Chapter 3

SIR,--The amazing popularity of the Costermonger Songs seems to me a significant phenomenon. While no humane person would deny to the itinerant vendor of comestibles that sympathy which is accorded to the joys and sorrows of his more refined fellow-creatures, it is impossible to view without alarm the hold which his loose and ungrammatical diction is obtaining in the most cultured _salons_ of to-day. Anxious to minimise the danger, yet loth to check a sentiment of fraternity so creditable to our common humanity, I have devised a plan by which Mr. CHEVALIER's songs may he rendered in such-wise that while all their deep humanity is preserved, their English is so elevated as to be innocuous to the nicest sensibility. Permit me to give, just as a sample, my treatment of that very popular ballad, known, _rubesco referens_, as "_Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road_." Not being a singer, I have adopted Mr. CLIFFORD HARRISON's charming plan of speaking through the music of the song, and this is how _I_ render the chorus:--

"'How is it with you?' was the universal exclamation of the residents in the vicinity.

"'With whom, WILLIAM, have you made an appointment?'

"'Have you, WILLIAM, purchased all the house-property in this thoroughfare?'

"Were my risible faculties exercised?--you ask me. Nay. Indeed I was actually apprehensive of a fatal issue.

"So striking was the effect produced upon those in the ancient Cantian highway."

This, Sir, not only gives the sense, but gives it, I venture to claim, in a form fit for the apprehension of the most refined. Judging, too, by the reception it met with at our recent Penny Readings, I am convinced that Mr. CHEVALIER's peculiar humour is thoroughly preserved, for, indeed, many of the audience laughed till I became positively concerned for their safety.

Yours faithfully, ROBERT BOWDLER SPALDING.

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GOOD NEWS INDEED!

That fiendish malefactor, the Influenza Bacillus, has been caught at last! The peculiarity about him, confound him, is said to be his "immobility." Ugh! the hard-hearted infinitesimally microscopic monster! No tears, short-breathings, sighs, no groans, no sufferings, nothing will move him. There he remains, untouched, immobile. But there was one hopeful sign mentioned in the _Times_ of last Saturday--the Bacillus was found "in chains, and in strings." Let the chains be the heaviest possible till he can be tried by a Judge and Jury; and don't resort to "strings" till the supply of chains has failed.

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