(_By an Old-fashioned Fellow_)
["I would buy 'Cheshire,' if I could get it; but I cannot. For
years I have been doing business in most parts of the country ...
and I have hardly ever seen a Cheshire cheese."--_"Fromage," in the
correspondence on "English Cheese" in the "Daily News."_]
So they've found it out at last, the other fellows,
The mystery that for years I have bewailed!
The cheese that with long keeping merely mellows,
The good "Old Cheshire" from our marts has failed!
You _cannot_ get it now for love or money,
That fair, and fine, and flavoursome old stuff,
With its amber glow as warm as virgin honey--
So different from the Yankee's soapy buff!
Don't talk to me of fine Canadian Cheddar,
Of Gloster, or of Dutch, or shams like these;
They may be cheaper, greasier, yellower, redder,
But they're none of 'em a patch on Cheshire Cheese!
Why, I used to munch it every day at luncheon;--
'Twas lovely with a glass of amber ale!
Now a chunk as hard as any Bobby's truncheon,
As dry as yellow soap, and just as pale,
They give me when I ask 'em for Old Cheshire,
Or a clammy stuff called Gruyere--all in holes.
Ah! "a crust of bread-and-cheese" was once a pleasure
To honest appetites and English souls.
I can do with Wiltshire, Dorset, Double Gloster,
Or even good old Stilton at a pinch,
But the modern "Cheshire" Cheese is an impostor,
From whose muckiness malodorous I flinch.
What the dickens have they been and gone and done with it?
The foreigner has mucked _our_ market up,
And it seems to me he's simply having fun with it.
Cheese hard as any steel shot from a Krupp,
Or soft and green and oozy as a swamp is,
They give me, with some comic crackjaw name.
But these foreign frauds--like Cæsars and like Pompeys--
In nastiness seem pretty much the same.
The smell of 'em--sometimes--is something horrid.
They are limp, and locomotive, and--oh, there!
The _thought_ of 'em makes me go chill or torrid,
Whether Gruyere, or Roquefort, or Camembert!
Then the Yankee with his tendencies Titanic
Has sacrificed prime cheese to speed and bulk.
_Now_ they say that in our markets there is panic;
That luckless dairy farmers shake and sulk.
Well upon my Alfred David _I_ don't wonder
If "Cheddar" cheese _is_ rotting by the ton;
For our worship of mere bigness is a blunder
And I only hope the reign of it is done.
But why should boyhood's "Cheshire Cheese" delicious--
Like good old Ribstone pippins--fail and cease?
Of modern "Cheshire" I am most suspicious,
And whatever it _may_ be, it's not "the cheese"!
* * * * *
AN ASININE PERFORMANCE.--A certain gallant and deservedly popular
colonel, whose love of politics is, perhaps, not quite so fervent
as his fondness for race-horses and greyhounds, has recently turned
his attention to another and comparatively novel form of sport. This
takes the shape of an _asinus doctus_--a learned, or accomplished,
donkey--"who can be matched at jumping, eating, and drinking, or all
three, against any other member of his tribe in the world," and the
erudite animal gave, for the colonel's behoof, a private exhibition
of his attainments in the grounds attached to an hotel in Norton.
First, _Ned_ jumped a 5ft. 6in. bar "without any apparent effort:"
then he devoured an ounce of twist tobacco and half-a-pound of bacon
with equal ease, but the thirst provoked by the latter comestible
had to be assuaged by a quart of champagne which he "put away" with
great promptitude and gusto. Refreshed with wine he further proceeded
to show a clean pair of heels to a pony in a steeplechase, winning
easily--"ears down" in fact. Finally, with a fox-terrier dog as his
jockey, he galloped round an orchard. The colonel was much pleased with
the entertainment, and well he might be. There is a brilliant career
in store for that donkey on the variety stage; or even in Parliament,
where he might "command the applause of list'ning senates," while
adorning the Hibernian benches as, of course, Member "for Bray."
Bedad! here's a leader, ye sons o' Killarney
Begorrah! ye'll not find a better I'll lay.
Thin hould all yer braggin' and blusterin' blarney,
And take a few hints from the Mimber for Bray!
* * * * *
[Illustration: VIVA ITALIA!
BRITANNIA (_to Italia_). "HEARTILY I WISH YOU WELL! BE 'LESS
VISIONARY,' AND 'MORE PRACTICAL'!"
["The financial condition of Italy in the last degree unsatisfactory
and unsound, the Roman question ever looming in the horizon, and
the certainty of internal dissension continuing to develop, must
necessarily blast all fair prospects for peace and prosperity in
the young nation, towards which England has been inclined to look
with sympathetic regard and almost maternal anxiety."--_Vide Daily
Telegraph, Sept. 16, "The Ransom of Rome."_
"An enormous debt has been run up, and the financial position of Italy
has been damaged by the magnificent aims of her rulers."--_Times,
Sept. 21._]
* * * * *