German Rhine,—
"That of the Fatherland, The happy Fatherland, Gives the greatest pain inside."
However, the Bacillus is an enemy, and if he can be got rid of by grape-shot, pour it in and spare not.
NEW PUBLICATION.—"The Dumb D." Musical Novel. Companion to The Silent Sea, by Mrs. MACLEOD.