Produced by Neville Allen, Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOLUME 93. * * * * * JULY 16, 1887. * * * * * THE LAST VISIT TO THE ACADEMY. [Illustration: No. 691. The Donkey Rider Stopped. "You can't go further than this for twopence."] [Illustration: No. 540. Arrival of the G.O.M. Collars in Venice.] [Illustration: No. 35. A Brave Lassie. "Come on!--the whole lot of you! I'll give it you!"] [Illustration: No. 928. Cat and Child Fight.] * * * * * ABSURD TO A DEGREE. Now that girls have proved themselves capable of earning the highest University honours, why should women remain debarred of University degrees? If any senatorial difficulty precludes the removal of that ridiculous injustice, a girl forbidden to term herself a Bachelor of Arts, for example, might, it has been suggested, "invent some other title more significant of the distinction she has won." No invention could be easier. Her alternative for Bachelor would be obviously Spinster of Arts. No Graduate able to pass the _Pons Asinorum_ can be such a preposterous donkey as to persist in denying even the plainest--possibly the prettiest--Passwoman that. The Dons will be unworthy of the name they go by unless they immediately remove the disability their old-world statutes have imposed upon the _Donne_. * * * * * ROBERT AT THE ACADEMY. I PAID my reglar wisit to the Academy last week, and was glad to find that my werry ernest remonstrance of last year had perduced sech a change as regards Staggerers. No Miss Menads a hunting in Burnham Beeches without no close on to speak of, and no Mr. Cassandra a carrying off of a pore yung lady afore she's had time to dress, merely because she upset the salad-bowl. I don't think it's because "familyaryty breeds content," as the poet says, that I am less staggered than last year, but becos there ain't so many staggerers to be staggered at. Not that there ain't none. Why, there's one lady in the werry same dishabil as Madame Wenus herself a poring out somethink that the Catalog says is a incantashun, but then her pecooliar costoom is reelly xcusable, for she's that red hot that wood excuse anythink or nothink, as in her case. One of the jolliest picturs to my mind is a portrate of a Port Wine drinker. Why, it seems to be a oozing out of ewery pore of his skin! and nothink younger than '63, I'll be bound. What a life to lead, and what a life to look back upon with proud satisfacshun! Poor Lord HARTINGTON looks terribly bored at having to be gazed at so constantly by so many longing, if not loving, eyes, and at being pinted at by the old dowagers as their bo ideall of a sun in law.