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[Illustration: PUNCH VOL CV]




  LONDON:

  PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET,

  AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

  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!"

