Besides the British Publick is used to our little ways, as we are quite used to theirn, and they talk to us in that nice confidenshal tone about the different wines, et setterer, as no true Born Englishman ewer yet spoke to a Frenchman, much less a German.  No, no, the hole thing’s a mistake, as will soon be found out.  And what a groce injustice to the native article.  These sollem-looking Germans, not content with pushing our poor sons from their stools in our counting-houses, as Macbeth says, must now cum and take the werry bread out of their poor Father’s mouths.  Oh pale-faced shame, where’s your blush?  And think too of their himperance.  Why they are acshilly a going for to have a hexibition of their own, here in Lundon, and does anyone think as they’ll write up on the gates, “Only English Waiters need apply?” Why the hidear is ridiclous, but where’s the difference I should like to kno.  No, no, no one can kno better than I do, from a long and waried xperience, from the Grand old City, the ome of ospitality and turtle soup, to the “Grand” and “Metropole,” the omes of lucksury and refinement, that the British Public likes his British Waiter, he likes his nice respecful ways, the helligent Bow with which he ands him his At, and the graceful hair with which he receeves his little doosure.

ROBERT.

* * * * *

SPECIMENS FROM MR. PUNCH’S SCAMP-ALBUM.

NO.  IV.—­THE HUSBAND’S OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW.

We will suppose that you are a young wife, and that your husband is absent in the City during the greater part of the day.  One afternoon a card is brought in bearing the inscription:—­

CAPTAIN CAULKER.

United Service Club.  The Hermitage, Coventry.

Which document is followed closely by a tall, well-groomed, rather portly and florid stranger, with a military moustache, who greets you with the utmost cordiality.  “I happened to find myself in this neighbourhood,” he says, “and I could not—­I really could not—­resist this opportunity.  My name, I venture to think, is a sufficient introduction?”

It is nothing of the sort—­but you are too shy and too polite to admit it, so you merely murmur some incoherency.  He detects you at once.  “Ah!” he cries, in good-tempered reproach; “I see, I’ve been too sanguine.  Now confess, my dear lady, you haven’t a notion who I am!”

Thus brought to bay, you own that you have no clue to your visitor’s identity—­as yet.  “Well—­well,” he says, tolerantly, “Time is a terrible sponge—­though I had hoped that, even after all these years, your dear husband might have occasionally mentioned the name of his old school-chum!  I’ve never forgotten him—­no, all through the years I’ve been in India I’ve never forgotten dear old WALTER!”

“But my husband’s name is WILLIAM!” you say here.

[Illustration]