SIR,—­At this time of year, when our glorious Lees are in the full radiance of their summer beauty, it becomes a mere act of Christian duty to warn intending holiday-makers to avoid Whitecliffe, and to select Chorkstone as their place of sojourn instead.  An eminent local medical man asserts that morbiferous germs exist to a very dangerous degree in the Whitecliffe atmosphere, and that the Whitecliffe water is rendered almost solid by the multitude of bacilli it contains.  Another Chorkstone resident, who lately visited Whitecliffe, found the air so relaxing that he fainted away, and had it not been for the kindness of the landlord of a certain hotel, who had him carried out of his bar and driven off in a trap to his own home, he believes he would have succumbed!  Comment is needless.

Yours impartially, THE MAYOR OF CHORKSTONE.

SIR,—­There is not the slightest foundation for the ridiculous canard as to the inhabitants of this picturesque and abnormally fashionable town being “in a state of complete panic, owing to the fact that all the convicts recently confined at Shortland have broken out, and are indulging in frightful excesses in the neighbourhood.”  The convicts have not broken out; but an epidemic of gratuitous mendacity has done so, it appears.

Yours indignantly, THE MAYOR OF CURDSMOUTH.

P.S.—­Have you heard about the sanitary state of Shutmouth?  Shocking!

SIR,—­As I hear that it is rumoured that M. PASTEUR has discovered an entirely new and most dangerous kind of bacillus in the neighbourhood of pine-trees, perhaps I may mention, in order to reassure our myriads of intending summer visitors, that the death-rate at this town is one in ten thousand, and that we should have had no death-rate at all last week, if the one person referred to had not met with an unfortunate accident.  All the Shutmouth doctors are starving.

Yours, THE MAYOR OF SHUTMOUTH.

P.S.—­Ought not something to be done to check the mortality at
Curdsmouth?  It is disgraceful!

* * * * *

TO THE RIGHT WHEEL, BARROW!

  CAINE’S action shakes the Unionists’ dominion;
    Against it piteous appeals seem vain;
  But ‘tis, in his late colleagues’ pained opinion,
    Not “the nice conduct of a clouded CAINE!”

* * * * *

“THE SEA!  THE SEA!”

A BUSINESS-LIKE BALLAD.

(PENNED BY MR. PUNCH ON BEHALF OF “NOBODY’S BOYS.")

“We propose soon to take our rescued Street-Arabs for ’A Fortnight’s Holiday under Canvas’—­by the sea, if possible.”—­Appeal of Mr. J.W.C.  Fegan, of the Boys’ Home, Southwark.

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