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Updated: June 14, 2025
Punch is certainly a comic journal of which the English have every reason to be proud; but if we had to name the paper most typical of the English taste in humour we should, perhaps, be shamefacedly compelled to turn to Ally Sloper.
Penniman had not ventured to lay the famous explanation of Morris's motives before Mrs. Almond, though she had thought it good enough for Catherine and she pronounced her brother too consistently indifferent to what the poor creature must have suffered and must still be suffering. Dr. Sloper had his theory, and he rarely altered his theories.
Bandages on hands, feet, and, in some cases, heads, were the popular form of adornment, and the man who did not have some part of his anatomy decorated in this way was looked upon as a "sloper," or one who ran away from work. For how could any one do his share without getting a finger jammed or a toe crushed?
Sloper was then dropped over the side into the boat, which pulled ashore, landed him, and returned; and a few minutes later the cutter was standing for the mouth of the river, leaving the tailor on the Herne Bay beach, forty miles from home without a farthing in his pocket.
He had a sweet, light tenor voice, and when he had finished every one made some exclamation every one, that is, save Catherine, who remained intensely silent. Mrs. Penniman declared that his manner of singing was "most artistic," and Dr. Sloper said it was "very taking very taking indeed"; speaking loudly and distinctly, but with a certain dryness.
It must be added that though she had the expectation of a fortune Dr. Sloper for a long time had been making twenty thousand dollars a year by his profession, and laying aside the half of it the amount of money at her disposal was not greater than the allowance made to many poorer girls.
Thus much was overheard by Miles as they turned into a side-street, and entered what was obviously one of the poorer districts of the town. "Evidently that soldier's opinion does not agree with yours," remarked Miles, as they walked along. "More's the pity!" returned the shabby man, whose name he had informed his companion was Sloper.
"What did you fire at us for?" said Bob. "I never fired at you. I was firing for my own diversion," answered Mr. Sloper. "D' ye load with stones for your divarsion, as ye call it?" said Bob. "There was no stones when you came along," cried the tailor. "Why did you aggrevate me by firing in return?"
Millet's "Angelus," "Ally Sloper at the Derby," a splendid lithograph of "The Angel of Pity at the Well of Cawnpore," Lottie Collins, scantily attired, in her song and dance "Tara-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," Sir Frederick Leighton's "Wedded," a gruesome depiction of a Chinese execution at Canton, an old-fashioned engraving of that dashing, debonair cavalry officer, "Major Hodson," of Indian Mutiny fame, George Robey, as a nurse-maid, wheeling Little Tich in a perambulator, the grim, torture-lined face of Slatin Pasha, a ridiculously obscene picture entitled "Two coons scoffing oysters for a wager," that glorious edifice the "Taj Mahal" of India, and so on.
If you choose to say that, I am no more disposed to argue with you than if you choose to wear a mitre in Fleet Street or drink a bottle of ink, or declare the figure of Ally Sloper more dignified and beautiful than the head of Jove. There is no Q.E.D. that you cannot do so. You can. You will not like to go on with it, I think, and it will not answer, but that is a different matter.
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