PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 99.
December 13, 1890.
MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.
NO. IX.--THE CURSE OF COGNAC.
(_By_ WATER DECANT, _Author of "Chaplin off his Feet," "All
Sorts of Editions for Men," "The Nuns in Dilemma," "The
Cream he Tried," "Blue-the-Money Naughty-boy," "The Silver
Gutter-Snipe," "All for a Farden Fare," "The Roley Hose,"
"Caramel of Stickinesse," &c., &c., &c._)
[Of this story the Author writes to us as follows:--"I can
honestly recommend it, as calculated to lower the exaggerated
cheerfulness which is apt to prevail at Christmas time. I
consider it, therefore, to be eminently suited for a Christmas
Annual. Families are advised to read it in detachments of four
or five at a time. Married men who owe their wives' mothers
a grudge should lock them into a bare room, with a guttering
candle and this story. Death will be certain and not painless.
I've got one or two rods in pickle for the publishers. You
wait and see.--W.D."]
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration]
GEORGE GINSLING was alone in his College-rooms at Cambridge. His
friends had just left him. They were quite the tip-top set in Christ's
College, and the ashes of the cigarettes they had been smoking lay
about the rich Axminster carpet. They had been talking about many
things, as is the wont of young men, and one of them had particularly
bothered GEORGE by asking him why he had refused a seat in the
University Trial Eights after rowing No. 5 in his College boat. GEORGE
had no answer ready, and had replied angrily. Now, he thought of
many answers. This made him nervous. He paced quickly up and down the
deserted room, sipping his seventh tumbler of brandy, as he walked. It
was his invariable custom to drink seven tumblers of neat brandy every
night to steady himself, and his College career had, in consequence,
been quite unexceptionable up to the present moment. He used playfully
to remind his Dean of PORSON's drunken epigram, and the good man
always accepted this as an excuse for any false quantities in GEORGE's
Greek Iambics. But to-night, as I have said, GEORGE was nervous with a
strange nervousness, and he, therefore, went to bed, having previously
blown out his candle and placed his Waterbury watch under his pillow,
on the top of which sat a Devil wearing a thick jersey worked with
large green spots on a yellow ground.