Page:History of the Anti corn law league - Volume 2.pdf/344

 materials of various kinds for ladies' dresses, and curiosities, among which may be mentioned a piece of muslin, printed by the late Sir Robert Peel, and a pen-and ink portrait of the Queen, the lines of which, instead of being blank, are written words, and comprise the whole contents of a book which is attached to, and descriptive of, it. This singular specimen of ingenuity is to be raffled for at 2s. 6d. a head, and, strange to say, we saw several Quaker ladies pressing forward to have their names set down as gamblers for it. Opposite these stalls, and on the right centre of the hall, are the stalls allotted to Northampton, Stockport, Swansea, Carlisle, York, Stockton, Hull, Beveiiey, and Bristol. Then comes, at right angles, the Newcastle stall, followed by those of Huddersfield, Barnsley, Wakefield, and Bloomsbury, and the Kentish- town stalls. Opposite these, and on this side the stage, are the stalls appropriated to the metropolitan districts, which are described as Peckham, Islington, City. Kensington, Camden-town, Sussex, Norwood, Pentonville, Hoxton, St. Martin's, and the Savoy. The stalls in the curved line at the top, which unites the two central lines of stalls, are allotted to Sheffield.

"The refreshment room is appropriately allotted to refreshment stalls, with the single exception of a book stall, and is much resorted to by visitors, who really need some refreshment after their toilsome and tedious passage to it. But, next to the creams and ices vended there, the chief object of attraction is a huge plum cake—a cake, the idea of which could, we think, have occurred in a dream only to some imaginative schoolboy—so vast in its expanse, so ponderous its size, so rich its ingredients, so delicious its fragrance. It is a Bury Simnel, and measures, we should think, some five feet in diameter, weighs 280 lbs., and bears upon its broad surface a sheet of iced sugar so large as to have inscribed upon it nearly all the maxims which embody the religion of the League, and so sweet and richly orna-