LONDON:

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET,

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1893.

[pg iii]

PREFACE

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

"Who made that stale and inappropriate quotation?" exclaimed Mr. OraclePunch,looking severely around the illustrious group gathered in his sanctumabout 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 trumpmine," retorted the Oracle. "If revenants knew whatnonsense is put into their spectral mouths by noodles and charlatans, they wouldnever return to be made spectral pilgarlics of."

"A ghost is a good thing—in a Christmas story!" laughed the jolly old gentlemanin a holly-crown. "Elsewhere itis generally a fraud and a nuisance."

"Right, Father Christmas!" cried Mr. Punch. "But the Voces frommy Oracular Funograph are not ghostlynothings, neither are they ambiguous, like the oracles of the Sibyl of Cumæ,—towhich, my eloquent Premier, some havehad the audacity to compare certain of your vocal deliverances."

The Old Oracular Hand smiled sweetly. "Nescit vox missa reverti," hemurmured. "Would that Edison couldinvent a Party Leader's Phonograph whose utterances should satisfy at the timewithout danger of being quoted against onefifty years later by Cleon the Tanner, or Agoracritus theSausage-Seller, to whom even the Sibylline Books would scarcehave been sacred. But you and your Funograph—as you neatly call it—have neverbeen Paphlagonian, have never had togive up to Party what was meant for Mankind."

"And Womankind, surely, Mr. Gladstone?" subjoined theStrong-minded Woman, glaring reproachfully throughher spectacles at the Anti-Woman's-Rights Premier. "I wish I could say as muchof you, Sir!"

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

"Am I not a lady?" queried Hibernia, with an affectionate glanceat her aged champion.

"Golly, and me too?" added a damsel of dusky Libyan charms, clinging close tothe stalwart arm of NapoleonicCecil Rhodes.

"Yes—with a difference!" said the Oracle, drily. "'Place aux dames' is amotto of partial and rather capriciousapplication, is it not, my evergreen Premier?"

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