Nosebag. Why, a emerald buckle that the Irish House of Commons give to Miss Faucit last year for playing in Antigony. It was very well to put it in the playbill, ’cause of course it drew so many folks who’d never seen a buckle. Nevertheless, if Mr Webster—and I don’t mean to say anything against Mr Webster, not by no means—nevertheless, if he’d known his own interest he would have had five hundred posters with a bold woodcut of that fibula. And I should have stuck ’em.
Limpy. And you didn’t go to see it?
Nosebag. No; but I shall go next week, if I never go agin. For they do say that Mrs Humby—dear cretur!—is goin’ to appear in a thimble presented to her by the ladies’-maids of London. And if anybody ever deserved a bit of plate, Mrs Humby deserves that thimble.
Nutts. Now, Mr Slowgoe. (Slowgoe takes the chair.) There’s quite enough discourse of the playhouses, let’s talk of serious matters. Have you heard? They’ve been proposin’ in Parliament to make nineteen more bishops, and one of ’em a Bishop of Melton Mowbray.
Tickle. Ha! a sportin’ bishop; for the morals of the neighbourhood. And I shouldn’t wonder if we’ve a Bishop of Epsom, and a Bishop of Newmarket, and a Bishop of Ascot, and a Bishop of Doncaster. And very proper. Black aprons may reform blacklegs. Seein’ the bishops do so much good, in course they’re most wanted in the worst places. They’re to be sent in holes and corners of wickedness; jist as my wife hangs bags of camphor about the necks of the little ones when she hears of fevers. Now a bishop—the Bishop of Exeter, for instance (by the way, he’s been havin’ another row in the House of Lords—he’s always at it)—the Bishop of Exeter, what is he, I should like to know, but a big lump of camphor in a bag of black silk hung about the whole neck of the West of England? Why, the good he does nobody knows.
Bleak. (With newspaper.) ’Pon my word, when I read these things I do feel ashamed that I’m a man.
Nutts. Daresay; but ’tisn’t your fault. What is it?
Bleak. That a good quiet gen’lewoman can’t go by herself in a railway carriage without having to scream out for the police! Insulted by a coward with a good coat on him. Thinks himself, I daresay, one of the lords of the creation. Lords!—I call ’em apes.
Nutts. My wife—and I’d advise every lady to do the like—my wife never travels by rail without a pair of scissors. But then she’s a woman of sich strong mind!
Slowgoe. So, I see they’ve been givin’ a dinner at Lynn to Lord George Bentinck. He’s a great man, Lord George; and they’ve had him all the way from London to tell him. Made a beautiful speech, I see. Here’s a touch after my own heart. He’s a-talkin’ about the corn-laws, and he says, “When some foreign ship, some Swede or Norwegian or Dane, with an outlandish name for herself and her captain, which neither you nor I could pronounce (cheers and laughter), comes into port (cheers), I ask you how much this foreigner pays out of his wages to support the trade of your town?” Well, I say, that’s what I call talking like a true Briton.