Mines were made for sinking money, not for raising dividend.

And the clergy bring their savings, the widows bring their store,
And they push to reach your presence, and they jostle and they fall,
And at last they pile their money in a heap before your door;
And, just to make them happy, you accept and keep it all.

So you make your mine by begging--(modern miners never dig),--
And you float a gorgeous Company. The shares go spinning up;
But you never "rig the market." (What an awkward word is "rig"!)
And you drain success in bumpers from an overflowing cup.

Then one day the thing gets shaky, and it goes from bad to worse,
And the public grasps a shadow where it tried to hold a share;
And in vain the country clergy most unclerically curse,
_You_ have "realised your property," and end a millionnaire.

* * * * *

COMING SEA-SCRAPES AT CHELSEA.

(_DRAWN BY AN INSIDER._)

MR. PUNCH, SIR,

That the sister Service should also have its turn at Chelsea I
reckon I can understand, and the Show ought to be popular; but if
the Admiralty want to make a further "exhibition" of themselves, they
won't have to go very far a-field for material. Here are one or two
exhibits that come to hand at once. First, there's those big guns
which it ain't safe to fire nohow, and which, if you do load with half
a charge, crack, bend, and get sent back to be "ringed" up, whatever
that means, and are not safe, even for a salute, ever afterwards.
Then, in another case, they might show a foot or two of that blessed
boiler-piping which is always leaking, or splitting, or bursting, just
when it shouldn't. In a third they might display a chop that had been
cooked from lying exposed in one of those famous stokeholes where
the poor beggars of sailors are expected to pass their time without
getting roasted too. Then there might be, as a sort of prize puzzle,
a plan of these here recent manoeuvres, with the Umpire's opinion
of the whole blessed jumble tacked on to it. Then, to enliven the
proceedings. Lord GEORGE might take his turn with the rest of the
Admiralty Board, and give us, every half hour or so, a figure or two
of the Hornpipe, just to let the public see that they have got some
sort of nautical "go" about them to warrant them in drawing their big
screw. Bless you, _Mr. Punch_, there's lots to make an Exhibition of
at Chelsea next year if you come to calculate. Leastways