File:A great "Punch" editor, being the life, letters, and diaries of Shirley Brooks (1907) (14778691055).jpg

Identifier: greatpuncheditor00laya (find matches)
Title: A great "Punch" editor, being the life, letters, and diaries of Shirley Brooks
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Layard, George Somes, 1857-1925
Subjects: Brooks, Shirley, 1815-1874
Publisher: London : Sir I. Pitman & sons, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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g each step as though the way were plain :Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,Of chiefs perplexity, or peoples pain. Beside this corj^se, that bears for winding-sheetThe Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew.Between the mourners at his head and feet.Say, scurril-j ester, is there room for you ?* * * Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,To lame my pencil, and confute my pen—To make me own this hind of princes peer,This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,Noting how to occasions height he rose,How his quaint wit, made home-truth seem more true.How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. In America the verses, accompanying as they didTenniels noble cartoon of Britannia Sympathisingwith Columbia, created a profound impression. Onewriter even went so far as to declare that they werelargely instrumental in preventing the war betweenAmerica and England which seemed imminent. Over-wrought nerves had been strained almost to snapping 242
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PUNCHS GREAT RECANTATION point by the hostile criticism of the sad-faced, loose-hmbed Yankee, whom America had learned to lookon as her saviour. And it wanted but a little more toprecipitate a catastrophe at which the world wouldhave stood aghast—a sorry commentary on the boastedcivilization and humanity of the nineteenth century.Happily it was averted, and who shall say what partwas played by Punchs prompt and courageous atone-ment ? The sincerity, manliness, sympathy, and, aboveall, the humility of the verses spoke straight to theheart of a great nation, and soothed a wound whichshould never have been opened and which constantteasing had kept cruelly at the raw. Since that timePunch has, whilst reserving to himself the right oflaughing at our cousins foibles as at our own, steadilyused his great influence for conciliation and kindlyfeeling, and has been instant in removing those mis-understandings which never should be allowed to existbetween nations so nearly related by blood, an

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