Slowgoe. What’s that?
Nosebag. Why, “Young Ireland in arms not admitted.”
Nutts. And he might add, “No money returned.”
Bleak. So I see Mr Hume’s lost his motion for opening skittle-grounds on Sundays.
Slowgoe. Skittle-grounds—I thought ’twas to open the British Museum, the National Gallery, and suchlike.
Bleak. Well, it seems to be all the same, for Lord John Russell won’t have it nohow. He says (reading), “As to the admission on Sundays to the British Museum and National Gallery, he thought it was better not to lay down any positive rule, or for that House to interfere by a resolution. There were some places where a single porter at the door would be sufficient as a protection. Such places he thought it was quite right to have open on the Sundays; but if they went further, he did not see why they might not ask to have the theatres open on a Sunday. Listening to a play of Shakespeare, it might be said, would divert people from habits of drunkenness. Then as to opening such places as the Museum and National Gallery on Sundays, it would tend to deprive a great many persons of their only day of rest; and they could not well supply their places with others who were not in the daily habit of taking care of rooms.” Well, for my part, it does seem to me that what holds good with “many persons” ought to hold good with a “single porter.”
Nutts. Agin. Why don’t they ’bolish steamboats on the river; Sunday rail-travelling; Sunday coach and cab stands; Sunday tea-gardens? These things and places—all of ’em—deprive a great many persons of their only day of rest! So do Sunday public-houses. And then, as if taking care of the pictures at the National Gallery, that folks don’t run their walking-sticks through ’em—and keeping a sharp eye upon the mummies at the Museum, for fear they should be run away with—was such delicate work that people must serve a ’prenticeship to learn it.
Tickle. And ’specially, too, when Mr Wakby said there was so many Jews who’d be delighted to take the post o’ Sundays, and be ’specially delighted to take the money for it.
