You have taken quite a mob in Of new military flames;-- They would make a fine Round Robin If I gave you all their names!

“It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is ‘lighter than vanity;’ and also because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is vanity.”--PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.

The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. I (of XI) — Part 155

“I named this place Boothia.”--CAPTAIN ROSS.

The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. I (of XI) — Part 155

“A Fancy Fair,” said my friend L., in his usual quaint style, “is a fair subject for fancy; take up your pen and try. For instance, there was one held at the Mansion House. Conceive a shambling shock-headed clodpole, familiar with the wakes of Bow, Barnet, and Bartlemy, elbowing his awkward way into the Egyptian Hall, his round eyes and mouth all-agape in the ludicrous expectation of seeing the Lord Mayor standing on his very Worshipful head, the Lady Mayoress lifting a hundred weight by her Right Honourable hair, the Sword-Bearer swallowing his blade of state, the Recorder conjuring ribands from his learned and eloquent mouth, and the Senior Alderman with a painted York-and-Lancaster-face, dancing a _saraband_ à la Pierrot! Or fancy Jolterhead at the fair of the Surrey Zoological, forcing his clumsy destructive course through groups of female fashionables, like a hog in a tulip bed, with the equally laughable intention of inspecting long horns and short horns, prime beasts and lean stock, of handling the porkers and coughing the colts. Nay, imagine our bumpkin at the great Fancy Fair of all, blundering up to a stall kept by a Royal Duchess, and enquiring perseveringly for a gilt gingerbread King and Queen--a long-promised fairing to brother Bill at Leighton Buzzard!”

The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. I (of XI) — Part 155

Little did L. dream during this flourish of fancy, that his whimsical fiction had been forestalled by fact; and a deep shade of vexation passed over his features while he perused the following hints from Hants, as conveyed in a _bonâ fide_ letter to the Editor of the Comic Annual.

Dont no if you Be a Hamshire man, or a man atacht to the fancy, but as Both such myself, have took the libberty to write about what is no joke. Of coarse allude to being Hoaxt up to Lonnon, to sea a fair no fair at all and About as much fancy as you mite fancy on the pint of a pin.--