THE DEMOGRAPHIC VADE MECUM.
Question. You properly attended the Congress last week?
Answer. Certainly, by wearing a small brooch pinned on the flap of my coat.
Q. What effect had this on the cabmen?
A. To cause them to charge me just double the customary fares.
Q. Did you go to the Inaugural Meeting?
A. Of course, but as it was so crowded, I could get no further than the door.
Q. Did you hear the speech of the Prince of WALES?
A. Unfortunately not; but I had the advantage of seeing the top of his Royal Highness's head.
Q. Did you go to the Soirée in Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the Hall of the Royal College of Surgeons?
A. I did, and was much amused at finding myself drinking claret cup in the museum devoted to skeletons.
Q. Did you go to the reception at Guildhall?
A. Certainly, and was greatly gratified at the amusements supplied to the Lord Mayor's guests.
Q. What were those amusements?
A. So far as I could see, the Band of the Grenadier Guards, conducted by Lieut. DAN GODFREY in undress uniform, playing before Sir JOSEPH SAVORY, Bart.; and some charters under a glass case.
Q. Was that all?
A. Well, I heard some harps, and then of course there were the Lord Mayor's trumpeters.
Q. Did you get your hat and coat in comfort?
A. In great comfort—after I had fought like a wild beast with other wild beasts for an hour and a half to get up to the place of distribution.
Q. Was this part of the programme badly managed?
A. It was not managed at all. The City Authorities had not even had the sense to put the numbers available at each counter en évidence.
Q. Did you derive any linguistic learning from this struggle?
A. Certainly. I heard bad language in sixteen different tongues.
Q. And what (as a connoisseur) did you think of the oaths?
A. That none were comparable to that English expletive which is equally suggestive of a barrier in a river, the mother of a lamb, and the observations of an angry man.
Q. Did you go anywhere else?
A. The entertainments I attended were so numerous that it is impossible to remember a tithe of them.
Q. And what did you do about Science?
A. Left it for discussion until the meeting of the Congress to be held next year!
