fe, gallant SHAW and his crew
She must manfully back, and she'll find it won't do
In this instance to be too penurious.

[Illustration: THE "FIRE FIEND."

SHAW THE LIFEGUARD MAN. "I'VE GOT HIM UNDER!--BUT I MUST HAVE SUPPORT TO
_KEEP HIM DOWN_!!"]

* * * * *

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION.

_Robert (to stingy Old Gent, who had given him a Halfpenny)._ "YOU'LL
'XCUSE ME, SIR--BUT--WOULD YOU MIND--AH--MAKIN' IT A PENNY, SIR--WHICH
WE HAS TO DIVIDE IT--'MONGST THE OTHER WAITERS, SIR!"]

* * * * *

ROBERT AT THE MINISTERIAL BANKWET.

HER Majesty's Ministers, so far as I understands these sollem matters,
don't seam to have been having a partickler cumferal time of it lately.
BROWN, who's quite a grate Pollytishun, or at any rate thinks hisself
so, which I spose is pritty much the same thing, says, in his wulgar
way, as they have been and had 2 or 3 slaps in the face lately as has a
good deal staggered 'em, but in course he was ony speaking
paragorically, as the chymists says, so I don't suppose as they was
werry much hurt by 'em, and they most suttenly didn't show not no sines
of 'em when, on Wensday last, they all marched in in triumph to receeve
from the Rite Honnerabel the LORD MARE the proud assurance that in his
Rite Honnerabel opinion, and in that of the Grand Old Copperashun over
witch he so royally presides, they had nobly done their dooty, and well
herned the werry hiest reward as he had it in his power to bestow, wiz.,
a reel Manshun Ouse Bankwet!

Praps if there was one of the werry Noble and Rite Honnerabel Gestes as
didn't look quite at his hease, it was the forren Gent as is the
CHANCESELLER of the XCHECKER, and in course that's werry heasily
accounted for. Weather men bes Tories, or weather they be Libberals,
they all likes men as sales strait and sticks to their cullers, and, if
it's posserbel, nales 'em to the Marst, and never ewen dreams of bawling
'em down coz the weather's a looking jest a little dusty. Howsumever
these sollem thorts ain't quite the thing for such reel jowial Bankwets
as that of Wensday, so I banishes 'em hence without no blessing.

The grate Conserwatif Cheefs seemed to thorowly enjoy the change, and to
sum on 'em it must have bin a change indeed. Tork about Conserwatifs not
liking change, how about changing the Ouse of Commons, with their
spessimens of the Wulgar Tung, and their most rude questions, and their