_An Alice-in-Wonderlandish Sea-Dream._
["An inquiry into the circumstances under which the cultivation
and storage of oysters and other shell-fish around our coast are
carried out, which it is stated Mr. BRYCE is about to institute,
will serve a useful purpose, especially in the case of 'other
shell-fish,'"--_Daily Chronicle._]
[Illustration: THE INTERESTING INVALID.
_Dr. Lobster_ (_to Nurse Crab_). "CAN'T MAKE OUT WHAT'S THE MATTER
WITH HIM! EXPECT HE'S SHAMMING!"]
'Twas the voice of the Lobster, I heard him declare,
"Doctors frighten our Dandos, and that isn't fair.
'Inquiry on Shell-fish'? Oh! blow Mr. BRYCE!
You will soon be all right if you take _my_ advice!"
"Well, I hope so, I'm sure," said the Walrus to the Carpenter.
"Or else what is to become of our pleasant little picnics on the
sea-shore?" said the Carpenter to the Walrus.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were hovering round the bed;
They wept like anything to see
Each Oyster hang his head;
"If they go on like this," they cried,
"They'll very soon be dead!"
"Drat 'em!" grumbled Nurse Crab. "They've been taking a _drain_ too
much, I feel _sewer_."
"You're another, _Mrs. Gamp_," murmured a Native, lifting his head
limply from his brown-sand bolster, and dropping it back again with a
disconsolate dab.
"If you make bad puns to 'em in their present low state I won't answer
for the consequences," said Dr. Lobster, pulling Nurse Crab's shelly
apron in professional remonstrance.
Nurse Crab squared her claws like Amazonian elbows, and rolled her
protuberant eyes scornfully.
"Feel their pulses," suggested the Carpenter.
"They haven't got any," snapped Dr. Lobster. "Besides my claws are not
suited for pulse-feeling."
"Make 'em put their tongues out," hinted the Walrus.
"Tongues?" sneered Dr. Lobster, derisively. "Don't you know that, like
CHARLES READE'S nigger, oysters are 'darned anomalies,'--
'Because they have beards without any chin, And get out of bed to be
tucked in.'"
"Old riddles are more painful than bad puns," protested the bed-ridden
bivalve. "Tucked in, indeed. Well, _I_ shall never get out of bed
again, that's one thing," he continued, with a spitefully triumphant
look at the Walrus and the Carpenter.
"Oh, _don't_ say that!" said the Carpenter, tearfully.
The Artful Oyster looked at him,
But no word more he said;
The Artful Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his fevered head;
As who should say "'Tis not for _you_,
I'll leave the oyster-bed."
"_Silence_ in the sick-room, or I'll turn you all out of it," snapped
Dr. Lobster, making his claws click like infuriated castanets in the
Walrus's ears.
As a duck in a thunderstorm, quite thunder-struck,
Each sixpenny bivalve looks "down on his luck."
Fancy six bob a dozen! You _ought_ to be nice,
You dear little darlings, _most_ dear--at the price!
What _have_ you been doing to make yourself sick
Like a lot of slum-dwellers? Come, answer me quick!
"'Spect they're shamming," said Nurse Crab, crabbily.
"I'd like to poison the lot of you!" muttered the irascible invalid.
"Just what you've been trying to do, you murderous mossels!" retorted
Nurse Crab.
"_Mussels?_ No! Come now! we're not as bad as _they_ are," protested
the better-class bivalve, indignantly. "_Mussels_, indeed! Mussels are
low things, cheap and nasty shams, sold by costers at a penny a
plateful, and eaten by the ravenous rabble with black pepper _and
their fingers_! Eugh!" The superior mollusk's soul-shaking,
upper-class, high-toned shudder shook it into a sharp attack of
syncope, from which it was with difficulty that Dr. Lobster's
ministrations rallied it.
"Call yourself a _nurse_?" said the Doctor to Mrs. Crab. "You ought to
be ashamed of yourself. How would _you_ like to be compared to a whelk
or a winkle? You and your mussels! Consider the gentleman's feelings!"
"I _didn't_ say _mussels_--I said _mossels_," muttered Nurse Crab,
sullenly.
"Well, well," quoth the Lobster. "You take my advice,
And I fancy we'll do without HUXLEY or BRYCE.
Mere mussels or mackerel, lower-class grub,
That flounder in baskets, or flop in a tub,
At six for a shilling, or tuppence a pound,
May go sick if they like, but we _must_ bring _you_ round!"
[_And_ Mr. PUNCH _hopes they will_.
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