SCENE--_Cloudland, nigh to midnight of the last day of the Old
Year. The Incomparable Sage of Fleet Street and "La Mancha's
Matchless Knight" mounted on their respective wooden horses._
_Mr. Punch_ (_spurring the Spotted One_). Yoicks! Tallyho!! Hark
forward!!! Something like space-consuming speed this, eh, my dear Don?
Who talks now of a Horseless Age?
_Don Quixote_ (_turning the peg of Malambruno's magic steed_). Only
your scientific and sensational journals, who, dryasdust dogs! are,
after all, endless leagues behind Merlin the Enchanter, and the
magic-aided heroes of old romance.
_Mr. Punch._ Kim up, my timber-built timber-topper, and spotted
space-devourer! As though the much-talked of motor-carriage,
auto-cycle, or petroleum-propelled tram-car of these mouthing days of
modernity might compare with the Trifaldi's steed, my spotted Pegasus,
or even the peripatetic carpet of Persian story! Speed you well,
valorous knight!
_Don Quixote._ Heaven guide thee, undaunted Sage! Hah! How you fly
aloft! How you cut the air more swiftly than an arrow!! How you mount,
and soar, and astonish the world below!!!
_Mr. Punch._ Haha! Ours is no imaginary, bellows-blown flight, as was
yours, worthy knight, when seated with SANCHO on the wooden crupper of
Clavileno, pressed aforetime by the valourous PETER of Provence, and
the fair MAGALONA!
_Don Quixote._ Nay, indeed, Sir Knight of the Spotted Bucephalus--for
thou art no chivalry-scorning TRIFALDI--we are not now blindfolded,
and _thy_ Pegasus, _thy_ Brilladoro, _thy_ Bayarte, _thy_ Frontino,
_thy_ Clavileno el Aligero--or Wooden-Peg the Winged--might give a
lead even to my renowned Rosinante!
_Mr. Punch._ Blindfolded? Nay, dear knight, I am the Dazzling
Illuminator, not the Bewildering Blinder!
_Don Quixote._ I plainly perceive that thou art a Progressive.
_Mr. Punch._ I am a Progressive Moderate and a Moderate Progressive.
Badge me not therefore in any less comprehensive fashion, O Knight of
the Rueful Countenance.
_Don Quixote._ I presume, Sir Sage, that those same Progressives,
however, who claim to initiate all the forthright movement of the Age,
did originate and invent the motor-carriages, auto-cycles, and other
the horseless locomotive vehicles of which we spake but now?
_Mr. Punch._ Who better than yourself should know, my dear Don, that
all are not Progressives who make a stir about Progress? Like the
circumgyrators in the game of "Giant's Stride," many of them ramp
round in a circle, and "get no forrader." _I_ am the only true and
trustworthy Progressive, and my auto-motor cuts _all_ records!
_Don Quixote._ And is it propelled by petroleum?
_Mr. Punch._ By nothing so crude, flaring, and fuliginous, dear Don.
It is "motived" by--LIGHT!
_Don Quixote._ Wondrous machine! How would I like to mount it! Is it
in likeness of a horse?
_Mr. Punch._ Say not the witlings and wiseacres that we are on the
verge of a Horseless Age?
_Don Quixote._ They do. But, by the bones of my beloved Rosinante, the
idea liketh me not. The horse is indeed a noble animal----
_Mr. Punch._ And will continue to be "useful to man," our current
cyclo-and-auto-motormania notwithstanding. The cycle doubtless hath
its utility, and even charm, though in certain of its characteristics
it seems qualified to give mankind the hump!
_Don Quixote._ And womankind the wobbles!
_Mr. Punch._
When lovely woman stoops to wheeling,
And finds too late that bikes betray,
Beauty, and grace, and finer feeling
She'll see the sex hath chucked away!
_Don Quixote._ Verily, had my peerless DULCINEA herself bestraddled a
spinning-wheel in ungraceful posture and unseemly garb, I, her sworn
knight, should have deemed her the victim of diabolic enchantment.
Why, even the afflicted duenna, with her fair cheeks beard-begrown by
enchantment, she whom SANCHO called the Countess Three-Skirts, would
not--save under dire compulsion--have donned the modern divided skirt
and mounted the man-saddled steed of steel. Art sure, Sir Sage,
that after all it is _not_ enchantment that hath so far unsexed your
afflicted damosels and duennas, and that 'tis not my duty in their
defence to lay lance in rest----
_Mr. Punch._ Nay, sweet soul of chivalry, Mayfair is not La Mancha,
and you may safely leave its fair denizens to the defence--or, if need
be, chastening--of that knightly lance of to-day, my own invincible
and unerring _bâton_. But, verily, 'twere a punishment not
ill-deserved by certain of our mannish maidens and male-mimicking
matrons did MALAMBRUNO clap bristly scrubbing-brush hairs upon them as
upon your distressful Duenna of Toledo.
_Don Quixote._ Verily, Sir Sage, we are mounting skyward, dawn-ward,
New Year-ward in a wondrous manner! Thy spotted steed is surely
Pegasus itself, for Skyworld is full of myriad voices of wisdom and
melody.
_Mr. Punch._ But my Auto-Motor, comparable only with the Sun God's
glowing chariot, shall outsoar and outshine even our present empyrean
flight.
_Voice_ (_suddenly sounding behind them_). Wuff! Wuff! Wuff!
_Don Quixote_ (_looking round_). Saints preserve us! What is this new
marvellous enchantment? Hath Sirius itself broken loose?--doth the Dog
Star follow our trail?
_Mr. Punch._ What seest thou, Sir Knight?
_Don Quixote_ (_with awe_). I behold, as it were, an aerial
fire-wheeled car, shapen in the guise of a Titanic Tome, coruscating
comet-like in its career, whereon is mounted--yes, verily--a Dog--a
Dog of Dogs! What, Sir PUNCH, may be this portent?
_Mr. Punch._ Why, my dear DON QUIXOTE--who seems scarcely the Quixote
Quicksight of the nursery rhyme--what _should_ it be but TOBIAS
himself with that promised specimen of my Auroral Autocar, or
Mirific Motor-Carriage, self-impelled, self-steered, self-lighted,
self-heated, the most peerless outcome of the true Progressive spirit,
the true acme of sure and speedy Progress; in other words, dear Don,
and at your entire service, my
=One Hundred and Ninth Volume!!!=
[Illustration]
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