But the Bench, when they heard him, grew bolder—­
    “Make it out to George Hamilton—­he
  Is the man who should figure as holder,”
    Said ROBERTSON-SHERSBY, J.P. 
  Just to think of the head of the Navy,
    The proudest and strongest afloat,
  Cutting joints or distributing gravy,
    First Lord of his own table d’hote!

  Will their Charity be a beginner
    At home?  Will they dine there each day,
  These Lords, on a succulent dinner,
    Free, gratis, and nothing to pay? 
  Well, well, though we’d rather prefer ships
    That burst not, we’ll take what they give. 
  So we offer our thanks to their Worships
    For permitting the licence to live.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  AMUSEMENTS FOR THE GALLERY—­AND THE MOB!]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “BEG PARDON, SIR!  BUT IF YOU WAS TO AIM AT HIS LORDSHIP THE NEXT TIME, I THINK HE’D FEEL MORE COMFORBLER, SIR!”]

* * * * *

MR. PUNCH’S PRIZE NOVELS.

NO.  III.—­JOANNA OF THE CROSS WAYS.

(BY GEORGE VERIMYTH, AUTHOR OF “RICHARD’S SEVERAL EDITIONS,” “THE APHORIST,” “SHAMPOO’S SHAVING-POT.")

[With this story came a long, explanatory letter.  The story, however, is itself so clear and easy to understand (as is all the work of this master), that the accompanying commentary is unnecessary.]

CHAPTER I.

In the earlier portion of the lives of all of us there is a time, heaven-given without doubt, for all things, as we know, draw their origin thence, if only in our blundering, ill-conditioned way we trace them back far enough with the finger of fate pointing to us as in mockery of all striving of ours on this rough bosom of our mother earth, a time there comes when the senses rebel, first faintly, and then with ever-increasing vehemence, panting, beating, buffeting and breasting the torrent of necessity, against the parental decree that would drench our inmost being in the remedial powder of a Gregorian doctor, famous, I doubt not, in his day, and much bepraised by them that walked delicately in the light of pure reason and the healthful flow of an untainted soul, but now cast out and abhorred of childhood soaring on uplifted wing through the vast blue of the modern pharmacopoeia.  Yet to them is there not comfort too in the symbolic outpourings of a primaeval wisdom which, embodied for all time in imperishable verse, are chanted in the haunts of the very young like the soft lappings of the incoming tide on a beach where rounded pebble disputes with shining sand the mastery of the foreshore?

[Illustration]