DEAR SUNNY:—­In our issue dated November 19th, we took occasion to congratulate you upon the sparkle added to your “Sunbeams” by the judicious reproduction of our crisp and crystalline little poem “SALLY SALTER.”  We have no doubt that your languid circulation was partly restored by the timely aid thus unconsciously afforded you by PUNCHINELLO.  If any SALTER could save your bacon for you, surely “SALLY” was the one to do it; only you shouldn’t have tried to pass her off as one of your own SALLIES.  The jackdaw decked out in peacock’s feathers was a bird truly absurd, though not a whit more so than a Solar Dodo like yourself with a PUNCHINELLO plume for a tail.

Now, in your number for November 9th, we find a remarkably pretty “Autumn Song.”  It was pointed out to us, triumphantly, by a man who carries The Sun in his pocket, and who wanted to know why PUNCHINELLO never gave his readers anything like that? In reply, we courteously referred him to PUNCHINELLO of October 22d, in which that identical “Autumn Song” made its “first appearance upon any stage.”  And so there you go, dear DODO SUNNY, with another PUNCHINELLO feather in your pensive tail.  Keep decking yourself with the feathers, dear SUNNY.  They become you well; and when you’ve got a bushel or so of ’em, we’ll dispose of you to BARNUM as the original Anti-Promethean Dodo that stole fire from PUNCHINELLO to light up The Sun.

PUNCHINELLO.

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[Illustration:  THAT BLONDE BUSINESS.

Little Nell. “O MA, WHAT PRETTY BOOTS THOSE LADIES HAVE!”

Mamma. “AND SUCH NICE DRESSES, TOO.”

Little Nell. “DRESSES, MA?  I DON’T SEE ANY DRESSES—­I ONLY SEE THEIR BOOTS!”]

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OUR PORTFOLIO.

A Bilious Review of the French Situation.—­Hot Fat for Idiots.—­Trochu
Encounters a Conundrum.

PARIS, SEVENTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO:—­If America has any “bowels of compassion” it is fit that they should yearn now.  This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that ebb where national “extreme unction” must be administered speedily, else the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without the benefit of clergy.  I feel as if I would like to get the whole nation on a toasting-fork before a slow fire, and roast it into a realizing sense of what the devil is doing for it.  To see BISMARCK feeding on shrimps with anchovy sauce, and drinking champagne, while TROCHU and JULES FAVRE fight domestic treason within the walls, and the Prussians without, upon stomachs that feebly digest Parisian “hard tack” and gritty vin ordinaire, is enough to make the spirit of liberty lay over the mourner’s bench and perpetrate a perfect Niagara of tears.  When FLOURENS bagged the whole government at the Hotel de Ville the other day, my feelings got the better of me, and I went for him.