"MIDSUMMER MADNESS."

FEARFUL epidemic is raging amongst the country newspapers, denoting its presence by a particularly offensive eruption. Sometimes our afflicted contemporaries break out into bad grammar, sometimes into a wild and incoherent jargon, and very often into both.

occa

The Bendigo Advertiser has fallen a victim to the malady, and the symptoms are of such a distressing character, that nothing but a course of Lindley Murray, combined with the exhibition of sional doses of Whately, can preserve the sufferer from insanity or fatuity. In proof of the deplorable condition to which the unfortunate invalid is already reduced, Punch refers to the following extract from an article, entitled "Political Gossip" in the Advertiser of Saturday last :

"The time will shortly come when the hermaphrodites will be found minus in their current account. It is all very well to talk about conscience and to decry faction, but representatives must do something more than hang under eaves droppings, and to hold their principles on the issues of chance majorities. are wanted, not to approve or frustrate the minority, but rather to stand uprightly-holding the scales even for the general good, and to constrain the Government to discharge its public duties."

Men

Does not the foregoing read like an excerpt from the notes of a crazed reporter, who has jotted down the distracted harangue of a delirious orator? "Hermaphrodites" with "current accounts; "representatives" hanging "under eaves droppings ;" and men "holding the scales" which are "to constrain the Government to discharge its public duties !"-"Wild and whirling words" truly, and powerfully suggestive of a strait jacket, and salutary restraint. But still more alarming symptoms manifest themselves anon :

"Haines, perhaps, deserves a better fate, and may be pitied in his predicament for a better farmer ne'er ploughed (sic) dew from lawn' As a member, he seems to be spoiled by evil contaminations. Gradually he has undergone a process of deterioration-the polarity of his virtues are (SIC) reversed, and like a decomposing fish, his luminosity is evidence of lost vitality. It is positively painful to witness his spasmodic ebullitions of temper and clap-trap. As a private gentleman, his deportment was frank and manly, and a bluff ingenuousness graced his disposition and habits. The amenities are now all vanished, and he cannot rise in reply without betraying a petulant and malignant bearing-unbecoming a minister, and unworthy a gentleman. The day has gone by for cowardly assailing of motives and character,the CONTICUERE OMNES men regard such attempts with contempt. The days of the present ministry are numbered, and valuable as bush relics may be in the museum of the University, Haines may for the future be classed by Professor M'Coy with soddened damper and the worn-out billylabelled, Times isn't what they used to was.' A freer and more generous liber

ality now encircles the world. Mankind link their hands together, and the sons of toil in this colony will no longer bend the knees in shame, at the foot of an usurped throne."

Is society safe when individuals afflicted with such a rabid form of madness, as is exhibited by the writer of the above string of incoherencies, are allowed to roam about the colony at large, and permitted to rave and gibber in the columns of a newspaper? The unhappy man's want of "luminosity" is surely undeniable "evidence of lost" sanity.

And notions blessedly absurd
As fancy ever shaped to word,
That fitfully will go and come,
And gyrate through the cerebrum-
Ye powers, if such there be, oh, curb
Each flight of adjective and verb,
Restrain such pranks until we've told
Our legend of the land of gold;
Mark well with kindly, watchful glance,
Each disposition to romance ;
If even slightly inexact,
Arrest us in the very act,
And chain our narrative to fact.

Some years ago,-we need not fix
The date precisely more than six-
There lived a jolly settler, who,
Whatever he might hap to do,
Whatever trade he might pursue,

His schemes would always burst and break,
And prove a sumptuous mistake-
If any friend or next of kin
Supplied him with a little tin,
This same predestinated cash
In speculation went to smash;
The same ill-fortune still he'd suffer
And lived a most unlucky buffer---
At last, when twenty trades he'd learn't,
And twenty times his fingers burnt,
He thought, by way of money making,
He'd have a little turn at baking;
And one day consequently found
His assets sixpence in the pound.

Now, human patience has a line Of boundary, depicted fine; And to the baker Satan preached, That he this boundary line had reached; Whereon the man of rolls did vote The right thing was to cut his throatOr, more professionally, bake A pound of arsenic in a cake, Of which profusely to partake; And quietly his exit make

From all his bakehouse cares and woes, And bring the business to a close.

Off to the druggist then he went,
For this unwholesome condiment;
The druggist fellow-knowing card-
First eyed the baker very hard :
Saw desperation in his look;

And from beneath the counter took

A packet, which he marked in writing,
"Strong Poison," (but 'twas only whiting).
Then home the wretched baker goes,
To make an end of all his woes;
Turns up his sleeves and calmly makes
His flour and whiting into cakes;
Just bakes them till they're piping hot,
And desperately bolts the lot-
Prepares to lose the vital spark,
Makes testamentary remark-

In chalk-bemoans his wicked ways-
Then goes to bed to end his days.
Now flour and whiting cakes you see
When new are apt to disagree;
And soon, so gently o'er him stealing,
Sore stomach-ache the baker feeling-
Did to his mind suspicion bring
He'd done a very foolish thing;
What would the coroner say to him
To-morrow, when he came to view him-
And thinking, as he lived so long,
The arsenic wasn't very strong,
Lay lost in cogitation deep,

Until he groaned himself to sleep.

The baker dreamt he wasn't dead,
But far into the bush had fled;
In fancy that he had been told
Of mighty hidden stores of gold;
In fierce resolve and purpose rash
To find this magazine of cash;
In savage energy of search,

Just feeling fit to rob a church;

He thought that gold would give him all
That Hope could dream, or Thought recall;
Each power and pleasure heart could wish,
And every earthly loaf and fish.

Here had he lived a ragged life,
In poverty's eternal strife;

Could he but hit the yellow metal,
'Twould all his difficulties settle;

Life's troubles then would all be over,
He'd live in happiness and clover-
He swore, in passion uncontrolled,
He'd sell his very soul for gold,

Would any buy him-there's no knowing,
So crying out, "here, going, going."
A gentleman of dark renown

Stepped softly up and knocked him down, (Quite figuratively), and affirms

He takes the baker on these terms,
Observes, "my friend your'e fairly sold,
"So come along and get your gold."
The man of rolls in silence eyed
The figure stalking at his side,
Observed his heels, no sign of hoof,
His skull too had a proper roof,

A gentleman beyond a doubt,

The baker thought he'd see it out,

So gives his arm and takes the t'other's,
And off the pair then went like brothers,

Is it the wind that landward comes Down howling through the eternal gums ? Is it the sea's dull distant roar, Far thundering on the rock-bound shore ! Short time and every doubt has passed, The baker hears a furnace blast; Then groping through a cavern dark, That pierced a range of stringy bark, He comes to where, 'midst brimstone blaze,

And smell of matches, met his gaze

A hundred inky looking devils,
As if at some unearthly revels,

Mad rioting, as ne'er to tire,
Around a roaring furnace fire-
"There," said the stranger,
now behold
My manufactory of gold,

You've only just to fetch a dray,
And cart a ton or two away;
"Twill set you on your social legs,
"Twill raise you up some fifty pegs;
Make you, in short, beyond a doubt,
A gentleman right out and out;
Just give a little I. O. U.,

About your soul, and that will do."
"No!" said the plucky baker, "Never,
If I do that may I " - however,

No matter what emphatic word
He used, he meant he much preferred
To get the bargain off, and so
The Devil's guest prepared to go;
Which, when the Evil One did note,
He took the baker by the throat;
Who struggled nearly fit to choke,
And fought like fury till he woke !

And found a neighbour asking how
He came to make that horrid row;
Who, when the fast reviving baker
Found out was not an undertaker,
Did straightway answer to his question,

That arsenic brought on indigestion ;
But still did he his vision deem
A something stranger than a dream-
A sort of special call, that told
His destiny was bound in gold;—
So raking up a little tin,

He mizzled from his bakers' bin;
And persevered with luck surprising

In amateur geologising.

The tale has been already told,

About "a hundred tons of gold”-
But not an ounce of all the lot
Had stirred from its appointed spot,-
Sleeping beneath its unturned acre,
But for a poor dyspeptic baker!

MELBOURNE PUNCH'S PARLIAMENTARY DIARY.

DECEMBER 4.

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.-A great many notices of motion were given, among others one by Mr. Hood, that in anticipation of Federal legislation, it is expedient and necessary that the colonies of Australia be divided into territories of equal proportion." Equal proportion presumably means equal size, and as Victoria happens to be the smallest of the Australian colonies, probably no objection will be raised to the motion here. What the other colonies may say to it remains to be seen. Carrying out Mr. Hood s idea, however, Mr. Punch gives notice that in the event of the heme of equalization proving successful, he proposes entering Parliament expressly to

move

"That in anticipation of con siderable advantage likely to accrue thereupon, it is expedient that the properties of Mr. W. J. T. Clarke, Mr. Henry Miller, and Mr. Melbourne Punch be divided among those gentlemen in equal proportion."

Mr. Fawkner moved the appointment of a committee to memorialize the Queen not to send convicts to any party of Australia or the adjacent islands-a very proper motion, which ought, however to be no longer necessary, but the colonial office seems to hover over these colonies like a great blow-fly buzzing over a joint of meat and ready to drop down and contaminate it on the least relaxation of vigilance. The motion was carried.

Mr. Bennett's motion for opening the proceedings of the house with prayer was carried by the casting vote of the Speaker, so that the catalogue of "vain repetitions" will receive daily augumentation.

Having nothing particular to do, and no room ready to do it in, the Council then adjourned for a week.

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.-After all the fuss about the chairmanship of Committees, and the postponements that had taken place because there was no Chairman, the Assembly discovered that there was nothing in the usages of Parliament, or elsewhere, forbidding the appointment of a temporary Chairman. Mr. Griffith was accordingly elected to that post, and the House went into committee. Mr. G., as he took his seat, cast some sheeps' eyes at the Speaker's chair, as if On the whole, that locality would have agreed still better with him. however, he seemed to think that half a loaf was better than no bread, and to be satisfied with his proximity to the object of his desires. Mr Sladen then made his financial statement; prefacing it (truthful creature!) with the announcement that it would be (like himself) long and dull. It was satisfactory to hear, however, that the country had not out-run the constable--but besides having ever so much ready money, would have a balance after paying all debts. Why the Govern ment have been borrowing money at interest, while they had half a million lying idle at Mr. Miller's and elsewhere, for months together, seems puzzling, however. The watch or umbrella of private life is never spouted while the pocket is full, and the same principle ought to govern public affairs. The most remarkable parts of Mr. Sladen's statements were, perhaps, the proposal to establish a National Bank, (whereupon Mr. Brooke exclaimed-"Who stole my thunder," or words to that effect), and the declared intention to put the screw upon This will amount on the squatters, to the tune of two pence an acre.

an average to nearly five hundred pounds a year per squatter. (Mem.

tice throughout the country, but is a shop where particular people buy a deleterious luxury, the use of which ought to be discouraged.

Mr. Haines moved the second reading of the Census Bill, explaining that the last Census had been a good deal bungled, and that the next one would be beautifully accurate and complete. It was proposed to take the ceusus on the 1st of February, which would fall on a Sunday, (here a gentleman in the strangers' gallery, a white choker, and highly perfumed with pine-apple rum, was observed to stagger,) which the Census commissiou had recommended as the best day. Mr. Harker said something else, but meant to say that he thought the same machinery used in taking the Census might be employed in the registration of electors. As he was quite unintelligible, however, no one took any notice of the suggestion he intended to make, and the bill was read a second time and just dipped in committee-Mr. Aspinall merely sitting down in the chair, getting up again, reporting progress, and obtaining leave to sit again another time.

Mr. Haines moved the second reading of the Electoral Act Amendfeeling, said he did think that property should be represented, and he ment Bill, upon which Mr. Greeves, with the usual indications of deep did not think that a man without a stake in the country, and who had not been in it more than six months-and all that kind of thing for about three quarters of an hour.

A great many other members took part in the debate-including Dr. Evans, who made quite a clean speech; Mr. Michie, who was sarcastic and histrionic; Mr. Aspinall, who was entertaining and purposeless; the Attorney-General, who was dogmatic and unconvincing; Mr. Griffith, who was weak and well-meaning; Mr. Fyfe, who was incoherent and obscure-and about a dozen others. Finally the bill was read a second time, upon a division, in which the Government had the majority by four votes.