“Mr. Chairman and prize goose,—The feelings which now agitate my sensorium on this Michaelmasian occasion stimulate the vibratetiuncles of the heartiean hypothesis, so as to paralyse the oracular and articulative apparatus of my loquacious confirmation, overwhelming my soul-fraught imagination, as the boiling streams of liquid lava, buried in one vast cinereous mausoleum—the palace-crowded city of the engulphed Pompeii. (Immense cheers.)—I therefore propose a Methusalemic elongation of the duration of the vital principle of the presiding anserian paragon.” (Stentorian applause, continued for half-an-hour after the rising of the Prize Goose) who said—
“Fellow Geese and Goslings,—Julius Cæsar, when he laid the first stone of the rock of Gibraltar—Mr. Carstairs, the celebrated caligrapher, when he indited the inscription on the Rosetta stone—Cleopatra, when she hemmed Anthony’s bandanna with her celebrated needle—the Colossus of Rhodes, when he walked and won his celebrated match against Captain Barclay—Galileo, when he discovered and taught his grandmother the mode of sucking eggs—could not feel prouder than I do upon the present occasion. (Cheers.) These reminiscences, I can assure you, will ever stick in my grateful gizzard.”
Here the gallant Colonel sat down, overcome by his feelings and several glasses of Betts’ best British brandy.
Song—“Goosey, goosey gander.”
Mr. D’ISRAELI then rose, and said,—“Chair, and brethren of the quill, I feel, in assuming the perpendicular, like the sun when sinking into his emerald bed of western waters. Overcome by emotions mighty as the impalpable beams of the harmonious moon’s declining light, and forcibly impressed as the trembling oak, girt with the invisible arms of the gentle loving zephyr; the blush mantles on my cheek, deep as the unfathomed depths of the azure ocean. I say, gentlemen, impressed as I am with a sense—with a sense, I say, with a sense—” Here the hon. gentleman sat down for want of a termination.
Song—“No more shall the children of Judah sing.”
Mr. PETER BORTHWICK (having corked himself a handsome pair of mustachios), next rose, and said,—“Most potent, grave, and reverend signors, and Mr. Chairman,—if it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly’—in rising to drink—‘my custom always of an afternoon’—the health of Sir Peter Laurie, and whom I can ask, in the language of the immortal bard, ‘where gottest thou that goose look,’ I can only say, ‘had Heaven made me such another,’ I would not”— Then Peter Borthwick sat down, evidently indisposed, exclaiming—“The drink, Hamlet, the drink!!!”
Here our reporter left the meeting, who were vociferously chanting, by way of grace, previous to the attack on the “roast geese,” the characteristic anthem of the “King of the Cannibal Islands.”