The bland looks and persuasive tones of Uncle Timothy, to say nothing of the last bumper, had wrought wonders on the mastermason. He looked Silenus-like and rosy, and glanced his little peering eyes across the table-Mrs. Muff having a voice too in the affair -for an assenting nod from the fierce black velvet spangled turban of his better and bigger half. But Mrs. Muff made no sign, and he paused irresolute, when another kind word and smile from the middle-aged gentleman encouraged him, at all hazards, to begin with, "You shan't sing another line, that you shan't, Brutus!" vociferated Mrs. Muff. But the Cockney Roman, undaunted and vocal, went on singing, Says Doctor Peter Pott, "As I know vhat's vhat, My anti-bilious patent pill on Tib my rib I'll try ; If Mrs. P. vill svallow, if dissolution follow, And she should kick the bucket, I'm sure I shan't cry!" "Where could he have learned such a rubbishing song? I never know'd that he knew it! A man, too, after pa's own heart! I shall certainly go into hystericals," sighed Mrs. Muff. "If so be as you're so inclined, my love, have the purliteness just to vait till I've a-done singing. And vel the doctor knew that a leer par les deux yeux Mrs. Pott vithstand could not, vhen shot from Peter's eye; And said the pill it vouldn't kill, no, not a little fly! "Have you no sort of compassion for my poor nerves?" remonstrated Mrs. Muff, pathetically. "Vhat com "None vhatsumdever," replied the stoical Brutus. passion have you ever had for mine?” "Besides," said he, "I svear, d'ye see, Brass knocker and bell, And the cab in vhich I cut sich a svell, Is a dose !) if Mrs. Pott vill try, Of gout and phthisic she 'll newer complain, Down it slid, And she newer did! (The Doctor vith laughing vas like to burst!) For this werry good reason-it finish'd her first! "I'll send," cried Mrs. Bumgarten, furiously, "for one of the L division." "You may send to the devil for one of the L division!" shouted the valiant Mr. Muff, aspirating with particular emphasis the letter L. 66 Howsever, ladies, as you don't seem much to like Doctor Pott, suppose I favour you vith the Irishman's epitaph. Here I lays, Teddy O'Blaize, (Singing) And my body quite at its aise is; Vith the tip of my nose and the tops of my toes Turn'd up to the roots of the daisies! And now, my inwaluable spouse, as I carn't conwenently sing you any more moral lessons, I'll just tipple you two or three!" And Mr. Muff, with admirable coolness and precision, filled himself a bumper. "First and foremust, from this day henceforrer'd I'm determined to be my own lord and master." "You shall never be mine!" said Mrs. Muff, bitterly. "Imprimis and secondly, I don't choose to be the hen-pecked, hugger-mugger, collywoffling, snubbed, under-the-fear-of-his-vifeand-a-broomstick Jerry Sneak and Polly coddle, that old Nic Fubsy the Vhitechapel pin-maker vas! You shan't, my dear, like his loving Lizzy, curry-comb my precious vig, and smuggle my last vill!" "Et tu Brute!" said Uncle Timothy, in a half whisper. "He is a brute!" sobbed Mrs. Bumgarten, "to speak so of poor dear pa! Mr. Muff, Mr. Muff! how I disgust you!" "Don't purwoke me, Mrs. Bumgarten, pray, don't purwoke me into 'fending and proving, or I shall let the cat out of the bag to Mr. Timvig, and the kittens into the bargain! By the Lord Harry, I'll peach, Mrs. Muff!" Five full glasses of red port had removed the decent restraint that Mrs. Bumgarten sometimes imposed on her unruly member, which restraint may be likened unto the board that confines the odoriferous contents of a scavenger's cart, and she was about to pour upon the master-mason a fragrant flood of Fubsyean eloquence, when Prudence, the family guardian angel, took her by the tongue's tip, as St. Dunstan took a certain ebony gentleman by the nose. She telegraphed Mrs. Muff, and Mrs. Muff telegraphed the intelligent Guy. Just as Brutus was fetching breath for another ebullition, with his hand on the decanter for another bumper, he found himself half throttled in the Cornish hug of his affectionate and blubbering first-born! When a chimney caught fire, it was a custom in Merrie England to drop down it a live goose, in the quality of extinguisher! And no goose ever performed its office better than the living Guy. He opened the flood-gates of his gooseberry eyes, and played upon pa so effectually, ma and aunt sobbing and sighing in full chorus, that Mr. Muff's ire or fire was speedily put out; and when, to prevent a coroner's inquest, the obedient child was motioned by the ladies to relax his filial embrace, the mollified master-mason began to sigh and sob too. The politic sisters now proposed to cut short their day's pleasure!— a proposal not resisted by Mr. Muff, who was in a humour to comply with anything, and politely seconded by Uncle Timothy, to whom it was some consolation, that while he had been sitting upon thorns, his tormentors too were a little nettled! Seeing bluff John Tomkins in the stable-yard grooming con amore one of Mr. Bosky's pet bloods, he called out, "John! I'm afraid we were too many this morning for that shying left-wheeler. Now, if he should unfortunately take to kicking-" "Kicking! Mr. Timwiddy," screamed Mrs. Bumgarten. "Kicking! Mr. Timwig!" echoed Mrs. Muff. Herodotus (who practised what he preached) said, "When telling 66 a lie will be profitable, let it be told!”. "" He who knows how to do it in a suitable time." So thought John may lie," said Plato, Tomkins, who in all probability had never read either Herodotus or Plato, and thinking no time like the present, and hoping to frighten his unwelcome customers into an omnibus, and drive home Uncle Timothy in capital style, he so aggravated the possible kickings, plungings, takings fright, and runnings away of that terrible leftwheeler, that the good-natured and accommodating middle-aged gentleman was easily persuaded by the ladies to lighten the weight and diminish the danger, by returning to town by some other conveyance. And it was highly ludicrous to mark the glum looks and disappointment of John when he doggedly put the horses to, and how he mischievously laid his whip-cord into the sensitive flanks of the "shying left-wheeler," who honoured every draft on his fetlocks, and duly confirmed the terrifying anticipations and multiplications of the veracious John Tomkins! 66 Song sweetens toil, however rude the sound,"-and John sweetened his by humming the following, in which he encored himself several times, as he drove Mrs. Bumgarten and family to town. Dash along! splash along! hi, gee ho! Save me from a Jerry Sneak, and save me from a scold. A horse is not a mare, and a cow is not a calf; A woman that talks all day long has too much tongue by half. When Madam's in her tantrums, and Madam 'gins to cry ; No horse so fast can gallop as a woman's tongue can go. ON GALATEA. BY GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. FOLKS say that Galatea dyes her hair: 'Twas black the day she bought it, I can swear. whom it was some consolation, that while he had been sitting upon thorns, his tormentors too were a little nettled! Seeing bluff John Tomkins in the stable-yard grooming con amore one of Mr. Bosky's pet bloods, he called out, 66 John! I'm afraid we were too many this morning for that shying left-wheeler. Now, if he should unfortunately take to kicking-" "Kicking! Mr. Timwiddy," screamed Mrs. Bumgarten. "Kicking! Mr. Timwig!" echoed Mrs. Muff. Herodotus (who practised what he preached) said, "When telling a lie will be profitable, let it be told!"-"He may lie," said Plato, "who knows how to do it in a suitable time." So thought John Tomkins, who in all probability had never read either Herodotus or Plato, and thinking no time like the present, and hoping to frighten his unwelcome customers into an omnibus, and drive home Uncle Timothy in capital style, he so aggravated the possible kickings, plungings, takings fright, and runnings away of that terrible leftwheeler, that the good-natured and accommodating middle-aged gentleman was easily persuaded by the ladies to lighten the weight and diminish the danger, by returning to town by some other conveyance. And it was highly ludicrous to mark the glum looks and disappointment of John when he doggedly put the horses to, and how he mischievously laid his whip-cord into the sensitive flanks of the "shying left-wheeler," who honoured every draft on his fetlocks, and duly confirmed the terrifying anticipations and multiplications of the veracious John Tomkins! "Song sweetens toil, however rude the sound,"-and John sweetened his by humming the following, in which he encored himself several times, as he drove Mrs. Bumgarten and family to town. Dash along! splash along! hi, gee ho! Save me from a tough yarn twice over told Save me from a Jerry Sneak, and save me from a scold. A horse is not a mare, and a cow is not a calf; A woman that talks all day long has too much tongue by half. When Madam's in her tantrums, and Madam 'gins to cry; Dash along! splash along! hi, gee ho! No horse so fast can gallop as a woman's tongue can go. ON GALATEA. BY GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. FOLKS say that Galatea dyes her hair: HORE OFFLEANÆ. BY A MAN ABOUT TOWN. I TURNED into Offley's the other night, when it was was "almost at odds with morning which was which." It was accordingly, as Jack Falstaff feelingly describes it on being disturbed, the sweetest morsel of the night; and such have I often found it "In my warm youth, when George the Fourth was King." Then it was that, flinging aside dull Care, and bidding her try to kill another cat,* instead of tormenting a Christian, I began "to put in the remainder of the evening,"-an evening, by the way, of a peculiar sort, for it always expired "amidst the tears of the cup," and generally in the broad blaze of sun-light. Many and many an evening of this sort have I spent at Offley's, and it was the memory of them that now guided my footsteps. The large and well-proportioned room erected by old Offley as a temple to singing, smoking, supping, and so forth, was empty, save for the presence of the waiter, Reynolds, who was leaning upon his arms in the accustomed place over the back of the box near the door, gazing into the unpeopled space before him with a melancholy air, which would have sat appropriately upon the genius of the place. He started at my footsteps, and his face lit up as he rocognised in me an old frequenter of the establishment in those days when he whom men called Offley, but the loftier spirits styled Frawley, presided over the gay and busy scene, and took his state as the patron of high solemnities. Time had made no perceptible change in Reynolds: I think the old scythe-bearer rarely does in waiters. They acquire prematurely in their youth the appearance of a "certain age," and for at least a generation they look no older. You par-boil salmon to make it keep. The waiter seems to have undergone a similar process at the outset of his career, and in its course to exemplify the conservative effects. The French are right; the proper appellation for them from the knife-board to the grave is garçon! I ordered the staple commodities of the house-a chop, and a nip of Burton ale. There was no such chop to be had in Christendom as that which old Frawley used to cook with his own hands for his favourite guests. But the mighty Mandarin of multitudinous chops, is no more. No matter we must take things as we can best get them; and so, like an Homeric hero, I proceeded to remove my desire for meat and drink, and then, with a Broughamian glass of brandyand-water, calidum cum by my side, and a real Havannah, I fell into a reflective mood. The feelings which swelled my bosom were similar to those which Cicero attributes to Atticus. "Movemur enim nescio quo pacto locis ipsis, in quibus eorum quos diligimus aut admiramur adsunt vestigia. Me quidem ipsæ illæ nostræ Athenæ non tam operibus magnificis exquisitisque antiquorum artibus delectant, quàm recordatione summorum virorum, ubi quisque habitare, ubi sedere, ubi disputare sit solitus, studiosèque eorum etiam * Care killed a cat.-Old proverb. sepulchra contemplor." I thought of a number of good and clever fellows who used to spend so much time in this room,-they might be said, without exaggeration, to inhabit it; I saw where they used to sit, carry on their arguments, and do other things which the Roman has neglected to record of his illustrious Greeks, such as drink grog, smoke cigars, sing songs, make speeches, and occasionally box their corners. I threw myself back upon the bench, closed my eyes, and the room was again thronged as of yore. There was the crowd of strangers to the town, and of low persons belonging to itof the town, towny; and there, too, knots of rare fellows, now spectators only, and rather supercilious ones, of the busy scene, soon to be actors of fast and fiery merriment, when the professional singers shall have been gone, and the snobbery cleared. There at the round table, behind a huge bowl, worthy representative of the Celestial Empire, ladling out the punch which he has himself concocted, sits Lord in all the portliness of a bon vivant of the school of Fox and Sheridan, who had consumed seas of turtle, forests of venison, and oceans of punch and claret. On his right sits the Marquess of -, smoking shag tobacco from a clay pipe, and looking more like a north country grazier than a courtier, or the representative of a house that can boast "The stirring memories of a thousand years." Around this table, close packed, are members of Parliament, officers, barristers, and other gentlemen; and conspicuous amongst them for his stentorian laugh and rollicking flow of spirits is Jack Spenser, the prince of boon companions, an excellent singer of songs of all sorts, "From grave to gay, from lively to severe," and the best of convivial orators. In the box next to this table, and in familiar communication with it, is a younger crew of "jolly companions," law-students, parliamentary reporters, painters, and actors, and amongst these, as the general guest, is Sim Fairfield, alias "the Captain." Ay, and there on the stool in the middle of the room stands old Frawley himself, singing, "I'm jolly Dick the lamplighter." And oh! how the chorus thunders with that aspiration of the vowels, in which the company loved to follow the example of Mr Offley! "Then who'd be grave, when wine can save The heaviest heart from sinking? And magic grapes lend hangel shapes To hevery girl we 're drinking! I opened my eyes for the purpose of taking some more of the lining out of my tumbler; my vision fled, and I awoke to the remembrance that a few bricks only stood betwixt the churchyard and the seat of unbridled jollity, and that old Frawley now lay in that churchyard, and so did Simon Fairfield; and no doubt both sleep well, as the tavern's roar was always sweet lullaby in their ears. Sim lies directly under the great window of the room. On the evening of his burial, Count Bolieski, a Polander, and a number of the Captain's friends, assembled at that window, and poured libations upon his grave. They did not, however, treat his gentle and jolly spirit like a heathen ghost. They poured forth no blood; the Captain had an aversion to it even in the way of his profession, unless VOL. IX. T |