Chapter 2

TYRO.--You are quite right--a four-in-hand is worth two in the bush, which, as you justly observe, no good wine needs. To handle the reins correctly, proceed as follows. Divide the sum-total of all the reins measured to a _millimètre_ by half a forefinger, no allowance being made for chalk-stones, or stiff knuckles. Multiply the quotient by the off-wheel-rein, and add the near leader's blinkers to the result. Then pass your left thumb under your right middle finger, taking care at the same time to tie the off-leading-rein round your neck in a sailor's knot. Add six yards of whipcord to the near leader's shoulders, subtract yourself from the box, and send us your doctor's bill, for purposes of comparison.

WHO'S WHO?--(1) _Roundabout Sammy_ is a very promising horse, by _Engineer_, out of _Little Joker_. He was not bred in France, for, though there is a Parisian accent about some of his neighs, there is a distinctly British look about his nose. He is a trifle cobby, no doubt, but he is a capital feeder, and should go well in a double harness, with 84 '_Pommery_, his constant stable companion. (2.) Peat Moss Litter is not generally used for soup, or table decorations. (3.) The appearance you refer to is probably _rubinosis brandiginiata_. It is due to the absorption of _liquor per haustum_. The snakes you sent us are indigenous to the hill-country of Del Trementi.

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UNCLE TOBY AND WIDOW WADMAN.

(MODERN ULSTER VERSION.)

_A Fragment after the Fashion of Sterne._

_Uncle Toby_ Mr. J-HN B-LL. _Widow Wadman_ Mrs. ULST-R.

"I AM half distracted, Captain SHANDY," said Mrs. WADMAN, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my Uncle TOBY'S Sentry-Box--"a mote, or sand, or small fly, or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine. The Gardener declares it is one of those Green Flies which are the pest of this Distressful Country. I refuse to believe _that_. There never was, never will, never can, never _shall_ be any Green in _my_ eye. But whatever it is, mote or beam, it is awfully irritating. Do look into it; it is not in the white, or perhaps I should say--for I am a brunette of olive complexion, you know--in the Yellow----"

In saying which, Mrs. WADMAN edged herself close in beside my Uncle TOBY, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up "_Do_ look into it!" said she.

Honest soul! Thou wast ever being adjured to "look into" things, all sorts of things, from Widow's eyes to matters of far wider scope, and infinitely less simplicity and clarity. And thou didst look into it with as much innocency and simple good-will as ever child looked into a raree show-box.

If a man will be prying, of his own accord, into things of such ticklish and troublesome, not to say perilous nature--I've nothing to say to it.

My Uncle TOBY never did, being naturally of an unobservant and easy-going nature; and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly in his seat in that Sentry Box or the House from February to September (which you know were his favourite months for serious Session) with an eye as fine and soft as the Thracian Rhodope's, or as threatening and commanding as that of Mars--even a hectoring fiery thrasonic Hibernian Mars--himself, without being able to tell whether it was a black or a blue one, or even a Green or a Yellow.

The difficulty was to get my Uncle TOBY to look into things at all.

'Tis surmounted. And----

I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it, looking, and looking, then rubbing his eyes and looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever GALILEO looked for a spot in the sun.

In vain! For by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow WADMAN'S left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right. 'Tis true the unfortunate, and something irate lady--and what lady would _not_ be irate at the charge of having aught of Green in her eye?--hath with her cambric handkerchief rubbed the sinister orb into a state of roseate irritation--externally--but there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor fly,--Green or otherwise--nor particle of solid opaque matter floating in it. 'Tis, indeed, pure optic illusion on the Widow's part, illusion born, perchance, partly of fear, partly of pique. There is nothing, my dear paternal Uncle, but one lambent, feverish fire, deliciously attractive, even in its angry heat, fascinating even whilst phlogistic, shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine----

----If thou lookest, Uncle TOBY, in search of this imaginary mote one moment longer--thou art undone.

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon in this respect; that it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye--and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. The Widow's eye, owing mainly to the militant and menacing carriage thereof, _looked_ as formidable as a whole park of artillery, ranged up to defend a final fortification, or, as it might be, Last Ditch of defence. Whether it were exactly as fierce or formidable as it seemed--well, that was a question which my Uncle TOBY had not yet fully "looked into"--as he was now doing into Widow WADMAN'S left eye.

"I protest, Madam," said my Uncle TOBY, "I can see nothing whatever in your eye!"

But this was not what the Widow wanted.

"It is not in the white, or yellow," said Mrs. WADMAN. My Uncle TOBY looked with might and main into the pupil.

Now there never, surely, was an eye so fitted to rob my Uncle TOBY of his repose as the very eye at which he was looking. It was not, Madam, a rolling eye, a dissatisfied or a revolutionary one--nor was it an eye wicked, wanton, or wandering--but it _was_ an eye sparkling, petulant, and imperious, of high claims, and large exactions--an eye full of brisk challenges and sharp responses, an eye of satisfied strength and confident ascendancy--speaking, not like the dulcet appeal of a mellow flute, but like the trumpet stop of some powerful party organ. The cornea was perhaps a shade sallow or so, even verging on the Widow's favourite Yellow--(for the Widow, like some modern decorative artists, was sweet upon all tawny tints, from the most delicate buff to the most _flamboyant_ Orange)--but as to any touch, tint, or tone of her chromatic antipathy, Green----!!!

"Now, _dear_ Mr. SHANDY," cried the Widow, edging nearer, and opening the optic to its widest, "tell me--tell me truly, _do_ you, _can_ you detect the slightest suspicion of Green in _my_ eye----?"

"I protest, Madam," said my Uncle TOBY, "I can see nothing whatever of the sort!"

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THE B. AND S. DRAMA AT THE ADELPHI.

"SOME one has blundered!" Who? The Messrs. GATTI, in sending to Messrs. BUCHANAN and SIMS ("B. & S.") for an Adelphi melodrama? Surely not! These two might have been trusted to turn out the right article. So the GATTIS leave the Court without a stain on their managerial character. Therefore, 'tis the brother-authors, "_hoi Adelphoi_," who have blundered. Undoubtedly. An Adelphi audience is not to be satisfied with a one-scene piece, when that scene is without any incident in it worth a melodramatic father's cuss. A fancy-dress ball at Covent Garden, however well put on the stage,--and, after all, it has not beaten the record of the Masked Ball at the Opera House in Paris, as given in Mr. IRVING'S revival of _The Corsican Brothers_,--will not carry a piece of far stronger calibre than _The Black Domino_, and it won't carry this. Neither will a charming "set," representing the terrace of the "Star and Garter," at Richmond, carry a piece to a successful finale, if the audience has lost all interest in the characters, and does not very much care what becomes of any one of them, male or female. To the play-goer it is not attractive; he has seen it all before. "He knows that man and that woman,--they come from Sheffield;" _i.e._, the persons and the incidents are taken out of a lot of dramas which dwell in his memory, from BOUCICAULT'S _Formosa_ at Drury Lane, up to OSCAR'S _Lady Windermere's Fan_ at the St. James's. Of course, my imaginary play-goer is the Bill of the play, who has "matured," and is not a junior member of the Play-goer's Club. Then, in the old blind German, there is a touch of TOM TAYLOR'S _Helping Hands_, and, as for all the rest of the characters, well, they can be found in the common stock-pot of the melodramatic authors of the last half-century, for, like SHAKSPEARE himself, these wicked lawyers and gamblers--the aiders and a-betters--are "not for an age" (would they were, and that age passed!) "but for all time!"

Nothing saves the piece from being absolutely dull, except the admirable acting, and, I may add, the scenery. It is impossible to count upon renewing such effects as those in _Formosa, The Flying Scud,_ and in the _Prodigal Daughter_ at Drury Lane, wherein the wrong horse was poisoned (in a really dramatic scene), and LEONARD BOYNE, riding the winner, cleared the brook, thus causing part-author DRURIOLANUS to clear--any amount of money. There are no two exciting scenes like these in this Adelphi drama. Its comic relief is "poor relief," and would go for nothing at all, were it not in the hands of Mr. DALE, who played and sang so well in _Miss Decima_ at the Criterion, and of the vivacious Miss CLARA JECKS.

Mr. W. DENNIS, as the _Earl of Arlington_, is own brother to the old Peer in _The Bauble Shop_. Perhaps this is a tribute to the representative of the aristocracy at the Criterion, or it indicates with great subtlety that, like Members of Parliament, "Peers are, after all, human--very human," and that one old Peer is uncommonly like another old Peer. Miss EVELYN MILLARD, as the soprano heroine, and Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL as the base heroine, look handsome, and act excellently. They take the audience with them as far as the audience will go. As good as they possibly can be in such conventional puppet-parts are Messrs. GLENNY and ABINGDON, the first as the well-intentioned but weak-willed _Lord Dashwood_, and the second as that old-fashioned scoundrel, _Captain Greville_. Mr. ARTHUR WILLIAMS rather suggests Mr. BLAKELEY as the oily, scoundrelly lawyer, _Joshua Honybun_; and Mr. LE HAY gives variety to the entertainment (which is his special line) in the entirely new and original character part of _an Irish Major_, with nothing particularly humorous to say, and nothing at all, humorous, or otherwise, to do.

Something new in Melodrama is wanted, and Melodrama "all of the modern time" is played out, unless a genius can hit on a new sensation. The Adelphi piece, however, has its advantages, and among these its chiefest is, that it necessitates the taking of light refreshment immediately afterwards. Fortunately, the Adelphi is close to our old friend RULE'S in Maiden Lane, and for this hospitable shelter our party made in haste; and, before the arrival of the crowd of supper-numeraries, gained a table, on which were soon placed appetising and drinkatising oysters, followed by the grateful stout. "Pretty to see," as PEPYS hath it, at the very next table to us, the good hero of the drama welcoming the double-dyed villain, chiding him for being a few minutes late, and then drowning all past dramatic animosities in the flowing bowl. "See how these players love one another!" So have I seen politicians, mortal enemies in the House, hob-nobbing together at the dinner-table of some hospitable Impartial. "And thus it is," said I to myself, said I, "that 'all the world's a stage, and men and women' like to have supper after the play and enjoy themselves generally." So philosophising, we, my companion and I, lighted the pipe of peace--I should say a cigar a-piece--and returned home satisfied with our excellent supper. _Vive_ BAYLISS! BRITANNIA rules the waves, and this is the last month for oysters till the arrival of another month with an "r" in it; but, _en attendant_, there will appear some very small, very sweet, and very digestible lobsters! "_Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle?_" But an indifferent play is well worth a first-rate supper, which may be a shell-fish view, but at all events, if (like the jest) it be "a poor thing," yet 'tis mine own (for the time being), and thereto I sign my hand.

PRIVATE BOX.

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SIR JOHN GILBERT, R.A., has given his pictures to Liverpool to be arranged in "The Walker Gallery." This is rather like saying "Walker" to any Gallery, London. Great opportunity for advertisement to J. L. T. of T**LE'S Theatre.

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ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

_House of Commons, Monday, April_ 10.--"Quite refreshing," murmured GRANDOLPH, looking round at the Party, to which, as he said at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH added, still scanning the beaming faces on the Benches behind. "It is almost an intellectual delight to them."

"Yes," said PLUNKET, "they are acutely pleased to hear so smartly said what they think they thought."

Truly a stirring of the sluggish pool during hour and half that CHAMBERLAIN stepped in. Speech full of bitterness; effect immeasurably increased by perfect equability of manner, and the utterance of a voice ever soft and low--a beautiful thing in a man who says nasty things of parted friends. If one stone deaf had sat in Gallery and watched JOSEPH, as he gracefully bent over towards Treasury Bench, whereon sat his one-time revered Leader and the still faithful band of followers, he would naturally have imagined JOSEPH was complimenting him and them upon the perfectness of their measure, and the prospect of the Irish wilderness, under its beneficent influence, blossoming like the rose. Deaf man would have been mistaken; JOSEPH saying nothing of the kind; indeed, quite the reverse, as deaf man, turning his eyes on Mr. G., would begin to suspect.

Wide differences between Mr. G. and J. C.; none so marked as their demeanour throughout debate. The wilder the storm of interruption rages round JOSEPH, the more urbane he becomes, and the more dangerous. Mr. G., standing on the commanding eminence he has built for himself in the House of Commons, is the sport of most inconsiderable Member. Anyone, with whatever bungling hand, can "draw" him. To-night, whilst JOSEPH smiled his way through all the spiteful things he had stored up for gratification of old friends, Mr. G. sat restless, with clouded brow, face pale with anger, every now and then springing up with hot correction. Which was just what JOSEPH wanted to achieve.

_Business done._--Third Day Debate on Second Reading Home-Rule Bill.

_Tuesday._--ELLIS ASHMEAD-BARTLETT (Knight) back again. "He's Knight and Morning," said leal TOM SUTHERLAND, of the P. & O., looking on admiringly from the starboard poop. In a sense this is true, for ASHMEAD gave us a full hour's discourse last night, and here in broad day, on threshold of another sitting, proposes to add another forty minutes. PRINCE ARTHUR had quite a time with him last night. He was, so to speak, the Boy left on the Burning Deck whence all but he Had Fled. Right Hon. Gentlemen on Front Opposition Bench, following example set in other parts of House, cleared out when ASHMEAD appeared at table with prodigious roll of manuscript in red right hand. PRINCE ARTHUR looked wistfully towards door, but, remembering leading precept of OLD MORALITY, determined to stay, and do duty to QUEEN and Country. So sat it out till midnight struck; Debate automatically closed, and SPEAKER called on next Order of the Day.

ASHMEAD, pleased with his success, and pondering on fresh delights in store for House when it met again, remained standing at table, reflectively arranging his papers. Horrible thought suddenly struck him; froze his veins, and paled his brow. With generous desire that country should fully share advantages of House, he had his speech printed in advance. Copies sent to newspapers. Suppose they printed it all, whereas he had not found opportunity to deliver more than half of it! Awakened from reverie by violent tugging at coat-tails. This was PRINCE ARTHUR, signalling him to sit down, with perhaps unnecessary vigour. But PRINCE ARTHUR had a long score (fully an hour long) to pay off.

Great speech finished at to-day's sitting; another hour saw it through. "I think I had _my_ hour last night," said PRINCE ARTHUR, as, on rising of his esteemed colleague, he hastily passed out. Example again contagious; Benches emptied; but ELLIS ASHMEAD pounded along. There was the speech reproachfully facing him in its portentous-printed length; must be reeled off, though the glass roof fell. Did it at last; sat down, flushed, and triumphant. Members, warily assuring themselves speech really finished, began to stream back again, till all the Benches filled to hear DAVITT. Excellent speech; full of human nature; illumined by gleams of grim, humour; better if it had been shorter by a third; but quality so good, that House, now crowded, sat it all out.

"Curious to think," said the _Squire of Malwood_, who just now has unusually full opportunities for reflection, "that a few years ago DAVITT was working out the Irish Question with a rope over his shoulder, dragging a cart of stones through the court-yard of one of Her Majesty's prisons. No one, casually coming across him at Portland, would have ventured to forecast the hour when, standing up, the centre of interest in an applauding House of Commons, he should have had an opportunity of reasoning with the only occasionally DUM BARTON, warning him against the practice of treason-felony, and reminding him that the pathway to the Bench does not lie by way of the dock. No parallel in politics to the Irish Question. Some of us have our earlier studies interrupted by a sentence of imprisonment; others, I daresay, will, later on, find in similar chaste repose opportunity of reviewing our connection with it."

Involuntarily the eye of the Great Philosopher rested on the graceful figure of PRINCE ARTHUR, whose speech at Belfast, on the Philosophy of Rebellion, DAVITT just now cited in justification of the overt acts that led him to Portland.

_Business done._--Fourth Night Home-Rule Debate.

_Thursday._--"In spite of all temptation, I have hitherto remained a Member of House of Commons," CHAPLIN said to me just now. "I might by this time, had I pleased, been a Duke, and my most unscrupulous detractor will not deny that is a position I could fill with pictorial effect; but I've stuck to the Commons, and this is my reward."

Truly a striking episode. CHAPLIN delivered oration on Home-Rule Bill hour and half long. Had sat up night and day with it, polishing its rotund periods, till, as PRINCE ARTHUR whispers, "CHAPLIN, gazing upon their surface, saw not himself, but DEMOSTHENES." Fortune favoured him in opportunity. Member for Sunderland had secured privilege of resuming Debate after Questions. Resolved to make long STOREY short, he sacrificed his position. CHAPLIN nimbly stepped in, and reasonably looked forward to crowning epoch in shining Parliamentary career. To open or resume Debate between four and five in afternoon is a prized opportunity; accident had placed it within CHAPLIN'S grasp; the hour had struck, and here, at the table, was the Man.

Alack, for the instability of human prospects! When the House, fairly full, beheld the sunny presence at the table, watched it produce the vaporous folds of manuscript, noted the shrug of satisfaction with which it set about its self-appointed task, it folded its tent like the Arab, and, though not as silently, stole away. Trundled and bundled out, with ostentatious indifference to great orator, the fund of information he had garnered, the counsel with which he was charged. CHAPLIN had brought statesmanship and literature of Europe into review, picking out from encyclopædic stores testimony to destruction of Mr. G.'s pet scheme. The very names quoted were a liberal education--Mr. LECKY, Count BEUST, CAVOUR, Dr. GEFFCKEN, M. DE MOLINARIS. And then interposes the SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE with bland deferential inquiry--

"I beg the Right Hon. Gentleman's pardon, I did not catch the name. Was it M. APOLLINARIS?"

CHAPLIN stared haughtily over SAGE'S head, and went on. So did fragments of audience, the latter towards the door, till, almost in solitude, there rolled forth the treasured peroration. This bad, but worse followed, when immediately succeeded an obscure Irishman, whom CHAPLIN vaguely remembers a few years back as a Committee Clerk, or something of that kind. Benches swiftly filled up, and an assembly that vaunts itself most critical audience in the world followed, with rapt attention, the simple sentences of obscure JOHN REDMOND, Ex-Committee Clerk--this same audience that had scornfully treated the portentous periods of the Right Hon. HENRY CHAPLIN, sometime Cabinet Minister.

_Business done._--Fifth Night's Debate.

_Friday._--Prince ARTHUR, enumerating Statesmen anxious to speak in Debate, doling them out at the rate of one a day, omitted Cousin CRANBORNE. Doubtless accidental; Noble Lord has his revenge; worked off his speech to-night whilst ASQUITH addressing House. Consisted of only single word; effect instantaneous, startling. Into ASQUITH'S fervent eulogium on DAVITT, CRANBORNE dropped the additional description, "Murderer." Was only thinking aloud as he explained to House; just talking genially to himself; regretted he was overheard, and begged to apologise.

"It's the principle of heredity," said TIM HEALY; "the father calls us all Hottentots; the son accuses one of us of murder."

_Business done._--Sixth Night's Debate on Home-Rule Bill.

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