“Ha-ha-ha!”
“Of hope for the future——”
“Hoo-roo! Hoo-roo!”
“Of everything beautiful, pleasant, and truthful! Oh, how good it is to know that we are thus assembled together, and that we have among us a Human Creature, unlike, yet so like ourselves! Oh, my dear friends! ‘Lest we forget,’ let us remember that we were all Humans once! All Humans!—all Humbugs!—and such respectable Humbugs too! Oh, my friends, let us turn our thoughts back along the tide of Time—the tide of Time is such a fine expression!—and reflect on those days—the days of frock-coats and top-hats! The days when we were GOOD!”
“Ha-ha-HA! Hoo-roo! Hoo-roo!”
Screams of laughter echoed through the dim space, where now, faintly discernible through a floating red vapour, the trembling Josiah caught sight of the glittering tubes of a great organ, and scarcely had he seen this when CRASH!—went the keys with a droning and discordant thunder. A hideous black scarecrow of a Goblin, waving its paws or claws about fantastically, began performing on the instrument, whereat all the impish congregation burst out yelling in chorus:
“When WE were ‘good,’ in all the world
None were so ‘good’ as WE;
We thought OURSELVES the only ones