Volume 104 — THE INFANT'S GUIDE TO KNOWLEDGE.
Reading edition
(Revised to date by Mr. Punch.)
Question. What is an Infant?
Answer. A guileless child who has not yet reached twenty-one years of age.
Q. What is a year?
A. An unknown quantity to a lady after forty. And this reply is distinctly smart.
Q. What is "smartness"?
A. The art of appearing to belong to a good set.
Q. What is a good set?—A. A clique that prefers modes to morality, chic to comfort, and frivolity to family ties.
Q. What is chic?—A. An indefinable something, implying "go," "fast and loose style," "slap-dash."
Q. What is a dinner-party?
A. A large subject, that cannot be disposed of in a paragraph.
Q. What is a subject?—A. Something distinct from Royalty.
Q. Can one be distinct after dinner?—A. Yes,—with difficulty.
Q. What is a difficulty?
A. When of a pecuniary character—the time following the using up of the pecuniary resources of your friends.
Q. What is a friend?
A. A man who dines with you—a past enemy or a future foe.
Q. What is bad champagne?—A. A fruity effervescing beverage costing about thirty shillings the dozen.
Q. What is good?—A. Cannot reply until I have received samples.
Q. How can an inexperienced diner discover that he has taken bad champagne?
A. By the condition of his head on the following morning.
Q. What is a head?—A. A necessary alternative to money.
Q. What is money?
A. The only satisfactory representative of credit.
Q. What are representatives?
A. The mouthpieces of voters mustered in the House of Commons.
Q. What is mustard?
A. The chief ingredient of breakfast, after a night of it with your friends, when your appetite requires coaxing.
Q. What is the future?—A. To-morrow, and the coming centuries.
Q. And the past?—A. Two minutes ago, and all that went before.
Q. And the present?—A. The right time for bringing the current instalment of the Infant's Guide to a prompt conclusion.