“'Slipp'd into a tent, just to spend half-a-crown,
Slipp'd out, met a friend, and for joy knock'd him down,
With his sprig of shillelagh, and shamrock so green!”
The showmen shouted, and the drums rumbled, and the cymbals clanged, and the fiddlers fiddled, but the dancing was limp and feeble, and the general effect was dreary. We visited Mr. Batty's Menagerie, and were offered a mount upon a young elephant, at the low charge of one penny. And I am glad that we declined; because the quadruped in question, having gone round the show, until it was tired of doing so, suddenly dropped upon its stern, and discharged its jockeys into the sawdust, as though they were a load of coals!
Then we visited the Theatre of Ferguson, and there a Prima Donna appeared to us, from the arrangement of her mouth, to be singing with remarkable energy; but we had no further means of verifying the supposition, as the whole House, incited by her example, was chanting at the top of its voice. And I must say that, although I stood, most uncomfortably and insecurely, on a narrow plank at the top of “the Boxes,” I never enjoyed a concert more; and I very much doubt whether the Pope himself could have resisted joining in the Chorus.
We saw nothing at all suggestive of a shindy until (to our great joy) we met a couple of our college friends, Hoare, the stroke of our boat, tall among the tallest, as Arba among the Anakims, arm in arm with little Dibdin, the coxswain (they have been sworn friends, ever since Hoare took him by the collar, and dropped him into the Isis, for some mistake in steering); and these gentlemen were armed with shillelaghs, and anxious, as the old lady in the captured city, to know when the fun would begin. “For now I see,” said Hoare,—
“The true old times are gone,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.”
“And every knight,” I said, as a supplement,
“brought home a broken head.”
Let us haste to Kelvin Grove—I mean, let us return to Morrisson's!”
We steamed away next morning from Kingston Quay. Looking back upon that lovely bay, I thought of the poor Irishman's most touching words, as he gazed for the last time on his native land, “Ah, Dublin, sweet Jasus be with you!” and from my heart I breathed an earnest prayer for the good weal of beautiful Ireland!