It was time to appeal to my resources. I had read somewhere of an Italian, who, by dint of mental abstraction, had rendered himself unconscious of the rack, and while the executioners were tugging, wrenching, twisting, dislocating, and breaking joints, sinews, and bones, was perchance in fancy only performing his diurnal Gymnastics, or undergoing an amicable Shampooing. The pillory was a milder instrument than the rack, and I had naturally a lively imagination; it seemed plausible, therefore, that I might make shift to be pelted in my absence. To attain a scene as remote as possible from pain, I selected one of absolute pleasure for the experiment; no other, in truth, than that Persian Paradise, the Garden of Gul, at the Feast of Roses. Flapping the wings of Fancy with all my might, I was speedily in those Bowers of Bliss, and at high romps with Houri and Peri,-- “Flinging roses at each other.” But, alas, for mental abstraction! The very first bud hit me with stone-like vehemence; my next rose, of the cabbage kind, breathed only a rank cabbage fragrance; and in another moment the claws of a flying cat scratched me back into myself; and there I was again, in full pelt in the pillory! My first fifteen minutes, the only quarter I met with, had now elapsed, and my face was turned towards the East. The first object my one eye fell upon was a heap of Macadamisation, and I confess I never thought of calculating the number of stones in such a hillock, till I saw the mob preparing to cast them up! I expected to be lithographed on the spot! Instinct suggested to me that the only way to save my life was by dying; so dropping my head and hands, and closing my last eye with a terrific groan, I expired for the present. The _ruse_ took effect. Supposing me to be defunct, the mob refused to kill me. Shouts of “Murder! Shame! Shame! No Pillory!” burst from all quarters. The Pipkin-monger abused the Fishwoman, who rated the Schoolboys; they in turn fell foul of the Costermonger, who was hissing and groaning at the whole assembly; and, finally, a philanthropic Constable took the whole group into custody. In the mean time I was taken down, laid with a sack over me in a cart, and driven off to a Hospital, my body seeming a very proper present to St. Bartholomew’s or St. Thomas’s, but my clothes fit for nothing but _Guy’s_. [Illustration: A “CONSTABLE’S MISCELLANY.”] [Illustration: MOVING IN THE FIRST CIRCLES.] A SINGULAR EXHIBITION AT SOMERSET HOUSE. “Our Crummie is a dainty cow.”--SCOTCH SONG.