_Punch_ certainly exercised the national privilege of grumbling to the full, though the shafts of his satire were sometimes of the nature of boomerangs. We can sympathize with him when, in his list of "things and persons that should emigrate," he includes "all persons who give imitations of actors; all quack doctors and advertising professors; all young men who smoke before the age of fifteen, and young ladies who wear ringlets after the age of thirty," as fit for "dumping." But he runs the risk of the _Quis tulerit Gracchos_ retort when he bans "all punsters and conundrum makers." In the main he was a strenuous supporter of education, especially elementary education, and the recognition and reward of men of science and letters, but, along with his general support of literary and scientific institutions, he seldom missed a chance of making game of learned societies, beginning with the British Association. The ignorance of candidates for appointments in the Civil Service does not escape his reforming zeal, when in 1857 no fewer than 44 per cent. were rejected for bad spelling; yet in 1852 we find him publishing a picture of a Japanese as a black man. [Sidenote: _Desirable Emigrants_] [Illustration: OFFENDED DIGNITY SMALL SWELL (who has just finished a quadrille): "H'm, thank goodness that's over. Don't give me your bread-and-butter Misses to dance with--I prefer grown Women of the World!" (N.B. The bread-and-butter Miss had asked him how old he was, and when he went back to school.)] [Illustration: TWO WORDS TO A BARGAIN JAPANESE: "We won't have Free Trade. Our ports are closed, and shall remain so." AMERICAN: "Then we will open our ports, and convince you that you're wrong."] [Sidenote: _Exploiting the Dead_] Spiritualism invaded England from America at the end of the 'forties; the mania for table-turning dates from 1852, and in 1855 the famous "medium" Daniel Dunglas Home (the original of Browning's "Sludge") paid his first visit to England. From the very first _Punch's_ attitude was hostile, sceptical, even derisive; and he was one of the first to condemn the harrying of humble fortune-tellers while fashionable and expensive exponents of clairvoyance were immune from prosecution. Crystal-gazing is mentioned in 1851. Playing upon words, in the _Almanack_ for 1852 we read: "It is related as astonishing that there are some clairvoyants who can see right through anybody; but that is not so very strange. The wonder is that there should be anybody who cannot see through the clairvoyant." In 1853 it was seriously suggested by a mesmerist in the _Morning Post_ that he could get into communication with Sir John Franklin; this _Punch_ promptly pilloried, as, too, a little later, he did a reference to a play alleged to have been dictated by Shakespeare's spirit. In 1857 _Punch_ solemnly vouches for the authenticity of the following advertisement under the heading "Spirits by retail":--