He seemed willing enough to be hanged, but did not know how to place his neck in the halter; sometimes he put his arms through the noose, then half his body, but never by any chance did he allow the cord to touch his neck. At length he succeeded in persuading Jack Ketch to shew him the right way: the hangman did so, placed his own neck in the noose, received a crack on the head with the staff and a kick behind, and there he hung and swung to the delight of every beholder. Then came the Devil, horned, hoofed, tailed, saucer-eyed, and black as ebony; but Punch was game to the back-bone, and fought with all his might, causing the Devil himself to retreat several times before he would give in. Nor did we ever think the Devil beat him fairly; for he came behind, like a sneaking thief as he is, pinioned both the arms of Punch, while the latter had his face turned towards us in triumph, and bore him away on his back: we could even hear the prominent-paunched old hero swearing, as his horned antagonist vanished with him below the green baize.
The dog Toby is a modern innovation. He belonged not to the Punch and Judy of our boyish days.
But our picture is not complete without the spectators. Look at that ragged woman holding up her dirty child. The little rogue claps his tiny hands, and crows again at every blow Judy receives; and that poor mother is more delighted with the pleasurable expression of her dirty darling’s countenance than she is with the exhibition, for her heart and eyes are fixed on her child. But for Punch sounding in the street, the urchin would probably have been creeping about the house, or seated upon the hearth crunching the cinders he picked up from under the grate. Even that thin pale-faced girl, who holds up a baby half as big as herself, and throws the long loose hair aside which fell over her clear blue eyes, as she came running and panting up with her heavy burden, stands looking on delighted. That respectable-looking old gentleman also halts, though half ashamed of being seen in such a motley assembly; then passes on with a smile on his face, for he remembers pausing many a time, when going or returning from school with his books swung idly over his shoulder, to look at Punch and Judy; and while he walks along his mind turns back to the days of other years. Then the drum—what a spirit-stirring sound it makes! and the shrill pandean pipes, stuck in a stock of faded crimson velvet, how clear and shrilly they sound!—the man’s head seems as if placed on a swivel, and he hammers and blows away as if for very life.
But whither is the crowd running? To see an organ-boy and his monkey. What an excellent tumbler Jocko is! his long tail seems no incumbrance to him, but head over heels he goes. What a strange language his jabbering seems, a running of one word into another! and he looks at us as if pitying our ignorance for not understanding him. There is something about his countenance conducive to merriment; something so old-manish in the expression of his face, that we cannot forbear laughing at him. See how he cracks that nut,—how nimbly he plies his fingers, and how knowingly he looks up at us all the time, as if wondering whether he shall get another or not when that is eaten. What a living caricature he is of our race; now an indignant ugly old man, jabbering and spitting out his vexation; then a mischievous boy, playing all kinds of tricks, and, though grumbled at, liked by every body. Poor fellow! we almost regret that he was ever caught and shoved into that scarlet jacket, to add to our street
