The Comic Almanack, Volume 1: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and OdditiesThackeray, William Makepeace
Philosophy
The Comic Almanack, Volume 1: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Almanacs, English -- England -- London; English wit and humor
I'd be a butterfly, spreading my pinions,
All through the future, and far after fame;
I'd die by chance to astound the press minions;
I'd see when dead what they'd do with my name.
I'd have a carriage, and when it had spill'd me,
Wheel O, and Shafto, and Leader, and all,
If a hoax were got up to announce it had kill'd me,
Just when my death all the land would appal,
I'd be a butterfly!
I'd be a butterfly!
I'd come to life again safe after all:
OCTOBER.—NOTICE TO QUIT.
Well, we arrived at Boulogne; and Jemmy, after making inquiries, right
and left, about the Baron, found that no such person was known there;
and being bent, I suppose, at all events, on marrying her daughter to a
lord, she determined to set off for Paris, where, as he had often said,
he possessed a magnificent——, hotel he called it; and I remember Jemmy
being mightily indignant at the idea; but hotel, we found afterwards,
means only a house in French, and this reconciled her. Need I describe
the road from Boulogne to Paris? or, need I describe that Capitol
itself? Suffice it to say that we made our appearance there, at
Murisse's Hotel, as became the family of Coxe Tuggeridge; and saw
everything worth seeing in the metropolis in a week. It nearly killed
me, to be sure; but, when you're on a pleasure party in a foreign
country you must not mind a little inconvenience of this sort.
Well: there is, near the city of Paris, a splendid road and row of
trees, which, I don't know why, is called the Shandeleezy, or Elysian
Fields, in French: others, I have heard, call it the Shandeleery; but
mine I know to be the correct pronunciation. In the middle of this
Shandeleezy is an open space of ground, and a tent, where, during the
summer, Mr. Franconi, the French Ashley, performs with his horses and
things. As everybody went there, and we were told it was quite the
thing, Jemmy agreed that we should go too; and go we did. It's just like
Ashley's: there's a man just like Mr. Piddicombe, who goes round the
ring in a huzzah-dress, cracking a whip; there are a dozen Miss
Woolfords, who appear like Polish Princesses, Dihannas, Sultannas,
Cachuchas, and heaven knows what! There's the fat man, who comes in with
the twenty-three dresses on, and turns out to be the living skeleton!
There's the clowns, the sawdust, the white horse that dances a hornpipe,
the candles stuck in hoops, just as in our own dear country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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