Mr Punch's Model Music Hall Songs and Dramas. Anstey F.

(as indeed is the usual custom) coloured limelight at the wings.

First Verse (to be sung under pure white light)

      He (these awful examples are usually, and quite properly, anonymous) was once as nice a fellow as you could desire to meet,

      Partial to a pint of porter, always took his spirits neat;

      Long ago a careful mother's cautions trained her son to shrink

      From the meretricious sparkle of an aërated drink.

      Refrain (showing the virtuous youth resisting temptation. N.B. The refrain is intended to be spoken through music. Not sung.)

      Here's a pub that's handy.

      Liquor up with you?

      Thimbleful of brandy?

      Don't mind if I do.

      Soda-water? No, Sir.

      Never touch the stuff.

      Promised mother – so, Sir.

(With an upward glance.)

      'Tisn't good enough!

Second Verse. (Primrose light for this.)

      Ah, how little we suspected, as we saw him in his bloom,

      What a demon dogged his footsteps, luring to an awful doom!

      Vain his mother's fond monitions; soon a friend, with fiendish laugh,

      Tempts him to a quiet tea-garden, plies him there with shandy-gaff!

Refrain (illustrating the first false step)

      Why, it's just the mixture

      I so long have sought!

      Here I'll be a fixture

      Till I've drunk the quart!

      Just the stuff to suit yer.

      Waiter, do you hear?

      Make it, for the future,

      Three parts ginger-beer!

Third Verse (requiring violet-tinted slide)

      By-and-by, the ale discarding, ginger-beer he craves alone.

      Undiluted he procures it, buys it bottled up in stone.

(The earthenware bottles are said by connoisseurs to contain liquor of superior strength and quality.)

      From his lips the foam he brushes – crimson overspreads his brow.