ROBERT AT THE LEATHERSELLERS'.
We had been so preshus busy at "the Grand Hotel" lately, that I hadn't seen werry much of my deer old Citty, but larst week I was arsked for to go and offishyate there at the jolly Leathersellers Company's Grand Dinner, as they was about to have a very distangy Party including one of our most sellybrated Hartist's, who's that poplar that ewerybody calls him 'Arry instead of 'Enery, as must in course have been the name as his godmothers and godfathers gav him when he was quite young and had his fust taste of a cold Bath, and most probberbly didn't like it.
So I went accordingly, and a werry scrumpshus Bankwet they had, includin them trewly Royal luxeries '80 Shampane and '47 Port! Ah! what a thing it must be to be a Royal or a Nobel persson, and to live on all the Fat of the Land, and wash it all down with nothink yunger than '80 shampain and '47 Port! And no matter where you gos, or weather it's to lay down a Fust Stone, or to Hopen a Hexibishun, or to take a Chair at a nobel Charity Dinner, there it is all reddy for you, and a hole crowd of Peeple a watching you a eating and a drinking of 'em, and a thanking you artily for taking the trubble of doing so! Ah! I sumtimes werrily beleeves as that my nateral tastes tells me as I was horiginally hintended for sum such useful life myself!
Well, arter the Bankwet of course we had all the reglar gushing speeches, and werry bewtifool but rather lengthy they was, but presently a sumthink appened as more estonished me praps than anythink as has appened to me for some time past.
The hartistick and poplar Gent as ewerybody calls Arry Furnace was called upon to return thanks for Hart, when to my intense estonishment, and ewerybody else's emusement, he acshally said as how as his frend "Robert," seeing how garstly pale he turned when he was told wot he wood have to do, had writ down for him 6 lines of most bewtifool Poetry, which he at wunce proceeded to recite, and sat down amid enthusiastick cheers and shouts of larfter! Seeing my look of puzzled surprise, he kindly turned round to me and said, "Look here, Robert, as I've rather taken a libberty with your honnerd name, I'll repay you by taking another with your well-known features," and borrowing a bewtifool pencil of me, that I had bort the day before for a penny, he acshally sketched three likenesses of me in his Book of the Songs, and giving it to me, said, with his merry laugh. "There, I hope that will console you for my bit of harmless fun;" and from what I was offered for my three sketches when I showed 'em about, after he was gone, I thinks, that upon the whole, I got a werry good share of the larf on my own side of the mouth.
Robert.
