_Tickle._ That’s what the Statue Committee think it. And they do say, just to show what they care for it, that afore the Duke’s head was soldered on, they put copies of the _Times_ and the _Chronicle_--as writ agin it--in the Duke’s inside. _Nosebag._ With a spicy cut of Leech’s from _Punch_, jest to keep the cold from the Duke’s stomach. Well, it will be a bad thing for some time for the playhouses. Mr Webster--I always sticks his bills for him, like a gen’leman as he is--has got a new farce at the ’Aymarket. I don’t care how droll it is--but it must feel the ’fect of the Duke’s cocked-hat. Painful to think of, isn’t it, to one who sticks the legitimate drayma--painful to think of, how, whether dead or alive, the nobility is agin the English stage! _Slowgoe._ This talk about the drama, and such rubbish, Mr Nutts, it’s enough to drive every respectable person from the shop. _Nutts._ Well, it is bad. But we must allow for early edication. Mr Nosebag was, we may say, brought up on paste, and so talks like a billsticker. And the Duke’s up, after all! Nevertheless, it’s my ’pinion, it had never been if a soul had been in town. Folks at the watering-places, and folks abroad--in France, and in Germany, and in Swisserland---- _Slowgoe._ I pity ’em, poor wretches! out o’ London on such a day! Every absent Englishman as thinks on it, ought to go into a shirt o’ cinders-and-water. But go on, sir (_to Cannikin_), tell us the rest o’ the ceremony. _Cannikin._ Oh, it was all hoorain’--nothing but hoorain’. _Nutts._ Well, altogether, I’m disappointed. As the people was for the time in such high spirits, and took the thing so kindly, I don’t think they went far enough. Seein’ what a idol they’ve made o’ the thing--sticking it up agin common sense--and, by the way, the sufferings of common sense under them as is got the upper hand, there’s nobody can tell--seein’ what a idol they’ve made of it, the Committee might ha’ gone further, and made the show, as I may say, complete. _Slowgoe._ What do you mean, Mr Nutts? To my poor thinking, the ceremony seems to have been magnificent--perfect! _Nutts._ Not half. See what they do in Indy. Don’t the folks, when they bring _their_ dray, the dray of Juggernought--don’t they go and throw themselves right down, as if upon a feather bed, right down under its wheels? _Slowgoe._ Mr Nutts! You don’t dare to insinuate that free-born Britons, men that never stoop to nothin’, should have cast themselves---- _Nutts._ What?--right down under the wheels of the Wellington Idol? Why, no; not quite. That would ha’ been a little too serious. But when we hear some folks talk as they do about the statue, and about the Duke, as if he was the first man born, and would certainly be the last--when these folks are for settin’ up brass and bronze to the glory of gunpowder, and never heeding the glory of the goose-quill, or---- _Nosebag._ Ha! there’s Shakespeare, and----