Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/45

33 mechanical genius, the imperial jaw dropped, which movement being a little too strong for me, I left.

All the while a continual fusillade was being maintained by the rifle-galleries and nut-hawkers. Of the former, there were no less than nine in full work. The process was safe and simple: at the end of a tube a foot in diameter and thirty-five feet long, was the brilliantly-illuminated bull’s-eye, which, on being struck, rung a bell; the bell kept going all the evening, so I should advise the Emperor to keep civil. In front of each gallery there was a pictorial screen. The proprietor must have had very decided Whig tendencies, inasmuch as his pictures illustrated the life of Dutch William; and one drawing particularly struck me—“William the Third consigning the Duke of Gloucester to the care of Bishop Burnet.” I cannot say that the spectators took much advantage by this effort at inculcating history, inasmuch as I overheard a costermonger asking a “pal” if it didn’t represent the Prince of Wales talking to Cardinal Wiseman! By far the most familiar representation, however, referred to Indian massacres,—Sepoys throwing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets, as calmly as though they were playing cup and ball. The Cawnpore Massacre again figured largely, proving the interest the people take in contemporary events. In revenge, Nana Sahib, as the bull’s-eye, suffered indescribable agony the whole night, and yielded in return abundant nuts and—nightmares.

I must not omit to mention the canvas avenue of toys and gingerbread nuts—that fairy land of our boyhood some quarter of a century ago. There was the same eager inquiry, in shrill falsetto, “Will you take a nut, sir?” that leads one back to the days of George IV., when fairs were fairs, and society recognised amusements on a level with the tastes of the working-classes, instead of destroying them all for the sake of third-rate Athenæums, with which the bulk of the people have nothing to do. During the hours I spent in our fair, I must candidly confess that I saw no impropriety or ill-behaviour whatever,—a statement which much surprised our churchwarden, who called upon me next morning with a memorial to enable the parish to get rid of what he was pleased to term “the scum of the earth,” and that sink of iniquity—our Fair. 2em

wife sat thoughtfully turning over A book inscribed with the school-girl’s name; A tear—one tear—fell hot on the cover She quickly closed when her husband came.

He came, and he went away—it was nothing— With cold calm words upon either side; But, just at the sound of the room-door shutting, A dreadful door in her soul stood wide.

Love, she had read of in sweet romances,— Love that could sorrow, but never fail, Built her own palace of noble fancies, All the wide world a fairy tale.

Bleak and bitter, and utterly doleful, Spreads to this woman her map of life; Hour after hour she looks in her soul, full Of deep dismay and turbulent strife.

Face in both hands, she knelt on the carpet; The black cloud loosen’d, the storm-rain fell: Oh! life has so much to wilder and warp it,— One poor heart’s day what poet could tell?

A.