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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Some Roundabout Papers, by William Makepeace
+Thackeray
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Some Roundabout Papers
+
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2013  [eBook #1462]
+[This file was first posted on July 16, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME ROUNDABOUT PAPERS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1908 T. N. Foulis edition by Stephen Rice, email
+srice01@ibm.net and David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                               SOME ROUND-
+                               ABOUT PAPERS
+
+
+                                    BY
+                            WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
+                                THACKERAY
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                               T. N. FOULIS
+                          13–15 FREDERICK STREET
+                         EDINBURGH: & 23 BEDFORD
+                           STREET, LONDON, W.C.
+
+                                   1908
+
+
+
+
+ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI
+
+
+WE have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who has
+passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan
+establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the parish of Saint Lazarus.
+Stay—twenty-three or four years ago, she came out once, and thought to
+earn a little money by hop-picking; but being overworked, and having to
+lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all
+further labour, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.
+
+An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty makes
+us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old shaking body has to
+lay herself down every night in her workhouse bed by the side of some
+other old woman with whom she may or may not agree.  She herself can’t be
+a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking old limbs and
+cold feet.  She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking
+of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but sleepless with aches,
+and agues, and rheumatism of old age.  “The gentleman gave me
+brandy-and-water,” she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the
+thought.  I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her
+better now from what this old lady told me.  The Queen, who loved snuff
+herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses; and, in her
+watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Charlotte’s snuff,
+“and it do comfort me, sir, that it do!”  _Pulveris exigui munus_.  Here
+is a forlorn aged creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the
+great struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled
+out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and
+soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy.  Let me think as I
+write.  (The next month’s sermon, thank goodness! is safe to press.)
+This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that
+wassail-bowls make their appearance; at the season of pantomime, turkey
+and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys; Christmas
+bills, and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders.  If we
+oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment.  We
+shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush.  We shall pass
+the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire.  That old thing will have
+a sort of festival too.  Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her
+for that day also.  Christmas falls on a Thursday.  Friday is the
+workhouse day for coming out.  Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has
+her invitation for Friday, 26th December!  Ninety is she, poor old soul?
+Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe!  “Yes, ninety, sir,”
+she says, “and my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a hundred
+and two.”
+
+Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and two?
+What a queer calculation!
+
+Ninety!  Very good, granny: you were born, then, in 1772.
+
+Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born, and was
+born therefore in 1745.
+
+Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and was born
+therefore in 1710.
+
+We will begin with the present granny first.  My good old creature, you
+can’t of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you mother
+was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a
+“History of England,” the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and many diverting
+pieces.  You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick
+Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good
+to children.  That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down
+on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose
+history of “Rasselas” you have never read, my pour soul; and whose
+tragedy of “Irene” I don’t believe any man in these kingdoms ever
+perused.  That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers
+sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than
+any of the scholars, your Mr Burke and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr
+Goldsmith.  Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings;
+and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit.
+Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No
+Popery before Mr Langdale’s house, the Popish distiller’s, and that bonny
+fire of my Lord Mansfield’s books in Bloomsbury Square?  Bless us, what a
+heap of illuminations you have seen! For the glorious victory over the
+Americans at Breed’s Hill; for the peace in 1814, and the beautiful
+Chinese bridge in St James’s Park; for the coronation of his Majesty,
+whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don’t you?  Yes; and you
+went in a procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good
+lady, the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House; and you
+remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords
+executed at the Tower.  And as for your grandmother, she was born five
+months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where her poor father was
+killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen.  With the help of a
+“Wade’s Chronology,” I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my
+poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books.
+
+Peerage-books and pedigrees?  What does she know about them? Battles and
+victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and the
+like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear of
+General Wolfe?  Your mother may have seen him embark, and your father may
+have carried a musket under him.  Your grandmother may have cried huzza
+for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so
+much as hear tell of his name?  How many hundred or thousand of years had
+that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct exhibition?—and yet he
+was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred years
+younger.
+
+“Don’t talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince Dukes, and
+toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it?” says granny.  “I know
+there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she left me snuff; and it comforts
+me of a night when I lie awake.”
+
+To me there is something very touching in the notion of that little pinch
+of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully inhaled by her in the
+darkness.  Don’t you remember what traditions there used to be of chests
+of plate, bulses of diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the
+country privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in
+M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz?  Not all the treasure went.  _Non omnis moritur_.
+A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts
+her shaking old hand to her nose.  Gliding noiselessly among the beds
+where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I
+fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak.  “There, Goody,
+take of my rappee.  You will not sneeze, and I shall not say ‘God bless
+you.’  But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won’t you?  Ah!
+I had a many troubles, a many troubles.  I was a prisoner almost so much
+as you are.  I had to eat boiled mutton every day: _entre nous_, I
+abominated it.  But I never complained.  I swallowed it.  I made the best
+of a hard life.  We have all our burdens to bear.  But hark!  I hear the
+cock-crow, and snuff the morning air.”  And with this the royal ghost
+vanishes up the chimney—if there be a chimney in that dismal harem, where
+poor old Twoshoes and her companions pass their nights—their dreary
+nights, their restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what
+glum companionship, illumined by what a feeble taper!
+
+“Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother was
+seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she married your
+esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five? 1745, then, was the
+date of your dear mother’s birth.  I daresay her father was absent in the
+Low Countries, with his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under whom
+he had the honour of carrying a halberd at the famous engagement of
+Fontenoy—or if not there, he may have been at Preston Pans, under General
+Sir John Cope, when the wild Highlanders broke through all the laws of
+discipline and the English lines; and, being on the spot, did he see the
+famous ghost which didn’t appear to Colonel Gardner of the Dragoons?  My
+good creature, is it possible you don’t remember that Doctor Swift, Sir
+Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford, as you justly say), old Sarah
+Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of Twitnam, died in the year of your
+birth?  What a wretched memory you have!  What? haven’t they a library,
+and the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus,
+where you dwell?”
+
+“Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift, Atossa, and Mr Pope,
+of Twitnam!  What is the gentleman talking about?” says old goody, with a
+“Ho! ho!” and a laugh like a old parrot—you know they live to be as old
+as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is comparatively
+young (ho! ho! ho!).  Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age.
+Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with
+great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they could tell all
+sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak—but they are very silent,
+carps are—of their nature _peu communicatives_.  Oh! what has been thy
+long life, old goody, but a dole of bread and water and a perch on a
+cage; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond?  What are Rossbach
+or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know it is a grandchild of
+England who brings bread to feed them?
+
+No!  Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old and have
+nothing to tell but that one day is like another; and the history of
+friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety than theirs.  Hard
+labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger
+most days.  That is her lot.  Is it lawful in my prayers to say, “Thank
+heaven, I am not as one of these”?  If I were eighty, would I like to
+feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow
+when Mr Bumble the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to
+Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world?  If I were
+eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman
+of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and
+snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command, accommodating
+my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy,
+hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly pittance of
+gruel, and say, “Thank you, ma’am,” to Miss Prim, when she has done
+reading her sermon.  John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I
+desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies.  You have a
+fair voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a hymn very sweetly the
+other night, and was thankful that our humble household should be in such
+harmony.  Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless and quaky, that she
+can’t sing a bit; but don’t be giving yourself airs over her, because she
+can’t sing and you can.  Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth.  Set
+that old kettle to sing by our hob.  Warm her old stomach with nut-brown
+ale and a toast laid in the fire.  Be kind to the poor old school-girl of
+ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday.
+Shall there be many more Christmases for thee?  Think of the ninety she
+has seen already; the four-score and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New
+Years!
+
+If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of better
+early days, when you were young and happy, and loving, perhaps; or would
+you prefer to have no past on which your mind could rest?  About the year
+1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some
+young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them?  We may grow old, but
+to us some stories never are old.  On a sudden they rise up, not dead,
+but living—not forgotten, but freshly remembered.  The eyes gleam on us
+as they used to do.  The dear voice thrills in our hearts.  The rapture
+of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the
+tragedy is acted over.  Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so
+like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the whole past
+came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the Strand, and I was young
+again in the midst of joys and sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred
+and fondly remembered.
+
+If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old school-girl?
+Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a source of great pain
+and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes.  She sewed it away in her old stays
+somewhere, thinking here at least was a safe investment—(vestis—a vest—an
+investment,—pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the
+pleasantry).  And what do you think?  Another pensionnaire of the
+establishment cut the coin out of Goody’s stays—_an old woman who went
+upon two crutches_!  Faugh, the old witch!  What?  Violence amongst these
+toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones?  Robbery amongst the
+penniless?  Dogs coming and snatching Lazarus’s crumbs out of his lap?
+Ah, how indignant Goody was as she told the story!  To that pond at
+Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of hundreds of years, with
+hunches of blue mould on their back, I daresay the little Prince and
+Princess of Preussen-Britannien come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to
+feed the mouldy ones.  Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds
+at Napoleon’s jack-boots: they have seen Frederick’s lean shanks
+reflected in their pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them,
+and now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob,
+squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble
+struggle is over.  Sans souci, indeed!  It is mighty well writing “Sans
+souci” over the gate; but where is the gate through which Care has not
+slipped?  She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box:
+she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the
+staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal:
+this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes’
+meagre bolster, and whisper, “Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me
+again!  No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes.” Goody!  For shame of
+yourself!  Do not be cynical.  Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures.
+What?  Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times?  For
+four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth,
+hungry and obscure? Peace and goodwill to thee, let us say at this
+Christmas season.  Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor
+old pilgrim!  And of the bread which God’s bounty gives us, I pray,
+brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and
+silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the means of labour.
+Enough!  As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow a note shall be sent to
+Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr Roundabout requests the honour of
+Mrs Twoshoes’ company on Friday, 26th December.
+
+
+
+
+DE JUVENTUTE
+
+
+WE who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are
+like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.  The children will gather
+round and say to us patriarchs, “Tell us, grandpapa, about the old
+world.”  And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one
+by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and
+feeble.  There will be but ten præ-railroadites left: then three—then
+two—then one—then 0!  If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of
+which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think
+he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again.
+Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great
+hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times?  What has he in
+common with the brisk young life surrounding him?  In the watches of the
+night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when
+even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their
+chatter, he—I mean the hippopotamus—and the elephant, and the long-necked
+giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about
+the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty
+monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the banks, and
+dragons darted out of the caves and waters before men were made to slay
+them.  We who lived before railways are antediluvians—we must pass away.
+We are growing scarcer every day; and old—old—very old relicts of the
+times when George was still fighting the Dragon.
+
+Not long since, a company of horseriders paid a visit to our
+watering-place.  We went to see them, and I bethought me that young
+Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to witness the
+performance.  A pantomime is not always amusing to persons who have
+attained a certain age; but a boy at a pantomime is always amused and
+amusing, and to see his pleasure is good for most hypochondriacs.
+
+We sent to Walter’s mother, requesting that he might join us, and the
+kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the morning
+performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go in the evening
+likewise.  And go he did; and laughed at all Mr Merryman’s remarks,
+though he remembered them with remarkable accuracy, and insisted upon
+waiting to the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just
+before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party
+would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo the rush and trample
+of the crowd round about.  When this fact was pointed out to him, he
+yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking longingly
+towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth.  We were scarcely
+clear of the place, when we heard “God save the Queen,” played by the
+equestrian band, the signal that all was over.  Our companion entertained
+us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home—precious crumbs of wit
+which he had brought away from that feast.  He laughed over them again as
+he walked under the stars.  He has them now, and takes them out of the
+pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a
+sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school by this
+time; the holidays are over; and Doctor Birch’s young friends have
+reassembled.
+
+Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin!  As the jaded
+Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the whip, some of the old
+folks in the audience, I daresay, indulged in reflections of their own.
+There was one joke—I utterly forget it—but it began with Merryman saying
+what he had for dinner.  He had mutton for dinner, at one o’clock, after
+which “he had to _come to business_.”  And then came the point.  Walter
+Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch’s, Market Rodborough, if you read this,
+will you please send me a line, and let me know what was the joke Mr
+Merryman made about having his dinner?  _You_ remember well enough.  But
+do I want to know?  Suppose a boy takes a favourite, long-cherished lump
+of cake out of his pocket, and offers you a bit?  _Merci_!  The fact is,
+I _don’t_ care much about knowing that joke of Mr Merryman’s.
+
+But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and his
+landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr M. in
+private life—about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history, and
+I daresay was forming a picture of those in my mind:—wife cooking the
+mutton; children waiting for it; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so
+forth; during which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at,
+and Mr M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and
+heels.  Do not suppose I am going, _sicut est mos_, to indulge in
+moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.  Nay, Prime
+Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish
+them: Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they
+utter them.  All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these
+performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and why in
+his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of
+pathos, humour, eloquence;—that Minister of State, and what moves him,
+and how his private heart is working;—I would only say that, at a certain
+time of life certain things cease to interest: but about _some_ things
+when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing?
+Poems are written, and we cease to admire.  Lady Jones invites us, and we
+yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned.  The last time I saw
+a ballet at the opera—oh! it is many years ago—I fell asleep in the
+stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amusement
+to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting
+flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant.  Ah, I remember a
+different state of things!  _Credite posteri_.  To see these
+nymphs—gracious powers, how beautiful they were!  That leering, painted,
+shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers,
+coming thumping down on her board out of time—_that_ an opera-dancer?
+Pooh!  My dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours,
+who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the
+dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out
+of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their
+wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can like
+to look at them.  And as for laughing at me for falling asleep, I can’t
+understand a man of sense doing otherwise.  In my time, _à la bonne
+heure_.  In the reign of George IV., I give you my honour, all the
+dancers at the opera were as beautiful as Houris.  Even in William IV.’s
+time, when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadère,—I say it was
+a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can’t see nowadays.  How well
+I remember the tune to which she used to appear!  Kaled used to say to
+the Sultan, “My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called
+Bayaderes approaches,” and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping of
+my heart, in she used to dance!  There has never been anything like
+it—never.  There never will be—I laugh to scorn old people who tell me
+about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot—pshaw, the
+senile twaddlers!  And the impudence of the young men, with their music
+and their dancers of to-day!  I tell you the women are dreary old
+creatures.  I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they
+send all rational creatures to sleep.  Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely
+one!  Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel!  Ah, Malibran!  Nay, I will come
+to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very good singer
+thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me): and they we had
+Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer.
+
+But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty
+since the days of George IV.  Think of Sontag!  I remember her in
+_Otello_ and the _Donna del Lago_ in ’28.  I remember being behind the
+scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to
+go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous
+to her murder by Donzelli.  Young fellows have never seen beauty like
+_that_, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes.  Don’t tell _me_!
+A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not
+to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing?  The
+deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young
+fellows more lamentable still, that they won’t see this fact, but persist
+in thinking their time as good as ours.
+
+Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang,
+acted, and danced.  When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there:
+when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler’s
+Wells, and her forty glorious pupils—of the Opera and Noblet, and the
+exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more!  One
+much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that
+was the chief _male_ dancer—a very important personage then, with a bare
+neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the
+applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever.
+And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling
+_laudator temporis acti_—your old fogey who can see no good except in his
+own time.
+
+They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much improved since
+the days of _my_ monarch—of George IV.  _Pastry Cookery_ is certainly not
+so good.  I have often eaten half-a-crown’s worth (including, I trust,
+ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook’s, and that is a proof that the
+pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now?  I passed by
+the pastrycook’s shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.  It
+looked a very dingy old baker’s; misfortunes may have come over him—those
+penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I remember them: but he may
+have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now
+about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning.
+
+Not that we were not great epicures.  I remember how we constantly
+grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master’s house—which on my
+conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful—and how we tried once or
+twice to eat him out of house and home.  At the pastrycook’s we may have
+over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown’s worth for my own
+part, but I don’t like to mention the _real_ figure for fear of
+perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous confession)—we
+may have eaten too much, I say.  We did; but what then?  The school
+apothecary was sent for: a couple of small globules at night, a trifling
+preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to school, so
+that the draught was an actual pleasure.
+
+For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much in
+old times as they are now (except cricket _par exemple_—and I wish the
+present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth
+will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were novels—ah! I
+trouble you to find such novels in the present day!  O Scottish Chiefs,
+didn’t we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn’t I and Briggs
+Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said?  Efforts, feeble indeed,
+but still giving pleasure to us and our friends.  “I say, old boy, draw
+us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition,” or, “Draw us Don Quixote and the
+windmills, you know,” amateurs would say, to boys who had a love of
+drawing.  “Peregrine Pickle” we liked, our fathers admiring it, and
+telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think I was
+rather bewildered by it, though “Roderick Random” was and remains
+delightful.  I don’t remember having Sterne in the school library, no
+doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for
+young people.  Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and
+Trim, would I say a word in disrespect.  But I am thankful to live in
+times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call
+blushes on women’s cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to
+honest boys.  Then, above all, we had WALTER SCOTT, the kindly, the
+generous, the pure—the companion of what countless delightful hours; the
+purveyor of how much happiness; the friend whom we recall as the constant
+benefactor of our youth! How well I remember the type and the brownish
+paper of the old duodecimo “Tales of My Landlord!”  I have never dared to
+read the “Pirate,” and the “Bride of Lammermoor,” or “Kenilworth,” from
+that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people die, and are
+murdered at the end.  But “Ivanhoe,” and “Quentin Durward”!  Oh! for a
+half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those books again!  Those
+books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them; and, it may be,
+the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart was good; but how fresh
+the appetite was!  If the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I
+should be able to write a story which boys would relish for the next few
+dozen of centuries.  The boy-critic loves the story: grown up, he loves
+the author who wrote the story.  Hence the kindly tie is established
+between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life.  I meet
+people now who don’t care of Walter Scott, or the “Arabian Nights”; I am
+sorry for them, unless they in their time have found _their_
+romancer—their charming Scheherazade.  By the way, Walter, when you are
+writing, tell me who is the favourite novelist in the fourth form now?
+Have you got anything so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth’s
+_Frank_?  It used to belong to a fellow’s sisters generally; but though
+he pretended to despise it, and said, “Oh, stuff for girls!” he read it;
+and I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes now,
+were I to meet with the little book.
+
+As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling Tom and
+Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on purpose to get it;
+but somehow, if you will press the question so closely, on reperusal, Tom
+and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it to be.  The pictures
+are just as fine as ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry
+Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many year’s absence.  But
+the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even thought
+it a little vulgar—well! well! other writers have been considered
+vulgar—and as a description of the sports and amusements of London in the
+ancient times, more curious than amusing.
+
+But the pictures!—oh! the pictures are noble still!  First, there is
+Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, and
+being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian
+Tom’s tailor.  Then away for the career of pleasure and fashion.  The
+park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!!
+Rapturous bliss—the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to
+_knock down a Charley_ there!  There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights
+and little cocked hats, coming from the opera—very much as gentlemen in
+waiting on royalty are habited now.  There they are at Almack’s itself,
+amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself
+looking at them dancing.  Now, strange change, they are in Tom Cribb’s
+parlour, where they don’t seem to be a whit less at home than in
+fashion’s gilded halls; and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons
+knocked off the malefactors’ legs previous to execution.  What hardened
+ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches!  What
+compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has
+been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain!
+Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall’s (ah gracious powers!
+what a funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky Green in that
+scene in the play!); and now we are at a private party, at which
+Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully too, as you must confess)
+with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the
+piano!
+
+“After,” the text says, “_the Oxonian_ had played several pieces of
+lively music, he requested as a favour that Kate and his friend Tom would
+perform a waltz.  Kate without any hesitation immediately stood up.  Tom
+offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the dance took place.
+The plate conveys a correct representation of the ‘gay scene’ at that
+precise moment.  The anxiety of the _Oxonian_ to witness the attitudes of
+the elegant pair had nearly put a stop to their movements.  On turning
+round from the pianoforte and presenting his comical _mug_, Kate could
+scarcely suppress a laugh.”
+
+And no wonder; just look at it now (as I have copied it to the best of my
+humble ability), and compare Master Logic’s countenance and attitude with
+the splendid elegance of Tom!  Now every London man is weary and _blasé_.
+There is an enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which
+contrasts strangely with our feelings of 1860.  Here, for instance, is a
+specimen of their talk and walk, “If,’ says LOGIC—‘if _enjoyment_ is your
+_motto_, you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than at
+any other place in the metropolis.  It is all free and easy.  Stay as
+long as you like, and depart when you think proper.’—‘Your description is
+so flattering,’ replied JERRY, ‘that I do not care how soon the time
+arrives for us to start.’  LOGIC proposed a ‘_bit of a stroll_’ in order
+to get rid of an hour or two, which was immediately accepted by Tom and
+Jerry.  A _turn_ or two in Bond Street, a _stroll_ through Piccadilly, a
+_look in_ at TATTERSALL’s, a _ramble_ through Pall Mall, and a _strut_ on
+the Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour
+for dinner arrived, when a few glasses of TOM’s rich wines soon put them
+on the _qui vive_.  VAUXHALL was then the object in view, and the TRIO
+started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply
+affords.”
+
+How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals, bring out
+the writer’s wit and relieve the eye!  They are as good as jokes, though
+you mayn’t quite preceive the point.  Mark the varieties of lounge in
+which the young men indulge—now a _stroll_, then a _look in_, then a
+_ramble_, and presently a _strut_.  When George, Prince of Wales, was
+twenty, I have read in an old Magazine, “the Prince’s lounge” was a
+peculiar manner of walking which the young bucks imitated.  At Windsor
+George III. had a _cat’s path_—a sly early walk which the good old king
+took in the grey morning before his household was astir.  What was the
+Corinthian path here recorded?  Does any antiquary know?  And what were
+the rich wines which our friends took, and which enable them to enjoy
+Vauxhall?  Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which could occasion such a
+delightful perversion of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample
+pleasures there, what were they?
+
+So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic, is fairly
+knocked up by all this excitement and is forced to go home, and the last
+picture represents him getting into the coach at the “White Horse
+Cellar,” he being one of six inside; whilst his friends shake him by the
+hand; whilst the sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round
+with oranges, knives, and sealing-wax: whilst the guard is closing the
+door.  Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors? where are the
+guards? where are the jolly teams? where are the coaches? and where the
+youth that climbed inside and out of them; that heard the merry horn
+which sounds no more; that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge; that rubbed
+away the bitter tears at night after parting as the coach sped on the
+journey to school and London; that looked out with beating heart as the
+milestones flew by, for the welcome corner where began home and holidays.
+
+It is night now: and here is home.  Gathered under the quiet roof elders
+and children lie alike at rest.  In the midst of a great peace and calm,
+the stars look out from the heavens.  The silence is peopled with the
+past; sorrowful remorses for sins and shortcomings—memories of passionate
+joys and griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad.
+Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine.  The
+town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the
+autumn mists.  Twinkling among the houses a light keeps watch here and
+there, in what may be a sick chamber or two.  The clock tolls sweetly in
+the silent air.  Here is night and rest.  An awful sense of thanks makes
+the heart swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my room through the
+sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing were upon it.
+
+
+
+
+ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+
+THE kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader has
+pulled out a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am writing, and
+sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season.  You young ladies, may you
+have plucked pretty giftlings from it; and out of the cracker sugar-plum
+which you have split with the captain or the sweet young curate may you
+have read one of those delicious conundrums which the confectioners
+introduce into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of
+love.  Those riddles are to be read at _your_ age, when I daresay they
+are amusing.  As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the
+tree, they don’t care about the love-riddle part, but understand the
+sweet-almoned portion very well.  They are four, five, six years old.
+Patience, little people!  A dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be
+reading those wonderful love-conundrums, too.  As for us elderly folks,
+we watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling at the
+branches: and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which
+we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr Carnifex’s review of the
+quarter’s meat; Mr Sartor’s compliments, and little statement for self
+and the young gentlemen; and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline’s respects to the
+young ladies, who encloses her account, and will sent on Saturday,
+please; or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch of the
+Christmas tree, and there find a lively and amusing article from the Rev.
+Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy’s exceedingly moderate account
+for the last term’s school expenses.
+
+The tree yet sparkles, I say.  I am writing on the day before Twelfth
+Day, if you must know; but already ever so many of the fruits have been
+pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out.  Bobby Miseltow, who has
+been staying with us for a week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously
+in the bath-room), comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the
+holidays with his grandmother—and I brush away the manly tear of regret
+as I part with the dear child.  “Well, Bob, good-bye, since you _will_
+go.  Compliments to grandmamma.  Thank her for the turkey.  Here’s —”
+(_A slight pecuniary transaction takes place at this juncture_, _and Bob
+nods and winks_, _and puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket_.)  “You have
+had a pleasant week?”
+
+BOB.—“Haven’t I!”  (_And exit_, _anxious to know the amount of the coin
+which has just changed hands_.)
+
+He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind which I
+see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our past Christmas
+week.  When Bob’s holidays are over, and the printer has sent me back
+this manuscript, I know Christmas will be an old story.  All the fruit
+will be off the Christmas tree then; the crackers will have cracked off;
+the almonds will have been crunched; and the sweet-bitter riddles will
+have been read; the lights will have perished off the dark green boughs;
+the toys growing on them will have been distributed, fought for,
+cherished, neglected, broken.  Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keep out
+of it (be still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of a riddle read
+together, of a double almond munched together, and of the moiety of an
+exploded cracker. . . .  The maids, I say, will have taken down all that
+holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses,
+the dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the pantomime
+fairies whom they have seen; whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by
+this time; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are
+all dingy and dusty.  Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will
+have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of
+adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin.  When you read
+this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his mouth,
+and saying, “How are you to-morrow?”  To-morrow, indeed!  He must be
+almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the blush of
+shame) for asking the absurd question.  To-morrow, indeed!  To-morrow the
+diffugient snows will give place to spring; the snowdrops will lift their
+heads; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that
+feast; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green
+knobs; the whitebait season will bloom . . . as if one need go on
+describing these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though
+ending, and the subject of my discourse!
+
+We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how boisterously
+jolly they become at Christmas time.  What wassail-bowls,
+robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song!  And
+then to think that these festivities are prepared months before—that
+these Christmas pieces are prophetic!  How kind of artists and poets to
+devise the festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time!
+We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at midnight
+and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at six o’clock.  I
+often think with gratitude of the famous Mr Nelson Lee—the author of I
+don’t know how many hundred glorious pantomimes—walking by the summer
+wave at Margate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of
+some new gorgeous spectacle of faëry, which the winter shall see
+complete.  He is like cook at midnight (_si parva licet_).  He watches
+and thinks.  He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums of
+fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of—well, the figs of fairy
+fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething cauldron of
+imagination, and at due season serves up the PANTOMIME.
+
+Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see _all_ the
+pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I shall never
+forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of _The Times_ which
+appears on the morning after Boxing-day.  Perhaps reading is even better
+than seeing.  The best way, I think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed,
+and have the paper for two hours, reading all the way down from Drury
+Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton.  Bob and I went to two pantomimes.  One
+was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I
+don’t know which we liked the best.
+
+At the Fancy, we saw “Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy’s Ghost and Nunky’s
+Pison,” which is all very well—but, gentlemen, if you don’t respect
+Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil?  The palace and ramparts of
+Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg’s finest efforts.
+The banqueting hall of the palace is illuminated: the peaks and gables
+glitter with the snow: the sentinels march blowing their fingers with the
+cold—the freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and
+dexterously arranged: the snow storm rises: the winds howl awfully along
+the battlements: the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore.
+Hamlet’s umbrella is whirled away in the storm.  He and his two friends
+stamp on each other’s toes to keep them warm.  The storm-spirits rise in
+the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks.  My
+eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air!  As the
+storm reaches its height (here the wind instruments come in with
+prodigious effect, and I compliment Mr Brumby and the violoncellos)—as
+the snow storm rises (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then
+thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends a
+shiver into your very boot-soles), the thunder-clouds deepen (bong, bong,
+bong, from the violoncellos).  The forked lightning quivers through the
+clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins—and look, look, look! as the
+frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the
+reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the
+gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges into the water
+again.
+
+Hamlet’s mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son.  The
+storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires screaming in
+pattens.
+
+The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are seen to
+drive off, and several people are drowned.  The gas-lamps along the
+street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot through the
+troubled air.  Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars and pours!  The
+darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the power of the music—and
+see—in the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and
+wave—what is that ghastly figure moving hither?  It becomes bigger,
+bigger, as it advances down the platform—more ghastly, more horrible,
+enormous!  It is as tall as the whole stage.  It seems to be advancing on
+the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the Ghost
+of THE LATE HAMLET comes in, and begins to speak.  Several people faint,
+and the light-fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the darkness.
+
+In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about, the
+gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments
+bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt
+frightened.  But hark! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles?  Is
+it—can it be—the grey dawn peeping in the stormy east?  The ghost’s eyes
+look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony.  Quicker, quicker ply
+the violins of Phoebus Apollo.  Redder, redder grow the orient clouds.
+Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come out on the roof
+of the palace.  And now the round sun himself pops up from behind the
+waves of night.  Where is the ghost?  He is gone!  Purple shadows of morn
+“slant o’er the snowy sward,” the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and
+we confess we are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost.
+We don’t like those dark scenes in pantomimes.
+
+After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into Columbine
+was to be expected; but I confess I was a little shocked when Hamlet’s
+mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly knocked down by Clown
+Claudius.  Grimaldi is getting a little old now, but for real humour
+there are few clowns like him.  Mr Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste
+and comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves.
+
+“Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings,” at the other house, is
+very pleasant too.  The irascible William is acted with great vigour by
+Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque.  Some
+trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not
+the merry genius of pantomime permit himself?  At the battle of Hastings,
+William is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very
+elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharpshooter),
+when a shot from the Normans kills Harold.  The Fairy Edith hereupon
+comes forward, and finds his body, which straightway leaps up a live
+harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the
+Archbishop of Bayeux a diverting pantaloon, &c. &c. &c.
+
+Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw; but one description
+will do as well as another.  The plots, you see, are a little intricate
+and difficult to understand in pantomimes; and I may have mixed up one
+with another.  That I was at the theatre on Boxing-night is certain—but
+the pit was so full that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the
+distance, as I stood at the door.  And if I was badly off, I think there
+was a young gentleman behind me worse off still.  I own that he has good
+reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my back, and
+hereby beg his pardon.
+
+Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly, who had
+slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his back, uttering
+energetic expressions: that party begs to offer thanks, and compliments
+of the season.
+
+Bob’s behaviour on New Year’s day, I can assure Dr Holyshade, was highly
+creditable to the boy.  He had expressed a determination to partake of
+every dish which was put on the table; but after soup, fish, roast-beef,
+and roast-goose, he retired from active business until the pudding and
+mince-pies made their appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not
+too freely.  And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising the
+punch, which was of my own manufacture, and which some gentlemen present
+(Mr O’M—g—n, amongst others) pronounced to be too weak.  Too weak! A
+bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two
+bottles and a half of water—_can_ this mixture be said to be too weak for
+any mortal?  Our young friend amused the company during the evening, by
+exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, which he had purchased, and
+likewise by singing “Sally, come up!” a quaint, but rather monotonous
+melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the
+broad Mississippi.
+
+What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child’s amusement during the
+Christmas week?  A great philosopher was giving a lecture to young folks
+at the British Institution.  But when this diversion was proposed to our
+young friend Bob, he said, “Lecture?  No, thank you.  Not as I knows on,”
+and made sarcastic signals on his nose.  Perhaps he is of Dr Johnson’s
+opinion about lectures: “Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear that
+imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a book?”  _I_
+never went, of my own choice, to a lecture; that I can vow.  As for
+sermons, they are different; I delight in them, and they cannot, of
+course, be too long.
+
+Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides pantomime,
+pudding, and pie.  One glorious, one delightful, one most unlucky and
+pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which carried
+us more quickly and briskly than any of your vulgar railways, over
+Battersea Bridge, on which the horse’s hoofs rung as if it had been iron;
+through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in
+which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where
+not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were
+sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as
+they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up in the air; the air
+frosty with a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and
+churches, and plantations glimmered.  We drive up the hill, Bob and I; we
+make the last two miles in eleven minutes; we pass that poor, armless man
+who sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes.  I don’t give
+anything, and Bob looks disappointed.  We are set down neatly at the
+gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door.  I don’t give anything;
+again disappointment on Bob’s part.  I pay a shilling apiece, and we
+enter into the glorious building, which is decorated for Christmas, and
+straightway forgetfulness on Bob’s part of everything but that
+magnificent scene.  The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and
+Christmas.  The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, statues,
+splendours, are all crowned for Christmas.  The delicious negro is
+singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob.  He has scarcely
+done, when, Tootarootatoo!  Mr Punch is performing his surprising
+actions, and hanging the beadle.  The stalls are decorated.  The
+refreshment-tables are piled with good things; at many fountains “MULLED
+CLARET” is written up in appetizing capitals.  “Mulled Claret—oh, jolly!
+How cold it is!” says Bob; I pass on.  “It’s only three o’clock,” says
+Bob.  “No, only three,” I say meekly.  “We dine at seven,” sighs Bob,
+“and it’s so-o-o coo-old.”  I still would take no hints.  No claret, no
+refreshment, no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob.  At last I am
+obliged to tell him all.  Just before we left home, a little Christmas
+bill popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold.  I
+forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half-a-crown from
+John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of delight.  _Now_
+you see, Bob, why I could not treat you on that second of January when we
+drove to the palace together; when the girls and boys were sliding on the
+ponds at Dulwich; when the darkling river was full of floating ice, and
+the sun was like a warming-pan in the leaden sky.
+
+One more Christmas sight we had, of course; and that sight I think I like
+as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all seasons.  We went to a
+certain garden of delight, where, whatever your cares are, I think you
+can manage to forget some of them, and muse, and be not unhappy; to a
+garden beginning with a Z, which is as lively as Noah’s ark; where the
+fox has brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the
+elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag, and
+the condor his old white wig and black satin hood.  On this day it was so
+cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as they plapped up and
+down by their pool, and seemed to say, “Aha, this weather reminds us of
+dear home!”  “Cold! bah!  I have got such a warm coat,” says brother
+Bruin, “I don’t mind”; and he laughs on his pole, and clucks down a bun.
+The squealing hyænas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us quite
+refreshingly at their window; and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger, burning
+bright, glared at us red-hot through his bars, and snorted blasts of
+hell.  The woolly camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced round his
+ring on his silent pads.  We went to our favourite places.  Our dear
+wambat came up, and had himself scratched very affably.  Our
+fellow-creatures in the monkey room held out their little black hands,
+and piteously asked us for Christmas alms.  Those darling alligators on
+their rock winked at us in the most friendly way.  The solemn eagles sat
+alone, and scowled at us from their peaks; whilst little Tom Ratel
+tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner.  If I
+have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don’t pass the
+gate.  I recognise my friends, my enemies, in countless cages.  I
+entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the
+black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou
+stork yesterday at dinner; and when Bob’s aunt came to tea in the
+evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely,
+and said—
+
+    “First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,
+    Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.
+
+                            _Chorus of Children_.
+
+    Then I saw the camel with a HUMP upon his back!
+
+    Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;
+    Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;
+    Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,
+    Then I saw the monkeys—mercy, how unpleasantly they—smelt!”
+
+There.  No one can beat that piece of wit, can he Bob?  And so it is
+over; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us, hadn’t we?
+Present my respects to the doctor; and I hope, my boy, we may spend
+another merry Christmas next year.
+
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Some Roundabout Papers, by William Makepeace Thackeray</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Some Roundabout Papers, by William Makepeace
+Thackeray
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Some Roundabout Papers
+
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2013  [eBook #1462]
+[This file was first posted on July 16, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME ROUNDABOUT PAPERS***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1908 T. N. Foulis edition by Stephen
+Rice, email srice01@ibm.net and David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>SOME ROUND-<br />
+ABOUT PAPERS</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE<br />
+THACKERAY</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic"
+src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">T. N. FOULIS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">13&ndash;15 FREDERICK STREET</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">EDINBURGH: &amp; 23 BEDFORD</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">STREET, LONDON, W.C.</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">1908</p>
+<h2>ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have lately made the
+acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who has passed the last
+twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan
+establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the parish of Saint
+Lazarus.&nbsp; Stay&mdash;twenty-three or four years ago, she
+came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-picking;
+but being overworked, and having to lie out at night, she got a
+palsy which has incapacitated her from all further labour, and
+has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.</p>
+<p>An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how
+poverty makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor
+old shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her
+workhouse bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she
+may or may not agree.&nbsp; She herself can&rsquo;t be a very
+pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking old limbs and
+cold feet.&nbsp; She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure,
+not thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but
+sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water,&rdquo; she said,
+her old voice shaking with rapture at the thought.&nbsp; I never
+had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now
+from what this old lady told me.&nbsp; The Queen, who loved snuff
+herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses; and,
+in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen
+Charlotte&rsquo;s snuff, &ldquo;and it do comfort me, sir, that
+it do!&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>Pulveris exigui munus</i>.&nbsp; Here is a
+forlorn aged creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the
+great struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite
+trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a
+little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny
+legacy.&nbsp; Let me think as I write.&nbsp; (The next
+month&rsquo;s sermon, thank goodness! is safe to press.)&nbsp;
+This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that
+wassail-bowls make their appearance; at the season of pantomime,
+turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for
+schoolboys; Christmas bills, and reminiscences more or less sad
+and sweet for elders.&nbsp; If we oldsters are not merry, we
+shall be having a semblance of merriment.&nbsp; We shall see the
+young folks laughing round the holly-bush.&nbsp; We shall pass
+the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire.&nbsp; That old
+thing will have a sort of festival too.&nbsp; Beef, beer, and
+pudding will be served to her for that day also.&nbsp; Christmas
+falls on a Thursday.&nbsp; Friday is the workhouse day for coming
+out.&nbsp; Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her
+invitation for Friday, 26th December!&nbsp; Ninety is she, poor
+old soul?&nbsp; Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a
+mistletoe!&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes, ninety, sir,&rdquo; she says,
+&ldquo;and my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a
+hundred and two.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a
+hundred and two?&nbsp; What a queer calculation!</p>
+<p>Ninety!&nbsp; Very good, granny: you were born, then, in
+1772.</p>
+<p>Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born,
+and was born therefore in 1745.</p>
+<p>Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born,
+and was born therefore in 1710.</p>
+<p>We will begin with the present granny first.&nbsp; My good old
+creature, you can&rsquo;t of course remember, but that little
+gentleman for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the
+ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a &ldquo;History of
+England,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Vicar of Wakefield,&rdquo; and many
+diverting pieces.&nbsp; You were brought almost an infant to his
+chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for
+the doctor was always good to children.&nbsp; That gentleman who
+well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a
+chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose history of
+&ldquo;Rasselas&rdquo; you have never read, my pour soul; and
+whose tragedy of &ldquo;Irene&rdquo; I don&rsquo;t believe any
+man in these kingdoms ever perused.&nbsp; That tipsy Scotch
+gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom
+everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the
+scholars, your Mr Burke and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr
+Goldsmith.&nbsp; Your father often took him home in a chair to
+his lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond
+Street, the famous wit.&nbsp; Of course, my good creature, you
+remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr
+Langdale&rsquo;s house, the Popish distiller&rsquo;s, and that
+bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield&rsquo;s books in Bloomsbury
+Square?&nbsp; Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have
+seen! For the glorious victory over the Americans at
+Breed&rsquo;s Hill; for the peace in 1814, and the beautiful
+Chinese bridge in St James&rsquo;s Park; for the coronation of
+his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody,
+don&rsquo;t you?&nbsp; Yes; and you went in a procession of
+laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady, the injured
+Queen of England, at Brandenburg House; and you remember your
+mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords
+executed at the Tower.&nbsp; And as for your grandmother, she was
+born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where
+her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the
+Queen.&nbsp; With the help of a &ldquo;Wade&rsquo;s
+Chronology,&rdquo; I can make out ever so queer a history for
+you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the
+peerage-books.</p>
+<p>Peerage-books and pedigrees?&nbsp; What does she know about
+them? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings,
+literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to
+her? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe?&nbsp; Your
+mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have carried
+a musket under him.&nbsp; Your grandmother may have cried huzza
+for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you
+ever so much as hear tell of his name?&nbsp; How many hundred or
+thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the
+defunct exhibition?&mdash;and yet he was not a bit better
+informed than toads seven or eight hundred years younger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions,
+and Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what
+is it?&rdquo; says granny.&nbsp; &ldquo;I know there was a good
+Queen Charlotte, for she left me snuff; and it comforts me of a
+night when I lie awake.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To me there is something very touching in the notion of that
+little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully
+inhaled by her in the darkness.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you remember
+what traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of
+diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country
+privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in
+M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz?&nbsp; Not all the treasure went.&nbsp;
+<i>Non omnis moritur</i>.&nbsp; A poor old palsied thing at
+midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her shaking old
+hand to her nose.&nbsp; Gliding noiselessly among the beds where
+lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I
+fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There, Goody, take of my rappee.&nbsp; You will not
+sneeze, and I shall not say &lsquo;God bless you.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won&rsquo;t
+you?&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; I had a many troubles, a many
+troubles.&nbsp; I was a prisoner almost so much as you are.&nbsp;
+I had to eat boiled mutton every day: <i>entre nous</i>, I
+abominated it.&nbsp; But I never complained.&nbsp; I swallowed
+it.&nbsp; I made the best of a hard life.&nbsp; We have all our
+burdens to bear.&nbsp; But hark!&nbsp; I hear the cock-crow, and
+snuff the morning air.&rdquo;&nbsp; And with this the royal ghost
+vanishes up the chimney&mdash;if there be a chimney in that
+dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her companions pass
+their nights&mdash;their dreary nights, their restless nights,
+their cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship,
+illumined by what a feeble taper!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that
+your mother was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born,
+and that she married your esteemed father when she herself was
+twenty-five? 1745, then, was the date of your dear mother&rsquo;s
+birth.&nbsp; I daresay her father was absent in the Low
+Countries, with his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under
+whom he had the honour of carrying a halberd at the famous
+engagement of Fontenoy&mdash;or if not there, he may have been at
+Preston Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the wild
+Highlanders broke through all the laws of discipline and the
+English lines; and, being on the spot, did he see the famous
+ghost which didn&rsquo;t appear to Colonel Gardner of the
+Dragoons?&nbsp; My good creature, is it possible you don&rsquo;t
+remember that Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford,
+as you justly say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of
+Twitnam, died in the year of your birth?&nbsp; What a wretched
+memory you have!&nbsp; What? haven&rsquo;t they a library, and
+the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint
+Lazarus, where you dwell?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift,
+Atossa, and Mr Pope, of Twitnam!&nbsp; What is the gentleman
+talking about?&rdquo; says old goody, with a &ldquo;Ho!
+ho!&rdquo; and a laugh like a old parrot&mdash;you know they live
+to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred
+is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!).&nbsp; Yes, and likewise
+carps live to an immense old age.&nbsp; Some which Frederick the
+Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue
+mould on their old backs; and they could tell all sorts of queer
+stories, if they chose to speak&mdash;but they are very silent,
+carps are&mdash;of their nature <i>peu communicatives</i>.&nbsp;
+Oh! what has been thy long life, old goody, but a dole of bread
+and water and a perch on a cage; a dreary swim round and round a
+Lethe of a pond?&nbsp; What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy
+ones, and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings
+bread to feed them?</p>
+<p>No!&nbsp; Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand
+years old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like
+another; and the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much
+more variety than theirs.&nbsp; Hard labour, hard fare, hard bed,
+numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days.&nbsp; That
+is her lot.&nbsp; Is it lawful in my prayers to say, &ldquo;Thank
+heaven, I am not as one of these&rdquo;?&nbsp; If I were eighty,
+would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have
+to get up and make a bow when Mr Bumble the beadle entered the
+common room? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to give me
+her ideas of the next world?&nbsp; If I were eighty, I own I
+should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own
+age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and
+snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command,
+accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other
+prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling
+hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, &ldquo;Thank you,
+ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her
+sermon.&nbsp; John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I
+desire she may not be disturbed by theological
+controversies.&nbsp; You have a fair voice, and I heard you and
+the maids singing a hymn very sweetly the other night, and was
+thankful that our humble household should be in such
+harmony.&nbsp; Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless and
+quaky, that she can&rsquo;t sing a bit; but don&rsquo;t be giving
+yourself airs over her, because she can&rsquo;t sing and you
+can.&nbsp; Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth.&nbsp; Set
+that old kettle to sing by our hob.&nbsp; Warm her old stomach
+with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire.&nbsp; Be kind to
+the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out
+for a day of Christmas holiday.&nbsp; Shall there be many more
+Christmases for thee?&nbsp; Think of the ninety she has seen
+already; the four-score and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New
+Years!</p>
+<p>If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance
+of better early days, when you were young and happy, and loving,
+perhaps; or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind
+could rest?&nbsp; About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks
+rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder
+and a pigtail look in them?&nbsp; We may grow old, but to us some
+stories never are old.&nbsp; On a sudden they rise up, not dead,
+but living&mdash;not forgotten, but freshly remembered.&nbsp; The
+eyes gleam on us as they used to do.&nbsp; The dear voice thrills
+in our hearts.&nbsp; The rapture of the meeting, the terrible,
+terrible parting, again and again the tragedy is acted
+over.&nbsp; Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so
+like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the whole
+past came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the Strand, and
+I was young again in the midst of joys and sorrows, alike sweet
+and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered.</p>
+<p>If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old
+school-girl?&nbsp; Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which
+was a source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes.&nbsp;
+She sewed it away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at
+least was a safe investment&mdash;(vestis&mdash;a vest&mdash;an
+investment,&mdash;pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot
+help the pleasantry).&nbsp; And what do you think?&nbsp; Another
+pensionnaire of the establishment cut the coin out of
+Goody&rsquo;s stays&mdash;<i>an old woman who went upon two
+crutches</i>!&nbsp; Faugh, the old witch!&nbsp; What?&nbsp;
+Violence amongst these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble
+ones?&nbsp; Robbery amongst the penniless?&nbsp; Dogs coming and
+snatching Lazarus&rsquo;s crumbs out of his lap?&nbsp; Ah, how
+indignant Goody was as she told the story!&nbsp; To that pond at
+Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of hundreds of years,
+with hunches of blue mould on their back, I daresay the little
+Prince and Princess of Preussen-Britannien come sometimes with
+crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones.&nbsp; Those eyes may
+have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon&rsquo;s
+jack-boots: they have seen Frederick&rsquo;s lean shanks
+reflected in their pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed
+them, and now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push,
+hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity
+when the ignoble struggle is over.&nbsp; Sans souci,
+indeed!&nbsp; It is mighty well writing &ldquo;Sans souci&rdquo;
+over the gate; but where is the gate through which Care has not
+slipped?&nbsp; She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the
+sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair:
+she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and
+queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will
+perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes&rsquo; meagre bolster, and
+whisper, &ldquo;Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me
+again!&nbsp; No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes.&rdquo;
+Goody!&nbsp; For shame of yourself!&nbsp; Do not be
+cynical.&nbsp; Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures.&nbsp;
+What?&nbsp; Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety
+times?&nbsp; For four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to
+totter on this earth, hungry and obscure? Peace and goodwill to
+thee, let us say at this Christmas season.&nbsp; Come, drink,
+eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim!&nbsp; And
+of the bread which God&rsquo;s bounty gives us, I pray, brother
+reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and
+silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the means of
+labour.&nbsp; Enough!&nbsp; As I hope for beef at Christmas, I
+vow a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which
+Mr Roundabout requests the honour of Mrs Twoshoes&rsquo; company
+on Friday, 26th December.</p>
+<h2>DE JUVENTUTE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> who lived before railways, and
+survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his
+family out of the Ark.&nbsp; The children will gather round and
+say to us patriarchs, &ldquo;Tell us, grandpapa, about the old
+world.&rdquo;&nbsp; And we shall mumble our old stories; and we
+shall drop off one by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of
+us, and these very old and feeble.&nbsp; There will be but ten
+pr&aelig;-railroadites left: then three&mdash;then two&mdash;then
+one&mdash;then 0!&nbsp; If the hippopotamus had the least
+sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide
+or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank,
+and never come up again.&nbsp; Does he not see that he belongs to
+bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out
+of place in these times?&nbsp; What has he in common with the
+brisk young life surrounding him?&nbsp; In the watches of the
+night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one
+leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys
+have ceased their chatter, he&mdash;I mean the
+hippopotamus&mdash;and the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe,
+perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about
+the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where
+mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on
+the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before
+men were made to slay them.&nbsp; We who lived before railways
+are antediluvians&mdash;we must pass away.&nbsp; We are growing
+scarcer every day; and old&mdash;old&mdash;very old relicts of
+the times when George was still fighting the Dragon.</p>
+<p>Not long since, a company of horseriders paid a visit to our
+watering-place.&nbsp; We went to see them, and I bethought me
+that young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also
+to witness the performance.&nbsp; A pantomime is not always
+amusing to persons who have attained a certain age; but a boy at
+a pantomime is always amused and amusing, and to see his pleasure
+is good for most hypochondriacs.</p>
+<p>We sent to Walter&rsquo;s mother, requesting that he might
+join us, and the kind lady replied that the boy had already been
+at the morning performance of the equestrians, but was most eager
+to go in the evening likewise.&nbsp; And go he did; and laughed
+at all Mr Merryman&rsquo;s remarks, though he remembered them
+with remarkable accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very
+end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just before its
+conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party would
+be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo the rush and
+trample of the crowd round about.&nbsp; When this fact was
+pointed out to him, he yielded at once, though with a heavy
+heart, his eyes looking longingly towards the ring as we
+retreated out of the booth.&nbsp; We were scarcely clear of the
+place, when we heard &ldquo;God save the Queen,&rdquo; played by
+the equestrian band, the signal that all was over.&nbsp; Our
+companion entertained us with scraps of the dialogue on our way
+home&mdash;precious crumbs of wit which he had brought away from
+that feast.&nbsp; He laughed over them again as he walked under
+the stars.&nbsp; He has them now, and takes them out of the
+pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a
+sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school
+by this time; the holidays are over; and Doctor Birch&rsquo;s
+young friends have reassembled.</p>
+<p>Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to
+grin!&nbsp; As the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old
+gentleman with the whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I
+daresay, indulged in reflections of their own.&nbsp; There was
+one joke&mdash;I utterly forget it&mdash;but it began with
+Merryman saying what he had for dinner.&nbsp; He had mutton for
+dinner, at one o&rsquo;clock, after which &ldquo;he had to
+<i>come to business</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then came the
+point.&nbsp; Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch&rsquo;s,
+Market Rodborough, if you read this, will you please send me a
+line, and let me know what was the joke Mr Merryman made about
+having his dinner?&nbsp; <i>You</i> remember well enough.&nbsp;
+But do I want to know?&nbsp; Suppose a boy takes a favourite,
+long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and offers you a
+bit?&nbsp; <i>Merci</i>!&nbsp; The fact is, I <i>don&rsquo;t</i>
+care much about knowing that joke of Mr Merryman&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton,
+and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about
+Mr M. in private life&mdash;about his wife, lodgings, earnings,
+and general history, and I daresay was forming a picture of those
+in my mind:&mdash;wife cooking the mutton; children waiting for
+it; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth; during which
+contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr M.,
+resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and
+heels.&nbsp; Do not suppose I am going, <i>sicut est mos</i>, to
+indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and
+mountebanking.&nbsp; Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes;
+Opposition leaders prepare and polish them: Tabernacle preachers
+must arrange them in their minds before they utter them.&nbsp;
+All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these
+performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and
+why in his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies
+his power of pathos, humour, eloquence;&mdash;that Minister of
+State, and what moves him, and how his private heart is
+working;&mdash;I would only say that, at a certain time of life
+certain things cease to interest: but about <i>some</i> things
+when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight,
+hearing?&nbsp; Poems are written, and we cease to admire.&nbsp;
+Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and
+we are resigned.&nbsp; The last time I saw a ballet at the
+opera&mdash;oh! it is many years ago&mdash;I fell asleep in the
+stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording
+amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs
+were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant.&nbsp;
+Ah, I remember a different state of things!&nbsp; <i>Credite
+posteri</i>.&nbsp; To see these nymphs&mdash;gracious powers, how
+beautiful they were!&nbsp; That leering, painted, shrivelled,
+thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming
+thumping down on her board out of time&mdash;<i>that</i> an
+opera-dancer?&nbsp; Pooh!&nbsp; My dear Walter, the great
+difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some
+two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and
+singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune;
+the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their
+wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody
+can like to look at them.&nbsp; And as for laughing at me for
+falling asleep, I can&rsquo;t understand a man of sense doing
+otherwise.&nbsp; In my time, <i>&agrave; la bonne
+heure</i>.&nbsp; In the reign of George IV., I give you my
+honour, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as
+Houris.&nbsp; Even in William IV.&rsquo;s time, when I think of
+Duvernay prancing in as the Bayad&egrave;re,&mdash;I say it was a
+vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can&rsquo;t see
+nowadays.&nbsp; How well I remember the tune to which she used to
+appear!&nbsp; Kaled used to say to the Sultan, &ldquo;My lord, a
+troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes
+approaches,&rdquo; and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping
+of my heart, in she used to dance!&nbsp; There has never been
+anything like it&mdash;never.&nbsp; There never will be&mdash;I
+laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your
+Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot&mdash;pshaw, the senile
+twaddlers!&nbsp; And the impudence of the young men, with their
+music and their dancers of to-day!&nbsp; I tell you the women are
+dreary old creatures.&nbsp; I tell you one air in an opera is
+just like another, and they send all rational creatures to
+sleep.&nbsp; Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one!&nbsp; Ah,
+Caradori, thou smiling angel!&nbsp; Ah, Malibran!&nbsp; Nay, I
+will come to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a
+very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for
+me): and they we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a
+rising young singer.</p>
+<p>But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage
+beauty since the days of George IV.&nbsp; Think of Sontag!&nbsp;
+I remember her in <i>Otello</i> and the <i>Donna del Lago</i> in
+&rsquo;28.&nbsp; I remember being behind the scenes at the opera
+(where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and
+seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous
+to her murder by Donzelli.&nbsp; Young fellows have never seen
+beauty like <i>that</i>, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such
+eyes.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t tell <i>me</i>!&nbsp; A man who has been
+about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know
+better than you young lads who have seen nothing?&nbsp; The
+deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the
+young fellows more lamentable still, that they won&rsquo;t see
+this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as
+ours.</p>
+<p>Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels,
+who sang, acted, and danced.&nbsp; When I remember the Adelphi,
+and the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss
+Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler&rsquo;s Wells, and her forty
+glorious pupils&mdash;of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite
+young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more!&nbsp; One
+much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and
+that was the chief <i>male</i> dancer&mdash;a very important
+personage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat
+and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies,
+and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever.&nbsp; And this
+frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling
+<i>laudator temporis acti</i>&mdash;your old fogey who can see no
+good except in his own time.</p>
+<p>They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much
+improved since the days of <i>my</i> monarch&mdash;of George
+IV.&nbsp; <i>Pastry Cookery</i> is certainly not so good.&nbsp; I
+have often eaten half-a-crown&rsquo;s worth (including, I trust,
+ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook&rsquo;s, and that is a
+proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as
+much now?&nbsp; I passed by the pastrycook&rsquo;s shop lately,
+having occasion to visit my old school.&nbsp; It looked a very
+dingy old baker&rsquo;s; misfortunes may have come over
+him&mdash;those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I
+remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old
+(I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and
+his hand may have lost its cunning.</p>
+<p>Not that we were not great epicures.&nbsp; I remember how we
+constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our
+master&rsquo;s house&mdash;which on my conscience I believe was
+excellent and plentiful&mdash;and how we tried once or twice to
+eat him out of house and home.&nbsp; At the pastrycook&rsquo;s we
+may have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted
+half-a-crown&rsquo;s worth for my own part, but I don&rsquo;t
+like to mention the <i>real</i> figure for fear of perverting the
+present generation of boys by my monstrous confession)&mdash;we
+may have eaten too much, I say.&nbsp; We did; but what
+then?&nbsp; The school apothecary was sent for: a couple of small
+globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the
+morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was
+an actual pleasure.</p>
+<p>For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were
+pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket <i>par
+exemple</i>&mdash;and I wish the present youth joy of their
+bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them
+with light field-pieces next), there were novels&mdash;ah! I
+trouble you to find such novels in the present day!&nbsp; O
+Scottish Chiefs, didn&rsquo;t we weep over you! O Mysteries of
+Udolpho, didn&rsquo;t I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of
+you, as I have said?&nbsp; Efforts, feeble indeed, but still
+giving pleasure to us and our friends.&nbsp; &ldquo;I say, old
+boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition,&rdquo; or,
+&ldquo;Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know,&rdquo;
+amateurs would say, to boys who had a love of drawing.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Peregrine Pickle&rdquo; we liked, our fathers admiring it,
+and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think
+I was rather bewildered by it, though &ldquo;Roderick
+Random&rdquo; was and remains delightful.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because
+the works of that divine were not considered decent for young
+people.&nbsp; Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby
+and Trim, would I say a word in disrespect.&nbsp; But I am
+thankful to live in times when men no longer have the temptation
+to write so as to call blushes on women&rsquo;s cheeks, and would
+shame to whisper wicked allusions to honest boys.&nbsp; Then,
+above all, we had <span class="smcap">Walter Scott</span>, the
+kindly, the generous, the pure&mdash;the companion of what
+countless delightful hours; the purveyor of how much happiness;
+the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our
+youth! How well I remember the type and the brownish paper of the
+old duodecimo &ldquo;Tales of My Landlord!&rdquo;&nbsp; I have
+never dared to read the &ldquo;Pirate,&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;Bride of Lammermoor,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Kenilworth,&rdquo;
+from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people
+die, and are murdered at the end.&nbsp; But
+&ldquo;Ivanhoe,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Quentin Durward&rdquo;!&nbsp;
+Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those
+books again!&nbsp; Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which
+we read them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may
+be the tart was good; but how fresh the appetite was!&nbsp; If
+the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able
+to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen
+of centuries.&nbsp; The boy-critic loves the story: grown up, he
+loves the author who wrote the story.&nbsp; Hence the kindly tie
+is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly
+for life.&nbsp; I meet people now who don&rsquo;t care of Walter
+Scott, or the &ldquo;Arabian Nights&rdquo;; I am sorry for them,
+unless they in their time have found <i>their</i>
+romancer&mdash;their charming Scheherazade.&nbsp; By the way,
+Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favourite
+novelist in the fourth form now?&nbsp; Have you got anything so
+good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth&rsquo;s
+<i>Frank</i>?&nbsp; It used to belong to a fellow&rsquo;s sisters
+generally; but though he pretended to despise it, and said,
+&ldquo;Oh, stuff for girls!&rdquo; he read it; and I think there
+were one or two passages which would try my eyes now, were I to
+meet with the little book.</p>
+<p>As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling
+Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on
+purpose to get it; but somehow, if you will press the question so
+closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had
+supposed it to be.&nbsp; The pictures are just as fine as ever;
+and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian
+Tom with delight, after many year&rsquo;s absence.&nbsp; But the
+style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even
+thought it a little vulgar&mdash;well! well! other writers have
+been considered vulgar&mdash;and as a description of the sports
+and amusements of London in the ancient times, more curious than
+amusing.</p>
+<p>But the pictures!&mdash;oh! the pictures are noble
+still!&nbsp; First, there is Jerry arriving from the country, in
+a green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for a
+fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom&rsquo;s
+tailor.&nbsp; Then away for the career of pleasure and
+fashion.&nbsp; The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the
+saloon!! the green-room!!!&nbsp; Rapturous bliss&mdash;the opera
+itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to <i>knock down a
+Charley</i> there!&nbsp; There are Jerry and Tom, with their
+tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera&mdash;very
+much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now.&nbsp;
+There they are at Almack&rsquo;s itself, amidst a crowd of
+high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself looking
+at them dancing.&nbsp; Now, strange change, they are in Tom
+Cribb&rsquo;s parlour, where they don&rsquo;t seem to be a whit
+less at home than in fashion&rsquo;s gilded halls; and now they
+are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the
+malefactors&rsquo; legs previous to execution.&nbsp; What
+hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow
+breeches!&nbsp; What compunction in the face of the gentleman in
+black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his
+hands, and listens to the chaplain!&nbsp; Now we haste away to
+merrier scenes: to Tattersall&rsquo;s (ah gracious powers! what a
+funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky Green in that
+scene in the play!); and now we are at a private party, at which
+Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully too, as you must
+confess) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is
+playing on the piano!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After,&rdquo; the text says, &ldquo;<i>the Oxonian</i>
+had played several pieces of lively music, he requested as a
+favour that Kate and his friend Tom would perform a waltz.&nbsp;
+Kate without any hesitation immediately stood up.&nbsp; Tom
+offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the dance took
+place.&nbsp; The plate conveys a correct representation of the
+&lsquo;gay scene&rsquo; at that precise moment.&nbsp; The anxiety
+of the <i>Oxonian</i> to witness the attitudes of the elegant
+pair had nearly put a stop to their movements.&nbsp; On turning
+round from the pianoforte and presenting his comical <i>mug</i>,
+Kate could scarcely suppress a laugh.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And no wonder; just look at it now (as I have copied it to the
+best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic&rsquo;s
+countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom!&nbsp;
+Now every London man is weary and <i>blas&eacute;</i>.&nbsp;
+There is an enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which
+contrasts strangely with our feelings of 1860.&nbsp; Here, for
+instance, is a specimen of their talk and walk, &ldquo;If,&rsquo;
+says <span class="smcap">Logic</span>&mdash;&lsquo;if
+<i>enjoyment</i> is your <i>motto</i>, you may make the most of
+an evening at Vauxhall, more than at any other place in the
+metropolis.&nbsp; It is all free and easy.&nbsp; Stay as long as
+you like, and depart when you think
+proper.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Your description is so
+flattering,&rsquo; replied <span class="smcap">Jerry</span>,
+&lsquo;that I do not care how soon the time arrives for us to
+start.&rsquo;&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Logic</span> proposed a
+&lsquo;<i>bit of a stroll</i>&rsquo; in order to get rid of an
+hour or two, which was immediately accepted by Tom and
+Jerry.&nbsp; A <i>turn</i> or two in Bond Street, a <i>stroll</i>
+through Piccadilly, a <i>look in</i> at <span
+class="smcap">Tattersall</span>&rsquo;s, a <i>ramble</i> through
+Pall Mall, and a <i>strut</i> on the Corinthian path, fully
+occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner
+arrived, when a few glasses of <span
+class="smcap">Tom</span>&rsquo;s rich wines soon put them on the
+<i>qui vive</i>.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Vauxhall</span> was
+then the object in view, and the <span class="smcap">Trio</span>
+started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so
+amply affords.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those
+capitals, bring out the writer&rsquo;s wit and relieve the
+eye!&nbsp; They are as good as jokes, though you mayn&rsquo;t
+quite preceive the point.&nbsp; Mark the varieties of lounge in
+which the young men indulge&mdash;now a <i>stroll</i>, then a
+<i>look in</i>, then a <i>ramble</i>, and presently a
+<i>strut</i>.&nbsp; When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I
+have read in an old Magazine, &ldquo;the Prince&rsquo;s
+lounge&rdquo; was a peculiar manner of walking which the young
+bucks imitated.&nbsp; At Windsor George III. had a <i>cat&rsquo;s
+path</i>&mdash;a sly early walk which the good old king took in
+the grey morning before his household was astir.&nbsp; What was
+the Corinthian path here recorded?&nbsp; Does any antiquary
+know?&nbsp; And what were the rich wines which our friends took,
+and which enable them to enjoy Vauxhall?&nbsp; Vauxhall is gone,
+but the wines which could occasion such a delightful perversion
+of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there,
+what were they?</p>
+<p>So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the
+rustic, is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced
+to go home, and the last picture represents him getting into the
+coach at the &ldquo;White Horse Cellar,&rdquo; he being one of
+six inside; whilst his friends shake him by the hand; whilst the
+sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round with
+oranges, knives, and sealing-wax: whilst the guard is closing the
+door.&nbsp; Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors? where
+are the guards? where are the jolly teams? where are the coaches?
+and where the youth that climbed inside and out of them; that
+heard the merry horn which sounds no more; that saw the sun rise
+over Stonehenge; that rubbed away the bitter tears at night after
+parting as the coach sped on the journey to school and London;
+that looked out with beating heart as the milestones flew by, for
+the welcome corner where began home and holidays.</p>
+<p>It is night now: and here is home.&nbsp; Gathered under the
+quiet roof elders and children lie alike at rest.&nbsp; In the
+midst of a great peace and calm, the stars look out from the
+heavens.&nbsp; The silence is peopled with the past; sorrowful
+remorses for sins and shortcomings&mdash;memories of passionate
+joys and griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike calm and
+sad.&nbsp; Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me, that have long
+ceased to shine.&nbsp; The town and the fair landscape sleep
+under the starlight, wreathed in the autumn mists.&nbsp;
+Twinkling among the houses a light keeps watch here and there, in
+what may be a sick chamber or two.&nbsp; The clock tolls sweetly
+in the silent air.&nbsp; Here is night and rest.&nbsp; An awful
+sense of thanks makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as I
+pass to my room through the sleeping house, and feel as though a
+hushed blessing were upon it.</p>
+<h2>ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> kindly Christmas tree, from
+which I trust every gentle reader has pulled out a bonbon or two,
+is yet all aflame whilst I am writing, and sparkles with the
+sweet fruits of its season.&nbsp; You young ladies, may you have
+plucked pretty giftlings from it; and out of the cracker
+sugar-plum which you have split with the captain or the sweet
+young curate may you have read one of those delicious conundrums
+which the confectioners introduce into the sweetmeats, and which
+apply to the cunning passion of love.&nbsp; Those riddles are to
+be read at <i>your</i> age, when I daresay they are
+amusing.&nbsp; As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at
+the tree, they don&rsquo;t care about the love-riddle part, but
+understand the sweet-almoned portion very well.&nbsp; They are
+four, five, six years old.&nbsp; Patience, little people!&nbsp; A
+dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be reading those
+wonderful love-conundrums, too.&nbsp; As for us elderly folks, we
+watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling at
+the branches: and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the
+packets which we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr
+Carnifex&rsquo;s review of the quarter&rsquo;s meat; Mr
+Sartor&rsquo;s compliments, and little statement for self and the
+young gentlemen; and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline&rsquo;s respects
+to the young ladies, who encloses her account, and will sent on
+Saturday, please; or we stretch our hand out to the educational
+branch of the Christmas tree, and there find a lively and amusing
+article from the Rev. Henry Holyshade, containing our dear
+Tommy&rsquo;s exceedingly moderate account for the last
+term&rsquo;s school expenses.</p>
+<p>The tree yet sparkles, I say.&nbsp; I am writing on the day
+before Twelfth Day, if you must know; but already ever so many of
+the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone
+out.&nbsp; Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a
+week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room),
+comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the holidays
+with his grandmother&mdash;and I brush away the manly tear of
+regret as I part with the dear child.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well, Bob,
+good-bye, since you <i>will</i> go.&nbsp; Compliments to
+grandmamma.&nbsp; Thank her for the turkey.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s
+&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; (<i>A slight pecuniary transaction takes
+place at this juncture</i>, <i>and Bob nods and winks</i>, <i>and
+puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket</i>.)&nbsp; &ldquo;You have
+had a pleasant week?&rdquo;</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Bob</span>.&mdash;&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t
+I!&rdquo;&nbsp; (<i>And exit</i>, <i>anxious to know the amount
+of the coin which has just changed hands</i>.)</p>
+<p>He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door
+(behind which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little
+account of our past Christmas week.&nbsp; When Bob&rsquo;s
+holidays are over, and the printer has sent me back this
+manuscript, I know Christmas will be an old story.&nbsp; All the
+fruit will be off the Christmas tree then; the crackers will have
+cracked off; the almonds will have been crunched; and the
+sweet-bitter riddles will have been read; the lights will have
+perished off the dark green boughs; the toys growing on them will
+have been distributed, fought for, cherished, neglected,
+broken.&nbsp; Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keep out of it (be
+still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of a riddle read
+together, of a double almond munched together, and of the moiety
+of an exploded cracker. . . .&nbsp; The maids, I say, will have
+taken down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks,
+lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school,
+fondly thinking of the pantomime fairies whom they have seen;
+whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by this time; and whose
+pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and
+dusty.&nbsp; Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will
+have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving
+temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of
+Pekin.&nbsp; When you read this, will Clown still be going on
+lolling his tongue out of his mouth, and saying, &ldquo;How are
+you to-morrow?&rdquo;&nbsp; To-morrow, indeed!&nbsp; He must be
+almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the
+blush of shame) for asking the absurd question.&nbsp; To-morrow,
+indeed!&nbsp; To-morrow the diffugient snows will give place to
+spring; the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday may be
+expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in
+place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green
+knobs; the whitebait season will bloom . . . as if one need go on
+describing these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here,
+though ending, and the subject of my discourse!</p>
+<p>We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how
+boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time.&nbsp; What
+wassail-bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts
+of Christmas song!&nbsp; And then to think that these festivities
+are prepared months before&mdash;that these Christmas pieces are
+prophetic!&nbsp; How kind of artists and poets to devise the
+festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time! We
+ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at
+midnight and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at
+six o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; I often think with gratitude of the
+famous Mr Nelson Lee&mdash;the author of I don&rsquo;t know how
+many hundred glorious pantomimes&mdash;walking by the summer wave
+at Margate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea
+of some new gorgeous spectacle of fa&euml;ry, which the winter
+shall see complete.&nbsp; He is like cook at midnight (<i>si
+parva licet</i>).&nbsp; He watches and thinks.&nbsp; He pounds
+the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums of fancy, the
+sweetmeats of fun, the figs of&mdash;well, the figs of fairy
+fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething cauldron
+of imagination, and at due season serves up the <span
+class="smcap">Pantomime</span>.</p>
+<p>Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see
+<i>all</i> the pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of
+my life I shall never forego reading about them in that delicious
+sheet of <i>The Times</i> which appears on the morning after
+Boxing-day.&nbsp; Perhaps reading is even better than
+seeing.&nbsp; The best way, I think, is to say you are ill, lie
+in bed, and have the paper for two hours, reading all the way
+down from Drury Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton.&nbsp; Bob and I
+went to two pantomimes.&nbsp; One was at the Theatre of Fancy,
+and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I don&rsquo;t know which we
+liked the best.</p>
+<p>At the Fancy, we saw &ldquo;Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy&rsquo;s
+Ghost and Nunky&rsquo;s Pison,&rdquo; which is all very
+well&mdash;but, gentlemen, if you don&rsquo;t respect Shakspeare,
+to whom will you be civil?&nbsp; The palace and ramparts of
+Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg&rsquo;s
+finest efforts.&nbsp; The banqueting hall of the palace is
+illuminated: the peaks and gables glitter with the snow: the
+sentinels march blowing their fingers with the cold&mdash;the
+freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and
+dexterously arranged: the snow storm rises: the winds howl
+awfully along the battlements: the waves come curling, leaping,
+foaming to shore.&nbsp; Hamlet&rsquo;s umbrella is whirled away
+in the storm.&nbsp; He and his two friends stamp on each
+other&rsquo;s toes to keep them warm.&nbsp; The storm-spirits
+rise in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the
+rocks.&nbsp; My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling
+through the air!&nbsp; As the storm reaches its height (here the
+wind instruments come in with prodigious effect, and I compliment
+Mr Brumby and the violoncellos)&mdash;as the snow storm rises
+(queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then thrumpty thrump
+comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends a shiver
+into your very boot-soles), the thunder-clouds deepen (bong,
+bong, bong, from the violoncellos).&nbsp; The forked lightning
+quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of
+violins&mdash;and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring
+waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling
+parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the
+gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges into the
+water again.</p>
+<p>Hamlet&rsquo;s mother comes on to the battlements to look for
+her son.&nbsp; The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and
+she retires screaming in pattens.</p>
+<p>The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore
+are seen to drive off, and several people are drowned.&nbsp; The
+gas-lamps along the street are wrenched from their foundations,
+and shoot through the troubled air.&nbsp; Whist, rush, hish! how
+the rain roars and pours!&nbsp; The darkness becomes awful,
+always deepened by the power of the music&mdash;and see&mdash;in
+the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and
+wave&mdash;what is that ghastly figure moving hither?&nbsp; It
+becomes bigger, bigger, as it advances down the
+platform&mdash;more ghastly, more horrible, enormous!&nbsp; It is
+as tall as the whole stage.&nbsp; It seems to be advancing on the
+stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the
+Ghost of <span class="smcap">the Late Hamlet</span> comes in, and
+begins to speak.&nbsp; Several people faint, and the
+light-fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the darkness.</p>
+<p>In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes
+about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the
+wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest
+spectator must have felt frightened.&nbsp; But hark! what is that
+silver shimmer of the fiddles?&nbsp; Is it&mdash;can it
+be&mdash;the grey dawn peeping in the stormy east?&nbsp; The
+ghost&rsquo;s eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly
+agony.&nbsp; Quicker, quicker ply the violins of Phoebus
+Apollo.&nbsp; Redder, redder grow the orient clouds.&nbsp;
+Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come out on
+the roof of the palace.&nbsp; And now the round sun himself pops
+up from behind the waves of night.&nbsp; Where is the
+ghost?&nbsp; He is gone!&nbsp; Purple shadows of morn
+&ldquo;slant o&rsquo;er the snowy sward,&rdquo; the city wakes up
+in life and sunshine, and we confess we are very much relieved at
+the disappearance of the ghost.&nbsp; We don&rsquo;t like those
+dark scenes in pantomimes.</p>
+<p>After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into
+Columbine was to be expected; but I confess I was a little
+shocked when Hamlet&rsquo;s mother became Pantaloon, and was
+instantly knocked down by Clown Claudius.&nbsp; Grimaldi is
+getting a little old now, but for real humour there are few
+clowns like him.&nbsp; Mr Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste
+and comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed
+themselves.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings,&rdquo;
+at the other house, is very pleasant too.&nbsp; The irascible
+William is acted with great vigour by Snoxall, and the battle of
+Hastings is a good piece of burlesque.&nbsp; Some trifling
+liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the
+merry genius of pantomime permit himself?&nbsp; At the battle of
+Hastings, William is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex
+volunteers, very elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy
+(as Haco Sharpshooter), when a shot from the Normans kills
+Harold.&nbsp; The Fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds
+his body, which straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the
+Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux
+a diverting pantaloon, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+<p>Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw; but one
+description will do as well as another.&nbsp; The plots, you see,
+are a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes;
+and I may have mixed up one with another.&nbsp; That I was at the
+theatre on Boxing-night is certain&mdash;but the pit was so full
+that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I
+stood at the door.&nbsp; And if I was badly off, I think there
+was a young gentleman behind me worse off still.&nbsp; I own that
+he has good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me
+behind my back, and hereby beg his pardon.</p>
+<p>Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly,
+who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his
+back, uttering energetic expressions: that party begs to offer
+thanks, and compliments of the season.</p>
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s behaviour on New Year&rsquo;s day, I can assure Dr
+Holyshade, was highly creditable to the boy.&nbsp; He had
+expressed a determination to partake of every dish which was put
+on the table; but after soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose,
+he retired from active business until the pudding and mince-pies
+made their appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not too
+freely.&nbsp; And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by
+praising the punch, which was of my own manufacture, and which
+some gentlemen present (Mr O&rsquo;M&mdash;g&mdash;n, amongst
+others) pronounced to be too weak.&nbsp; Too weak! A bottle of
+rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two
+bottles and a half of water&mdash;<i>can</i> this mixture be said
+to be too weak for any mortal?&nbsp; Our young friend amused the
+company during the evening, by exhibiting a two-shilling
+magic-lantern, which he had purchased, and likewise by singing
+&ldquo;Sally, come up!&rdquo; a quaint, but rather monotonous
+melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro on the banks of
+the broad Mississippi.</p>
+<p>What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child&rsquo;s
+amusement during the Christmas week?&nbsp; A great philosopher
+was giving a lecture to young folks at the British
+Institution.&nbsp; But when this diversion was proposed to our
+young friend Bob, he said, &ldquo;Lecture?&nbsp; No, thank
+you.&nbsp; Not as I knows on,&rdquo; and made sarcastic signals
+on his nose.&nbsp; Perhaps he is of Dr Johnson&rsquo;s opinion
+about lectures: &ldquo;Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear
+that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a
+book?&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>I</i> never went, of my own choice, to a
+lecture; that I can vow.&nbsp; As for sermons, they are
+different; I delight in them, and they cannot, of course, be too
+long.</p>
+<p>Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides
+pantomime, pudding, and pie.&nbsp; One glorious, one delightful,
+one most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a
+famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any
+of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the
+horse&rsquo;s hoofs rung as if it had been iron; through suburban
+villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the
+sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where
+not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and
+girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old
+sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed
+shoes flew up in the air; the air frosty with a lilac haze,
+through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations
+glimmered.&nbsp; We drive up the hill, Bob and I; we make the
+last two miles in eleven minutes; we pass that poor, armless man
+who sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t give anything, and Bob looks disappointed.&nbsp; We
+are set down neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the
+brougham door.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t give anything; again
+disappointment on Bob&rsquo;s part.&nbsp; I pay a shilling
+apiece, and we enter into the glorious building, which is
+decorated for Christmas, and straightway forgetfulness on
+Bob&rsquo;s part of everything but that magnificent scene.&nbsp;
+The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and
+Christmas.&nbsp; The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts,
+statues, splendours, are all crowned for Christmas.&nbsp; The
+delicious negro is singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas and
+Bob.&nbsp; He has scarcely done, when, Tootarootatoo!&nbsp; Mr
+Punch is performing his surprising actions, and hanging the
+beadle.&nbsp; The stalls are decorated.&nbsp; The
+refreshment-tables are piled with good things; at many fountains
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Mulled Claret</span>&rdquo; is written
+up in appetizing capitals.&nbsp; &ldquo;Mulled Claret&mdash;oh,
+jolly!&nbsp; How cold it is!&rdquo; says Bob; I pass on.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only three o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; says
+Bob.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, only three,&rdquo; I say meekly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We dine at seven,&rdquo; sighs Bob, &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s
+so-o-o coo-old.&rdquo;&nbsp; I still would take no hints.&nbsp;
+No claret, no refreshment, no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for
+Bob.&nbsp; At last I am obliged to tell him all.&nbsp; Just
+before we left home, a little Christmas bill popped in at the
+door and emptied my purse at the threshold.&nbsp; I forgot all
+about the transaction, and had to borrow half-a-crown from John
+Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of
+delight.&nbsp; <i>Now</i> you see, Bob, why I could not treat you
+on that second of January when we drove to the palace together;
+when the girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich;
+when the darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was
+like a warming-pan in the leaden sky.</p>
+<p>One more Christmas sight we had, of course; and that sight I
+think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all
+seasons.&nbsp; We went to a certain garden of delight, where,
+whatever your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of
+them, and muse, and be not unhappy; to a garden beginning with a
+Z, which is as lively as Noah&rsquo;s ark; where the fox has
+brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the
+elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his
+bag, and the condor his old white wig and black satin hood.&nbsp;
+On this day it was so cold that the white bears winked their pink
+eyes, as they plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to
+say, &ldquo;Aha, this weather reminds us of dear
+home!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Cold! bah!&nbsp; I have got such a warm
+coat,&rdquo; says brother Bruin, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+mind&rdquo;; and he laughs on his pole, and clucks down a
+bun.&nbsp; The squealing hy&aelig;nas gnashed their teeth and
+laughed at us quite refreshingly at their window; and, cold as it
+was, Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us red-hot through
+his bars, and snorted blasts of hell.&nbsp; The woolly camel
+leered at us quite kindly as he paced round his ring on his
+silent pads.&nbsp; We went to our favourite places.&nbsp; Our
+dear wambat came up, and had himself scratched very
+affably.&nbsp; Our fellow-creatures in the monkey room held out
+their little black hands, and piteously asked us for Christmas
+alms.&nbsp; Those darling alligators on their rock winked at us
+in the most friendly way.&nbsp; The solemn eagles sat alone, and
+scowled at us from their peaks; whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled
+over head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner.&nbsp;
+If I have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they
+don&rsquo;t pass the gate.&nbsp; I recognise my friends, my
+enemies, in countless cages.&nbsp; I entertained the eagle, the
+vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, crimson-necked,
+blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork yesterday at
+dinner; and when Bob&rsquo;s aunt came to tea in the evening, and
+asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely, and
+said&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;First I saw the white bear, then I saw the
+black,<br />
+Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Chorus of Children</i>.</p>
+<p>Then I saw the camel with a <span class="GutSmall">HUMP</span>
+upon his back!</p>
+<p>Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;<br />
+Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;<br />
+Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,<br />
+Then I saw the monkeys&mdash;mercy, how unpleasantly
+they&mdash;smelt!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There.&nbsp; No one can beat that piece of wit, can he
+Bob?&nbsp; And so it is over; but we had a jolly time, whilst you
+were with us, hadn&rsquo;t we?&nbsp; Present my respects to the
+doctor; and I hope, my boy, we may spend another merry Christmas
+next year.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME ROUNDABOUT PAPERS***</p>
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Roundabout Papers, by Thackeray
+#3 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+Some Roundabout Papers
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+by W. M. Thackeray
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+September, 1998  [Etext #1462]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Roundabout Papers, by Thackeray
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+This etext was prepared from the 1908 T.N. Foulis edition by Stephen
+Rice, email srice01@ibm.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Some Roundabout Papers
+
+
+
+
+ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI
+
+
+
+We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety,
+who has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a
+great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the
+parish of Saint Lazarus.  Stay -- twenty-three or four years ago,
+she came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-
+picking;  but being overworked, and having to lie out at night,
+she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all further
+labour, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.
+
+An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty
+makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old
+shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her workhouse
+bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she may or may
+not agree.  She herself can't be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor
+thing! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet.  She lies awake
+a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times,
+for hers never were happy;  but sleepless with aches, and agues,
+and rheumatism of old age.  "The gentleman gave me brandy-and-
+water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the
+thought.  I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I
+like her better now from what this old lady told me.  The Queen,
+who loved snuff herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain
+poorhouses;  and, in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a
+pinch of Queen Charlotte's snuff, "and it do comfort me, sir,
+that it do!"  Pulveris exigui munus.  Here is a forlorn aged
+creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the great
+struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite
+trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a
+little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny
+legacy.  Let me think as I write.  (The next month's sermon,
+thank goodness! is safe to press.)  This discourse will appear at
+the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their
+appearance;  at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages,
+plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys;  Christmas bills,
+and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders.  If we
+oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of
+merriment.  We shall see the young folks laughing round the
+holly-bush.  We shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by
+the fire.  That old thing will have a sort of festival too.
+Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also.
+Christmas falls on a Thursday.  Friday is the workhouse day for
+coming out.  Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her
+invitation for Friday, 26th December!  Ninety is she, poor old
+soul?  Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe!  "Yes,
+ninety, sir," she says, "and my mother was a hundred, and my
+grandmother was a hundred and two."
+
+Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred
+and two?  What a queer calculation!
+
+Ninety!  Very good, granny:  you were born, then, in 1772.
+
+Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born,
+and was born therefore in 1745.
+
+Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and
+was born therefore in 1710.
+
+We will begin with the present granny first.  My good old
+creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman
+for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious
+Mr Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of
+Wakefield," and many diverting pieces.  You were brought almost
+an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some
+sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children.  That
+gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as
+you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose
+history of "Rasselas" you have never read, my pour soul; and
+whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these
+kingdoms ever perused.  That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to
+come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed,
+wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr Burke
+and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr Goldsmith.  Your father often
+took him home in a chair to his lodgings;  and has done as much
+for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit.  Of course, my
+good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No
+Popery before Mr Langdale's house, the Popish distiller's, and
+that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in Bloomsbury
+Square?  Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen!
+For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill;  for
+the peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St James's
+Park;  for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as
+Prince of Wales, Goody, don't you?  Yes;  and you went in a
+procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady,
+the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House;  and you
+remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch
+lords executed at the Tower.  And as for your grandmother, she
+was born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was;
+where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for
+the Queen.  With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make
+out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a
+pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books.
+
+Peerage-books and pedigrees?  What does she know about them?
+Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary
+gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her?
+Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe?  Your mother may have
+seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under
+him.  Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough;  but
+what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear
+tell of his name?  How many hundred or thousand of years had that
+toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct exhibition? -- and
+yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight
+hundred years younger.
+
+"Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince
+Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it?"
+says granny.  "I know there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she
+left me snuff;  and it comforts me of a night when I lie awake."
+
+To me there is something very touching in the notion of that
+little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully
+inhaled by her in the darkness.  Don't you remember what
+traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of
+diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country
+privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in M-ckl-
+nb-rg Str-l-tz?  Not all the treasure went.  Non omnis moritur.
+A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as
+she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose.  Gliding noiselessly
+among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their
+cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that
+does not creak.  "There, Goody, take of my rappee.  You will not
+sneeze, and I shall not say 'God bless you.'  But you will think
+kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't you?  Ah!  I had a many
+troubles, a many troubles.  I was a prisoner almost so much as
+you are.  I had to eat boiled mutton every day:  entre nous, I
+abominated it.  But I never complained.  I swallowed it.  I made
+the best of a hard life.  We have all our burdens to bear.  But
+hark!  I hear the cock-crow, and snuff the morning air."  And
+with this the royal ghost vanishes up the chimney -- if there be
+a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her
+companions pass their nights -- their dreary nights, their
+restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum
+companionship, illumined by what a feeble taper!
+
+"Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother
+was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she
+married your esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five?
+1745, then, was the date of your dear mother's birth.  I daresay
+her father was absent in the Low Countries, with his Royal
+Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under whom he had the honour of
+carrying a halberd at the famous engagement of Fontenoy -- or if
+not there, he may have been at Preston Pans, under General Sir
+John Cope, when the wild Highlanders broke through all the laws
+of discipline and the English lines;  and, being on the spot, did
+he see the famous ghost which didn't appear to Colonel Gardner of
+the Dragoons?  My good creature, is it possible you don't
+remember that Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford,
+as you justly say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of
+Twitnam, died in the year of your birth?  What a wretched memory
+you have!  What? haven't they a library, and the commonest books
+of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you
+dwell?"
+
+"Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift, Atossa, and
+Mr Pope, of Twitnam!  What is the gentleman talking about?" says
+old goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot -- you
+know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a
+parrot of a hundred is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!).  Yes,
+and likewise carps live to an immense old age.  Some which
+Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great
+humps of blue mould on their old backs;  and they could tell all
+sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak -- but they are
+very silent, carps are -- of their nature peu communicatives.
+Oh! what has been thy long life, old goody, but a dole of bread
+and water and a perch on a cage;  a dreary swim round and round a
+Lethe of a pond?  What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones,
+and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings bread
+to feed them?
+
+No!  Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old
+and have nothing to tell but that one day is like another;  and
+the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety
+than theirs.  Hard labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all
+night, and gnawing hunger most days.  That is her lot.  Is it
+lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of
+these"?  If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always
+gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr Bumble
+the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to Miss
+Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world?  If I were
+eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another
+gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old
+dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of
+command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the
+other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang;  to hold out a
+trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank
+you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon.
+John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not
+be disturbed by theological controversies.  You have a fair
+voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a hymn very sweetly
+the other night, and was thankful that our humble household
+should be in such harmony.  Poor old Twoshoes is so old and
+toothless and quaky, that she can't sing a bit;  but don't be
+giving yourself airs over her, because she can't sing and you
+can.  Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth.  Set that old
+kettle to sing by our hob.  Warm her old stomach with nut-brown
+ale and a toast laid in the fire.  Be kind to the poor old
+school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of
+Christmas holiday.  Shall there be many more Christmases for
+thee?  Think of the ninety she has seen already;  the fourscore
+and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years!
+
+If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of
+better early days, when you were young and happy, and loving,
+perhaps;  or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind
+could rest?  About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy,
+and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a
+pigtail look in them?  We may grow old, but to us some stories
+never are old.  On a sudden they rise up, not dead, but living --
+not forgotten, but freshly remembered.  The eyes gleam on us as
+they used to do.  The dear voice thrills in our hearts.  The
+rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and
+again the tragedy is acted over.  Yesterday, in the street, I saw
+a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my coming
+once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the
+rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys
+and sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly
+remembered.
+
+If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old
+school-girl?  Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a
+source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes.  She sewed it
+away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a
+safe investment -- (vestis -- a vest -- an investment, -- pardon
+me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleasantry).  And
+what do you think?  Another pensionnaire of the establishment cut
+the coin out of Goody's stays -- an old woman who went upon two
+crutches!  Faugh, the old witch!  What?  Violence amongst these
+toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones?  Robbery amongst
+the penniless?  Dogs coming and snatching Lazarus's crumbs out of
+his lap?  Ah, how indignant Goody was as she told the story!  To
+that pond at Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of
+hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould on their back, I
+daresay the little Prince and Princess of Preussen-Britannien
+come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones.
+Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's
+jack-boots:  they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in
+their pool;  and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them, and
+now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob,
+squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the
+ignoble struggle is over.  Sans souci, indeed!  It is mighty well
+writing "Sans souci" over the gate;  but where is the gate
+through which Care has not slipped?  She perches on the shoulders
+of the sentry in the sentry-box:  she whispers the porter
+sleeping in his arm-chair:  she glides up the staircase, and lies
+down between the king and queen in their bed-royal:  this very
+night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes'
+meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies
+ask me again!  No, no;  they will forget poor old Twoshoes."
+Goody!  For shame of yourself!  Do not be cynical.  Do not
+mistrust your fellow-creatures.  What?  Has the Christmas morning
+dawned upon thee ninety times?  For four-score and ten years has
+it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure?
+Peace and goodwill to thee, let us say at this Christmas season.
+Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old
+pilgrim!  And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray,
+brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those
+noble and silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the
+means of labour.  Enough!  As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow
+a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr
+Roundabout requests the honour of Mrs Twoshoes' company on
+Friday, 26th December.
+
+
+
+DE JUVENTUTE
+
+
+
+We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient
+world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.  The
+children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us,
+grandpapa, about the old world."  And we shall mumble our old
+stories;  and we shall drop off one by one;  and there will be
+fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble.  There will
+be but ten prae-railroadites left:  then three -- then two --
+then one -- then 0!  If the hippopotamus had the least
+sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide
+or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank,
+and never come up again.  Does he not see that he belongs to
+bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out
+of place in these times?  What has he in common with the brisk
+young life surrounding him?  In the watches of the night, when
+the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even
+the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their
+chatter, he -- I mean the hippopotamus -- and the elephant, and
+the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and
+have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which
+they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze,
+crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the
+caves and waters before men were made to slay them.  We who lived
+before railways are antediluvians -- we must pass away.  We are
+growing scarcer every day;  and old -- old -- very old relicts of
+the times when George was still fighting the Dragon.
+
+Not long since, a company of horseriders paid a visit to our
+watering-place.  We went to see them, and I bethought me that
+young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to
+witness the performance.  A pantomime is not always amusing to
+persons who have attained a certain age;  but a boy at a
+pantomime is always amused and amusing, and to see his pleasure
+is good for most hypochondriacs.
+
+We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join us, and
+the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the
+morning performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go
+in the evening likewise.  And go he did;  and laughed at all Mr
+Merryman's remarks, though he remembered them with remarkable
+accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very end of the fun,
+and was only induced to retire just before its conclusion by
+representations that the ladies of the party would be incommoded
+if they were to wait and undergo the rush and trample of the
+crowd round about.  When this fact was pointed out to him, he
+yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking
+longingly towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth.  We
+were scarcely clear of the place, when we heard "God save the
+Queen," played by the equestrian band, the signal that all was
+over.  Our companion entertained us with scraps of the dialogue
+on our way home -- precious crumbs of wit which he had brought
+away from that feast.  He laughed over them again as he walked
+under the stars.  He has them now, and takes them out of the
+pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a
+sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school
+by this time;  the holidays are over;  and Doctor Birch's young
+friends have reassembled.
+
+Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin!  As
+the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the
+whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I daresay, indulged
+in reflections of their own.  There was one joke -- I utterly
+forget it -- but it began with Merryman saying what he had for
+dinner.  He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, after which
+"he had to come to business."  And then came the point.  Walter
+Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you
+read this, will you please send me a line, and let me know what
+was the joke Mr Merryman made about having his dinner?  You
+remember well enough.  But do I want to know?  Suppose a boy
+takes a favourite, long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket,
+and offers you a bit?  Merci!  The fact is, I don't care much
+about knowing that joke of Mr Merryman's.
+
+But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and
+his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr
+M. in private life -- about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and
+general history, and I daresay was forming a picture of those in
+my mind:  -- wife cooking the mutton;  children waiting for it;
+Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth;  during which
+contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr M.,
+resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and
+heels.  Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in
+moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.
+Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes;  Opposition leaders
+prepare and polish them:  Tabernacle preachers must arrange them
+in their minds before they utter them.  All I mean is, that I
+would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly, and
+out of his uniform:  that preacher, and why in his travels this
+and that point struck him;  wherein lies his power of pathos,
+humour, eloquence;  -- that Minister of State, and what moves
+him, and how his private heart is working;  -- I would only say
+that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest:
+but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use
+of life, sight, hearing?  Poems are written, and we cease to
+admire.  Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn;  she ceases to
+invite us, and we are resigned.  The last time I saw a ballet at
+the opera -- oh! it is many years ago -- I fell asleep in the
+stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording
+amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs
+were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant.  Ah,
+I remember a different state of things!  Credite posteri.  To see
+these nymphs -- gracious powers, how beautiful they were!  That
+leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing,
+cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of
+time -- that an opera-dancer?  Pooh!  My dear Walter, the great
+difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some
+two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and
+singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune;
+the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their
+wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody
+can like to look at them.  And as for laughing at me for falling
+asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise.  In my
+time, a la bonne heure.  In the reign of George IV., I give you
+my honour, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as
+Houris.  Even in William IV.'s time, when I think of Duvernay
+prancing in as the Bayadere, -- I say it was a vision of
+loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see nowadays.  How well I
+remember the tune to which she used to appear!  Kaled used to say
+to the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing
+gurls called Bayaderes approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals,
+and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance!  There has
+never been anything like it -- never.  There never will be -- I
+laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your
+Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot -- pshaw, the senile
+twaddlers!  And the impudence of the young men, with their music
+and their dancers of to-day!  I tell you the women are dreary old
+creatures.  I tell you one air in an opera is just like another,
+and they send all rational creatures to sleep.  Ah, Ronzi de
+Begnis, thou lovely one!  Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel!  Ah,
+Malibran!  Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge that
+Lablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto
+was the boy for me):  and they we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni,
+and Donzelli, a rising young singer.
+
+But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage
+beauty since the days of George IV.  Think of Sontag!  I remember
+her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in `28.  I remember being
+behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows
+of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down
+over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli.  Young
+fellows have never seen beauty like that, heard such a voice,
+seen such hair, such eyes.  Don't tell me!  A man who has been
+about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know
+better than you young lads who have seen nothing?  The
+deterioration of women is lamentable;  and the conceit of the
+young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this
+fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.
+
+Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels,
+who sang, acted, and danced.  When I remember the Adelphi, and
+the actresses there:  when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss
+Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious
+pupils -- of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young
+Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more!  One much-admired
+being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the
+chief male dancer -- a very important personage then, with a bare
+neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to
+divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a
+trap-door for ever.  And this frank admission ought to show that
+I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti -- your old
+fogey who can see no good except in his own time.
+
+They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much
+improved since the days of my monarch -- of George IV.  Pastry
+Cookery is certainly not so good.  I have often eaten half-a-
+crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school
+pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been
+very good, for could I do as much now?  I passed by the
+pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.
+It looked a very dingy old baker's;  misfortunes may have come
+over him -- those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I
+remember them:  but he may have grown careless as he has grown
+old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age),
+and his hand may have lost its cunning.
+
+Not that we were not great epicures.  I remember how we
+constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's
+house -- which on my conscience I believe was excellent and
+plentiful -- and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of
+house and home.  At the pastrycook's we may have over-eaten
+ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own part,
+but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of
+perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous
+confession) -- we may have eaten too much, I say.  We did;  but
+what then?  The school apothecary was sent for:  a couple of
+small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the
+morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was
+an actual pleasure.
+
+For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty
+much in old times as they are now (except cricket par exemple --
+and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose
+Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces
+next), there were novels -- ah! I trouble you to find such novels
+in the present day!  O Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you!
+O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures
+out of you, as I have said?  Efforts, feeble indeed, but still
+giving pleasure to us and our friends.  "I say, old boy, draw us
+Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, "Draw us Don Quixote
+and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who had
+a love of drawing.  "Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers
+admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital
+fun;  but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick
+Random" was and remains delightful.  I don't remember having
+Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that
+divine were not considered decent for young people.  Ah! not
+against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say
+a word in disrespect.  But I am thankful to live in times when
+men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes
+on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to
+honest boys.  Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the kindly,
+the generous, the pure -- the companion of what countless
+delightful hours;  the purveyor of how much happiness;  the
+friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth!
+How well I remember the type and the brownish paper of the old
+duodecimo "Tales of My Landlord!"  I have never dared to read the
+"Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or "Kenilworth," from
+that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people die,
+and are murdered at the end.  But "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin
+Durward"!  Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of
+those books again!  Those books, and perhaps those eyes with
+which we read them;  and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes!
+It may be the tart was good;  but how fresh the appetite was!  If
+the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able
+to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen
+of centuries.  The boy-critic loves the story:  grown up, he
+loves the author who wrote the story.  Hence the kindly tie is
+established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly
+for life.  I meet people now who don't care of Walter Scott, or
+the "Arabian Nights";  I am sorry for them, unless they in their
+time have found their romancer -- their charming Scheherazade.
+By the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the
+favourite novelist in the fourth form now?  Have you got anything
+so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank?  It used to
+belong to a fellow's sisters generally;  but though he pretended
+to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he read it;  and
+I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes
+now, were I to meet with the little book.
+
+As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling
+Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on
+purpose to get it;  but somehow, if you will press the question
+so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I
+had supposed it to be.  The pictures are just as fine as ever;
+and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian
+Tom with delight, after many year's absence.  But the style of
+the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me;  I even thought it a
+little vulgar -- well! well! other writers have been considered
+vulgar -- and as a description of the sports and amusements of
+London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.
+
+But the pictures! -- oh! the pictures are noble still!  First,
+there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and
+leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at
+Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor.  Then away for the
+career of pleasure and fashion.  The park! delicious excitement!
+The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!!  Rapturous bliss --
+the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock down a
+Charley there!  There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and
+little cocked hats, coming from the opera -- very much as
+gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now.  There they are
+at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with
+the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing.  Now,
+strange change, they are in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't
+seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls;
+and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the
+malefactors' legs previous to execution.  What hardened ferocity
+in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches!  What
+compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I
+suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens
+to the chaplain!  Now we haste away to merrier scenes:  to
+Tattersall's (ah gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor
+was who performed Dicky Green in that scene in the play!);  and
+now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is
+waltzing (and very gracefully too, as you must confess) with
+Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the
+piano!
+
+"After," the text says, "the Oxonian had played several pieces of
+lively music, he requested as a favour that Kate and his friend
+Tom would perform a waltz.  Kate without any hesitation
+immediately stood up.  Tom offered his hand to his fascinating
+partner, and the dance took place.  The plate conveys a correct
+representation of the `gay scene' at that precise moment.  The
+anxiety of the Oxonian to witness the attitudes of the elegant
+pair had nearly put a stop to their movements.  On turning round
+from the pianoforte and presenting his comical mug, Kate could
+scarcely suppress a laugh."
+
+And no wonder;  just look at it now (as I have copied it to the
+best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's
+countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom!  Now
+every London man is weary and blase.  There is an enjoyment of
+life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with
+our feelings of 1860.  Here, for instance, is a specimen of their
+talk and walk, "`If,' says LOGIC -- `if enjoyment is your motto,
+you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than at any
+other place in the metropolis.  It is all free and easy.  Stay as
+long as you like, and depart when you think proper.' -- `Your
+description is so flattering,' replied JERRY, `that I do not care
+how soon the time arrives for us to start.'  LOGIC proposed a
+`bit of a stroll' in order to get rid of an hour or two, which
+was immediately accepted by Tom and Jerry.  A turn or two in Bond
+Street, a stroll through Piccadilly, a look in at TATTERSALL's, a
+ramble through Pall Mall, and a strut on the Corinthian path,
+fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner
+arrived, when a few glasses of TOM's rich wines soon put them on
+the qui vive.  VAUXHALL was then the object in view, and the TRIO
+started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so
+amply affords."
+
+How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals,
+bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye!  They are as good
+as jokes, though you mayn't quite preceive the point.  Mark the
+varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge -- now a
+stroll, then a look in, then a ramble, and presently a strut.
+When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old
+Magazine, "the Prince's lounge" was a peculiar manner of walking
+which the young bucks imitated.  At Windsor George III. had a
+cat's path -- a sly early walk which the good old king took in
+the grey morning before his household was astir.  What was the
+Corinthian path here recorded?  Does any antiquary know?  And
+what were the rich wines which our friends took, and which enable
+them to enjoy Vauxhall?  Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which
+could occasion such a delightful perversion of the intellect as
+to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, what were they?
+
+So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic,
+is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced to go
+home, and the last picture represents him getting into the coach
+at the "White Horse Cellar," he being one of six inside;  whilst
+his friends shake him by the hand;  whilst the sailor mounts on
+the roof;  whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives, and
+sealing-wax:  whilst the guard is closing the door.  Where are
+they now, those sealing-wax vendors? where are the guards? where
+are the jolly teams? where are the coaches? and where the youth
+that climbed inside and out of them;  that heard the merry horn
+which sounds no more;  that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge;
+that rubbed away the bitter tears at night after parting as the
+coach sped on the journey to school and London;  that looked out
+with beating heart as the milestones flew by, for the welcome
+corner where began home and holidays.
+
+It is night now:  and here is home.  Gathered under the quiet
+roof elders and children lie alike at rest.  In the midst of a
+great peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens.  The
+silence is peopled with the past;  sorrowful remorses for sins
+and shortcomings -- memories of passionate joys and griefs rise
+out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad.  Eyes, as I
+shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine.  The town
+and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the
+autumn mists.  Twinkling among the houses a light keeps watch
+here and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two.  The clock
+tolls sweetly in the silent air.  Here is night and rest.  An
+awful sense of thanks makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as
+I pass to my room through the sleeping house, and feel as though
+a hushed blessing were upon it.
+
+
+
+ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+
+
+The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader
+has pulled out a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am
+writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season.  You
+young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from it;  and
+out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with the
+captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of those
+delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce into the
+sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of love.
+Those riddles are to be read at your age, when I daresay they are
+amusing.  As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the
+tree, they don't care about the love-riddle part, but understand
+the sweet-almoned portion very well.  They are four, five, six
+years old.  Patience, little people!  A dozen merry Christmases
+more, and you will be reading those wonderful love-conundrums,
+too.  As for us elderly folks, we watch the babies at their
+sport, and the young people pulling at the branches:  and instead
+of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which we pluck off
+the boughs, we find enclosed Mr Carnifex's review of the
+quarter's meat;  Mr Sartor's compliments, and little statement
+for self and the young gentlemen;  and Madame de Sainte-
+Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, who encloses her
+account, and will sent on Saturday, please;  or we stretch our
+hand out to the educational branch of the Christmas tree, and
+there find a lively and amusing article from the Rev. Henry
+Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly moderate
+account for the last term's school expenses.
+
+The tree yet sparkles, I say.  I am writing on the day before
+Twelfth Day, if you must know;  but already ever so many of the
+fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out.
+Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a week (and who
+has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room), comes to say he
+is going away to spend the rest of the holidays with his
+grandmother -- and I brush away the manly tear of regret as I
+part with the dear child.  "Well, Bob, good-bye, since you will
+go.  Compliments to grandmamma.  Thank her for the turkey.
+Here's ----" (A slight pecuniary transaction takes place at this
+juncture, and Bob nods and winks, and puts his hand in his
+waistcoat pocket.)  "You have had a pleasant week?"
+
+Bob. -- "Haven't I!"  (And exit, anxious to know the amount of the
+coin which has just changed hands.)
+
+He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind
+which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our
+past Christmas week.  When Bob's holidays are over, and the
+printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know Christmas will
+be an old story.  All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree
+then;  the crackers will have cracked off;  the almonds will have
+been crunched;  and the sweet-bitter riddles will have been read;
+the lights will have perished off the dark green boughs;  the
+toys growing on them will have been distributed, fought for,
+cherished, neglected, broken.  Ferdinand and Fidelia will each
+keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of a
+riddle read together, of a double almond munched together, and of
+the moiety of an exploded cracker.... The maids, I say, will have
+taken down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks,
+lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school,
+fondly thinking of the pantomime fairies whom they have seen;
+whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by this time;  and whose
+pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and
+dusty.  Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have
+cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of
+adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin.  When
+you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue
+out of his mouth, and saying, "How are you to-morrow?"  To-
+morrow, indeed!  He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that
+cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the
+absurd question.  To-morrow, indeed!  To-morrow the diffugient
+snows will give place to spring; the snowdrops will lift their
+heads;  Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties
+peculiar to that feast;  in place of bonbons, trees will have an
+eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season will
+bloom ... as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena,
+when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of
+my discourse!
+
+We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how
+boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time.  What wassail-
+bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of
+Christmas song!  And then to think that these festivities are
+prepared months before -- that these Christmas pieces are
+prophetic!  How kind of artists and poets to devise the
+festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time!
+We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at
+midnight and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at
+six o'clock.  I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr
+Nelson Lee -- the author of I don't know how many hundred
+glorious pantomimes -- walking by the summer wave at Margate, or
+Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new
+gorgeous spectacle of faery, which the winter shall see complete.
+He is like cook at midnight (si parva licet).  He watches and
+thinks.  He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums
+of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of -- well, the figs of
+fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething
+cauldron of imagination, and at due season serves up the
+Pantomime.
+
+Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see all the
+pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I
+shall never forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of
+The Times which appears on the morning after Boxing-day.  Perhaps
+reading is even better than seeing.  The best way, I think, is to
+say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the paper for two hours,
+reading all the way down from Drury Lane to the Britannia at
+Hoxton.  Bob and I went to two pantomimes.  One was at the
+Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I don't
+know which we liked the best.
+
+At the Fancy, we saw "Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and
+Nunky's Pison," which is all very well -- but, gentlemen, if you
+don't respect Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil?  The palace
+and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of
+Loutherbourg's finest efforts.  The banqueting hall of the palace
+is illuminated:  the peaks and gables glitter with the snow:  the
+sentinels march blowing their fingers with the cold -- the
+freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and
+dexterously arranged:  the snow storm rises:  the winds howl
+awfully along the battlements:  the waves come curling, leaping,
+foaming to shore.  Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the
+storm.  He and his two friends stamp on each other's toes to keep
+them warm.  The storm-spirits rise in the air, and are whirled
+howling round the palace and the rocks.  My eyes! what tiles and
+chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air!  As the storm reaches
+its height (here the wind instruments come in with prodigious
+effect, and I compliment Mr Brumby and the violoncellos) -- as
+the snow storm rises (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and
+then thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major,
+which sends a shiver into your very boot-soles), the thunder-
+clouds deepen (bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos).  The
+forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream
+of violins -- and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring
+waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling
+parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-
+carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges into the water
+again.
+
+Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son.
+The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires
+screaming in pattens.
+
+The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are
+seen to drive off, and several people are drowned.  The gas-lamps
+along the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot
+through the troubled air.  Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars
+and pours!  The darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the
+power of the music -- and see -- in the midst of a rush, and
+whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave -- what is that
+ghastly figure moving hither?  It becomes bigger, bigger, as it
+advances down the platform -- more ghastly, more horrible,
+enormous!  It is as tall as the whole stage.  It seems to be
+advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with
+terror, as the Ghost of the Late Hamlet comes in, and begins to
+speak.  Several people faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick
+pockets furiously in the darkness.
+
+In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes
+about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the
+wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest
+spectator must have felt frightened.  But hark! what is that
+silver shimmer of the fiddles?  Is it -- can it be -- the grey
+dawn peeping in the stormy east?  The ghost's eyes look blankly
+towards it, and roll a ghastly agony.  Quicker, quicker ply the
+violins of Phoebus Apollo.  Redder, redder grow the orient
+clouds.  Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just
+come out on the roof of the palace.  And now the round sun
+himself pops up from behind the waves of night.  Where is the
+ghost?  He is gone!  Purple shadows of morn "slant o'er the snowy
+sward," the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess we
+are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost.  We
+don't like those dark scenes in pantomimes.
+
+After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into
+Columbine was to be expected;  but I confess I was a little
+shocked when Hamlet's mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly
+knocked down by Clown Claudius.  Grimaldi is getting a little old
+now, but for real humour there are few clowns like him.  Mr
+Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste and comic, as he always
+is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves.
+
+"Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings," at the other
+house, is very pleasant too.  The irascible William is acted with
+great vigour by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good
+piece of burlesque.  Some trifling liberties are taken with
+history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of
+pantomime permit himself?  At the battle of Hastings, William is
+on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very
+elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco
+Sharpshooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold.  The
+Fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, which
+straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes
+an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux a diverting
+pantaloon, &c. &c. &c.
+
+Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw;  but one
+description will do as well as another.  The plots, you see, are
+a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes;
+and I may have mixed up one with another.  That I was at the
+theatre on Boxing-night is certain -- but the pit was so full
+that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I
+stood at the door.  And if I was badly off, I think there was a
+young gentleman behind me worse off still.  I own that he has
+good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my
+back, and hereby beg his pardon.
+
+Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly,
+who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his
+back, uttering energetic expressions:  that party begs to offer
+thanks, and compliments of the season.
+
+Bob's behaviour on New Year's day, I can assure Dr Holyshade, was
+highly creditable to the boy.  He had expressed a determination
+to partake of every dish which was put on the table;  but after
+soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he retired from active
+business until the pudding and mince-pies made their appearance,
+of which he partook liberally, but not too freely.  And he
+greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising the punch, which
+was of my own manufacture, and which some gentlemen present (Mr
+O'M--g--n, amongst others) pronounced to be too weak.  Too weak!
+A bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy,
+and two bottles and a half of water -- can this mixture be said
+to be too weak for any mortal?  Our young friend amused the
+company during the evening, by exhibiting a two-shilling magic-
+lantern, which he had purchased, and likewise by singing "Sally,
+come up!" a quaint, but rather monotonous melody, which I am told
+is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the broad Mississippi.
+
+What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amusement
+during the Christmas week?  A great philosopher was giving a
+lecture to young folks at the British Institution.  But when this
+diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said,
+"Lecture?  No, thank you.  Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic
+signals on his nose.  Perhaps he is of Dr Johnson's opinion about
+lectures:  "Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear that
+imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a
+book?"  I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture;  that I can
+vow.  As for sermons, they are different;  I delight in them, and
+they cannot, of course, be too long.
+
+Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides
+pantomime, pudding, and pie.  One glorious, one delightful, one
+most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a
+famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any
+of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the
+horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron;  through suburban
+villages, plum-caked with snow;  under a leaden sky, in which the
+sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan;  by pond after pond, where
+not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and
+girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old
+sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed
+shoes flew up in the air;  the air frosty with a lilac haze,
+through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations
+glimmered.  We drive up the hill, Bob and I;  we make the last
+two miles in eleven minutes;  we pass that poor, armless man who
+sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes.  I don't
+give anything, and Bob looks disappointed.  We are set down
+neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door.
+I don't give anything;  again disappointment on Bob's part.  I
+pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the glorious building,
+which is decorated for Christmas, and straightway forgetfulness
+on Bob's part of everything but that magnificent scene.  The
+enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and Christmas.  The
+stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, statues, splendours,
+are all crowned for Christmas.  The delicious negro is singing
+his Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob.  He has scarcely
+done, when, Tootarootatoo!  Mr Punch is performing his surprising
+actions, and hanging the beadle.  The stalls are decorated.  The
+refreshment-tables are piled with good things;  at many fountains
+"Mulled Claret" is written up in appetizing capitals.  "Mulled
+Claret -- oh, jolly!  How cold it is!" says Bob;  I pass on.
+"It's only three o'clock," says Bob.  "No, only three," I say
+meekly.  "We dine at seven," sighs Bob, "and it's so-o-o coo-
+old."  I still would take no hints.  No claret, no refreshment,
+no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob.  At last I am obliged to
+tell him all.  Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill
+popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold.  I
+forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half-a-crown
+from John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of
+delight.  Now you see, Bob, why I could not treat you on that
+second of January when we drove to the palace together;  when the
+girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich;  when the
+darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like a
+warming-pan in the leaden sky.
+
+One more Christmas sight we had, of course; and that sight I
+think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all
+seasons.  We went to a certain garden of delight, where, whatever
+your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of them,
+and muse, and be not unhappy;  to a garden beginning with a Z,
+which is as lively as Noah's ark;  where the fox has brought his
+brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the elephant has
+brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag, and the
+condor his old white wig and black satin hood.  On this day it
+was so cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as they
+plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to say, "Aha, this
+weather reminds us of dear home!"  "Cold! bah!  I have got such a
+warm coat," says brother Bruin, "I don't mind";  and he laughs on
+his pole, and clucks down a bun.  The squealing hyaenas gnashed
+their teeth and laughed at us quite refreshingly at their window;
+and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us
+red-hot through his bars, and snorted blasts of hell.  The woolly
+camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced round his ring on his
+silent pads.  We went to our favourite places.  Our dear wambat
+came up, and had himself scratched very affably.  Our fellow-
+creatures in the monkey room held out their little black hands,
+and piteously asked us for Christmas alms.  Those darling
+alligators on their rock winked at us in the most friendly way.
+The solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks;
+whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in his
+usual diverting manner.  If I have cares in my mind, I come to
+the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate.  I recognise my
+friends, my enemies, in countless cages.  I entertained the
+eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated,
+crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork
+yesterday at dinner;  and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the
+evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her
+gravely, and said --
+
+"First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,
+Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.
+
+Chorus of Children
+
+Then I saw the camel with a HUMP upon his back!
+
+Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;
+Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;
+Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,
+Then I saw the monkeys -- mercy, how unpleasantly they -- smelt!"
+
+There.  No one can beat that piece of wit, can he Bob?  And so it
+is over;  but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us,
+hadn't we?  Present my respects to the doctor;  and I hope, my
+boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Roundabout Papers, by Thackeray
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Roundabout Papers, by Thackeray
+#3 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+Some Roundabout Papers
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+by W. M. Thackeray
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+September, 1998  [Etext #1462]
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+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1908 T.N. Foulis edition by Stephen
+Rice, email srice01@ibm.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Some Roundabout Papers
+
+
+
+
+ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI
+
+
+
+We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety,
+who has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a
+great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the
+parish of Saint Lazarus.  Stay -- twenty-three or four years ago,
+she came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-
+picking;  but being overworked, and having to lie out at night,
+she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all further
+labour, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.
+
+An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty
+makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old
+shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her workhouse
+bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she may or may
+not agree.  She herself can't be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor
+thing! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet.  She lies awake
+a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times,
+for hers never were happy;  but sleepless with aches, and agues,
+and rheumatism of old age.  "The gentleman gave me brandy-and-
+water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the
+thought.  I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I
+like her better now from what this old lady told me.  The Queen,
+who loved snuff herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain
+poorhouses;  and, in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a
+pinch of Queen Charlotte's snuff, "and it do comfort me, sir,
+that it do!"  Pulveris exigui munus.  Here is a forlorn aged
+creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the great
+struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite
+trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a
+little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny
+legacy.  Let me think as I write.  (The next month's sermon,
+thank goodness! is safe to press.)  This discourse will appear at
+the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their
+appearance;  at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages,
+plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys;  Christmas bills,
+and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders.  If we
+oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of
+merriment.  We shall see the young folks laughing round the
+holly-bush.  We shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by
+the fire.  That old thing will have a sort of festival too.
+Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also.
+Christmas falls on a Thursday.  Friday is the workhouse day for
+coming out.  Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her
+invitation for Friday, 26th December!  Ninety is she, poor old
+soul?  Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe!  "Yes,
+ninety, sir," she says, "and my mother was a hundred, and my
+grandmother was a hundred and two."
+
+Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred
+and two?  What a queer calculation!
+
+Ninety!  Very good, granny:  you were born, then, in 1772.
+
+Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born,
+and was born therefore in 1745.
+
+Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and
+was born therefore in 1710.
+
+We will begin with the present granny first.  My good old
+creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman
+for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious
+Mr Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of
+Wakefield," and many diverting pieces.  You were brought almost
+an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some
+sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children.  That
+gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as
+you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose
+history of "Rasselas" you have never read, my pour soul; and
+whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these
+kingdoms ever perused.  That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to
+come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed,
+wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr Burke
+and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr Goldsmith.  Your father often
+took him home in a chair to his lodgings;  and has done as much
+for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit.  Of course, my
+good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No
+Popery before Mr Langdale's house, the Popish distiller's, and
+that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in Bloomsbury
+Square?  Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen!
+For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill;  for
+the peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St James's
+Park;  for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as
+Prince of Wales, Goody, don't you?  Yes;  and you went in a
+procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady,
+the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House;  and you
+remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch
+lords executed at the Tower.  And as for your grandmother, she
+was born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was;
+where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for
+the Queen.  With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make
+out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a
+pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books.
+
+Peerage-books and pedigrees?  What does she know about them?
+Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary
+gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her?
+Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe?  Your mother may have
+seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under
+him.  Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough;  but
+what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear
+tell of his name?  How many hundred or thousand of years had that
+toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct exhibition? -- and
+yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight
+hundred years younger.
+
+"Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince
+Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it?"
+says granny.  "I know there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she
+left me snuff;  and it comforts me of a night when I lie awake."
+
+To me there is something very touching in the notion of that
+little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully
+inhaled by her in the darkness.  Don't you remember what
+traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of
+diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country
+privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in M-ckl-
+nb-rg Str-l-tz?  Not all the treasure went.  Non omnis moritur.
+A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as
+she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose.  Gliding noiselessly
+among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their
+cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that
+does not creak.  "There, Goody, take of my rappee.  You will not
+sneeze, and I shall not say 'God bless you.'  But you will think
+kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't you?  Ah!  I had a many
+troubles, a many troubles.  I was a prisoner almost so much as
+you are.  I had to eat boiled mutton every day:  entre nous, I
+abominated it.  But I never complained.  I swallowed it.  I made
+the best of a hard life.  We have all our burdens to bear.  But
+hark!  I hear the cock-crow, and snuff the morning air."  And
+with this the royal ghost vanishes up the chimney -- if there be
+a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her
+companions pass their nights -- their dreary nights, their
+restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum
+companionship, illumined by what a feeble taper!
+
+"Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother
+was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she
+married your esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five?
+1745, then, was the date of your dear mother's birth.  I daresay
+her father was absent in the Low Countries, with his Royal
+Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under whom he had the honour of
+carrying a halberd at the famous engagement of Fontenoy -- or if
+not there, he may have been at Preston Pans, under General Sir
+John Cope, when the wild Highlanders broke through all the laws
+of discipline and the English lines;  and, being on the spot, did
+he see the famous ghost which didn't appear to Colonel Gardner of
+the Dragoons?  My good creature, is it possible you don't
+remember that Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford,
+as you justly say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of
+Twitnam, died in the year of your birth?  What a wretched memory
+you have!  What? haven't they a library, and the commonest books
+of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you
+dwell?"
+
+"Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift, Atossa, and
+Mr Pope, of Twitnam!  What is the gentleman talking about?" says
+old goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot -- you
+know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a
+parrot of a hundred is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!).  Yes,
+and likewise carps live to an immense old age.  Some which
+Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great
+humps of blue mould on their old backs;  and they could tell all
+sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak -- but they are
+very silent, carps are -- of their nature peu communicatives.
+Oh! what has been thy long life, old goody, but a dole of bread
+and water and a perch on a cage;  a dreary swim round and round a
+Lethe of a pond?  What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones,
+and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings bread
+to feed them?
+
+No!  Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old
+and have nothing to tell but that one day is like another;  and
+the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety
+than theirs.  Hard labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all
+night, and gnawing hunger most days.  That is her lot.  Is it
+lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of
+these"?  If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always
+gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr Bumble
+the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to Miss
+Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world?  If I were
+eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another
+gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old
+dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of
+command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the
+other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang;  to hold out a
+trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank
+you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon.
+John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not
+be disturbed by theological controversies.  You have a fair
+voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a hymn very sweetly
+the other night, and was thankful that our humble household
+should be in such harmony.  Poor old Twoshoes is so old and
+toothless and quaky, that she can't sing a bit;  but don't be
+giving yourself airs over her, because she can't sing and you
+can.  Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth.  Set that old
+kettle to sing by our hob.  Warm her old stomach with nut-brown
+ale and a toast laid in the fire.  Be kind to the poor old
+school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of
+Christmas holiday.  Shall there be many more Christmases for
+thee?  Think of the ninety she has seen already;  the fourscore
+and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years!
+
+If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of
+better early days, when you were young and happy, and loving,
+perhaps;  or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind
+could rest?  About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy,
+and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a
+pigtail look in them?  We may grow old, but to us some stories
+never are old.  On a sudden they rise up, not dead, but living --
+not forgotten, but freshly remembered.  The eyes gleam on us as
+they used to do.  The dear voice thrills in our hearts.  The
+rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and
+again the tragedy is acted over.  Yesterday, in the street, I saw
+a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my coming
+once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the
+rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys
+and sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly
+remembered.
+
+If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old
+school-girl?  Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a
+source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes.  She sewed it
+away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a
+safe investment -- (vestis -- a vest -- an investment, -- pardon
+me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleasantry).  And
+what do you think?  Another pensionnaire of the establishment cut
+the coin out of Goody's stays -- an old woman who went upon two
+crutches!  Faugh, the old witch!  What?  Violence amongst these
+toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones?  Robbery amongst
+the penniless?  Dogs coming and snatching Lazarus's crumbs out of
+his lap?  Ah, how indignant Goody was as she told the story!  To
+that pond at Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of
+hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould on their back, I
+daresay the little Prince and Princess of Preussen-Britannien
+come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones.
+Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's
+jack-boots:  they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in
+their pool;  and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them, and
+now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob,
+squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the
+ignoble struggle is over.  Sans souci, indeed!  It is mighty well
+writing "Sans souci" over the gate;  but where is the gate
+through which Care has not slipped?  She perches on the shoulders
+of the sentry in the sentry-box:  she whispers the porter
+sleeping in his arm-chair:  she glides up the staircase, and lies
+down between the king and queen in their bed-royal:  this very
+night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes'
+meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies
+ask me again!  No, no;  they will forget poor old Twoshoes."
+Goody!  For shame of yourself!  Do not be cynical.  Do not
+mistrust your fellow-creatures.  What?  Has the Christmas morning
+dawned upon thee ninety times?  For four-score and ten years has
+it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure?
+Peace and goodwill to thee, let us say at this Christmas season.
+Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old
+pilgrim!  And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray,
+brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those
+noble and silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the
+means of labour.  Enough!  As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow
+a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr
+Roundabout requests the honour of Mrs Twoshoes' company on
+Friday, 26th December.
+
+
+
+DE JUVENTUTE
+
+
+
+We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient
+world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.  The
+children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us,
+grandpapa, about the old world."  And we shall mumble our old
+stories;  and we shall drop off one by one;  and there will be
+fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble.  There will
+be but ten prae-railroadites left:  then three -- then two --
+then one -- then 0!  If the hippopotamus had the least
+sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide
+or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank,
+and never come up again.  Does he not see that he belongs to
+bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out
+of place in these times?  What has he in common with the brisk
+young life surrounding him?  In the watches of the night, when
+the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even
+the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their
+chatter, he -- I mean the hippopotamus -- and the elephant, and
+the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and
+have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which
+they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze,
+crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the
+caves and waters before men were made to slay them.  We who lived
+before railways are antediluvians -- we must pass away.  We are
+growing scarcer every day;  and old -- old -- very old relicts of
+the times when George was still fighting the Dragon.
+
+Not long since, a company of horseriders paid a visit to our
+watering-place.  We went to see them, and I bethought me that
+young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to
+witness the performance.  A pantomime is not always amusing to
+persons who have attained a certain age;  but a boy at a
+pantomime is always amused and amusing, and to see his pleasure
+is good for most hypochondriacs.
+
+We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join us, and
+the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the
+morning performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go
+in the evening likewise.  And go he did;  and laughed at all Mr
+Merryman's remarks, though he remembered them with remarkable
+accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very end of the fun,
+and was only induced to retire just before its conclusion by
+representations that the ladies of the party would be incommoded
+if they were to wait and undergo the rush and trample of the
+crowd round about.  When this fact was pointed out to him, he
+yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking
+longingly towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth.  We
+were scarcely clear of the place, when we heard "God save the
+Queen," played by the equestrian band, the signal that all was
+over.  Our companion entertained us with scraps of the dialogue
+on our way home -- precious crumbs of wit which he had brought
+away from that feast.  He laughed over them again as he walked
+under the stars.  He has them now, and takes them out of the
+pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a
+sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school
+by this time;  the holidays are over;  and Doctor Birch's young
+friends have reassembled.
+
+Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin!  As
+the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the
+whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I daresay, indulged
+in reflections of their own.  There was one joke -- I utterly
+forget it -- but it began with Merryman saying what he had for
+dinner.  He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, after which
+"he had to come to business."  And then came the point.  Walter
+Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you
+read this, will you please send me a line, and let me know what
+was the joke Mr Merryman made about having his dinner?  You
+remember well enough.  But do I want to know?  Suppose a boy
+takes a favourite, long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket,
+and offers you a bit?  Merci!  The fact is, I don't care much
+about knowing that joke of Mr Merryman's.
+
+But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and
+his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr
+M. in private life -- about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and
+general history, and I daresay was forming a picture of those in
+my mind:  -- wife cooking the mutton;  children waiting for it;
+Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth;  during which
+contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr M.,
+resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and
+heels.  Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in
+moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.
+Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes;  Opposition leaders
+prepare and polish them:  Tabernacle preachers must arrange them
+in their minds before they utter them.  All I mean is, that I
+would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly, and
+out of his uniform:  that preacher, and why in his travels this
+and that point struck him;  wherein lies his power of pathos,
+humour, eloquence;  -- that Minister of State, and what moves
+him, and how his private heart is working;  -- I would only say
+that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest:
+but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use
+of life, sight, hearing?  Poems are written, and we cease to
+admire.  Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn;  she ceases to
+invite us, and we are resigned.  The last time I saw a ballet at
+the opera -- oh! it is many years ago -- I fell asleep in the
+stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording
+amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs
+were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant.  Ah,
+I remember a different state of things!  Credite posteri.  To see
+these nymphs -- gracious powers, how beautiful they were!  That
+leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing,
+cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of
+time -- that an opera-dancer?  Pooh!  My dear Walter, the great
+difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some
+two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and
+singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune;
+the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their
+wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody
+can like to look at them.  And as for laughing at me for falling
+asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise.  In my
+time, a la bonne heure.  In the reign of George IV., I give you
+my honour, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as
+Houris.  Even in William IV.'s time, when I think of Duvernay
+prancing in as the Bayadere, -- I say it was a vision of
+loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see nowadays.  How well I
+remember the tune to which she used to appear!  Kaled used to say
+to the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing
+gurls called Bayaderes approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals,
+and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance!  There has
+never been anything like it -- never.  There never will be -- I
+laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your
+Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot -- pshaw, the senile
+twaddlers!  And the impudence of the young men, with their music
+and their dancers of to-day!  I tell you the women are dreary old
+creatures.  I tell you one air in an opera is just like another,
+and they send all rational creatures to sleep.  Ah, Ronzi de
+Begnis, thou lovely one!  Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel!  Ah,
+Malibran!  Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge that
+Lablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto
+was the boy for me):  and they we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni,
+and Donzelli, a rising young singer.
+
+But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage
+beauty since the days of George IV.  Think of Sontag!  I remember
+her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in `28.  I remember being
+behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows
+of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down
+over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli.  Young
+fellows have never seen beauty like that, heard such a voice,
+seen such hair, such eyes.  Don't tell me!  A man who has been
+about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know
+better than you young lads who have seen nothing?  The
+deterioration of women is lamentable;  and the conceit of the
+young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this
+fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.
+
+Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels,
+who sang, acted, and danced.  When I remember the Adelphi, and
+the actresses there:  when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss
+Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious
+pupils -- of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young
+Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more!  One much-admired
+being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the
+chief male dancer -- a very important personage then, with a bare
+neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to
+divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a
+trap-door for ever.  And this frank admission ought to show that
+I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti -- your old
+fogey who can see no good except in his own time.
+
+They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much
+improved since the days of my monarch -- of George IV.  Pastry
+Cookery is certainly not so good.  I have often eaten half-a-
+crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school
+pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been
+very good, for could I do as much now?  I passed by the
+pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.
+It looked a very dingy old baker's;  misfortunes may have come
+over him -- those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I
+remember them:  but he may have grown careless as he has grown
+old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age),
+and his hand may have lost its cunning.
+
+Not that we were not great epicures.  I remember how we
+constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's
+house -- which on my conscience I believe was excellent and
+plentiful -- and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of
+house and home.  At the pastrycook's we may have over-eaten
+ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own part,
+but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of
+perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous
+confession) -- we may have eaten too much, I say.  We did;  but
+what then?  The school apothecary was sent for:  a couple of
+small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the
+morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was
+an actual pleasure.
+
+For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty
+much in old times as they are now (except cricket par exemple --
+and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose
+Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces
+next), there were novels -- ah! I trouble you to find such novels
+in the present day!  O Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you!
+O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures
+out of you, as I have said?  Efforts, feeble indeed, but still
+giving pleasure to us and our friends.  "I say, old boy, draw us
+Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, "Draw us Don Quixote
+and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who had
+a love of drawing.  "Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers
+admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital
+fun;  but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick
+Random" was and remains delightful.  I don't remember having
+Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that
+divine were not considered decent for young people.  Ah! not
+against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say
+a word in disrespect.  But I am thankful to live in times when
+men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes
+on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to
+honest boys.  Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the kindly,
+the generous, the pure -- the companion of what countless
+delightful hours;  the purveyor of how much happiness;  the
+friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth!
+How well I remember the type and the brownish paper of the old
+duodecimo "Tales of My Landlord!"  I have never dared to read the
+"Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or "Kenilworth," from
+that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people die,
+and are murdered at the end.  But "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin
+Durward"!  Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of
+those books again!  Those books, and perhaps those eyes with
+which we read them;  and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes!
+It may be the tart was good;  but how fresh the appetite was!  If
+the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able
+to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen
+of centuries.  The boy-critic loves the story:  grown up, he
+loves the author who wrote the story.  Hence the kindly tie is
+established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly
+for life.  I meet people now who don't care of Walter Scott, or
+the "Arabian Nights";  I am sorry for them, unless they in their
+time have found their romancer -- their charming Scheherazade.
+By the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the
+favourite novelist in the fourth form now?  Have you got anything
+so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank?  It used to
+belong to a fellow's sisters generally;  but though he pretended
+to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he read it;  and
+I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes
+now, were I to meet with the little book.
+
+As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling
+Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on
+purpose to get it;  but somehow, if you will press the question
+so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I
+had supposed it to be.  The pictures are just as fine as ever;
+and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian
+Tom with delight, after many year's absence.  But the style of
+the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me;  I even thought it a
+little vulgar -- well! well! other writers have been considered
+vulgar -- and as a description of the sports and amusements of
+London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.
+
+But the pictures! -- oh! the pictures are noble still!  First,
+there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and
+leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at
+Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor.  Then away for the
+career of pleasure and fashion.  The park! delicious excitement!
+The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!!  Rapturous bliss --
+the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock down a
+Charley there!  There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and
+little cocked hats, coming from the opera -- very much as
+gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now.  There they are
+at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with
+the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing.  Now,
+strange change, they are in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't
+seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls;
+and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the
+malefactors' legs previous to execution.  What hardened ferocity
+in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches!  What
+compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I
+suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens
+to the chaplain!  Now we haste away to merrier scenes:  to
+Tattersall's (ah gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor
+was who performed Dicky Green in that scene in the play!);  and
+now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is
+waltzing (and very gracefully too, as you must confess) with
+Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the
+piano!
+
+"After," the text says, "the Oxonian had played several pieces of
+lively music, he requested as a favour that Kate and his friend
+Tom would perform a waltz.  Kate without any hesitation
+immediately stood up.  Tom offered his hand to his fascinating
+partner, and the dance took place.  The plate conveys a correct
+representation of the `gay scene' at that precise moment.  The
+anxiety of the Oxonian to witness the attitudes of the elegant
+pair had nearly put a stop to their movements.  On turning round
+from the pianoforte and presenting his comical mug, Kate could
+scarcely suppress a laugh."
+
+And no wonder;  just look at it now (as I have copied it to the
+best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's
+countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom!  Now
+every London man is weary and blase.  There is an enjoyment of
+life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with
+our feelings of 1860.  Here, for instance, is a specimen of their
+talk and walk, "`If,' says LOGIC -- `if enjoyment is your motto,
+you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than at any
+other place in the metropolis.  It is all free and easy.  Stay as
+long as you like, and depart when you think proper.' -- `Your
+description is so flattering,' replied JERRY, `that I do not care
+how soon the time arrives for us to start.'  LOGIC proposed a
+`bit of a stroll' in order to get rid of an hour or two, which
+was immediately accepted by Tom and Jerry.  A turn or two in Bond
+Street, a stroll through Piccadilly, a look in at TATTERSALL's, a
+ramble through Pall Mall, and a strut on the Corinthian path,
+fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner
+arrived, when a few glasses of TOM's rich wines soon put them on
+the qui vive.  VAUXHALL was then the object in view, and the TRIO
+started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so
+amply affords."
+
+How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals,
+bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye!  They are as good
+as jokes, though you mayn't quite preceive the point.  Mark the
+varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge -- now a
+stroll, then a look in, then a ramble, and presently a strut.
+When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old
+Magazine, "the Prince's lounge" was a peculiar manner of walking
+which the young bucks imitated.  At Windsor George III. had a
+cat's path -- a sly early walk which the good old king took in
+the grey morning before his household was astir.  What was the
+Corinthian path here recorded?  Does any antiquary know?  And
+what were the rich wines which our friends took, and which enable
+them to enjoy Vauxhall?  Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which
+could occasion such a delightful perversion of the intellect as
+to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, what were they?
+
+So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic,
+is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced to go
+home, and the last picture represents him getting into the coach
+at the "White Horse Cellar," he being one of six inside;  whilst
+his friends shake him by the hand;  whilst the sailor mounts on
+the roof;  whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives, and
+sealing-wax:  whilst the guard is closing the door.  Where are
+they now, those sealing-wax vendors? where are the guards? where
+are the jolly teams? where are the coaches? and where the youth
+that climbed inside and out of them;  that heard the merry horn
+which sounds no more;  that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge;
+that rubbed away the bitter tears at night after parting as the
+coach sped on the journey to school and London;  that looked out
+with beating heart as the milestones flew by, for the welcome
+corner where began home and holidays.
+
+It is night now:  and here is home.  Gathered under the quiet
+roof elders and children lie alike at rest.  In the midst of a
+great peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens.  The
+silence is peopled with the past;  sorrowful remorses for sins
+and shortcomings -- memories of passionate joys and griefs rise
+out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad.  Eyes, as I
+shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine.  The town
+and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the
+autumn mists.  Twinkling among the houses a light keeps watch
+here and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two.  The clock
+tolls sweetly in the silent air.  Here is night and rest.  An
+awful sense of thanks makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as
+I pass to my room through the sleeping house, and feel as though
+a hushed blessing were upon it.
+
+
+
+ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+
+
+The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader
+has pulled out a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am
+writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season.  You
+young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from it;  and
+out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with the
+captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of those
+delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce into the
+sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of love.
+Those riddles are to be read at your age, when I daresay they are
+amusing.  As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the
+tree, they don't care about the love-riddle part, but understand
+the sweet-almoned portion very well.  They are four, five, six
+years old.  Patience, little people!  A dozen merry Christmases
+more, and you will be reading those wonderful love-conundrums,
+too.  As for us elderly folks, we watch the babies at their
+sport, and the young people pulling at the branches:  and instead
+of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which we pluck off
+the boughs, we find enclosed Mr Carnifex's review of the
+quarter's meat;  Mr Sartor's compliments, and little statement
+for self and the young gentlemen;  and Madame de Sainte-
+Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, who encloses her
+account, and will sent on Saturday, please;  or we stretch our
+hand out to the educational branch of the Christmas tree, and
+there find a lively and amusing article from the Rev. Henry
+Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly moderate
+account for the last term's school expenses.
+
+The tree yet sparkles, I say.  I am writing on the day before
+Twelfth Day, if you must know;  but already ever so many of the
+fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out.
+Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a week (and who
+has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room), comes to say he
+is going away to spend the rest of the holidays with his
+grandmother -- and I brush away the manly tear of regret as I
+part with the dear child.  "Well, Bob, good-bye, since you will
+go.  Compliments to grandmamma.  Thank her for the turkey.
+Here's ----" (A slight pecuniary transaction takes place at this
+juncture, and Bob nods and winks, and puts his hand in his
+waistcoat pocket.)  "You have had a pleasant week?"
+
+Bob. -- "Haven't I!"  (And exit, anxious to know the amount of the
+coin which has just changed hands.)
+
+He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind
+which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our
+past Christmas week.  When Bob's holidays are over, and the
+printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know Christmas will
+be an old story.  All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree
+then;  the crackers will have cracked off;  the almonds will have
+been crunched;  and the sweet-bitter riddles will have been read;
+the lights will have perished off the dark green boughs;  the
+toys growing on them will have been distributed, fought for,
+cherished, neglected, broken.  Ferdinand and Fidelia will each
+keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of a
+riddle read together, of a double almond munched together, and of
+the moiety of an exploded cracker.... The maids, I say, will have
+taken down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks,
+lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school,
+fondly thinking of the pantomime fairies whom they have seen;
+whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by this time;  and whose
+pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and
+dusty.  Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have
+cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of
+adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin.  When
+you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue
+out of his mouth, and saying, "How are you to-morrow?"  To-
+morrow, indeed!  He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that
+cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the
+absurd question.  To-morrow, indeed!  To-morrow the diffugient
+snows will give place to spring; the snowdrops will lift their
+heads;  Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties
+peculiar to that feast;  in place of bonbons, trees will have an
+eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season will
+bloom ... as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena,
+when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of
+my discourse!
+
+We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how
+boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time.  What wassail-
+bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of
+Christmas song!  And then to think that these festivities are
+prepared months before -- that these Christmas pieces are
+prophetic!  How kind of artists and poets to devise the
+festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time!
+We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at
+midnight and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at
+six o'clock.  I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr
+Nelson Lee -- the author of I don't know how many hundred
+glorious pantomimes -- walking by the summer wave at Margate, or
+Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new
+gorgeous spectacle of faery, which the winter shall see complete.
+He is like cook at midnight (si parva licet).  He watches and
+thinks.  He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums
+of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of -- well, the figs of
+fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething
+cauldron of imagination, and at due season serves up the
+Pantomime.
+
+Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see all the
+pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I
+shall never forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of
+The Times which appears on the morning after Boxing-day.  Perhaps
+reading is even better than seeing.  The best way, I think, is to
+say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the paper for two hours,
+reading all the way down from Drury Lane to the Britannia at
+Hoxton.  Bob and I went to two pantomimes.  One was at the
+Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I don't
+know which we liked the best.
+
+At the Fancy, we saw "Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and
+Nunky's Pison," which is all very well -- but, gentlemen, if you
+don't respect Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil?  The palace
+and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of
+Loutherbourg's finest efforts.  The banqueting hall of the palace
+is illuminated:  the peaks and gables glitter with the snow:  the
+sentinels march blowing their fingers with the cold -- the
+freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and
+dexterously arranged:  the snow storm rises:  the winds howl
+awfully along the battlements:  the waves come curling, leaping,
+foaming to shore.  Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the
+storm.  He and his two friends stamp on each other's toes to keep
+them warm.  The storm-spirits rise in the air, and are whirled
+howling round the palace and the rocks.  My eyes! what tiles and
+chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air!  As the storm reaches
+its height (here the wind instruments come in with prodigious
+effect, and I compliment Mr Brumby and the violoncellos) -- as
+the snow storm rises (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and
+then thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major,
+which sends a shiver into your very boot-soles), the thunder-
+clouds deepen (bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos).  The
+forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream
+of violins -- and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring
+waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling
+parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-
+carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges into the water
+again.
+
+Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son.
+The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires
+screaming in pattens.
+
+The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are
+seen to drive off, and several people are drowned.  The gas-lamps
+along the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot
+through the troubled air.  Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars
+and pours!  The darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the
+power of the music -- and see -- in the midst of a rush, and
+whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave -- what is that
+ghastly figure moving hither?  It becomes bigger, bigger, as it
+advances down the platform -- more ghastly, more horrible,
+enormous!  It is as tall as the whole stage.  It seems to be
+advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with
+terror, as the Ghost of the Late Hamlet comes in, and begins to
+speak.  Several people faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick
+pockets furiously in the darkness.
+
+In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes
+about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the
+wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest
+spectator must have felt frightened.  But hark! what is that
+silver shimmer of the fiddles?  Is it -- can it be -- the grey
+dawn peeping in the stormy east?  The ghost's eyes look blankly
+towards it, and roll a ghastly agony.  Quicker, quicker ply the
+violins of Phoebus Apollo.  Redder, redder grow the orient
+clouds.  Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just
+come out on the roof of the palace.  And now the round sun
+himself pops up from behind the waves of night.  Where is the
+ghost?  He is gone!  Purple shadows of morn "slant o'er the snowy
+sward," the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess we
+are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost.  We
+don't like those dark scenes in pantomimes.
+
+After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into
+Columbine was to be expected;  but I confess I was a little
+shocked when Hamlet's mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly
+knocked down by Clown Claudius.  Grimaldi is getting a little old
+now, but for real humour there are few clowns like him.  Mr
+Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste and comic, as he always
+is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves.
+
+"Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings," at the other
+house, is very pleasant too.  The irascible William is acted with
+great vigour by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good
+piece of burlesque.  Some trifling liberties are taken with
+history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of
+pantomime permit himself?  At the battle of Hastings, William is
+on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very
+elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco
+Sharpshooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold.  The
+Fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, which
+straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes
+an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux a diverting
+pantaloon, &c. &c. &c.
+
+Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw;  but one
+description will do as well as another.  The plots, you see, are
+a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes;
+and I may have mixed up one with another.  That I was at the
+theatre on Boxing-night is certain -- but the pit was so full
+that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I
+stood at the door.  And if I was badly off, I think there was a
+young gentleman behind me worse off still.  I own that he has
+good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my
+back, and hereby beg his pardon.
+
+Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly,
+who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his
+back, uttering energetic expressions:  that party begs to offer
+thanks, and compliments of the season.
+
+Bob's behaviour on New Year's day, I can assure Dr Holyshade, was
+highly creditable to the boy.  He had expressed a determination
+to partake of every dish which was put on the table;  but after
+soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he retired from active
+business until the pudding and mince-pies made their appearance,
+of which he partook liberally, but not too freely.  And he
+greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising the punch, which
+was of my own manufacture, and which some gentlemen present (Mr
+O'M--g--n, amongst others) pronounced to be too weak.  Too weak!
+A bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy,
+and two bottles and a half of water -- can this mixture be said
+to be too weak for any mortal?  Our young friend amused the
+company during the evening, by exhibiting a two-shilling magic-
+lantern, which he had purchased, and likewise by singing "Sally,
+come up!" a quaint, but rather monotonous melody, which I am told
+is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the broad Mississippi.
+
+What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amusement
+during the Christmas week?  A great philosopher was giving a
+lecture to young folks at the British Institution.  But when this
+diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said,
+"Lecture?  No, thank you.  Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic
+signals on his nose.  Perhaps he is of Dr Johnson's opinion about
+lectures:  "Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear that
+imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a
+book?"  I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture;  that I can
+vow.  As for sermons, they are different;  I delight in them, and
+they cannot, of course, be too long.
+
+Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides
+pantomime, pudding, and pie.  One glorious, one delightful, one
+most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a
+famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any
+of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the
+horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron;  through suburban
+villages, plum-caked with snow;  under a leaden sky, in which the
+sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan;  by pond after pond, where
+not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and
+girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old
+sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed
+shoes flew up in the air;  the air frosty with a lilac haze,
+through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations
+glimmered.  We drive up the hill, Bob and I;  we make the last
+two miles in eleven minutes;  we pass that poor, armless man who
+sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes.  I don't
+give anything, and Bob looks disappointed.  We are set down
+neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door.
+I don't give anything;  again disappointment on Bob's part.  I
+pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the glorious building,
+which is decorated for Christmas, and straightway forgetfulness
+on Bob's part of everything but that magnificent scene.  The
+enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and Christmas.  The
+stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, statues, splendours,
+are all crowned for Christmas.  The delicious negro is singing
+his Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob.  He has scarcely
+done, when, Tootarootatoo!  Mr Punch is performing his surprising
+actions, and hanging the beadle.  The stalls are decorated.  The
+refreshment-tables are piled with good things;  at many fountains
+"Mulled Claret" is written up in appetizing capitals.  "Mulled
+Claret -- oh, jolly!  How cold it is!" says Bob;  I pass on.
+"It's only three o'clock," says Bob.  "No, only three," I say
+meekly.  "We dine at seven," sighs Bob, "and it's so-o-o coo-
+old."  I still would take no hints.  No claret, no refreshment,
+no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob.  At last I am obliged to
+tell him all.  Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill
+popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold.  I
+forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half-a-crown
+from John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of
+delight.  Now you see, Bob, why I could not treat you on that
+second of January when we drove to the palace together;  when the
+girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich;  when the
+darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like a
+warming-pan in the leaden sky.
+
+One more Christmas sight we had, of course; and that sight I
+think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all
+seasons.  We went to a certain garden of delight, where, whatever
+your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of them,
+and muse, and be not unhappy;  to a garden beginning with a Z,
+which is as lively as Noah's ark;  where the fox has brought his
+brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the elephant has
+brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag, and the
+condor his old white wig and black satin hood.  On this day it
+was so cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as they
+plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to say, "Aha, this
+weather reminds us of dear home!"  "Cold! bah!  I have got such a
+warm coat," says brother Bruin, "I don't mind";  and he laughs on
+his pole, and clucks down a bun.  The squealing hyaenas gnashed
+their teeth and laughed at us quite refreshingly at their window;
+and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us
+red-hot through his bars, and snorted blasts of hell.  The woolly
+camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced round his ring on his
+silent pads.  We went to our favourite places.  Our dear wambat
+came up, and had himself scratched very affably.  Our fellow-
+creatures in the monkey room held out their little black hands,
+and piteously asked us for Christmas alms.  Those darling
+alligators on their rock winked at us in the most friendly way.
+The solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks;
+whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in his
+usual diverting manner.  If I have cares in my mind, I come to
+the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate.  I recognise my
+friends, my enemies, in countless cages.  I entertained the
+eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated,
+crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork
+yesterday at dinner;  and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the
+evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her
+gravely, and said --
+
+"First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,
+Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.
+
+Chorus of Children
+
+Then I saw the camel with a HUMP upon his back!
+
+Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;
+Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;
+Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,
+Then I saw the monkeys -- mercy, how unpleasantly they -- smelt!"
+
+There.  No one can beat that piece of wit, can he Bob?  And so it
+is over;  but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us,
+hadn't we?  Present my respects to the doctor;  and I hope, my
+boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Roundabout Papers, by Thackeray
+
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