‘I hardly know,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘whether there is any relationship between Mr. Paperstamp and the persons there represented; but there is at least a very intimate connection. The old woman in the scarlet cloak is the illustrious Mother Goose;—the two children playing at see-saw are Margery Daw and Tommy with his Banbury cake;—the little boy and girl, the one with a broken pitcher, and the other with a broken head, are little Jack and Jill: the house, at the door of which the whole party is grouped, is the famous house that Jack built; you see the clock through the window and the mouse running up it, as in that sublime strain of immortal genius, entitled Dickery Dock: and the boy in the corner is little Jack Horner eating his Christmas pie. The latter is one of the most splendid examples on record of the admirable practical doctrine of “taking care of number one,” and he is therefore in double favour with Mr. Paperstamp, for his excellence as a pattern of moral and political wisdom, and for the beauty of the poetry in which his great achievement of extracting a plum from the Christmas pie is celebrated. Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack are unanimously agreed that the Christmas pie in question is a type and symbol of the public purse; and as that is a pie in which every one of them has a finger, they look with great envy and admiration on little Jack Horner, who extracted a _plum_ from it, and who, I believe, haunts their dreams with his pie and his plum, saying, “Go, and do thou likewise!”’ The secret council broke up, and Mr. Paperstamp entering with his four compeers, bade the new-comers welcome to Mainchance Villa, and introduced to them Mr. Anyside Antijack. Mr. Paperstamp did not much like Mr. Forester’s modes of thinking; indeed he disliked them the more, from their having once been his own; but a man of large landed property was well worth a little civility, as there was no knowing what turn affairs might take, what party might come into place, and who might have the cutting up of the Christmas pie. They now adjourned to dinner, during which, as usual, little was said, and much was done. When the wine began to circulate, Mr. Feathernest held forth for some time in praise of himself; and by the assistance of a little smattering in Mr. Mystic’s synthetical logic, proved himself to be a model of taste, genius, consistency, and public virtue. This was too good an example to be thrown away; and Mr. Paperstamp followed it up with a very lofty encomium on his own virtues and talents, declaring he did not believe so great a genius, or so amiable a man as himself, Peter Paypaul Paperstamp, Esquire, of Mainchance Villa, had appeared in the world since the days of Jack the Giantkiller, whose _coat of darkness_ he hoped would become the costume of all the rising generation, whenever adequate provision should be made for the whole people to be taught and trained.