Produced by Punch, or the London Charivari, Malcolm Farmer, Ernest Schaal, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
_The Curate_. "YES, IT'S A LOVELY MORNING, TRENCHERMAN; JUST THE SORT TO GIVE ONE AN APPETITE FOR BREAKFAST."
_Farmer Trencherman_. "AH! A HAPPITITE FOR YER BREAKFAST, SIR. NOW THERE'S THE DIFFERENCE, YER SEE. I BE COME OUT FUR TO GET A BREAKFAST FOR MY HAPPITITE!"]
_A Trip round "the Island," and back to P'm'th_.
_Happy Thought (on board crowded steamboat)_.--"Obstinacy is the best policy." The obstinate man won't move, and won't speak, except in monosyllables; he won't budge one inch for anybody; he puts everybody in a worse temper than everybody was before, and, in the end, he wins. To the credit of the obstinate man be it said that "he knows how to keep his place," and does keep it too.
A kind of second-rate sporting bookmaker, with sandy whiskers and dirty hands, who has secured a corner seat near me, smokes like a chimney, and the chimney, his pipe, ought to have been swept and cleaned out long ago. Also he seems quite unable to take five whiffs without prolific expectoration. From experience I believe he will be visited by the steward, and told not to smoke. I am awaiting this with malicious anticipation of pleasure. I am disappointed. A junior steward, of whom I make the inquiry in heating of the objectionable fumigator, replies that "Smoking _is_ allowed here, but not abaft." Thanks, very much. The sandy-whiskered man won't go "abaft," wherever that is. Perhaps he will presently. After a time, when it becomes a bit rougher, he disappears. No doubt he has gone "abaft." Let him stay there.
"_The Needles_."--Why needles? There's no more point in the name than there is to the rocks.
Opposite Freshwater it very naturally commences to be a bit freshish; some people in the forepart are getting very wet; there is a stampede; it is still fresher and rougher; but I have every confidence in the Captain, who, as I observe, is negligently standing on the bridge, deliberately cracking specimens of that great delicacy the early filbert, or it may be the still earlier walnut.
_Happy Thought_.--There can be no danger when the Captain is engaged in cracking nuts as if they were so many jokes.