I was skeered out of my seven senses, and when I cum to and tried to recolect myself, I was like the old woman in the song who fell asleep, and
“By came a pedlar and his name was Stout
And he cut her petticoats all round about;
He cut her petticoats up to her knees,
Which made the old woman begin for to freeze.”
I was in the same predicament, for I was now only in my bare bones, and knew I was a rolecking old skeleton.
Wall, it gin me an awful shock to find myself like a skull and cross-bones on a tombstone, sittin’ on my own coffin!
Presently I was grappled by a big worm with a hundred legs. He then sent for his feller worms, and they licked me from skull to toe-jint. After I had stood the lickin’ as long as I could (they tickled so), I concluded to run away, so I started on a full gallop, and arter I had run awhile, where should I fetch up but in the vicinity of Vic’s Palace. I know’d by pussonal experience suthin’ of the feelin’ manner with which the British public look upon the Royal Family, and a sensation of relief cum over my mind as I thought if I once entered their ground no one dared foiler me. So I gin a spring and leaped right atop of the middle chimny. Owin’ to private considerations, I did’nt mind the soot, but I clambered down, and there I was, to my amazement, rite in the private apartments of the Queen. She was sittin’ at a table lookin’ at a dogerotipe of Prince Albert; and I walked straight up to her, not feel in’ a bit afeared, and making my manners, axed her if I didn’t resemble the Prince?—rememberin’ that the preacher had kindly said over my coffin that “there was no distinction in the grave.”
I thought that as I was a pooty gay image of Death, I might remind her of the “Prince Consort.”
She looked up kinder sideways as I spoke, but she must have bin a leetle hard o’ hearing, for she shook her head.
Then I thought I’d try her on another tack. So I placed my hands on my shakey knees, and bendin’ over in this guise, so she could see me plainly, while my teeth rattled in my skull as I shook my head at her and growled:
“Haint you afeared of me, Madam?” With the pirsistent obstinacy of the feminine gender, she refused to notice me. So I thought she was kinder “set up on her pins,” and I shouted louder:
“Victoria _Brown_! Aint you afeared of me? Aint you afeared I’ll tell Prince Albert of your _dooins_?”