The Hemperor is called the Brother of the Moon; and I shouldn't wunder if he's related in sum way, for I think he's crack'd, which is a common thing enuff in Chainy. They say he's the father of his peeple, and the mother two but I don't see how they make both of 'em aparent. The Guvament robs the natives vith vun hand, and pitches into 'em vith the other; so that betwixt being bamboozled and bambooed, they get a nice time of it. They used to be werry klever in science, but they're losing their hearts like winking; and though they don't paint particklarly good picters, they're great dabs at colours. Indeed, dying is the only thing they seems to excel in, as the returns of their killed will prove, to anybody's satisfakshun. As to ourselves, I've very little noose—hardly enuff to hang a line upon. Of korse you hurd of the affair at the Bogue, and the pretty Tilt we had with 'em! but it was such a farce, that I thought of sending the report to Messrs. Tilt and Bogue, for their Comic Allmyknack. The knavy of the poor fellers is quite stationary, which means to say that it's little better than brown paper; and as to their artillery, I don't believe their gunpowder would be strong enuff to shake the nerves of an old washerwoman. The soldiers all of 'em ware tails, and seem to be wery proud on 'em, for they always turn 'em to us direktly they cum into akshun. Poor Lin, who was to be the grate card, has turned out anything but a trump; and I shouldn't wonder if he gets cut at last by a chop from the Hemperor. The Chainees are werry proud of their feet, which I don't wunder at, considerin that, in battle, they owe so much to 'em. The wumen's shoes are so small that it hinterferes with rithmetic, and makes a foot only three or four inches. It only shows how cramped they are in their hunderstandings. I've urd it said that, sum day or anuther, the Chainees will adopt our abbits. Only fancy the Hemperor in a coat down to his eels, and knee britches, vitch, they say, will ewentually be the long and the short of it. As to our fashonable kustoms, they'd easy enuff fall into them, for I've seen 'em dance at a ball in the most natral manner.
But I must konklude; for a Chainee regiment of 600 is cummin on, and I'm ordered to relieve guard, with my six men, a quarter of an hour before the time, so as to kill two burds with wun stone, by changing the sentries and frightnin away the henemy.—Your dewoted
Mathew Musket.
THE COMPLETION OF THE TUNNEL.
This stupendous work is finished, and Wapping has reason to be proud of such a truly wapping undertaking. Perhaps no enterprise ever had so much cold water thrown upon it, and never was there a project which it seemed at one time so difficult to go through with. The engineer has worked like a horse, and has scarcely ever been out of the shaft.
The original shareholders, whose pockets were well drained, in fruitless efforts to drain the tunnel, have now the satisfaction of once more running through their property. For some time the ardour of the projectors was damped by the works going on rather too swimmingly. When accidents were every-day occurrences the Tunnel was a matter of interest; but since the water has been effectually kept out, it has become a dry subject.
On more than one occasion the Company would have been swamped, in spite of all hands being put to the pumps, if Government had not lent their sucker. The funds, in fact, were at low-water mark long before the works reached the same desirable point; and the more the Tunnel was set afloat the more were the shareholders aground in their undertaking.
But the perils are now past, and the Tunnel remains as a monument to British enterprise. We should call it, perhaps, a pillar to the fame of the engineer, if it were not that a pillar is incomplete without two things, one of which—the shaft—has been taken away, while the proprietors have long since lost sight of the capital.
THE CUP DAY AT ASCOT.
Well, this is beautiful, I do declare!