ally kind but less appropriate in his method of praise or censure."

_Punch_ has altogether had some two-score actions commenced, or
threatened, against it, by business firms or aggrieved persons or, more
often still, by newspapers on the ground of libel and kindred
wrongdoing. But then, consider how many there are in the world, and in
England especially, who will not see a joke!

A subject upon which _Punch_ has for some years been persistently
twitted is the personality of "Mrs. Ramsbotham"--Thackeray's Mrs. Julia
Dorothea Ramsbottom of "The Snob" (No. 7, May, 1829)--a homely sort of
Mrs. Malaprop, whose constant misquotations and misapplication of words
of somewhat similar sound to those she intends to use give constant
amusement to one section of _Punch's_ readers, and irritation quite as
constant to the other. She is the lady who suffers from a "torpedo
liver;" who complains of being "a mere siphon in her own house;" who
discharges her gardener because his answers to her questions are so
"amphibious;" and who does not understand how there can be "illegal
distress" in a free country where people may be as unhappy as they like.
There have, of course, been many originals to this unconscious
humorist--and are still. One lady, it has been declared, is not unknown
in society, who has held forth to a surprised circle of her
acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)--who,
when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as
the lawyers say, is _inter alias_"--and who wished that people would
always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically).

"Mrs. Ramsbotham" is obviously descended, through Mrs. Malaprop, from
Dogberry, and has many a time been "condemned to everlasting
redemption," at least by the _genus irritabile_. One critic cast his
protest in the form of a poetic appeal to _Punch_, and published it in
an Oxford journal:--

"Of Mrs. Ram I wish to speak,
You dear old London Charivari;
Don't ram her down our throats each week.
Of sameness do be chary. Vary."

A broader and severer hint was offered by the lively Poet of the London
"Globe":--

_To Mrs. Ramsbotham._

A few there be who still delight,
O Mrs. R., in _Punch's_ page,
Who like a joke to wear the blight
Of age.

Who, if they find a grain of wheat,
Are well content to pass the chaff,
And, every week, at least complete
One laugh.

But even they