"Ve don't expect no good grammar here, Muster Thingumbob, but, hang it! you might close the scenes!"
Mr. Bigstick being politely requested ("Strike up, Snow-drop! Go it, Day and Martin!") to "Jump Jim Crow" in triplicate, came forward, curvetting and salaaming with profound respect, and treated his audience with this _variorum version_ of their old favourite.
Jim's play'd his pranks--with many thanks,
The pantomine of Hot Rolls, or Harlequin Dumpling, and the Dragon of Wantley concluded the performances; in which Mr. Bigstick's promising young pupil, Master Magnumdagnumhuggleduggle, by a _jeu de théâtre_ bolted the baker; (bones, apron, night-cap and all!) set Old Father Thames on fire, exhibited the fishes frying in agony, and in his suit of spiked armour, like an "Egyptian Porcupig,"
and marched forth fiercely to a ferocious fight with a green leather dragon stuffed with fiery serpents, that hissed and exploded to the tune of two-pence a time!
The Bartlemy fairities were in raptures. Master Magnumdagnumhuggleduggle, Mr. Big stick, the Tumblctuzzy and the Dragon were successively garlanded with broccoli-sprouts and turnip-tops! It was all round my hat" with Bonassus, who divided the Lion's share with the Dragon, and looked like a May-day Jack-in-the-green! The enthusiasm of the audience did not end here. They called for the Call-boy, and the Candle-snuffer, whose bliss would have felt no cc aching void" had a "bit of bacon" accompanied, by way of a relish, this kitchen garden of cabbage.
The bells of St. Bartholomew chimed the hour when churchyards and "Charlies" yawn; upon which the illuminations and mob went out, and away, and Momus looked as down in the mouth as a convolvulus.
** Next morning's sun saw Smithfield restored to those polite intelligences whose "talk is of bullocks"--with no greater nuisance remaining, than its chartered brutes upon Jour legs, beaten, goaded, tortured, and blasphemed at by its greater brutes upon two!
The elephant booked his trunk and departed; the menagerie man returned to his dish of bird's claws and beaks, with a second course of shark's teeth and fish-bones; Punch and Judy were amicably domiciled with the dog, the devil, and the doctor; the Jacks-in-the-box, Noah's arks, Dutch dolls, and wooden Scaramouches, were stowed away pell-mell; the gingerbread kings, queens, and nuts, were huddled higgledy-piggledy into their tin canisters; a muddled chorister warbled "Fly not yet" to an intrusive "Blue-Bottle" that popped in the Queen's Crown and his own among a midnight dancing party of shopmen and Abigails, and a solitary fiddle, scraped by a cruel cobbler, squeaked the _Lay of the Last Minstrel!_