While upon this topic, I think it is but right to add, that I have always, ever since I was a child, made it a solemn duty to observe, with the greatest strictness, all the feasts which have been ordained by our venerable mother church. Thank goodness, I can lay my head on my pillow at night and safely say, that I have never allowed a single year to pass over my head without partaking with great devotion and extreme relish of the plum-pudding and mince-pie of Christmas, the pancake of Shrove Tuesday (by the bye, with a spoonful of gin, it eats just like ratafia, I can assure you) and the divine gooseberry tart of Easter Sunday; though, with all my enthusiasm, I regret to state, I can’t say as much for that filthy salt cod of Ash Wednesday. I cannot let the subject drop here, without adding, that it has cut me to the heart to see a nasty barbarous innovating spirit growing up among us of late, which threatens to destroy all the sacred institutions of our country, and to roll the plum-pudding of our forefathers in the dust. Nor can I, before quitting the theme, help giving this solemn warning to the wives and mothers of England, “Hold fast to your pancakes, or they will be snatched from you before many Shrove Tuesdays are over your heads, as sure as my name is Sk--n--st--n.” If the ruthless despoilers must pull down something, why let them tear our salt fish from us; but in the name of all that is great and good, let them spare us the agony of seeing the gooseberry pudding of our best affections trampled under foot.