Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, August 27, 1892

Excerpt

TWO-PENN'ORTH OF THEOSOPHY.

(A Sketch at the Islington Arcadia.)

SCENE—The Agricultural Hall. A large Steam-Circus is revolving with its organ in full blast; near it is a "Razzle-Dazzle" Machine, provided with a powerful mechanical piano. To the combined strains of these instruments, the merrier hearts of Islington are performing a desultory dance, which seems to consist chiefly in the various couples charging each other with desperate gallantry. At the further end of the Hall is a Stage, on which a Variety Performance is in progress, and along the side of the gallery a Switchback, the rolling thunder of which, accompanied by masculine whoops and feminine squeaks, is distinctly audible. Near the entrance is a painted house-front with two doors, which are being pitilessly battered with wooden balls; from time to time a well-directed missile touches a spring, one of the doors opens, and an idiotic effigy comes blandly goggling and sliding down an inclined plane, to be saluted with yells of laughter, and ignominiously pushed back into domestic privacy. Amidst surroundings thus happily suggesting the idyllic and pastoral associations of Arcady, is an unpretending booth, the placards on which announce it to be the temporary resting-place of the "Far-famed Adepts of Thibet," who are there for a much-needed change, after a "3500 years' residence in the Desert of Gobi." There is also a solemn warning that "it is impossible to spoof a Mahatma." In front of this booth, a fair-headed, round-faced, and Spectacled Gentleman, in evening clothes, and a particularly crumpled shirt-front—who presents a sort of compromise between the Scientific Savant and the German Waiter has just locked up his Assistant in a wooden pillory, for no obvious reason except to attract a crowd. The crowd collects accordingly, and includes a Comic Coachman, who, with his Friend—a tall and speechless nonentity—has evidently come out to enjoy himself.

The Spectacled Gentleman (letting the Assistant out of the pillory, with the air of a man who does not often unbend to these frivolities). Now, Gentlemen, I am sure all those whom I see around me have heard of those marvellous beings—the Mahatmas—and how they can travel through space in astral bodies, and produce matter out of nothing at all. (Here the group endeavour to look as if these facts were familiar to them from infancy, while the Comic Coachman assumes the intelligent interest of a Pantomime Clown in the price of a property fish.) Very well; but perhaps some of you may not be aware that at this very moment the air all around you is full of ghosts.

The Comic Coachman (affecting extreme terror). 'Ere, let me get out o' this! Where's my friend?

The Sp. G. I am only telling you the simple truth. There is, floating above the head of each one of you, the ghostly counterpart of himself; and the ghost of anybody who is smoking will be smoking also the ghost of a cigar or a pipe.

The C.C. (to his attendant Phantom)....