rvations, in a collection of papers entitled _Stage-land_, had
caused him to laugh several times, and to smile frequently, for the
subject has not been so well touched since GILBERT ABBOTT A BECKETT
wrote his inimitable _Quizziology of the Drama_, which for genuine
drollery has never been surpassed. Anticipating, then, some
side-splitters from _Three Men in a Boat_, the Baron sent for the work.
He opened it with a chuckle, which, instead of developing itself into a
guffaw and then into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, gradually
subsided altogether, his smile vanished, and an expression of weariness
came over the Baron's face, as after heroically plodding through five
chapters he laid the book down, and sighed aloud, "Well, I'm hanged if I
see where the fun of this is." The Baron may be wrong, and the humour of
this book, which seems to him to consist in weak imitations of American
fun, and in conversations garnished with such phrases as "bally idiot,"
"bally tent," "doing a mouch," "boss the job," "put a pipe in his mouth,
and spread himself over a chair," "land him with a frying-pan,"
"fat-headed chunk," "who the thunder" and so forth--a style the Baron
believes to have been introduced from Yankee-land, and patented here by
the _Sporting Times_ and its imitators,--interspersed with plentiful
allusions to whiskey-drinking, may not be, as it is not, to his
particular taste; and yet, for all that, it may be marvellously funny.
So the Baron requested an admirer of this book to pick out the gems, and
read them aloud to him. But even the admirer was compelled to own that
the gems did not sparkle so brilliantly as he had at first thought.
"Yet," observed the admirer, "it has had a big sale." "_Three Men in a
Boat_ ought to have," quoth the Baron, cheerily, and then he called
aloud, "Bring me _Pickwick_!" He commenced at the Review, and the first
meeting of _Mr. Pickwick_ with the Wardle family. Within five minutes
the Baron was shaking with spasmodic laughter, and CHARLES DICKENS'S
drollery was as irresistible as ever. Of course the Baron does not for
one moment mean to be so unfair to the _Three Men in a Boat_ as to
institute a comparison between it and the immortal _Pickwick_, but he
has heard some young gentlemen, quite of the modern school, who profess
themselves intensely amused by such works as this, and as the two books
by the author of _Through Green Glasses_, and yet allow that they could
not find anything to laugh at