MOUTHING, spouting, declamatory, meddlesome agitation for the compulsory
enforcement of total abstinence from invigorating, comforting, cheering,
and restorative drinks on people to whom it would be intolerable, is the
very staff of life to the United Kingdom Alliance. Therefore it is
taking the bread out of their mouths to enter into combination for any
purpose like that described by the _Post_ in a paragraph announcing:--
"ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT.--The working-men of the West End have
set on foot a new social movement, the main object of which is
to enable them to hold meetings with their trade and friendly
societies away from public-houses. A body of earnest working-men
have been exerting themselves for some months past to raise
funds for the purpose of building a central hall, in which the
trade and friendly societies of Chelsea, Brompton, and
Kensington may meet, instead of at public-houses. There are
upwards of seventy such societies in the districts named."
If working-men generally take to courses like these, they will very soon
vindicate their order from the accusation of drunkenness which Liquor
LAWSON, DAWSON BURNS, and their followers, put forward as a pretext for
soliciting the whole people to let themselves be placed under restraint,
like idiots or babies. The sober and earnest working-men, drinking their
beer in moderation, will show themselves to be really the same flesh and
blood with the gentlemen who sip their claret soberly, and are so kind
as to interest themselves in the promotion of schemes for withholding
their poorer kind from indulgence in "intoxicating liquors." But then
the occupation of the United Kingdom Alliance will be gone. That is to
say, they will be deprived of all excuse for vociferating, plotting, and
conspiring to have the pleasure of regulating the habits of others.
* * * * *
=Parental Present.=
THOUGH we have thus far entered on January, the window of a shop in
Fleet Street still exhibits a card bearing the legend of "Presents for
Christmas." This appears amid a lot of walking-sticks, where it is
somewhat suggestive. Perhaps too many schoolboys generally come home for
the holidays would receive the most suitable Christmas-box a fond Father
could present them with if he were to give them the Stick.
[_Mrs. Punch._ "Brute!"]
* * * * *
[Illustration: "HOUSEHOLD WORDS."
_Young Person_ (_on taking a Situation with Maiden Lady_). "IN THE
COURSE OF CONVERSATION, SHALL I ADDRESS YOU AS _MISS_ OR _MUM_?"!!]
* * * * *