PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET,

1893.

66

PREFACE

VOX, et præterea nihil!" murmured Somebody in the background.

"Who made that stale and inappropriate quotation ?" exclaimed Mr. Oracle PUNCH, looking severely around the illustrious group gathered in his sanctum about the brazen tripod which bore his brand-new Phonograph. Nobody answered.

"Glad to see you are ashamed of yourself, whoever you are," snapped the Seer.

"Rather think the-a-Spook spoke," muttered a self-important-looking personage, obliquely eyeing a shadowy visitor from Borderland.

"Humph! JULIA may use your hand, but you will not trump mine," retorted the Oracle.

"If revenants knew what nonsense is put into their spectral mouths by noodles and charlatans, they would never return to be made spectral pilgarlics of." "A ghost is a good thing in a Christmas story!" laughed the jolly old gentleman in a holly-crown. "Elsewhere it is generally a fraud and a nuisance."

"Right, Father Christmas!" cried Mr. PUNCH. "But the Voces from my Oracular Funograph are not ghostly nothings, neither are they ambiguous, like the oracles of the Sibyl of Cuma,-to which, my eloquent Premier, some have had the audacity to compare certain of your vocal deliverances."

The Old Oracular Hand smiled sweetly. "Nescit vox missa reverti," he murmured. "Would that EDISON could invent a Party Leader's Phonograph whose utterances should satisfy at the time without danger of being quoted against one fifty years later by CLEON the Tanner, or AGORACRITUS the Sausage-Seller, to whom even the Sibylline Books would scarce have been sacred. But you and your Funograph-as you neatly call it-have never been Paphlagonian, have never had to give up to Party what was meant for Mankind."

"And Womankind, surely, Mr. GLADSTONE?" subjoined the Strong-minded Woman, glaring reproachfully through her spectacles at the Anti-Woman's-Rights Premier. "I wish I could say as much of you, Sir!"

"Labour and the Ladies seem to have small share in his thoughts," began the Striker, hotly, when Lord ROSEBERY touched him gently on his fustian-clad shoulder, and he subsided.

"Am I not a lady?" queried HIBERNIA, with an affectionate glance at her aged champion.

"Golly, and me too?" added a damsel of dusky Libyan charms, clinging close to the stalwart arm of Napoleonic CECIL RHODES.

"Yes-with a difference!" said the Oracle, drily. "Place aux dames' is a motto of partial and rather capricious application, is it not, my evergreen Premier?"

"A principle of politeness rather than of politics or Parliament-at present," murmured the G. O. M. "Pooh! suiffed the Strong-minded Woman. "It will spread. Read Mr. H. FOWLER'S Bill, and Dr. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE's Woman and Natural Selection; put this and that together, and perpend!"

"The Penny Phonograph," pursued Mr. Oracle PUNCH, "is now pro ligiously patronised. For the popular penny you can hear an American band, a Chevalier co-ter ballad, the Charge of the Light Brigade,' a comic song by Little TICH,' or a speech by the Old Man el quent. No; for the latter I believe they charge twopence. That is fame. my Pantagruelian Premier But in my Funograph-charge the unchangeable Threepence-you can hear the very voice of Wisdom and Wit, of Humanity and Humour, of Eloquence and Essential Truth, of Music and of Mirth!"

"Hear! hear! hear!" chorussed everybody.

"You shall hear!" said the Oracle. "Stand round, all of you, and adjust your ear-tubes! DIONYSIUS's Ear was not an aural circumstance' (as your countryman would say, CLEVELAND) compared with this. Vox, et præterea nihil, indeed!" "Nihil-or Nihilism," growled the Trafalgar Square Anarchist, "is the burden of the vox populi of to-day”

"Vox diaboli, you mean." interrupted the great Funographer, sternly. "And there is no opening for that vox here. Shut up! You are here, misguided mischief-maker, not to spout murderously dogmatic negation, but to listen and-I hope -learn!"

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"I trust you have guidance for me," murmured gentle but anxious-faced Charity. "It would, like my ministrations, be most seasonable-as Father Christmas could tell you-for between my innumerable claims, and my contradictory 'multitude of counsellors,' my friends and enemies, my gushingly indiscriminate enthusiasts, and my arid, hide-bound' organisers,' I was never, my dear Mr. PUNCH, so completely puzzled in my life."

"Sareet lady," responded the Oracle, with gentle gravity, "there is guidance here for all who will listen; heavenly Charity and diabolic Anarchy, eloquent Statesmanship and adventurous Enterprise, scared Capital and clamorous Labour, fogged Finance and self-assertive Femininity; for the motley and many-voiced Utopia-hunters who fancy they see imminent salvation in Imperial Pomp or Parochial Pump, in Constitutional Clubs or County Councils, in Home Rule, Primrose Leagues, or the Living Wage, in Democracy or in Dynamite, in High Art or Mahatmas, in Science or in Spooks. Take your places, Ladies and Gentlemen! Charity first, if you please, with Father Christmas to her right, leaving room for the little New Year on her left. Listen all, and learn by the various voices of that many-cylindered, marvellous Funographic Machine, my