THINGS TO BE BORNE IN MIND IN JUNE.
If you go down to Ascot races on an old Norwich coach, at twenty shillings a head, when you leave it and get on the course, say, "a man you know (the coachman) brought you down on his drag (the coach)." In going home be careful to conceal yourself, that you may not be discovered jolly, pelting open landaus with pin-cushions, or making a banner of your pocket-handkerchief tied to a walking-stick. Do not go up to carriages whose inmates you know until the race is over: you will then get lunch, and will not be asked by the girls to join a sweepstakes, which never pays.
If not in funds, hide at home, on the Derby day; and when you go out at night declare you never saw a better race. The position of the horses may be read for nothing on the pen-and-ink placard outside the Globe and Sun offices.
The angler this month will find fish most abundant at Blackwall and Greenwich. Almost all sorts may be readily taken with brown bread and butter.
That otter hunting is in season this month, as the almanacks gravely assure us. When the thermometer stands at ninety in the shade, there cannot well be "otter" hunting.
THE ZODIAC—JULY.
LEO.-ANDROCLES.
A LAY OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
Part I.
'Tis of a foreign gentleman, Androcles was his name,
Who being somewhat "seedy"—many others are the same—
Having no shares to stag, no scrip to get from a new line,
Walked off into a savage place, with Humphrey's duke to dine.
Chance brought him to a rocky cave, whence issued cries of woe;
A lion there was screaming, with a splinter in his toe:
He volunteered his services; the noble brute, not proud,
A surgical inspection of his tender foot allowed.
Androcles drew the splinter out; the lion joy expressed—
This ends the first part of my lay; Part II. contains the rest.
Part II.
There's tumult in the Forum, and the people onward press;
Androcles, now a criminal, is in a precious mess:
He's got to meet a lion, hungry, savage, and unchained;
And act Van Amburgh with a beast that never has been trained.
The Colosseum's rows are filled with citizens of mark—
Vespasian's amphitheatre, not the one in Regent's Park—
The tribunes and ὁι πολλοι are all making up their books,
Or drawing for a lion "sweep," with eager turfish looks.
The den is opened, horror reigns, no soul is heard to speak;
Androcles strikes an attitude, like Keller's Poses Plastiques;
When Nero, darting from his cage, no longer fierce and wild,
Takes up the doomed one in his arms as though he were a child;
And roars and dances gaily on his hind legs loud and long,
As we have seen the Nigger when he sings the Banjo song.
The criminal is innocent!—he need no longer stay;
And with the lion arm-in-arm he bows and walks away.—
And so long live Androcles, and the lion long live he;
And next time such a thing occurs, may we be there to see!
LEO—Androcles and the Lion.
