Mrs. Graham and her husband will cause to be read to the meeting a paper, detailing numerous experiments, all tending to prove that it is a popular fallacy to suppose that balloons have a tendency to rise in the air.
Mr. Curtis will exhibit his celebrated acoustic chair, and explain its capabilities. He will display the gold medal presented to him by Government for the loan of it during the last year, and will show how a foreign or colonial secretary may slumber in it from morn till night, and yet hear what is going on all over the world. Mr. Curtis will further develope, by experiments on all who choose to try, its amazing property, by which a gentleman has only to sit in the chair, and appear to sleep, when he will be astonished to hear what all the world says of him.
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd will read a paper on the wrongs of authors, and instance many affecting cases in which, after having been allowed to live in splendour for a few years, they have been so reduced, by the illiberality of the trade and the ingratitude of the public, as to actually want a bottle of Champagne. He will illustrate the state of civil degradation to which they are reduced by the fact that at one of his literary dinners, a gentleman who had laboured in the Grub Street line all his life, actually did not know the names of some of the dishes set before him. Mr. Babbage will follow, with calculations produced by his machine, proving that every book is profitable, and that booksellers have neither rent, taxes, stock, nor bad debts to trouble them. He will allude to the fact of a West-end publisher having lately retired with a competence, and will suggest the propriety of a special meeting to inquire into the circumstances of such an atrocity. He will be supported by Captain Ross, who, however, will not state that author-ship is the worst vessel in which he ever put to sea.
Professor Fang, of Manchester, will present an interesting series of tests for ascertaining the existence of the vital principle in Factory children after they drop; and will suggest various novel stimulants when the billy roller has ceased to be effective. He will point out the evil of legislating on the subject of their ages, of which he will show the impossibility of obtaining the requisite proofs, arising from that beautiful economy of nature which bestows nothing in vain, and, therefore, withholds from them the usual supply of teeth, seeing that they have no time to use them.
Dr. Doubledose will communicate some interesting discoveries in the science of taw-tology, illustrated with real marbles. All the town's boys will be allowed to stand at this sitting.
Many other elaborate papers will be read to the various sections; but, as they will generally be about nothing, it is considered that they need trouble nobody.
Mrs. Williams, of the Old Bailey, will attend, for the accommodation of the visitors, with a copious supply of pewter plates, two-pronged forks, and handsome waiting maids; and a constant succession of buttocks and flanks, hot and hot, will be received by every train from Euston Square.
The inhabitants of the town are determined to shew their hospitality to the illustrious strangers they expect, and all the bachelors of arts and unmarried professors will be warmly welcomed at the houses of the single ladies.
1. Abolition of Negro Slavery, 1834; of Negro Apprenticeship, 1838.