“The additional attraction to which you so perspicuously allude, my dear sir, involves yet another striking peculiarity--viz., this driver, who so carefully conducts you through the crowded thoroughfares of our colossal metropolis, is no servile hireling, no parasitical serf to crouch at your feet, but a man, sir--a freeborn Briton--with as much vested right in ‘Rule Britannia’ as yourself. Sir! when a dissatisfied cabman alludes to my eyes and limbs, I open widely those aspersed optics, proudly draw up those vituperated limbs, and rejoice that he and I are fellow-countrymen!” “My dear Jack, we’re not upon the hustings; we have none of us the slightest intention of coming in for anywhere; and dinner has been served for the last five minutes,” suggested his host, mildly. Favouring him with a melodramatic scowl, which, at “Sadler’s Wells” or the “Victoria,” would, in theatrical parlance, have “brought down the house,” Jack exclaimed-- “Is it thus a haughty aristocracy strives to trample on the honest poor man! it is not well in ye, my lord, and before an illustrious foreigner, too; alas, my country!”--then perceiving that Guillemard was regarding him with a glance which evinced extreme doubts as to his sanity, that D’Almayne was looking supercilious, and Lord Alfred annoyed at his absurdity, Jack experienced the proud conviction that he had attained his object--viz., to astonish, confuse, and discomfit everybody. Having done so, he dropped the heroic, and condescended to make himself agreeable after the fashion of ordinary mortals, which, as he was really clever and well-informed, he succeeded in doing to a degree that, in great measure, effaced his previous misconduct from the recollection of his associates. He prefaced his reformation, however, by contriving to seat Guillemard by one of the boxing-gloved napkins, a manœuvre which elicited from that perplexed foreigner the exclamation, “_Mais que diable!_ vot shall zies be?” and a reproving “Jack, you idiot, how can you!” from Lord Alfred, who was equally amused and scandalised at his friend’s absurdities. But a Frenchman’s tact is seldom long at fault; and by the time Guillemard had extricated the boxing-glove from its envelope, he continued-- “_Ah, je comprends_, I apprehend! Monsieur Jacques Pipbo! _il est gai, il est farceur_, he vos play vot you call von practicable joke, _n’est-ce-pas, Milor?--bien comique!_ ver fonney, ha! ha!”