Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,359 pages of information about Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,359 pages of information about Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete.

I have had one case of fracture in the leg of Mrs. Finkey’s Italian greyhound, which Jack threw a flower-pot at in the dark the other night.  I tied it up in two splints cut out of a clothes-peg in a manner which I stated to be the most popular at the Hotel Dieu at Paris; and the old girl was so pleased that she has asked me to keep Christmas-day at her house, where she burns the Yule log, makes a bowl of wassail, and all manner of games.  We are going to bore a hole in the Yule log with an old trephine, and ram it chuck-full of gunpowder; and Jack’s little brother is to catch six or seven frogs, under pain of a severe licking, which are to be put into one of the vegetable dishes.  The old girl has her two nieces home for the holidays—­devilish handsome, larky girls—­so we have determined to take some mistletoe, and give a practical demonstration of the action of the orbicularis oris and ievatores labiae superioris et inferioris.  If either of them have got any tin, I shall try and get all right with them; but if the brads don’t flourish I shall leave it alone, for a wife is just the worst piece of furniture a fellow can bring into his house, especially if he inclines to conviviality; although to be sure a medical man ought to consider her as part of his stock in trade, to be taken at a fair valuation amidst his stopple-bottles, mortars, measures, and pill-rollers.

If business does not tumble in well, in the course of a few weeks, we have another plan in view; but I only wish to resort to it on emergency, in case we should be found out.  The railway passes at the bottom of my garden, and Jack thinks, with a few pieces of board, he can contrive to run the engine and tender off the line, which is upon a tolerably high embankment.  I need not tell you all this is in strict confidence; and if the plan does not jib, which is not very probable, will bring lots of grist to the mill.  I have put the engineer and stoker at a sure guinea a head for the inquest; and the concussions in the second class will be of unknown value.  If practicable, I mean to have an elderly gentleman “who must not be moved under any consideration;” so I shall get him into my house for the term of his indisposition, which may possibly be a very long one.  I can give him up my own bedroom, and sleep myself in an old harpsichord, which I bought cheap at a sale, and disembowelled into a species of deceptive bed.  I think the hint might put “people about to marry” up to a dodge in the way of spare beds.  Everybody now sees through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia on the bolster.

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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.