A PANIC AT THE BANK.
It was the 11th of November. It had been raining since three o'clock. A thick fog enveloped London. Horses smoked, as if in a terrible passion with the weather; and omnibuses rolled along, breaking for once their daily custom of stopping at every lamp-post on the way. I had a secret presentiment something strange would happen.
St. Paul's struck one—two—three—four o'clock. I counted them distinctly, one by one. They sounded like a death-knell. A dead silence ensued, invaded only by the cries of "Cl'pam!" "M'l'end!" that broke forth in fitful shouts from contending cads. I did not feel well. I was leaning against a lamp-post at the corner of the Bank—wet to the skin. My mind was very uneasy. I had that day accepted a bill. I was vowing within myself never to accept another, when a sudden noise—a fearful rush—recalled me to my senses. I looked around, and saw a large stream of human beings pouring, in fearful force, from the principal door of the Bank. Man seemed leagued in enmity against man—clerk looked on fellow-clerk with the lowering eyes of a malignant fiend. Their looks alarmed me. Not a policeman was in sight! What should I do? Was the Bank on fire? I had no money there, still there are moments when we can feel for others. It was like a human river broken from its bank, carrying ruin and terror wherever it went. Could it be a panic? I recollected my Julia had 500l. standing there in the suitable name of Smith. I dashed the drops of perspiration from my fevered brow. I endeavoured to recollect myself. It was but one effort. I determined, let it cost me what it would, to follow them to the end.
There were full two hundred beings. They formed one unbroken, moving mass. They were running, as if with one will, frantically together. Their speed was unnatural. The rain only made them run the faster. Not an umbrella had they amongst them. At last they reached the corner. The clerks behind ran as if for their very lives. I was alarmed, and ran after them, the agent of some mysterious fear. I lost sight of them for a moment. Again I saw them—and, oh! what a scene presented itself to me! A band of at least two hundred desperate clerks were struggling, fighting madly, to get admission all into one omnibus. Their screams were dreadful. One fat cashier was lying, dead or wounded, under the door-step, bathed in mud. Another was shouting in agony, at the door, unable to work his way out or in. Twenty or thirty clerks were climbing, to the imminent peril of their lives, on to the roof. At the same time a severe engagement was taking place amongst a determined dozen on the box, to decide by brutal force who should remain master of the one seat. In the algebraical fraction of a minute every place was invaded, and the omnibus rolled away before me, like some frightful dream. How many lives were lost I cannot tell. The subject was too painful to inquire into. I felt a degree of pity for the pettiness of human nature, and had a strong glass of brandy-and-water.
Never, as long as I live, shall I forget the 11th of November!
[This phenomenon, we have been told, is not so strange as it may appear. Let the curious reader only be present at the Bank, on the first rainy day, when the clock strikes four, and he will infallibly—should there be only one omnibus in waiting—witness the same desperate struggle for places as occurred to our German-minded correspondent on the memorable 11th. It is a very amusing sport, we have been told, to be a spectator (under an umbrella) of this animated clerk-race.]
LINES WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM.
BY THE LATE DANIEL LAMBERT.
Ellen, I will not praise thine eyes,
Nor laud the beauties of thy cheek;
For I have grown into a size,
That ladies titter when I speak
Of love! and vow they'll ne'er be won
By suitors weighing half a ton.
I will not sing of every spell
That decks thy form—thou'rt not for me;
For I've a voice that doth excel
A school-boy blowing in a key:
And lovely lips have o'er and o'er
Declared my singing quite a bore.
But let me breathe this fervent prayer,
That when to him thou hold'st most dear
Thou yield'st thine hand, oh! make him swear
To shun the wiles of bottled beer;
And, should he pause, then point me out,
And say—"Behold, that's horrid stout!"