June 27, 1885.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

* • A ND where, Mr. Punch, is your Stall ? ” inquired Mercury, politely, as his penetrating eye surveyed the spacious
jLA- spread of the Inventories.

“The Ubiquitous is not to be arbitrarily localised, as the Herald-God should know,” responded the A -Pervasive-One
sententiously.

“ This is a marvellous sight,” said Mercury ; “ one that may well make me and Prometheus rather proud of our
mortal proteges.”

“ It may indeed be called, in a sense somewhat different from the Poet’s, to be su-re, ‘ the Heaven of Invention,’ ”
responded Mr. Punch.

Mercury pointed with his caduceus to the Great Gun department. “ Your youthful Dizzy,” said he, “ for whom I
admit I have a strong fellow-feeling, wrote Ixion in Heaven. The Thessalian came to grief. How, I wonder, would Gatling
get on there ? ”

“ I perceive your meaning,” said the Sage. “ There are those, however, who consider that in the propaganda of Peace
projectiles will be found to play the leading part, and that such a Devil Fish as the Torpedo will in the end conduce more
surely to Universal International Harmony than Arion’s dolphin.”

“ Ate and Eighty-Ton Guns seem to be rather more ‘ in a concatenation accordingly,’ at present,” remarked Apollo, drily.

“ Inventions and Music ! ” ejaculated the Cyllenian Argiphont. “A charming combination, and one in which Phoebus
and I feel a natural interest. My Tortoise had to be tortured into tunefulness, and perhaps Humanity may eventually tor-
pedo itself into harmony. Anyhow, these new Shows of yours are not at all a bad notion—-for John Bull. Characteristic
jumble of Shop and Song, Business and Bands, Art and Advertisement, Serious Science and Sham Arcadia, Classical Music
and Cheap Dinners ! ”

“ Still the Olympian Smart Young Man, Mercury ! ” said Mr. Punch, smiling. “ What an admirable paragraph-
writer you’d make, or what a first-rate Member for Woodstock ! ”

“ Do you think Lord Randolph will turn out as adroit a Bull-driver, in Britain, as I did in Pieria? ” queried " the

Saturnian’s love-child,” archly.

“ Can’t say,” said Mr. Punch. “ Though fresh, as you were, from his ‘ ambrosial (political) swaddling clothes,’ the
artful adolescent has shown some nous in getting the British Bulls—some of them—to follow his meandering footsteps.
Whether he'll lead them long, or if so, to a hecatomb, after your memorable example, who can say?”

“ Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat,” murmured Apollo, musingly.

“ A bit of blind Johnsonian dogmatism ! ” said Mercury. “ Look at Vivian Grey ! Was he bucolic or adipose ? No,

bram, not brawn, rules the Boeotians. Apollo, perhaps, was not quite at home among the herds of Admetus. Too ideal,

uplifted, Gladstonian! But your mercurial Nimblewit makes the best drover, whether hailing from Cyllene, Bucks or Wood-
stock.”