The S.S. 'Old on, Guv'nor! Me and my friends are with yer so fur as doing away with these 'ere hidle GUELPHS; but blow yer MARY of Orstria, yer know. Blow 'er!
Mr. W. (horrified). Hush—this is rank treason! Remember—she is the lineal descendant of the House of Stuart!
The S.S. What of it? There won't be no lineal descendants when we git hour way, 'cause there won't be nothing to descend to nobody. The honly suv'rin we mean to 'ave is the People—the Democrisy. But there, you're young, me and my friends'll soon tork you over to hour way o' thinking. I dessay we ain't fur apart, as it is. I got yer address, and we'll drop in on yer some night—never fear. No hevenin' dress, o' course?
Mr. W. Of course. I—I'll look out for you. But I'm seldom in—hardly ever, in fact.
The S.S. Don't you fret about that. Me and my friends ain't nothing partickler to do just now. We'll wait for yer. I should like yer to know ole BILL GABB. You should 'ear that feller goin' on agin the GUELPHS when he's 'ad a little booze—it 'ud do your 'art good! Well, I on'y come in 'ere as a deligate like, to report, and I seen enough. So 'ere's good-day to yer.
Mr. W. (alone). I shall have to change my rooms—and I was so comfortable! Well, well,—another sacrifice to the Cause!
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
There was a bronze group by POLLET among the specimens of sculpture in the French Salon, some twenty years ago,—"It may be more or less an hour or so," as the poet sings,—representing a female form being carried upwards in the embrace of a rather evil-looking Angel. It illustrated a poem by the Vicomte ALFRED DE VIGNY, which I remember reading, in consequence of this very statue having come into my possession (it was afterwards sold at Messrs. CHRISTIE, MANSON & WOODS, under the style and title of "Lot 121, Elsa"), and it occurs to me that it was on precisely the same theme as the other ALFRED's—not the Vicomte but Mister ALFRED AUSTIN's—"The Tower of Babel," which I have just read with much pleasure, and, with some profit; the moral, as I take it, being favourable to the Temperance cause, as a warning against all spirits, good, bad, or indifferent. Afrael, the inhabitant of a distant star, falls in love with Noema, the wife of the atheistical Babelite Aran, to whom she has borne a son, aged in the poem, as far as I can make out, about eight years, and a fine boy for that. Anyhow, it makes Noema at least twenty-five, supposing she married at sweet seventeen, and, indeed, she alludes to herself in the poem as no longer in her first youth.