Last of all, gentle Reader, don't be too secure!-- Let seeming success never make you "cock-sure!" But beware!--and take care, When all things look fair, How you hang your Shirt over the back of your chair!-- --"There's many a slip 'Twixt the cup and the lip!" Be this excellent proverb, then, well understood, And DON'T HALLOO BEFORE YOU'RE QUITE OUT OF THE WOOD!!! FOOTNOTES: [38] Not a "row," but a dance-- "The brave Lord Keeper led the _brawls_, The seals and maces danced before him."--GRAY. And truly Sir Christopher danced to some tune. [39] Hibernicè "nigger," _quasi_ "niggard." _Vide_ B. Maguire _passim_. * * * * * It is to my excellent and erudite friend, Simpkinson, that I am indebted for his graphic description of the well-known chalk-pit, between Acol and Minster, in the Isle of Thanet, known by the name of the "Smuggler's Leap." The substance of the true history attached to it he picked up while visiting that admirable institution, the "Sea-Bathing Infirmary," of which he is a "Life Governor," and enjoying his _otium cum dignitate_ last summer at the least aristocratic of all possible watering-places. Before I proceed to detail it, however, I cannot, in conscience, fail to bespeak for him the reader's sympathy in one of his own MISADVENTURES AT MARGATE. A LEGEND OF JARVIS'S JETTY. MR. SIMPKINSON _loquitur_. 'Twas in Margate last July, I walk'd upon the pier, I saw a little vulgar Boy--I said, "What make you here?-- The gloom upon your youthful cheek speaks anything but joy;" Again I said, "What make you here, you little vulgar Boy?" He frowned, that little vulgar Boy,--he deem'd I meant to scoff-- And when the little heart is big, a little "sets it off;" He put his finger in his mouth, his little bosom rose,-- He had no little handkerchief to wipe his little nose! "Hark! don't you hear, my little man?--it's striking Nine," I said, "An hour when all good little boys and girls should be in bed. Run home and get your supper, else your Ma' will scold--Oh! fie!-- It's very wrong indeed for little boys to stand and cry!" The tear-drop in his little eye again began to spring, His bosom throbb'd with agony,--he cried like any thing! I stoop'd, and thus amidst his sobs I heard him murmur--"Ah! I haven't got no supper! and I haven't got no Ma'!!-- "My father, he is on the seas,--my mother's dead and gone! And I am here, on this here pier, to roam the world alone; I have not had this live-long day, one drop to cheer my heart, Nor '_brown_' to buy a bit of bread with--let alone a tart! "If there's a soul will give me food, or find me in employ, By day or night, then blow me tight!" (he was a vulgar Boy;) "And, now I'm here, from this here pier it is my fixed intent To jump, as Master Levi did from off the Monu-ment!"