"I search for lodgings--here's the very thing,-- Though I've not got a _rap_, I think I'll _ring_; For all I want is to be _taken in_,-- As I would others _take_--sure 'tis no sin To do to others--only tit for tat-- So here goes--Rat--tat, tat--a tat!!!!!" [Illustration: HERE WE ARE AGAIN!] The orchestra, loud in wishing to know "who's dat knocking at de door?" and Master Tom, deep in the bill, with Mr. Rat, who is there described as a "scamp"--an unknown term to Tom, for he asked its meaning; observing that Uncle Brick said Captain de Camp was a scamp. This question remained unanswered; for no one heard it except the Captain, who felt a great itching to pull a young monkey's ears, but did not. The cat (a sort of Puss in Boots, with a short stick and strip of paper) entering, to catch the rat, is worried by the dog; who is tossed by a cow with a very crumpled horn; who was milked by a maid said to be very forlorn; who is kissed by a sweet-looking beggar, all tattered and torn--the loving pair being likened to Jemima and Latimer, by Master Tom, causing his sister's face to redden as a furnace, that heightened the more it was fanned; and when the priest, all shaven and shorn (whom Tom called the Rev. Loyalla a Becket), commenced marrying the couple, then Miss Jemima entertained serious notions of fainting; and, probably, would, had not the solemnization of matrimony been violated by the priest, who shed his sack-cloth surplice, vaulting over the rails of the altar, between the astonished couple, leaving that sanctuary to change into a _match maker's_--appearing, himself, a perfect _clown_, stating that sublime, veritable, truth--"_here we are again!_"--working his geometric, chromatic, physiognomy into endless contortions, extending his arms like the sails of contrary windmills, twiddling his legs like a fly,--and when called upon, by unearthly voices, for "Tippytiwitchet," appears so scared that he tumbles through the big drum, to oblige them with the song from the slips; instantly afterwards presenting himself upon the stage, dilating his spotted inexpressibles, until they put him in mind of a friend, _Pantaloon_, that, by a curious coincidence, resides at a tailor's, in the back-ground, having just completed a patch-work skin, for _Harlequin_; who, the instant he is fitted, flies through the panel of a door, inscribed "_cutting-out_ room," into the next house, a _florist's_, there to obtain his favourite flower, the _Columbine_, with whom he has a long dance in the centre of a very solitary street; whilst Clown and Pantaloon arrange a partnership concern, which they carry on in the middle of the road, in front of the shop, until Clown renders himself more plague than profit, by warming his partner's lumbar region with a very red-hot goose, basting him with the sleeve-board, and sticking him to the road with wax--Clown dissolving partnership by walking off, in a new wrap-rascal, with the cash-box, that no one may rob them.