Punch is no Mrs. Jellyby, brimful of zeal for Borrio boolas in far-off Africas, and utterly stolid to disorders and distresses under his own roof. Proud of the glory, he feels and confesses the shame of England; and the grinding injustice of her caste-system, aristocracy, and hierarchy does not escape the lash of his rebuke. He is the friend of the threadbare curate, performing the larger half of clerical duty and getting but a tittle of the tithes,--of the weary seamstress, wetting with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn heartless rank and fashion at to-morrow's pageant,--of the pale governess, grudgingly paid her pittance of salary without a kind word to sweeten the bitterness of a lonely lot. He is the friend even of the workhouse juveniles, and, as their champion, castigates with cutting sarcasm and stinging scorn the reverend and honorable guardians, who, just as, full of hope, they had reached the door of the theatre, prohibited a band of these wretched orphans from availing of a kind-hearted manager's invitation to an afternoon performance of "Jack and the Bean-Stalk." Truly, Punch is more than half right, as, in his indignation, he declares, "It will go luckily with some four-faced Christians, if, with the fullest belief in their own right of entry of paradise, they are not '_stopped at the very doors_'"; and the parson, in the case, gets but his deserts, when at his lugubrious sham-piety are hurled stanzas like these:-- "Their little faces beamed with joy Two miles upon their way, As they supposed, each girl and boy, About to see the play. Their little cheeks with tears were wet, As _back again_ they went, Balked by a sanctimonious set, Led by a Reverend Gent. "And if such Reverend Gents as he Could get the upperhand, Ah, what a hateful tyranny Would override the land! That we may never see that time, Down with the canting crew That would _out of their pantomime_ Poor little children _do_!"