'That is more than I can tell you. The proprietor is constantly asking the question, and has even gone to the expense of repeatedly advertising. I shouldn't wonder if, by this time, he had gotten a satisfactory response. I went and listened to the customary description. The silence that ensued was broken by a miserable skeptic, whose ill-regulated aspirations betrayed his insular prejudice, 'Vot is it? arf hanimal, eh? t'other day, I stuck a pin into him, and ses he, 'Dam yez!' Vot is it, eh?' Thus did this wretch, by implication, endeavor to unsettle the opinions of the audience, none too definite, perhaps, before.
'It is singular the distrust with which a thankless public has long come to regard the efforts of one whose aim it has ever been to combine instruction with amusement. Do you remember an itinerant expedition sent forth, years ago, by the same grand purveyor? There was a Car of Juggernaut, you may recollect, drawn by twenty little pigs of elephants. That show I also attended, and was well repaid for going. Near the entrance of the tent was a large cage, peopled with the gayest denizens of tropic life, macaws, cockatoos, paroquets—what know I?—a feathered iridescence, that sulked prehensile or perched paradisiacal in their iron house. Two youths entered; one paused admiringly. 'Come along, Jack,' remonstrated the other, hurrying him on by the arm, 'them darned things is only painted.' He wasn't going to see his friend imposed upon and his admiration extorted under false pretenses. Not if he knew it! Mr. B—— couldn't do him!
'Painted! Ay, Jonathan—and if Church or Kensett, look you, could only get at those pigments! could find the oil-and-color men that filled that order! ah me! what opaline skies! what amethystine day-breaks! what incarnadine sunsets we should have! The palette for that work was laid by angels, from tubes long hidden in the choicest crypts of the vast elaboratory, and those transcendent tints.
'Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on,'
Painted! to be sure.
'For this wicked specimen of infidelity, I was presently overpaid by a charming bit of belief. At the further end of the great tent was a case, containing divers wax effigies of eminent personages; the Czar, Prince Albert, General Spitzentuyfel—what know I? You may see them any day, (if you happen to have two York shillings,) at the sumptuous home to which they have returned from those travels. There they stood, side by side, an imposing company, forever shiny in the face, like Mrs. Wittitterly's page, and with eyes magnificently superior to any thing so sordid as speculation. All were finely befrogged, and ruched, and epauletted, and, for the most part, they sported moustaches. It happened that I had the latter adornment—a variety then—on my own mug.
While recognizing them—they were old acquaintances—I felt a gentle pull at my skirt, and looking down, was aware of a little tot, some three years old, who asked, pointing to the counterfeit presentments in the show-case: 'Did you come out o' there?' The innocent! he little knew what an extinguisher he was clapping on me. 'No, sonny,' said I, looking down on the little nose, itself a bit of wax, between two peaches. The soft impeachment proceeded—'Well, where do yer belong? do yer belong in with the bear?' for there was a plantigrade there too. But I reckon that will do for bears, this time.'
'I should think so! They'll be dreaming about 'em all night.'
'Dick, how much of all this is true?'
'The whole, barring a few verbal interpolations.'