After the usual round of loyal and patriotic toasts, Mr. Merripall called the attention of the brethren to the standing toast of the day.
"High Cockolorums and gentlemen! 'Tis easy to say 'live and let live;' but if everybody were to live we must die. Life is short. I wish--present company always excepted--it was as short as my speech!----The grim tyrant!"
_Verbum sat._; and there rose a cheer loud enough to have made Death demand what meant those noisy doings at his door.
"Silence, gentlemen, for a duet from brothers Hatband and Stiflegig."
Had toast-master Toole * bespoke the attention of the Guildhall grandees for the like musical treat from Gog and Magog, we should hardly have been more surprised. Mr. Bosky looked the incarnation of incredulity.
* This eminent professor, whose sobriquet is "Lungs" having to shout the health of "the three present Consuls," at my Lord Mayor's feast, proclaimed the health of the "Three per Cent. Consols,"
After a few preliminary openings and shuttings of the eyes and mouth, similar to those of a wooden Scaramouch when we pull the wires, Brothers Hatband and Stiflegig began (chromatique),
Hatband. When poor mutes and sextons have nothing
Hatband. But when fevers flourish of bright scarlet
Both. Winter to us is a jolly trump card, fine hot May makes a fat churchyard!
Stiflegig. Should all the world die, what the deuce
When you're all dead and buried, zooks! what
Sing High Cockolorum, and dance fillalloo!
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Merripall, again rising, "all charged? _Mulligrum's Pill!_"
Doctor Dose, a disciple of that art which is founded in conjecture and improved by murder, returned thanks on the part of Messrs. Mulligrum, Thorogonimble and Co. It was a proud day for the pill; which through good report and evil report had worked its way, and fulfilled his predictions that it would take and be taken. He would not ask the Cockolorums to swallow one.--Here the mutes made horribly wry faces, and shook their heads, as much as to say it would be of very little use if he did.--It was sufficient that the pill bore the stamp of their approbation, and the government three-halfpenny one; and he begged to add, that all pills without the latter, and the initials of Mulligrum, Thorogonimble, and Dose, were counterfeits.