squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable
performance a "Crusade."

I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in
_Pickwick_ (p. 254 in the first edition):--

"Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that
species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or
animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain;
but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than
_he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to
him_; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass--"

[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories
back a year or two, to the utterances of a famous Church Congress on
the National Vice of Gambling.]

"--whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in
order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very
loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off
his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately
surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him
and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest
attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a
most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken
prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed
their stations, and the march was re-commenced."

"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced."
Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit
successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and
confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical
"crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very
best vaudeville--the same bland exhibition of _bourgeois_ logic, the
same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in
seizing the immediate explanation--the more trivial the better--the
same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound
unconsciousness of absurdity.

You remember _La Grammaire_? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of
broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:--

_Caboussat._ "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de
quatre ans."

_Machut._ "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... ca avale du verre a tout
age. J'en ai connu une qui a mange une eponge a laver les
cabriolets ... a sept ans! Elle en est mo