t one or two papers, taking the thing _au serieux_, commented
on the fact, and expressed their pleasure that "at last Mr. George
Augustus Sala has had the drubbing by _Punch_ he has so long and so
richly deserved"!

Mr. Clement Scott, the _doyen_ of the dramatic critics, Civil Servant
(like so many of the _Punch_ Staff), member of the clever band that
nurtured "Fun" into life, and brother-in-law of Mr. du Maurier, also had
to wait till Mr. Burnand was Editor before he was given the opportunity
to write for _Punch_. "It struck him," writes Mr. Scott, "that he might
mingle among the essentially comic pages an occasional poem that might
ventilate some grievance in a pathetic manner or describe some heroic
subject in the ballad style.... The first subject Burnand sent me was
the overworked and underpaid clerks in London. It took my fancy, and in
three hours after I received his letter I sent him 'The Cry of the
Clerk!' To my intense surprise, the morning after it appeared in _Punch_
I found it quoted _in extenso_ in 'The Times'--an unusual honour. I
believe Dr. Chinery the instant he read the poem clipped it out with his
own scissors and said, 'I don't know if this has ever been done before,
but we must quote the poem to-morrow morning.' The sub-editor was
aghast, but the poem was printed as from _Punch_."

These verses, indeed, struck people's consciences, as Thomas Hood had
struck them years ago with "The Song of the Shirt." It brought into
relief the enforced "respectability" of the men who earn but a few
shillings a week, and yet are supposed to be "above charity."

It was the last verse that most struck home:--

"Why did I marry? In mercy's name, in the form of my brother was I not
born?
Are wife and child to be given to him, and love to be taken from me
with scorn?
It is not for them that I plead, for theirs are the only voices that
break my sorrow,
That lighten my pathway, make me pause 'twixt the sad to-day and grim
to-morrow.
The Sun and the Sea are not given to me, nor joys like yours as you flit
together
Away to the woods and the downs, and across the endless acres of purple
heather.
But I've love, thank Heaven! and mercy, too; 'tis for justice only I bid
you hark
To the tale of a penniless man like me--to the wounded cry of a London
Clerk!"

Then he took the part of the shop-girls who are never allowed to sit
down ("Weary Womankind"); of the London childre