Produced by Lesley Halamek, Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: PUNCH VOL CV] LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET, AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1893. * * * * * [Illustration: PREFACE] "_Vox, et præterea nihil!_" murmured Somebody in the background. "Who made that stale and inappropriate quotation?" exclaimed Mr. Oracle PUNCH, looking severely around the illustrious group gathered in his _sanctum_ about the brazen tripod which bore his brand-new Phonograph. Nobody answered. "Glad to see you are ashamed of yourself, whoever you are," snapped the Seer. "Rather think the--a--Spook spoke," muttered a self-important-looking personage, obliquely eyeing a shadowy visitor from Borderland. "Humph! JULIA may use _your_ hand, but you will not trump _mine_," retorted the Oracle. "If _revenants_ knew what nonsense is put into their spectral mouths by noodles and charlatans, they would never return to be made spectral pilgarlics of." "A ghost is a good thing--in a Christmas story!" laughed the jolly old gentleman in a holly-crown. "Elsewhere it is generally a fraud and a nuisance." "Right, Father Christmas!" cried Mr. PUNCH. "But the _Voces_ from my Oracular Funograph are not ghostly nothings, neither are they ambiguous, like the oracles of the Sibyl of Cumæ,--to which, my eloquent Premier, some have had the audacity to compare certain of _your_ vocal deliverances." The Old Oracular Hand smiled sweetly. "_Nescit vox missa reverti_," he murmured. "Would that EDISON could invent a Party Leader's Phonograph whose utterances should satisfy at the time without danger of being quoted against one fifty years later by CLEON the Tanner, or AGORACRITUS the Sausage-Seller, to whom even the Sibylline Books would scarce have been sacred. But you and your Funograph--as you neatly call it--have never been Paphlagonian, have never had to give up to Party what was meant for Mankind." "_And_ Womankind, surely, Mr. GLADSTONE?" subjoined the Strong-minded Woman, glaring reproachfully through her spectacles at the Anti-Woman's-Rights Premier. "I wish I could say as much of _you_, Sir!" "Labour and the Ladies seem to have small share in his thoughts," began the Striker, hotly, when Lord ROSEBERY touched him gently on his fustian-clad shoulder, and he subsided. "Am _I_ not a lady?" queried HIBERNIA, with an affectionate glance at her aged champion. "Golly, and me too?" added a damsel of dusky Libyan charms, clinging close to the stalwart arm of Napoleonic CECIL RHODES. "Yes--with a difference!" said the Oracle, drily. "'_Place aux dames_' is a motto of partial and rather capricious application, is it not, my evergreen Premier?" "A principle of politeness rather than of politics or Parliament--at present," murmured the G. O. M.