Kirby and his wife went across the water with the children and Mrs. Fanny—she has a small settlement; and I am bound to say that our mutual friend Miss Elizabeth C. went down with Mrs. Dixon in the fly to the Tower Stairs, and stopped in Lombard Street by the way.
So it is that the world wags: that honest men and knaves alike are always having ups and downs of fortune, and that we are perpetually changing tenants in Our Street.
THE LION OF THE STREET.
THE LION OF THE STREET.
What people can find in Clarence Bulbul, who has lately taken upon himself the rank and dignity of Lion of our Street, I have always been at a loss to conjecture.
“He has written an Eastern book of considerable merit,” Miss Clapperclaw says; but hang it, has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the second cataract. An Eastern book, forsooth! My Lord Castleroyal has done one—an honest one; my Lord Youngent another—an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey another—a pious one; there is “The Cutlet and the Cabob”—a sentimental one; “Timbuctoothen”—a humorous one, all ludicrously overrated, in my opinion, not including my own little book, of which a copy or two is still to be had by the way.
Well, then, Clarence Bulbul, because he has made part of the little tour that all of us know, comes back and gives himself airs, forsooth, and howls as if he were just out of the great Libyan desert.
When we go and see him, that Irish Jew courier, whom I have before had the honour to describe, looks up from the novel which he is reading in the ante-room, and says, “Mon maitre est au Divan,” or, “Monsieur trouvera Monsieur dans son serail,” and relapses into the Comte de Montechristo again.