my little godson Willie, a few days ago, "wont
you go with us to see the Lord Mayor's show? There'll be thirteen
elephants and eight clowns, and an elephant picks a man up with his
trunk and holds him there. And then mamma's going to take me to
Sampson's. Do you know Sampson, Aunt Jennie?"

"I know about Samson in the Bible, Willie."

"Oh, not that one; our Sampson is a man in a shop in Oxford street,
and he makes such nice boys' clothes, and he's the master."

I have just come home from the Sandwich Islands, where I have been
living; I spent a few years, too, in New Zealand and Tahiti, and so
have seen many wonderful things on the land and sea; but a Lord Mayor
going to be sworn in to his duties, attended by thirteen elephants and
a London crowd, would be a novelty to me. I thought, too, that certain
little boys and girls in the Sandwich Islands and the United States,
who also call me Aunt Jennie, would like to hear all about it.

This has been an exciting week for the London children. The fifth of
November fell on Sunday, and Guy Fawkes had to wait till Monday to
make his appearance. All that day he was carried about the streets in
various shapes and forms, and the naughty, ignorant little boys, in
spite of enlightened school-board teaching, sang at our doors:

"A ha'penny loaf to feed the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it all down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him."

"Oh, papa," said Willie, as he ran into the breakfast-room for
pennies, "aren't you glad you're a real man and not a pope?"

At last the ninth, the Lord Mayor's day, came. It is also the Prince
of Wales' birthday, so the city would be very gay-looking with all the
flags flying.

Alas! it was a dark, dull morning, and a heavy fog hung all over the
city. Alas for the gilt coaches, the steel armor and other braveries!
and then the elephants, how could they possibly feel their way all
round the city in a thick, yellow fog? But, happily, by eleven the
weather cleared, and the sun shone out brightly. Such a crowd as there
was at our railway depot! So many bonny, happy little children never
went on the same morning to the busy old town before. It was something
new for great elephants to be seen walking through the prosy business
streets. Once before, twenty-seven years ago, when Sir John Musgrave
was Lord Mayor, not only elephants, but camels, deer, negroes,
beehives, a ship in full sail, and Britannia seated