ENGLISH AS SHE IS SUNG.

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MR. PUNCH, SIR,--If I start a butcher's business, and give my shop the
special title of The _Welsh_ Meat Shop, is the great British Public
so narrow-minded as to expect me to sell them only Welsh meat, the
produce of Welsh farms only? If so, the Public, with all due respect,
is a hass. For if I who have to live,--though perhaps others may not
see the necessity for my existence,--by my trade, find that the Welsh
meat, which the Public had expected to be ready and waiting, is not
forthcoming, only one of two things can I do; the one is to shut
up shop (which I won't), and the other is to provide my intending
customers with French, Indian, English, Irish, Scotch, American,
Australian, New Zealandian, Cape Colonial, in fact with any meat I can
get from anywhere, and as long as it is toothsome, and I can afford
to sell it at an average price, why should it not be sold at my Royal
Welsh Meat Shop?

When I call my shop The Royal Welsh Meat Shop, do I thereby bar myself
from dealing in English or foreign meats? Do I bar myself from dealing
in Indian pickles or China oranges? No, certainly not; nor do I bar
myself from selling neckties, gloves, ginger-beer, and Brazil nuts.
So, when a House of Musical Entertainment is styled The English Opera
House, it must be understood, "all to the contrary nevertheless
and notwithstanding," to mean an English House where Opera may be
performed, and not a Theatre where only English Opera is Housed. "My
soul can not be fettered," as the poet says,--what poet, I don't know
and don't care, but he said it, whoever he was, and _he was right_. If