Mr. Punch Awheel: The Humours of Motoring and Cycling, J. A. Hammerton [best free ebook reader for pc TXT] 📗
- Author: J. A. Hammerton
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The Great Motor Mystery.—At Lancaster two motorists were fined, according to the Manchester Evening News, "for driving a motor-car over a trap near Carnforth, at twenty-nine and thirty-four miles per hour respectively." We are of the opinion that the action of the second gentleman in driving at so high a speed over the poor trap when it was already down was not quite in accordance with the best traditions of English sport.
[Pg 128]
Breaking it Gently.—
Passer-by. "Is that your pork down there on the road, guv'nor?"
Farmer. "Pork! What d'ye mean? There's a pig o' mine out there."
Passer-by. "Ah, but there's a motor-car just been by."
[Pg 129]
Exclusive.—
Fair Driver. "Will you stand by the pony for a few minutes, my good man?"
The Good Man. "Pony, mum? No, I'm a motor-minder, I am. 'Ere, Bill! 'Orse."
[Pg 130] CRAZY TALESThe Duchess of Pomposet was writhing, poor thing, on the horns of a dilemma. Painful position, very. She was the greatest of great ladies, full of fire and fashion, and with a purple blush (she was born that colour) flung bangly arms round the neck of her lord and master. The unfortunate man was a shocking sufferer, having a bad unearned increment, and enduring constant pain on account of his back being broader than his views.
"Pomposet," she cried, resolutely. "Duky darling!"
(When first married she had ventured to apostrophise him as "ducky," but His Grace thought it infra dig., and they compromised by omitting the vulgar "c.")
"Duky," she said, raising pale distinguished eyes to a Chippendale mirror, "I have made up my mind."
"Don't," expostulated the trembling peer. "You are so rash!"
"What is more, I have made up yours."
"To make up the mind of an English Duke," [Pg 132] he remarked, with dignity, "requires no ordinary intellect; yet I believe with your feminine hydraulics you are capable of anything, Jane."
(That this aristocratic rib of his rib should have been named plain Jane was a chronic sorrow.)
"Don't keep me in suspense," he continued; "in fact, to descend to a colloquialism, I insist on Your Grace letting the cat out of the bag with the least possible delay."
"As you will," she replied. "Your blood be on your own coronet. Prepare for a shock—a revelation. I have fallen! Not once—but many times."
"Wretched woman!—I beg pardon!—wretched Grande Dame! call upon Debrett to cover you!"
"I am madly in love with——"
"By my taffeta and ermine, I swear——"
"Peace, peace!" said Jane. "Compose yourself, ducky—that is Plantagenet. Forgive the slip. I am agitated. My mind runs on slips."
The Duke groaned.
"Horrid, awful slips!"
With a countenance of alabaster he tore at his sandy top-knot.
[Pg 134]"I have deceived you. I admit it. Stooped to folly."
A supercilious cry rent the air as the Duke staggered on his patrician limbs.
With womanly impulse—flinging caste to the winds—Jane caught the majestic form to her palpitating alpaca, and, watering his beloved features with Duchessy drops, cried in passionate accents, "My King! My Sensitive Plant! Heavens! It's his unlucky back! Be calm, Plantagenet. I have—been—learning—to—bike! There! On the sly!"
The Duke flapped a reviving toe, and squeezed the august fingers.
"I am madly enamoured of—my machine."
The peer smoothed a ruffled top-knot with ineffable grace.
"Likewise am determined you shall take lessons. Now it is no use, duky. I mean to be tender but firm with you."
The Potentate gave a stertorous chortle, and, stretching out his arms, fell in a strawberry-leaf swoon on the parquet floor, his ducal head on the lap of his adored Jane.
[Pg 131]
The Freemasonry of the Wheel.—"Rippin' wevver fer hus ciciklin' chaps, ain't it?"
[Pg 133]
BROTHERS IN ADVERSITY
Farmer. "Pull up, you fool! The mare's bolting!"
Motorist. "So's the car!"
[Pg 135]
QUITE RESPECTFUL
Fair Cyclist. "Is that the incumbent of this parish?"
Parishioner. "Well, 'e's the Vicar. But, wotever some of us thinks, we never calls 'im a hencumbrance!"
[Pg 136]
Gipsy Fortune-teller (seriously). "Let me warn you. Somebody's going to cross your path."
Motorist. "Don't you think you'd better warn the other chap?"
THE SCORCHER (After William Watson)I do not, in the crowded street
Of cab and "'bus" and mire,
Nor in the country lane so sweet,
Hope to escape thy tyre.
One boon, oh, scorcher, I implore,
With one petition kneel,
At least abuse me not before
Thou break me on thy wheel.
[Pg 137]
A motorist wishes to point out the very grave danger this balloon-scorching may become, and suggests a speed limit be made before things go too far.
[Pg 138] THE MUGGLETON MOTOR-CAR;OR, THE WELLERS ON WHEELS A Pickwickian Fragment Up-to-date
As light as fairies, if not altogether as brisk as bees, did the four Pickwickian shades assemble on a winter morning in the year of grace, 1896. Christmas was nigh at hand, in all its fin-de-siècle inwardness; it was the season of pictorial too-previousness and artistic anticipation, of plethoric periodicals, all shocker-sensationalism sandwiched with startling advertisements; of cynical new-humour and flamboyantly sentimental chromo-lithography.
But we are so taken up by the genial delights of the New Christmas that we are keeping Mr. Pickwick and his phantom friends waiting in the cold on the chilly outside of the Muggleton Motor-car, which they had just mounted, well wrapped up in antiquated great coats, shawls, and comforters.
Mr. Weller, Senior, had, all unconsciously, brought his well-loved whip with him, and was greatly embarrassed thereby.
[Pg 140]"Votever shall I do vith it, Sammy?" he whispered, hoarsely.
"Purtend it's a new, patent, jointless fishing-rod, guv'nor," rejoined Sam, in a Stygian aside. "Nobody 'ere'll 'ave the slightest notion vot it really is."
"When are they—eh—going to—ahem—put the horses to?" murmured Mr. Pickwick, emerging from his coat collar, and looking about him with great perplexity.
"'Osses?" cried the coachman, turning round upon Mr. Pickwick, with sharp suspicion in his eye. "'Osses? d'ye say. Oh, who are you a-gettin' at?"
Mr. Pickwick withdrew promptly into his coat-collar.
The irrepressible Sam came immediately to the aid of his beloved master, whom he would never see snubbed if he knew it.
"There's vheels vithin vheels, as the bicyclist said vhen he vos pitched head foremost into the vatchmaker's vinder," remarked Mr. Weller, Junior, with the air of a Solomon in smalls. "But vot sort of a vheel do you call that thing in front[Pg 142] of you, and vot's its pertikler objeck? a top of a coach instead o' under it?"
"This yer wheel means Revolution," said the driver.
"It do, Samivel, it do," interjected his father dolorously. "And in my opinion it's a worse Revolution than that there French one itself. A coach vithout 'osses, vheels instead of vheelers, and a driver vithout a vhip! Oh Sammy, Sammy, to think it should come to this!!!"
The driver—if it be not desecration to a noble old name so to designate him—gave a turn to his wheel and the autocar started. Mr. Winkle, who sat at the extreme edge, waggled his shadowy legs forlornly in the air; Mr. Snodgrass, who sat next to him, snorted lugubriously; Mr. Tupman turned paler than even a Stygian shade has a right to do. Mr. Pickwick took off his glasses and wiped them furtively.
"Sam," he whispered hysterically in the ear of his faithful servitor, "Sam, this is dreadful! A—ahem!—vehicle with no visible means of propulsion pounding along like—eh—Saint Denis without his head, is more uncanny than Charon's boat."
[Pg 144]"Let's get down, Sammy, let's get down at once," groaned Mr. Weller the elder. "I can't stand it, Samivel, I really can't. Think o' the poor 'osses, Sammy, think o' the poor 'osses as ain't there, and vot they must feel to find theirselves sooperseeded by a hugly vheel and a pennorth o' peteroleum, &c.!"
"Hold on, old Nobs!" cried the son, with frank filial sympathy. "Think of the guv'nor, father, and vait for the first stoppage. Never again vith the Muggleton Motor! Vhy, it vorse than a hortomatic vheelbarrow, ain't it, Mr. Pickwick?"
"Ah, Sammy," assented Mr. Weller, Senior, hugging his whip, affectionately. "Vorse even than vidders, Sammy, the red-nosed shepherd, or the Mulberry One hisself!"
A bear in a motor-car attracted much attention in the City last week. It had four legs this time.
The Motor Car declares, on high medical authority, that motoring is a cure for insanity. We would therefore recommend several motorists we know to persevere.
[Pg 139]
Gentle Satire—"I say, Bill, look 'ere! 'Ere's a old cove out record-breaking!"
[Pg 141]
Motor Mania.—
The Poet (deprecatingly). "They say she gives more attention to her motor-cars than to her children."
The Butterfly. "Of course. How absurd you are! Motor-cars require more attention than children."
[Pg 143]
SOUR GRAPES
First Scorcher. "Call that exercise?"
Second Scorcher. "No. I call it sitting in a draught!"
[Pg 145]
Not to be Caught.—
Motorist (whose motor has thrown elderly villager into horse-pond). "Come along, my man, I'll take you home to get dry."
Elderly Villager. "No, yer don't. I've got yer number, and 'ere I stays till a hindependent witness comes along!"
[Pg 146]
Pedestrian. "I hear Brown has taken to cycling, and is very enthusiastic about it!"
Cyclist. "Enthusiastic! Not a bit of it. Why, he never rides before breakfast!"
[Pg 147]
GROTESQUERIES
Words wanted to express feelings
When your motor refuses to move, twenty miles from the nearest town.
[Pg 148]
SO INCONSIDERATE
"Jove! Might have killed us! I must have a wire screen fixed up."
BROWNING ON THE ROAD.Round the bend of a sudden came Z 1 3,
And I shot into his front wheel's rim;
And straight was a fine of gold for him,
And the need of a brand-new bike for me.
[Pg 149]
"IF DOUGHTY DEEDS MY LADY PLEASE"
"Mamma! Mr. White says he is longing to give you your first bicycle lesson!"
[Pg 150] A WISH (By a Wild Wheelman. A long way after Rogers)Mine be a "scorch" without a spill,
A loud "bike" bell to please mine ear;
A chance to maim, if not to kill,
Pedestrian parties pottering near.
My holloa, e'er my prey I catch,
Shall raise wild terror in each breast;
If luck or skill that prey shall snatch
From my wild wheel, the shock will test.
On to the bike beside my porch
I'll spring, like falcon on its prey,
And Lucy, on her wheel shall "scorch,"
And "coast" with me the livelong day.
To make old women's marrow freeze
Is the best sport the bike has given.
To chase them as they puff and wheeze,
On rubber tyre—by Jove, 'tis heaven!
THE BIKER BIKEDHenpeck'd he was. He learnt to bike.
"Now I can go just where I like,"
He chuckled to himself. But she
Had learnt to bike as well as he,
And, what was more, had bought a new
Machine to sweetly carry two.
Ever together now they go,
He sighing, "This is wheel and woe."
[Pg 151]
"WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS," &c.
He (alarmed by the erratic steering). "Er—and have you driven much?"
She (quite pleased with herself).
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