[Illustration: REACTION INDIGNANT CITIZEN (_who had expected great things of the London County Council after the extinction of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the abolition of the Wine and Coal Dues, receives an application for Rates amounting to 2s. 8¾d. in the pound_): "D--! D--!! D--!!!"] In the very next month the mood of disillusionment is apparent in the cartoon revealing friction and the delight of the ex-Bumble and ex-member of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Not that _Punch_ regretted the Board, though he rendered justice to its greatest achievements in the decidedly mixed epitaph composed for its tombstone, to be surmounted by an armed figure labelled "Black Mail" and headed "Peace to Its Hashes":-- To the Melancholy Memory of The Metropolitan Board of Works. It was an Unfortunate Institution. Flushed in the earlier years of its Existence, With a laudable Ambition To command the Respect and Admiration of the Ratepayers, It gave an Embankment to the Thames, Drained London, And suddenly showed the world How jobbery could be elevated to the level of the Fine Arts; Thus Fighting to the End, it was more anxious To leave an Inheritance of Spite to its Successor, Than to retire from the Scene of its Late Labours with Dignity to itself. Unwept, Unrepentant, yet Unhung, It has Passed for Good and Aye to that Oblivion From which it is Possible the More Thoughtful and Philosophical Ratepayer May think it would have been as Well For the Interests of Municipal Honesty That it had Never Emerged. The series of articles on "County Councildom" are by no means sympathetic; and the indignation of the ratepayer, who had expected a reduction in his burdens and was proportionately disappointed, is vividly and vocally expressed in Du Maurier's picture of "Reaction." The resignation of Sir John Lubbock and later on of Lord Rosebery,[6] the Chairman of the L.C.C., lent point to _Punch's_ allusions to the jubilation of "Bumble" and his confident hope that he will have to come back. "Bumble's" idea is that the "toffs" and "big pots" were "hooking it" in disgust at the bad manners and arrogance of the "Progressives." But if the truth be told, it was not the methods of the L.C.C. in dealing with ordinary affairs of administration that disappointed and exasperated _Punch_: it was the spirit in which the Progressives addressed themselves to the task of regulating theatres and places of entertainment. In his verses "Ye Moderates of England" he inveighs against the grand-maternal rule of the Puritan L.C.C., and more especially Messrs. McDougall and Lidgett:--