Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/305

 292 Digest the fact. Here the Fates have put their seal to something Nature clearly devised. It was intended: and it has come to pass. A thing has come to pass which we feel to be right! The machinery of the world, then, is not entirely dislocated: there is harmony, on one point, among the mysterious Powers who have to do with us. Discordant as the individual may have become, the condition of the universe is vindicated by this great meeting of beef and Britons. We have here a basis. I cherish a belief that, at some future day, the speculative Teuton and experimental Gaul will make pilgrimages to this island solely to view this sight, and gather strength from it.

Apart from its eloquent and consoling philosophy, the picture is pleasant. You see two rows of shoulders resolutely set for action: heads in divers degrees of proximity to their plates: eyes variously twinkling, or hypocritically composed: chaps in vigorous exercise. Now leans a fellow right back with his whole face to the firmament: Ale is his adoration. He sighs not till he sees the end of the mug. Now from one a laugh is sprung; but, as if too early tapped, he turns off the cock, and serenely primes himself anew. Occupied by their own requirements, these Britons allow that their neighbours have rights: no cursing at waste of time is heard when plates have to be passed: disagreeable, it is still duty. Field-Marshal Duty, the Briton’s star, shines here. If one usurps more than his allowance of elbow-room, bring your charge against them that fashioned him: work away to arrive at some compass yourself. Now the mustard has ceased to travel, and the salt: the guests have leisure to contemplate their achievements. Laughs are more prolonged, and come from the depths.

Now Ale, which is to Beef what Eve was to Adam, threatens to take possession of the field. Happy they who, following Nature’s direction, admitted not bright ale into their Paradise till their manhood was strengthened with beef. Some, impatient, had thirsted; had satisfied their thirst; and the ale, the light though lovely spirit, with nothing to hold it down, had mounted to their heads; just as Eve will do when Adam is not mature: just as she did—Alas! Gratitude forbid that I should say a word against good ale: I am disinclined to say a word in disfavour of Eve. Both Ale and Eve seem to speak imperiously to the soul of man. See that they be good, see that they come in season, and we bow to the consequences.

Now, the ruins of the feast being removed, and a clear course left for the flow of ale, farmer Broadmead, facing the chairman, rises. He speaks:

“Gentlemen! ’Taint’Tain’t [sic] fust time you and I be met here, to salbrate this here occasion. I say, not fust time, not by many a time, ’tain’t. Well, gentlemen, I ain’t much of a speaker, gentlemen, as you know. Hows'ever, here I be. No denyin’ that. I’m on my legs. This here’s a strange enough world, and a man as ’s a gentleman, I say, we ought for to be glad when we got ’m. You know: I’m coming to it shortly. I ain’t much of a speaker, and if you wants somethin’ new, you must ax elsewhere: but what I say is—dang it! here’s good health and long life to Mr. Tom, up there!”

“No names!” shouts the chairman, in the midst of a tremendous clatter.

Farmer Broadmead moderately disengages his breadth from the seat. He humbly asks pardon, which is accorded.

Ale (to Beef what Eve was to Adam), circulates beneath a dazzling foam, fair as the first woman.

Mr. Tom (for the breach of the rules in mentioning whose name on a night when identities thereon dependent are merged, we offer sincere apologies every other minute), Mr. Tom is toasted. His parents, who selected that day sixty years ago, for his bow to be made to the world, are alluded to with encomiums, and float down to posterity on floods of liquid amber.

But to see all the subtle merits that now begin to bud out from Mr. Tom, the chairman and giver of the feast; and also rightly to appreciate the speeches, we require to be enormously charged with Ale. Mr. John Raikes did his best to keep his head above the surface of the rapid flood. He conceived the chairman in brilliant colours, and probably owing to the energy called for by his brain, the legs of the young man failed him twice, as he tried them. Attention was demanded. Mr. John Raikes addressed the meeting.

The three young gentlemen-cricketers had hitherto behaved with a certain propriety. It did not offend Mr. Raikes to see them conduct themselves as if they were at a play, and the rest of the company paid actors. He had likewise taken a position, and had been the first to laugh aloud at a particular slip of grammar; while his shrugs at the aspirations transposed and the pronunciation prevalent, had almost established a free-masonry between him and one of the three young gentlemen-cricketers—a fair-haired youth, with a handsome reckless face, who leaned on the table, humourously eyeing the several speakers, and exchanging by-words and laughs with his friends on each side of him.

But Mr. Raikes had the disadvantage of having come to the table empty in stomach—thirsty, exceedingly; and, I repeat that as, without experience, you are the victim of divinely-given Eve, so, with no foundation to receive it upon, are you the victim of good sound Ale. Mr. Raikes very soon lost his head. He would otherwise have seen that he must produce a wonderfully-telling speech if he was to keep the position he had taken, and had better not attempt one. The three young cricketers were hostile from the beginning. All of them leant forward, calling attention loudly, humming a roll of Rhine wines, laughing for the fun to come.

“Gentlemen!” he said; and said it twice. The gap was wide, and he said, “Gentlemen!” again.

This commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge, but not that you can swim. At a repetition of “Gentlemen!” expectancy resolved into cynicism.

“Gie’n a help,” sung out a son of the plough to a neighbour of the orator.