PATERFAMILIAS AS HAMLET. _Ham._――To bake, or not to bake, that is the question:―― Whether ’tis better for ourselves to make Digestive, light, sweet, wholesome home-made bread; Or to take in tradesmen’s loaves against our sense, And, nothing heeding, eat them?――To eat――eat what?―― The trough’s abominations without end: The cockroach! a thousand unnatural things The bakehouse teems with,――’tis adulteration Devoutly to be shun’d. Impure? Or pure? ’Praps pure! perchance impure:――ay, there’s the rub; For in this loaf of bread what dirt may come From unclean baker at his midnight toil, Must give us pause: There’s the respect That takes all relish from the staff of life: For who that reads his _Lancet_, or his _Times_, Would eat this stuff the baker sends, contentedly, Knowing full well from analysts’ reports And sanitary officers’ returns, The noisome mysteries of the baker’s art, When he himself bread, cakes, and scones may make With Borwick’s Baking Powder? _Funny Folks_, December, 1883. ――――:o:―――― HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY ON THE TURKISH BATH. SCENE――_Opposite the Turkish Bath, West Street, Brighton._ _Ham._――To bathe, or not to bathe,――that is the question; Whether ’tis wiser in a man to suffer The aches and pangs of disordered nature, Or to take baths against a sea of troubles And by so doing end them? To strip――to sweat, No more; and, by a roast, to say we end The headache, and a thousand natural ills That flesh is heir to,――’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To strip,――to sweat:―― To sweat! and be shampooed:――aye, there’s the rub; For in that heat such evils may remove We need not shuffle off this mortal coil, But save our lives. ’Tis this experience That makes so many take the Turkish Bath; For who would bear the whips and stings of pain, The consumptive’s cough, the fat man’s obesity, The pangs of dyspepsia, or Bright’s disease, The torturings of asthma, or the woes That Alcohol upon the inebriate brings, When he himself might his deliverance take With a bare body? Who would rheumatism bear, And grunt and groan under a weary life? But that an ignorance of Turkish baths, Those re-discovered pleasures, unto which Wise travellers return, doth still prevail, And makes us tamely bear those ills we have, Heedless of remedies that we know not of. Thus ignorance oft makes wretches of us all; And thus the native hue of health and vigour Is sicklied o’er with the pallor of disease. But thus, I ween, it shall not be with me; The good I know, and oft have tried, again I will embrace. Clerk, in thy dressing rooms Hast thou a place for me?