[47] Gents. Mag. and Brit. Chron.
January 31.
King George IV. proclaimed.—Holiday at the Exchequer.
Wakes.
A newspaper of this day,[48] in the year 1821, relates the following anecdote:—
All through Ireland the ceremonial of wakes and funerals is most punctually attended to, and it requires some sçavoir faire to carry through the arrangement in a masterly manner. A great adept at the business, who had been the prime manager at all the wakes in the neighbourhood for many years, was at last called away from the death-beds of his friends to his own. Shortly before he died he gave minute directions to his people as to the mode of waking him in proper style. “Recollect,” says he, “to put three candles at the head of the bed, after you lay me out, and two at the foot, and one at each side. Mind now, and put a plate with the salt on it just a top of my breast. And, do you hear? have plenty of tobacco and pipes enough; and remember to make the punch strong. And—but what the devil is the use of talking to you? sure I know you’ll be sure to botch it, as I won’t be there myself.”
Mr. John Bull, an artist, with poetical powers exemplified in the first volume[49] by a citation from his poem entitled “The Museum,” which deserves to be better known, favours the Every-Day Book with the following original lines. The conflict between the cross and the crescent, renders the communication peculiarly interesting to those who indulge a hope that the struggle will terminate in the liberation of Greece from “worse than Egyptian bondage.”