The Comic Almanack, Volume 2: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities
David Hume · en
CASE 2.—_Joseph Badger._—I'm a cabman. I didn't sleep not in no house on
that night: I haven't done for years. I took a party from Doory Lane,
Julyun's, to Pentonwill; and afterwards nodded on my box a bit, just a
wink, cos no cabs as never no call there. Then I took a gent as was a
little overcome, and thought he was at Paddington, as far as the Edg'er
Road, by St. Paul's and the Regency Circus; and then I went to the Great
West'un, and dozed a bit again, inside, and set on my whip and broke it,
just like anythink, as you might say. Next fare I got was a up-passenger
from Exeter, and took him to the Piazzy Hotel, and then I got another
wink in Bedford Street, and there I was till morning.
[Illustration]
CASE 3.—_Mr. Gregory Barnes._—I am a surgeon and chemist in Seven Dials.
I certainly never slept in any house on that evening. I was rung up at
eleven o'clock to an obstetric case in Endell Street; and sent from
there at two, to an Irishman who'd got his skull fractured in St.
Giles's, by a quart pot; and was obliged to leave him to cut down a
tipsy tailor, who had just hung himself in Crown Street, and was two
hours coming round; and then I had his wife in hysterics for the same
time; and then it was morning, and I was obliged to go off to the Old
Bailey on a trial of manslaughter.
[Illustration:
ALARMING INCREASE OF
THE POPULATION.
]
But these examples might be multiplied to the ages of Sinclair,
Widdicombe, Braham, and any other "veterans," as they are termed,
combined. The people unnumbered in the Census compose waiters, tramps,
stokers, carriers, gamblers, piemen, breakfast-stall-keepers, steamboat
stewards, mail-train passengers, moon-shooters, show-folks, Vauxhall
lamp-men, and renowned individuals of all sorts, whose night's repose is
doubtful; such as Mr. Braidwood; the toll-keepers at the bridges, the
beadles of the arcades, Mr. Green, if on a night ascent; the editor of
the _Times_; and, on certain debates, Mr. Chisholm Anstey.
We are told that population doubles in a certain number of years. If so,
when it doubles itself again, what the dickens will the crowd do in
Cheapside at four o'clock in the afternoon; or the people on the roof of
the Cremorne omnibuses homeward-bound; in the pit of the Adelphi; the
Derby-day cheap trains; the Blackwall whitebait houses on fine Sundays;
or the Watermen steamers from Greenwich Fair?
THE LION HUNTER'S MUSEUM.
Mrs. Leo Hunter has passed fifteen years of her fashionable life in the
pursuit of lions. The following is a faithful enumeration of the various
trophies which she carried off at different times in the ardour of the
chase. They have been collected into a museum, which will be shortly
thrown open to the public, on a plan somewhat similar to Mr. Gordon
Cumming's South African Exhibition:—
1. The autograph of Miss Biffin, written with her toes.
2. The leg of a fowl which Bernard Kavanagh, the living skeleton,
devoured at supper. Unique.