AUTHORS’ MISERIES.
Old Gentleman. Miss Wiggets. Two Authors.
Old Gentleman. I am sorry to see you occupied, my dear Miss Wiggets, with that trivial paper Punch. A railway is not a place, in my opinion, for jokes. I never joke—never.
Miss W. So I should think, sir.
Old Gentleman. And besides, are you aware who are the conductors of that paper, and that they are Chartists, Deists, Atheists, Anarchists, and Socialists, to a man? I have it from the best authority, that they meet together once a week in a tavern in Saint Giles’s, where they concoct their infamous print. The chief part of their income is derived from threatening letters which they send to the nobility and gentry. The principal writer is a returned convict. Two have been tried at the Old Bailey; and their artist—as for their artist....
Guard. Swin-dun! Sta-tion! [Exeunt two Authors.
In taking leave of this very entertaining subject one cannot do better than quote a printer’s “little joke,” which is at once mirth-provoking, and eminently suited as a “tail-piece” for this paper—
“Full many a man, who now doth cheat the printer,
Will waste his voice upon the heated air,
And vainly sigh for cooling breeze of winter
When he is punished for his sins down there.”
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