entures, need not to make
deliberately 'Sentimental Journeys' through France, or Italy, or
by forest or mountain, picturesque hamlet, or romantic stream. The
purlieus of great cities amongst the poverty-stricken members of
what it is usual to call the 'lower middle-classes,' will furnish
multitudinous subjects for pensive thought, and--what were a whole
world better--for practical benevolence. 'Tis too late, alas! to do
aught for this dead Violinist, but were eyes and pen more sedulously
and sympathetically employed about real, if sordid-seeming, in place
of imaginary, if picturesque, woes, why verily, EUGENIUS, something
more, perchance, might be done in such pitiful cases as that I
have described to thee in non-journalistic language, than what was
formally done by the Coroner's Jury, who--as they were bound to
do, indeed--'_returned a verdict in accordance with the medical
testimony_.'"

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[Illustration: PUNCH'S PIC-NIC. THE PARLIAMENTARY MIRAGE.]

* * * * *

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

NO. XIII.--TO IRRITATION.

I have just come home from my Club in a state bordering upon
distraction. No great misfortune has happened to me, my dearest
friend has not been black-balled, the Club bore has not had me in his
unrelenting clutches. The waiters have been, as indeed they always
are, civil and obliging, the excellent _chef_ catered with his
usual skill to my simple mid-day wants, my table companions were
good-humoured, cheerful, and pleasantly cynical. What then, you may
ask, has happened to shatter my nerves and impair my temper for the
day? It is a simple matter, and I am almost ashamed to confess it
openly. But I am encouraged by the fact that two eminently solid and,
so far as I could see, perfectly unemotional gentlemen were as deeply
pricked and worried by what happened as I was myself. To begin with,
I do not admit that my nerves vibrate more easily than those of my
fellow-men. I have never killed an organ-grinder, I am guiltless of
the blood of a German band, I have even gone so far as to spare guards
who asked for my railway-ticket after I had carefully wrapped myself
up for a journey, and no touting vendor of subscription books or works
of art can truthfully say that I have kicked him. On the whole I think
I am reasonably even-tempered and of higher than average amiability.
Others may judge me differently. I don't wish to quarrel with them.