Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. VVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. V
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night, and then
flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,
the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair; is faced
(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them, and
support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little Swills
says, Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short
description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day. Is much
applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes in as
the Coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes the
Inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment to the
refrain--With his (the Coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol lo
doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally
round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now
laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt
eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here, by the
mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised
to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon
the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would
have seemed! O, if, in brighter days, the now-extinguished fire within
him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is she,
while these ashes are above the ground!
It is any thing but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court;
where Guster murders sleep, by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself
allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into
twenty. The occasion of this seizure is, that Guster has a tender
heart, and a susceptible something that possibly might have been
imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,
now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's
account of the inquiry at which he had assisted, that at supper-time
she projected herself into the kitchen preceded by a flying
Dutch-cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration: which she only
came out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain
of fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically
availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not to
give her warning "when she quite comes to;" and also in appeals to the
whole establishment to lay her down on the stones, and go to bed.
Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in
Cursitor-street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the
subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most
patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am sure!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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