1893.
* * * * *
[Illustration: PREFACE]
"_Vox, et praeterea nihil!_" murmured
Somebody in the background.
"Who made that stale and inappropriate quotation?" exclaimed Mr.
Oracle PUNCH, looking severely around the illustrious group gathered
in his _sanctum_ about the brazen tripod which bore his brand-new
Phonograph.
Nobody answered.
"Glad to see you are ashamed of yourself, whoever you are," snapped
the Seer.
"Rather think the--a--Spook spoke," muttered a self-important-looking
personage, obliquely eyeing a shadowy visitor from Borderland.
"Humph! JULIA may use _your_ hand, but you will not trump _mine_,"
retorted the Oracle. "If _revenants_ knew what nonsense is put into
their spectral mouths by noodles and charlatans, they would never
return to be made spectral pilgarlics of."
"A ghost is a good thing--in a Christmas story!" laughed the jolly old
gentleman in a holly-crown. "Elsewhere it is generally a fraud and a
nuisance."
"Right, Father Christmas!" cried Mr. PUNCH. "But the _Voces_ from
my Oracular Funograph are not ghostly nothings, neither are they
ambiguous, like the oracles of the Sibyl of Cumae,--to which, my
eloquent Premier, some have had the audacity to compare certain of
_your_ vocal deliverances."
The Old Oracular Hand smiled sweetly. "_Nescit vox missa reverti_," he
murmured. "Would that EDISON could invent a Party Leader's Phonograph
whose utterances should satisfy at the time without danger of
being quoted against one fifty years later by CLEON the Tanner, or
AGORACRITUS the Sausage-Seller, to whom even the Sibylline Books would
scarce have been sacred. But you and your Funograph--as you neatly
call it--have never been Paphlagonian, have never had to give up to
Party what was meant for Mankind."
"_And_ Womankind, surely, Mr. GLADSTONE?" subjoined the Strong-minded
Woman, glaring reproachfully through her spectacles at the
Anti-Woman's-Rights Premier. "I wish I could say as much of _you_,
Sir!"
"Labour and the Ladies seem to have small share in his thoughts,"
began the Striker, hotly, when Lord ROSEBERY touched him gently on his
fustian-clad shoulder, and he subsided.
"Am _I_ not a lady?" queried HIBERNIA, with an affectionate glance at
her aged champion.
"Golly, and me too?" added a damsel of dusky Libyan charms, clinging
close to the stalwart arm of Napoleonic CECIL RHODES.
"Yes--with a difference!" said the Oracle, drily. "'_Place aux dames_'
is a motto of partial and rather capricious application, is it not, my
evergreen Premier?"
"A principle of politeness rather than of politics or Parliament--at
present," murmured the G. O. M.
"Pooh!" sniffed the Strong-minded Woman. "It will _spread_. Read Mr.
H. FOWLER'S Bill, and Dr. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE'S _Woman and Natural
Selection_; put this and that together, and perpend!"
"The Penny Phonograph," pursued Mr. Oracle PUNCH, "is now prodigiously
patronised. For the popular penny you can hear an American band, a
Chevalier coster ballad, the 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' a comic
song by 'Little TICH,' or a speech by the Old Man eloquent. No;
for the latter I believe they charge twopence. That _is_ fame, my
Pantagruelian Premier. But in _my_ Funograph--charge the unchangeable
Threepence--you can hear the very voice of Wisdom and Wit, of Humanity
and Humour, of Eloquence and Essential Truth, of Music and of Mirth!"
"Hear! hear! hear!" chorussed everybody.
"You _shall_ hear!" said the Oracle. "Stand round, all of you, and
adjust your ear-tubes! DIONYSIUS'S EAR was not an aural 'circumstance'
(as your countryman would say, CLEVELAND) compared with this. _Vox, et
praeterea nihil_, indeed!"
"_Nihil_--or Nihilism," growled the Trafalgar Square Anarchist, "is
the burden of the _vox populi_ of to-day----"
"_Vox diaboli_, you mean," interrupted the great Funographer, sternly.
"And there is no opening for that _vox_ here. Shut up! You are here,
misguided mischief-maker, not to spout murderously dogmatic negation,
but to listen and--I hope--learn!"
"I trust you have guidance for me," murmured gentle but anxious-faced
Charity. "It would, like my ministrations, be most seasonable--as
Father Christmas could tell you--for between my innumerable claims,
and my contradictory 'multitude of counsellors,' my friends and
enemies, my gushingly indiscriminate enthusiasts, and my arid,
hide-bound 'organisers,' I was never, my dear Mr. PUNCH, so completely
puzzled in my life."
"Sweet lady," responded the Oracle, with gentle gravity, "there is
guidance here for _all_ who will listen; heavenly Charity and diabolic
Anarchy, eloquent Statesmanship and adventurous Enterprise, scared
Capital and clamorous Labour, fogged Finance and self-assertive
Femininity; for the motley and many-voiced Utopia-hunters who fancy
they see imminent salvation in Imperial Pomp or Parochial Pump,
in Constitutional Clubs or County Councils, in Home Rule, Primrose
Leagues, or the Living Wage, in Democracy or in Dynamite, in High Art
or Mahatmas, in Science or in Spooks. Take your places, Ladies and
Gentlemen! Charity first, if you please, with Father Christmas to her
right, leaving room for the little New Year on her left. Listen all,
and learn by the various voices of that many-cylindered, marvellous
Funographic Machine, my