The breakfast-eating practical joker, who can be credited with the humorous invention of placing the shell of an egg (the edible contents of which he has previously extracted and swallowed) inverted in an egg-cup, so as to deceive the first hungry person arriving late into fancying that the others have considerately deprived themselves in order that he may not be without his favourite delicacy, this originator, I say, was decidedly a genius. His work after hundreds, nay, thousands of years, remains, fresh as is the new laid egg itself! After being used a million billion times, it gives now the same pleasure as ever it did when it first issued from the brain of its brilliant creator! Such a practical joke as this is "not for an age, but for all time," until there shall be no longer left a hen to lay an egg, or, if there be an egg left by the expiring hen, there shall be no longer a person remaining to eat the egg left by the egg-spiring hen; or, if the person and the egg be there, the last man and the last egg, there shall be no ten minutes allowed for refreshment, as there will be no more time for anything!! Socrates, Homer, Ovid, Horace, Plautus, Terence, Shakspeare, Watt, Sir Isaac Newton, cum multis aliis! their names are remembered, and their fame is to the end of the world! While, alas, the name of the True Wit who first chuckled over his stroke of genius, is lost for ever, no work of art perpetuates his name. But his humour is usque ad finem omnium rerum!
Mrs. R. is not surprised that the Valkyrie did not win, when it broke its pinnacle and did not have a centipede.
UNDER THE ROSE.
(A Story in Scenes.)
Scene XII.—Another box at the Eldorado. Time—About 9.30 P.M.
Enter Mrs. Merridew and Althea, followed by Colonel Merridew and Captain Alchin.
Mrs. Merridew. Frank, the man did say Walter Wildfire hasn't sung yet, didn't he? Yes? then that's all right! Oughtn't you and I to sit at the back, Thea? Well, you shall have this corner at any rate, and then the curtain will hide you. Captain Alchin, will you come between us, please, and then you can explain any of the jokes we don't understand.