The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 287, December 15, 1827 — John Shaqi
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 287, December 15, 1827Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 287, December 15, 1827
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
A few interrogatories on each side, a joke, and its accompanying laugh,
occupy brief space; when, suddenly, a general rush proclaims the load is
strewed upon the ground! a chaotic mass--"old hats, old wigs, old boots,
old shoes, and all the tribe of leather," remnants of all things, the
ends and the beginnings, horticultural fragments and broken crockery,
the hunter's bone and the beggar's rags, pilfered lace suspected, and
the stolen jewel, the lost gold, and the mislaid spoon: and, for a
climax, rejoice! gentle reader--for when the designs of the crafty are
defeated by inadvertence, or otherwise, with the weird sisters, "we
should rejoice! we should rejoice!"--a bill for fifteen pounds, drawn
by a lawyer for expenses, and which was taken to the acceptor by the
dustman, for which he received a considerate remuneration. Complicated
as this mass appears, it is all reduced to the most perfect order, and
each portion arranged according to the purposes intended for. Thus, the
vegetable matter, so eagerly seized upon by the pigs, contributes to
keep up a supply of _dairy-fed_ pork and _Epping sausages:_
the bones are laid aside for the purposes of making hartshorn and
phosphorus, dominoes, and apple-scoops, &c. The old boots and shoes,
with the tribe of leather, after a slight examination of their utter
inefficiency, find their way, through divers passages to the glue-pot.
How fractured bottles, and broken glass of every description, is
disposed of, is easily _seen through_--to the furnace; and how the
old iron is appropriated, is not hard to guess. The old woollen, if
perchance any should exist in the shape of a pair of innominables,
after exploring the pockets, and a sigh for their insolvency, are
unceremoniously cast aside along with the worthless remains of rags of
every description, string, paper, &c. &c., to pass through the operation
necessary for making brown paper. What still remains, of coals, and
cinders unconsumed, the dustman's perquisite, are measured first,
"thence hurried back to fire:" the wood, the sifters take. Broken tiles,
bricks, delf, crockery, with a variety of substances and etceteras, go
towards the formation of roads. I had almost forgotten the crowning
item, viz. old wigs! Towards the close of the last century, so much were
they in request, that the supply was scarcely equal to the demand. Yes,
in the days of Beau Tibbs, every street had its corner and every corner
its shoe-black, and to every shoe-black might be traced an old wig,
sometimes _two_. In those days of ruffles and etiquette, when
a well-formed leg was advantageously displayed in _whole_ silk
stockings, shoes, and buckles, it was the custom with pedestrians, when
making a call, to have their shoes wiped and touched up at the corner
of the street nearest the place they were going to visit: and what so
efficient for the purpose as an old wig? nothing. But, alas! those days
are gone! and Beau Tibbs is gone! and, if we question where? only Echo
answers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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