Mr. Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at the Grand Junction Meeting of Sçavans, then congregating from all parts of the known world, in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity,—a little too much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen,—is highly spoken of and, it is supposed, will obtain a Bridgewater prize.
Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as bridesmaids on the occasion; the former wrote an epithalamium, and the latter cried "Lassy me!" at the clergyman's wig. But as of these young ladies, of the fair widow, Mr. Sucklethumbkin, Mrs. Peters and her P. we may have more to say hereafter, we take our leave for the present; assuring our pensive public that Mr. and Mrs. Seaforth are living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond of each other, can possibly do; and that since the day of his marriage Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors o' nights,—though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim of his young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair Caroline does still occasionally take advantage of it so far as to "slip on the Breeches."
THE WIDE AWAKE CLUB.
BY RIGDUM O'FUNNIDOS.
The clubs of London! I recollect once reading a book so called; but as for any bonâ fide information touching the soi disant social assemblies, I might as well have been perusing the Shaster, or reading the Florentine copy of the Pandects! The clubs of London afford, as I have reason to know, ample material for the most abundant fun; but they who expect to find it at Crockford's, the Athenæum, and other maisons de jeu, where yawning dandies, expert chevaliers, old men of the town, roués of all sorts,
Mingle, mingle, mingle, As they mingle may,
will be wofully disappointed. The clubs, par excellence, take them one and all,—from the Oriental, stuck, with a due disposition and attention to habits of Eastern indolence, in the dullest corner of the dullest square in London, down to, or up to, I care not which, the staring bow-windowed Omnibus Union in Cockspur-street,—are all alike destitute of the requisite material. I perhaps may have a touch at them in the middle of the session and season, when the élite of the club-men are in town, and when their sayings and doings may by possibility be worth recording, even if it were only to have a laugh over them. But, as Copp says, "let that pass for the present." The clubs that I intend to introduce to the readers of the Miscellany are certain of those convivial associations composed of the middlemen of society in the metropolis, who assemble on certain stated nights in the week to sing songs, smoke pipes, and imbibe moisture in the shape of divers goes of spirit and pints of ale. My reminiscences of these assemblies, I think, would fill a goodly tome. To begin with the last, Hebrew fashion. In was my lot one evening, a short time since, to be introduced by Mr. Timmins, my landlord, who, seeing I was rather low-spirited, volunteered the invitation, on a social community called the "Wide Awake Club."
"Sir," said Mr. Timmins,—a very worthy knight of the needle, who called me "the genelman wot lodges in my first floor," (whether up or down the chimney, deponent sayeth not,)—"you looks werry oncomfutable this here nasty evening. Prowisin it ain't takin' of too great a liberty, and you feel noways disinclined, I think an hour or two at our club—(I have the privilege of introducing a wisitor wot I can answer for in regard to respectability)—might do you good."
"And pray, Mr. Timmins, what is the character of your club?"—"Oh! sir, the character of our club is on-doubted, sir; we are all men of experence, sir: no one is admitted a member onless he shows he is a wide awake cove."