But Punch and Judy are the chief characters in our sketch. Punch was a different performance in our youthful days: then he went out, got drunk, came home and quarrelled with his wife; from words they got to blows, and there used to be a tremendous fight between them, and sorry we are to say the drunken old rascal swore dreadfully. At last he struck Judy a tremendous blow with his truncheon, and she fell down senseless, as if dead. Then the conscience of the hump-backed villain smote him, and he wept and wailed over her, until at last the doctor came, felt her pulse, and pronounced her dead. Punch was inconsolable for her loss, pronounced the doctor a quack, and then they went at it. Oh, what a fight that was between Punch and the Doctor! but the man of physic fell beneath the truncheon of the hooked-nosed old blackguard, and appeared as if dead. Punch was next tried, and knocked the judge off the bench for finding him guilty of murder, and sentencing him to be hanged. Then the gallows was brought out, and you made sure that the old villain's career of crime was ended; but not a bit of it; like Mat Prior's thief, he "Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, And often took leave, but was loth to depart." He seemed willing enough to be hanged, but did not know how to place his neck in the halter; sometimes he put his arms through the noose, then half his body, but never by any chance did he allow the cord to touch his neck. At length he succeeded in persuading Jack Ketch to shew him the right way: the hangman did so, placed his own neck in the noose, received a crack on the head with the staff and a kick behind, and there he hung and swung to the delight of every beholder. Then came the Devil, horned, hoofed, tailed, saucer-eyed, and black as ebony; but Punch was game to the back-bone, and fought with all his might, causing the Devil himself to retreat several times before he would give in. Nor did we ever think the Devil beat him fairly; for he came behind, like a sneaking thief as he is, pinioned both the arms of Punch, while the latter had his face turned towards us in triumph, and bore him away on his back: we could even hear the prominent-paunched old hero swearing, as his horned antagonist vanished with him below the green baize. The dog Toby is a modern innovation. He belonged not to the Punch and Judy of our boyish days.