[Illustration: Mr Punch, with quill pen, bowing to reader]
THE IRISH YOLK.--In the name of the profit--eggs! Irish co-operators
have already made giant strides in the production of milk and butter,
and now the Irish Co-operative Agency has decided, so says the _Cork
Daily Herald_, to "take up the egg trade." We hope the egg-traders
won't be "taken up," too; if so, the trade would be arrested just when
it was starting, and where would the profit be then? "It is stated
that many Irish eggs now reach the English market dirty, stale, and
unsorted," so that wholesale English egg-merchants have preferred to
buy Austrian and French ones. Ireland not able to compete with the
foreigner! Perish the thought! A little technical education judiciously
applied will soon teach the Irish fowl not to lay "shop 'uns."
* * * * *
TANTALUS.--_Irish Waiter (to Commercial Gent, who had done a good
stroke of business already)._ "Brikfast! Yessir. What'll ye have, yer
honour--tay or coffee?"
_Commercial Gent (hungry and jubilant)._ "Coffee and fried sole and
mutton cutlet to follow!"
_Waiter (satirically)._ "Annything ilse, surr?"
_Commercial Gent._ "Yes, stewed kidneys. Ah and a savoury omelette!"
_Waiter._ "Yessir. Annything----"
_Commercial Gent._ "No, that will do----"
_Waiter (with calm contempt)._ "And do ye expict to foind the loikes o'
them things here? Sure, ye'll get what yez always got--bacon an' iggs!"
* * * * *
FROM AN IRISH REPORTER IN A TROUBLED DISTRICT.--"The police patrolled
the street all night, but for all that there was no disturbance."
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Mr. MacSimius._ "Well, Oi don't profess to be a
particularly cultivated man meself; but at laste me progenitors were
all educated in the hoigher branches!"]