Merton.
The World, October 1, 1879.
——:o:——
The Civic Mazeppa.
“The disappearance of Gibbs from the civic procession created some little astonishment, and many were the inquiries as to what had become of him. The following Poem gives a bold, but very probable, notion of how the Alderman was really occupied on the day of the opening of the Royal Exchange. It is supposed that some of his fellow parishioners, meeting with him in a back street, caught hold of him, and tied him on to a horse, which got dreadfully into a-rear, and was then suffered to run on without the smallest check—thus typifying the state of the accounts of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. The Poem begins at the period when the Alderman is about to undergo his equestrian martyrdom.”
“Bring forth the horse!” the horse was brought;
In truth he was a noble steed—
A creature of the hackney sort,
Dash’d slightly with the dray-horse breed,
His sire had drawn a fly,