After escaping from the attentions of Leech’s inimitable Arabs, Mr. Simmons reaches Hyde Park to find fresh troubles. The feathered wideawake creates a sensation, but not of the kind that its wearer expected; he was asked where “he bought it,” and “if he would sell it”; “if he made it himself”; and if he had “another at home like it to spare for a friend,” and so on. The “air of unconsciousness” that the reformer assumed irritated his assailants, whose “offensive remarks and insolent mirth” were soon exchanged for attentions more uncomfortable.
| Mr. Simmons’s attempt at Reform. |
Says Mr. Simmons: “A bright flash of practical jocularity suddenly illumined the mind of an original genius, who at once carried it into effect by casting at my decided article of costume a large tuft of grass, which struck me on the back of my neck, broke into dry dirt, and raised a perfect roar of delight at my expense.” Instead of patiently enduring this assault, as a prudent man would have done when surrounded by enemies, the valiant Simmons turned upon his assailant, “and struck the wit a severe blow in the face.” That was a death-blow to the picturesque hat, which “afforded some slight sport as a football for a few moments, and then vanished and was seen no more.”
It will be seen by the quotations that the literary portion of the Month is of the slight character—though sometimes clever and amusing—to which so much of Leech’s work has been allied. A sketch, entitled “Home from the Party,” gives occasion for the accompanying drawing by Leech of a young gentleman who has “danced all night till the broad daylight,” “and gone home” by himself “in the morning.” On his journey a brougham overtakes him, containing “the handsome dark girl with the clematis and fuchsia wreath, looking pale and pretty, with a pocket-handkerchief over her head cornerwise, held together at the chin. We think about that brougham-girl till she is out of sight, and wonder if we appeared to the best advantage as she passed. We don’t much think we did. One of the springs of our hat was out of order, and we were carrying our gloves in our hand, crumpled up to the size of a walnut, as though we were going to conjure with them; and we were blinking as we met the sun at the corner, and holding a seedy bouquet in our hand, which evidently she had not given us.”
The remarks, conversations, comments, and so forth, that generally accompany Leech’s drawings were invariably his own composition, and in their humorous aptness are almost as admirable as the drawings they explain. In illustration I note a design under the heading of “Moral Courage.”
“Scene—A Station of the Shoeblack Brigade.
“First Boy: ‘Here’s another swell, Bill, a-coming to be blacked.’
“Second Boy: ‘Ooray!’
“Third Boy: ‘Ain’t his boots thin neither?’
“Fourth Boy: ‘Wouldn’t they pinch my toes if I had ’em? Oh my!’