Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870

"Go It, My Sweet Dears," Said I, "Peel Off Their Skins, And You Shall All Have A Bran New Caliker Apiece To-Morrer Mornin."

Well, sir, in quicker time than I can write this, the house was cleared and the front door locked agin em; but my troubles had only just commenced, for I had, figerately speakin, jumped from the fryin pan into the fire.

"HIRAM GREEN," said MARIAR, backin me up into a corner, "you old sinner, you, look at that senter table, all scratched up with heels of a pair of drunken cow-hide butes. Look at my work basket; it looks as if a percession of hogs had been marchin into it.—See that nice rag carpet which took me over 6 months to make; what is it? eh! it's covered with old tabacker cuds, mud, segar stumps, broken whiskey bottles, and dish water. Haint you a sweet venerable head of a family? Haint you a saperb copy bound in calf, of ex-legal jewrisprudence?

"Presented you with a tea sarvice, did they? Oh! yool be the ruination of this family with your confounded efforts seekin arter fame. You—you—"

I dident wait to hear no more, but left the house with my feelins in a hily mixed up state. I have made up my mind to one thing, that if I ever get up another cerprise, I will hire good moral men, sich as editors, noosepaper men, and literary folks ginerally, whose conducts is above suspishon, to conduct the preceedins.When this you spy,

Remember HI,

Ewers, truly,

HIRAM GREEN, Esq.,

Lait Gustise of the Peece.

BABY'S PHOTOGRAPH.

SONG OF THE OYSTER.

"PUT ME IN MY LITTLE BED."

OUR PORTFOLIO

An Exciting Interview with King William.—"Seeing" Thiers and Going him Better.—The Influence of Monkeys In Diplomacy.

VERSAILLES, EIGHTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

"I don't believe a word of it," said the King, with an impatient stamp of the foot and a deprecatory wave of the hand—"not a word of it."

You see, dear PUNCHINELLO, the situation was thus: I had undertaken, not indeed without grave misgivings, to propitiate his Majesty, after the failure of the THIERS-BISMARCK negotiations, and, if possible, procure such terms as would save Parisians from the galling necessity of immolating the monkeys of the Jardin des Plantes to the popular demand for something to eat. I thought, as an American citizen and your correspondent, my propositions might have some chance of being favorably entertained, especially as I knew that the English Minister's presents of Stilton cheese and many dozens of BASS' bottled ale to BISMARCK had failed to prevent the current of the Chancellor's prejudice from running strongly in favor of Americans. Thus morally armed, and bearing in my pocket a passe-partout from Prussian Headquarters, I approached Versailles on the second evening after the departure of M. THIERS, and found the King occupying the apartment in the central pavilion of the palace, which had once been the sleeping-chamber of Louis XVI. and his unhappy spouse MARIE ANTOINETTE. Many alterations had taken place since I was last there and saw the wretched Queen from the balcony endeavoring to assuage the fierce mob that surged beneath. The room was not like the room in which I once helped Louis to pull off his boots, and the delicate perfume that usually pervades the apartments of French royalty had succumbed to the amalgamated odors of Schweitzer Kase and Saur Kraut.

"It is apparent, sire," said I to WILLIAM, who was sitting there "that Count BISMARCK has wholly misunderstood the situation in Paris."

"Not a bit of it," said the King; "don't I know well enough they've got down to two ounces a day for each man, and horse meat at that?

"You forget, sire, their vast supply of asses."

"Do I, indeed? when they've done nothing but develop an unlimited number of them ever since the war began."

I had an idea then that his majesty must have meant this for sarcasm though my own experience told me that it was only too true; and it also occurred to me that I was not in my true station as the representative of a government of "asses." Nothing but a stern sense of duty prevented me from clearing out at once under this last harrowing reflection. Accordingly, I returned to the charge with diminished vigor, assuring the King that if his army kept on blockading Paris in this cruel sort of way, the population would soon be dying by thousands. It was very strange why he wouldn't draw off his troops. What did he want with Paris? What had Paris done to him? Weren't there plenty of other cities in this world that didn't care a cent how much he bombarded them? (I began to think that possibly I might be growing childish in my method of stating the case, but it was only a momentary weakness that made me think so.) Where was Tyre? Let him go and bombard Tyre. Nobody cares for Tyre now. Where was Sidon? If he wanted to throw away his ammunition, let him "go" for Sidon. Where was Tuckahoo, New Jersey? Would New York care if Tuckahoo was reduced to the level of its original swamp? Moreover, there were lots of cities away off in China, yearning to have the rays of modern civilization let into them. Would it be anything out of his way to travel in that direction with a few big KRUPP guns, and give civilization a fair opening to get in at? Wasn't it cowardly to be punching all the time at one poor, miserable little town like Paris, that ain't big enough to help itself, and wouldn't have done the same by him no matter if it got ever so many high old chances? "Think of it, oh! think of it, my royal brother," I said, laying a hand on each of his royal shoulders. He took my hands off, and told BISMARCK to bring him a wisp-broom. It was a cruel insult, but I stood unmoved in the midst of it. "Perhaps at some future hour and place, Your Majesty, we may meet under different circumstances." That was a proposition he exhibited no disposition to deny. At this juncture a courier arrived from the front, breathless with excitement, and speechless too. The King seized him by the back of the neck and shook him violently, but the poor fellow couldn't articulate a word, I suggested that cold keys be put down his back, and his feet thrust into the fire. That brought him to so fast that I got behind an arm-chair for protection. In a few seconds he gathered voice enough to say:

"S-S-Sire, P-P-P-Paris is e-eatin' u-u-up the m-m-mon-monkeys."

Fatal news! It was all up with my museum.

Paris reduced to monkeys, and no treaty signed!

Horrible catastrophe!

I offered myself to Satan for a good lie—anything, I didn't care what, to clinch matters, and bring the King to terms. The Old Boy served me.

"Your Majesty, I forebore to tell you the worst; but it can be kept back no longer. You must fly from here; fly from Paris. Your worthy queen, the great, the good, the patriotic AUGUSTA, is now lying at the point of—"

"Liar!" shouted the King, as he seized a boot-jack from the hands of BISMARCK and hurled it at me with all his strength. I burst the back of my coat dodging the missile, which did not, however, interrupt the rapid utterance of my dreadful communication.

"Spare one moment more to hear what I have just received by telegraph from Berlin, which is to say that your grandmother—"

"I never had a grandmother!" roared the King, upon the verge of madness, as the Crown Prince, at the head of six Army Corps surrounded the building and captured me without firing a shot.

P.S.—It is scarcely necessary in my present exhausted state to say that my liberation is once more entirely due to the intercession of that man of all men, the defender of injured innocence, and the champion of all unfortunates, the most honorable Mr. WASHBURNE, American Minister, &c. He told them that he had known me from boyhood; that my father died in the lunatic asylum, and dying, bequeathed his intellectual characteristics to his son, which was all he had to bequeath. The King said it was more than likely, and so I got off.

DICK TINTO.