THE CHARITY DINNER.
Litchfield Moseley.
Time: half-past six o'clock. Place: The London Tavern. Occasion: Fifteenth Annual Festival of the Society for the Distribution of Blankets and Top-Boots among the Natives of the Cannibal Islands.
On entering the room, we find more than two hundred noblemen, and gentlemen already assembled; and the number is increasing every minute. There are many well-known city diners here this evening. That very ordinary looking personage, with the rubicund complexion and pimply features, is old Moneypenny, senior partner of the great firm of Moneypenny, Blodgers, and Wobbles, corn factors of Mark Lane. He began the world as a fellowship porter, and always makes a rule of attending the principal dinners at the London Tavern, "because," as he says confidentially, to Wobbles, "don't you see, my boy, it's a very cheap way of getting into society." He is talking now to Sir Sandy McHaggis, a Scotch baronet, with a slender purse and a large appetite, with whom he has scraped an acquaintance, and presented with a spare ticket for the festival; knowing that the Scotchman is "varra fond o' a gude dinner, specially when it costs a mon nothing at all." The preparations are now complete, and we are in readiness to receive the chairman. After a short pause, a little door at the end of the room opens, and the great man appears, attended by an admiring circle of stewards and toadies, carrying white wands, like a parcel of charity-school boys bent on beating the bounds. He advances smilingly to his post at the principal table, amid deafening and long-continued cheers.
He is a very popular man, this chairman; for is he not the Earl of Mount-Stuart, late one of Her Majesty's Cabinet Ministers? and his wealth and party influence are known to be enormous.
The dinner now makes its appearance, and we yield up ourselves to the enjoyments of eating and drinking. These important duties finished, and grace having been beautifully sung by the vocalists, the real business of the evening commences. The usual loyal toasts having been given, the noble chairman rises, and, after passing his fingers through his hair, he places his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, gives a short preparatory cough, accompanied by a vacant stare round the room, and commences as follows:—
"My Lords and Gentlemen—It is with mingled pleasure and regret that I appear before you this evening: of pleasure, to find that this excellent and world-wide-known society is in so promising a condition; and, of regret, that you have not chosen a worthier chairman; in fact, one who is more capable than myself of dealing with a subject of such vital importance as this. (Loud cheers). But, although I may be unworthy of the honour, I am proud to state that I have been a subscriber to this society from its commencement; feeling sure that nothing can tend more to the advancement of civilization, social reform, fireside comfort, and domestic economy among the cannibals, than the diffusion of blankets and top-boots. (Tremendous cheering, which lasts for several minutes.) Here, in this England of ours, which is an island surrounded by water, as I suppose you all know—or, as our great poet so truthfully and beautifully expresses the same fact, 'England bound in by the triumphant sea'—what, down the long vista of years, have conduced more to our successes in arms, and arts and song, than blankets? Indeed, I never gaze upon a blanket without my thoughts reverting fondly to the days of my early childhood. Where should we all have been now but for those warm and fleecy coverings? My Lords and Gentlemen! Our first and tender memories are all associated with blankets: blankets when in our nurses' arms, blankets in our cradles, blankets in our cribs, blankets to our French bedsteads in our schooldays, and blankets to our marital four-posters now. Therefore, I say, it becomes our bounden duty as men,—and, with feelings of pride, I add, as Englishmen—to initiate the untutored savage, the wild and somewhat uncultivated denizen of the prairie, into the comfort and warmth of blankets; and to supply him, as far as practicable, with those reasonable, seasonable, luxurious, and useful appendages. At such a moment as this, the lines of another poet strike familiarly upon the ears. Let me see, they are something like this—
"Blankets have charms to soothe the savage breast,
And to—to, do—a——"