English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require A SECRETARY,
of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum.
He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely
necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to
deposit,” &c.; or, “A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance)
who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers
her Erard's grand piano, valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond
cross of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant
villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in
return for the loan.” I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres
and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre,
fetching his victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after
another. There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens
ogres--pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the
water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their
caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round
the cavern of hulking Polypheme.
To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper
champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the
chain; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking
within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring ruffian! We give
him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it
should be green: it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful
wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. 'Tis
but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up:
the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point for me). A touch of
the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great
brute.
“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!” And who are these
who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated
widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the
dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny
of that ruffian! Ah ye knights of the pen! May honor be your shield,
and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to
women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and
have at him.
ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE.*
* The following paper was written in 1861, after the
extraordinary affray between Major Murray and the money-
lender in a house in Northumberland Street, Strand, and
subsequent to the appearance of M. Du Chaillu's book on
Gorillas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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