Excellent apologist!--how ridiculous!--Excessive delicacy, avaunt! give
me a glorious laugh, and "throw (affectation) to the dogs; I'll have
none of it." Now the farce begins: up starts the immortal hero himself,
and makes his bow; a simultaneous display of "broad grins" welcomes
his felicitous entree; and for a few seconds the scene resembles the
appearance of a popular election candidate, Sir Francis Burdett, or
his colleague, little Cam Hobhouse, on the hustings in Covent Garden;
nothing is heard but one deafening shout of clamorous approbation.
Observe the butcher's boy has stopped his ~62~~horse to witness the fun,
spite of the despairing cook who waits the promised joint; and the jolly
lamp-lighter, laughing hysterically on the top of his ladder, is
pouring the oil from his can down the backs and into the pockets of the
passengers beneath, instead of recruiting the parish-lamp, while
the sufferers are too much interested in the exhibition to feel the
trickling of the greasy fluid. The baker, careless of the expectant
owner's hot dinner, laughs away the time until the pie is quite cold;
and the blushing little servant-maid is exercising two faculties at
once, enjoying the frolics of Signor Punch, and inventing some plausible
excuse for her delay upon an expeditious errand.
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