BRITANNIA DISTRIBUTING THE BRIGHT POKER OF CIVILIZATION TO THE SAVAGES. ]
The Bright Stove; or the Modern Englishman's Fireside. ]
REPORT OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF CIVILIZATION, AND THE HANDBOOK OF ETIQUETTE ALL OVER THE WORLD.
The Distingué Committee of this Society, which has for its noble object the elevation of the poor degraded Savage, and the dissemination of horse-hair petticoats and finger-glasses among all the dark members of the human family, have published their Report.
The Report states the Committee have distributed to their coloured relations their sister Agogos's celebrated "Code of Good Manners;" as well as the instructive little tract "How to Live well upon a Hundred a-year;" which have effected a great moral change. And the Committee are now engaged in preparing the "Savage's own Edition" of "The Guide to the Toilet," and have made arrangements with a philanthropic Parisian Milliner for the weekly publication of a "Courier des Dames Noires" in the wilds of Africa and America.
In Domestic Economy they have succeeded in introducing the Bright Poker to the hearths of the benighted savages, and so impressing them with the noble truth that there are Pokers for use and Pokers for ornament. They have not, however, as yet, been able to confer upon them the enjoyment of the Silver Fork; but still they have accustomed them to the use of that article in Britannia Metal, which having, as a moral writer justly observes, quite the appearance of Silver, lends to the dinner-table all the show of plate.
In the article of Food the poor things have much improved. They have now given over eating their meat raw, while some families had advanced in Civilization so far as to have fed Turkies before the Fire, until they died from enlargement of the Liver, so that they might be able to partake of the luxury of the "Paté de Foie Gras."
THE WIVES OF ENGLAND SWEARING TO PROTECT UNSULLIED THE BRIGHT POKER. ]
"SAY YOU DID IT!" A ROMANCE OF SMILES AND TITTERS. TITTER THE THIRD.
Goffoni, however, though he hardly relished the idea of bidding adieu to the world, and a generous Italian public, on the boards of a scaffold— and which he now felt there was something stronger than a mere probability of his doing—at length began to contemplate his lot with all the melodramatic magnanimity of injured innocence. And though he had but little of the martyr in his constitution, yet as Fate had cast him the part, he was determined to fudge up as much stoical sternness as his nature would allow him to throw into the character. Besides, deserted by his Carlotta, he had still no great desire to continue a solitary unit on the slate of creation; so that, to use his own expression, it mattered not when he was sponged out. "What was the world to him?" again he asked himself, and again he gave himself precisely the same answer, videlicet,—"a wilderness, a desert!" Existence, he said, he viewed as a piece of burnt rag, with but a few bright specks flitting across its dark surface; and he cared not how soon "the parson and the clerk" appeared to announce the departure of his vital spark.
