alf so extravagant of colored cloth and feathers. A great day
for London loafers is it, when my Lord Mayor puts on the big chain,
and issues his mandate to the sprats, who then come up the river, to
the great joy of the poor, who have it thus in tradition. Well, Smooth
thought he would keep Lord Mayor's day, and to that end harnessed up
his team of donkeys, merely by way of contrasting it with some duke's
turn-out. Imagine, Sam, my chagrin, when one of the donkeys took it
into his head to keep Lord Mayor's day in his own obstinate way. Not a
step would he go. However, I got another donkey, and proceeded to
where the Lord Mayor was, just in time to hear him make a funny
speech, throughout which he made a sad slaughter of all the h's and
a's of the King's good English. Then he seated himself in the barge,
and had a sail on the Thames, followed by innumerable beggars,
sycophants, and costermongers. Succeeding this he marshalled his
show-folks into a string (such a string!), and with them caused his
august self to be moved to the Mansion House. Swarms of frightened
turtles were seen hurrying away in front of the cavalcade.

"Such a set of white-washed heads--heads with all outside--heads with
little inside--and heads nobody knew what they had been made for,
never before were seen displayed in one string. Strangely attractive
was the glare of tinsel--it fascinated the little souls of corpulent
men, and made small men more becomingly great. Fact was, Uncle Sam,
His Worship the Lord Mayor, whose year of greatness was death to
turtle and terrapin, so outshone Her Most Gracious Majesty (a good
little body) in confusion of brilliant brass, that the little woman
thought it incumbent to call a Cabinet Council, before which she laid
the grievance of his stealing her thunder. At this privy council
Prince Albert was permitted to be present without anything being said
by the Daily News and Morning Advertiser. His Worship had indeed
usurped all the modern appliances of flunkeydom. But the cabinet, it
was acknowledged, was very thick-headed, and her Majesty, good body,
must bear the consequences.

"Well, after the most curious caravan eyes ever rested upon, there
followed his jolly worship the Lord Mayor; he largely sat in a coach
of gingerbread, the tea-things spread outside, and the glows of
Souchong impregnating the air. They said his jolly Lordship sold real
and mixed Twankey. In this sense, however, was his Lordship more
fortunate