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benevolently wishes, in a mild voice, on certain regular occasions,
that we had thought better of his opinion.
The instinct with which our bore finds out another bore, and closes
with him, is amazing. We have seen him pick his man out of fifty
men, in a couple of minutes. They love to go (which they do
naturally) into a slow argument on a previously exhausted subject,
and to contradict each other, and to wear the hearers out, without
impairing their own perennial freshness as bores. It improves the
good understanding between them, and they get together afterwards,
and bore each other amicably. Whenever we see our bore behind a
door with another bore, we know that when he comes forth, he will
praise the other bore as one of the most intelligent men he ever
met. And this bringing us to the close of what we had to say about
our bore, we are anxious to have it understood that he never
bestowed this praise on us.
A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY
IT was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common
Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are
a frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes.
We are credibly informed, in reference to the nation whom this
choice spirit so happily disposed of, that the caricatures and
stage representations which were current in England some half a
century ago, exactly depict their present condition. For example,
we understand that every Frenchman, without exception, wears a
pigtail and curl-papers. That he is extremely sallow, thin, longfaced,
and lantern-jawed. That the calves of his legs are
invariably undeveloped; that his legs fail at the knees, and that
his shoulders are always higher than his ears. We are likewise
assured that he rarely tastes any food but soup maigre, and an
onion; that he always says, ‘By Gar! Aha! Vat you tell me, sare?’
at the end of every sentence he utters; and that the true generic
name of his race is the Mounseers, or the Parly-voos. If he be not
a dancing-master, or a barber, he must be a cook; since no other
trades but those three are congenial to the tastes of the people,
or permitted by the Institutions of the country. He is a slave, of
course. The ladies of France (who are also slaves) invariably have
their heads tied up in Belcher handkerchiefs, wear long earrings,
carry tambourines, and beguile the weariness of their yoke by
singing in head voices through their noses – principally to barrelorgans.
It may be generally summed up, of this inferior people, that they
have no idea of anything.
Of a great Institution like Smithfield, they are unable to form the
least conception. A Beast Market in the heart of Paris would be
regarded an impossible nuisance. Nor have they any notion of
slaughter-houses in the midst of a city. One of these benighted
frog-eaters would scarcely understand your meaning, if you told him
of the existence of such a British bulwark.
It is agreeable, and perhaps pardonable, to indulge in a little
self-complacency when our right to it is thoroughly established.
At the present time, to be rendered memorable by a final attack on
that good old market which is the (rotten) apple of the
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Corporation’s eye, let us compare ourselves, to our national
delight and pride as to these two subjects of slaughter-house and
beast-market, with the outlandish foreigner.
The blessings of Smithfield are too well understood to need
recapitulation; all who run (away from mad bulls and pursuing oxen)
may read. Any market-day they may be beheld in glorious action.
Possibly the merits of our slaughter-houses are not yet quite so
generally appreciated.
Slaughter-houses, in the large towns of England, are always (with
the exception of one or two enterprising towns) most numerous in
the most densely crowded places, where there is the least
circulation of air. They are often underground, in cellars; they
are sometimes in close back yards; sometimes (as in Spitalfields)
in the very shops where the meat is sold. Occasionally, under good