Mr. Punch Afloat 14What No One Should Forget, in Crossing the Channel
18
Literature · Humor
Mr. Punch Afloat 14
What No One Should Forget, in Crossing the Channel
AnonymousEnglish
To place his rugs, carpet-bags, and umbrellas on the six best seats on the boat.
To worry the captain with remarks about the state of the weather and the performance of the steamer: to observe to the steward that there is a change in the weather, and that there were more passengers the last time he crossed.
To speak to the man at the wheel, and ask him whether there was much sea on last trip.
To change his last half-crown into French money, and squabble with the steward as to the rate of exchange.
To stare at his neighbours, read aloud their names on their luggage, and remark audibly that he'll lay anything the lady with the slight twang is an American.
To repeat the ancient joke on "Back her! stop her!"
If the passage is rough, to put his feet on his neighbour's head, after appropriating all the cushions in the cabin.
To call for crockery in time. N.B.--Most important.
To groan furiously for an hour and a half, if a sufferer; or, if utterly callous to waves and their commotions, to eat beef and ham, and drink porter and brandy-and-water, during the entire voyage, with as much clattering of forks and noise of mastication as is compatible with enjoyment.
To kiss his hand, on entering the harbour, to the matelottes on the quays, or send his love in bad French to the Prefect of Police.
To struggle for a front place, in crowding off the steamer, as if the ship was on fire. And finally--
To answer every one who addresses him in good English in the worst possible French.
"What with the horse-boats," said Mrs. Ramsbotham, "the steam-lunches, the condolers, the out-ragers, the Canadian caboose, and the banyans, we had the greatest difficulty, at Henley, in getting from one side of the river to the other."
THE "CENTIPEDE"
A new flexible, patent-jointed, vertebral outrigger. (Seen--and drawn--by our artist (the festive one), after an unusually scrumptious lunch on board a houseboat at Henley).
THE INFLUENCE OF PLACES
Egeria. "Surely, Mr. Swinson, it must have been here, and on such a day as this, that you wrote those lines that end--
"'Give me the white-maned steeds to ride,
The Arabs of the main'----wasn't it?"
Mr. Swinson (faintly). "N-no. Reading party--half-way up
Matterhorn!"]
