Cind. Cinders and coals I'm so accustomed to,
They seem to me to tinge all things I view.
Prince. That fact I can't say causes me surprise,
For kohl is frequently in ladies' eyes.
Cind. At morn, when reading, as the fire up-burns,
The print to stops—to semi-coaluns—turns.
I might as well read Coke.
Prince.Quite right you are,—
He's very useful reading at the bar.
(Chaffingly) Who is your favourite poet?—Hobbs?
Cind.Not quite.
No, I think, Cole-ridge is my favourite;
His melan-coally suits my situation;
My dinner always is a coald coal-lation,
Smoked pictures all things seem, whate'er may be'em,
A cyclorama, through the "Coal I see 'em"
More acceptible in, pantomime than in travestie, "Little Red Riding Hood" has nevertheless been the heroine of at least one burlesque which has made its mark—namely, that which Leicester Buckingham brought out at the Lyceum just thirty years ago, under the auspices of Edmund Falconer. He had Miss Lydia Thompson for his Blondinette (Red Riding Hood), and Miss Cicely Nott for the young lady's lover, Colin. The fairy element was freely introduced, and instead of the wolf of the original there was a Baron Reginald de Wolf ("the would-be abductor of Blondinette, who finds he is sold when she 'ab duck'd herself to escape him"). Here and there one gets in the "book" a glimpse of parody; as in—
My protegè—my protegè,
Ah! never look so shy,
For pretty girls seem ugly
When a gloom is in their eye.
Or, again, in—
They say the peasant's life is sweet,
But that we know all trash is, O;
He very little gets to eat,
For often scarce his cash is, O.
Teeth then he gnashes, O,
Gnaws his moustaches, O;
But jolly are the hours he spends
When plentiful the cash is, O.