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The next night, and the next,
Still the fight was the text,

"T was a theme for the Minstrels to brag on! And the Vassals' hoarse throats

Still re-echoed the notes,

"Live Sir Otto, who vanquished the Dragon!"

There was never such work

Since the days of King Stork,

When he lived with the Frogs at free quarters! Not to name the invites

That were sent down of-nights,

To the villagers' wives and their daughters!

It was feast upon feast,

For good cheer never ceased,

And a foray replenished the flagon;

And the Vassals stood by,

But more weak was the cry,

"Live Sir Otto, who vanquished the Dragon!"

Down again sank the sun,

Nor were revels yet done,

But as if every mouth had a gag on,

Though the Vassals stood round,

Deuce a word or a sound

Of "Sir Otto, who vanquished the Dragon!"

There was feasting aloft,

But, through pillage so oft,

Down below there was wailing and hunger;
And affection ran cold,

And the food of the old,

It was wolfishly snatched by the younger!

Mad with troubles so vast,
Where's the wonder at last

If the Peasants quite altered their motto?
And with one loud accord

Cried out, "Would to the Lord

That the Dragon had vanquished Sir Otto!"

TO PETER BAGSTER, ESQ., CANTERBURY.

MY DEAR PETER,

I am not a man to be easily shocked, but I don't know when I've been more struck of a heap, since my pitch off Jupiter into the gravel-pit, than by your precious letter to my nephew. Suppose you did not hear from me, what then? Ă hundred things might turn up to prevent my taking a pen in hand; but no, dead I was to be, and dead I am, and I suppose stuck into all the newspapers, with a flourish about my Xtian fortitude and resignation. I know I named Rotterdam, but why didn't you wait for my letter from Nimeguen? I cannot help thinking that, as an old friend, you might have staid a post or two, and hoped for the best, instead of taking a flying leap to such a melancholy conclusion. Even as an old sportsman, you ought to have known better, than to cry whooop before I was fairly run into. God knows I am but too likely to die every day and hour of my life, without being killed before my time. If it had been a first warning, there was some excuse for giving me over; but you know as well as any one, how many fatal attacks I've pulled through in the most miraculous manner. Go I must, and suddenly, but owing to a wonderful original constitution, as you are well aware of, I die particularly hard. Besides, you and Truby were always incredulous, and even if you had seen me laid out in my coffin, it's my belief you would both have sworn it was all sham abram. I must say, Peter, it has gone to my heart. Five-and-twenty years have we been hand and glove, more like born brothers than old friends, and here you knock me on the head with as little ceremony as a penny-a-line fellow would kill the Grand Turk, or the King of France. Hang me, Peter, if I can believe you are your own man. As for proving the Will, and so forth, it's the first time I ever knew you to be prompt in law business, instead of quite the reverse; for, asking your pardon, you did not get the nickname of "Lord Eldon" for nothing amongst your clients in Kent. Then to put the whole house into mourning! I don't mind expense; but it goes against the grain to be made ridiculous, and a laughing-stock, which I shall be whenever I

get back to Woodlands, after being made a ghost of to my own servants. A rare joke it will be amongst them for John to be sent by a dead and gone master for a jug of ale! Besides, who knows but I may be run after by all the fools in the parish, and kissed and sung hymns to, and made a prophet of, for coming back out of my own grave, as you know your idiots down at Canterbury expected about Mad Thom!

But that is not the worst. You not only kill me out of hand, but, forsooth, you must take away my character to my own nephew. In your Burking letter to him you say, “And so, those gloomy forebodings which, amongst your late worthy uncle's friends, were looked upon as mere nervous fancies, and vaporish croakings, have, alas! been sadly fulfilled." Croakings indeed! I always knew I should die suddenly, and I always said so, and proved it by my symptoms and inward feelings; but is a man for that to be made out a complete hypochondriac, which I never was in my life! I don't wish to be harsh, but if anything could frighten and flurry such a poor hypped croaking creature as you have made of me, out of this world into the other, it would be just such an undertaker's black pall as you have chucked over me in the shape of a condoling letter! Luckily my own nerves are of a tougher texture, but poor Kate cried and sobbed over your infernal blackedged funeral sermon, with its comfortings and sympathizings, as if I had been fairly dead and buried in the family vault. However, I shall now drop the uncomfortable subject, hoping you will not take amiss a few words of serious advice, namely, not to treat an old friend like a defunct one, just because he don't write by every post that he is alive.

This plaguy business has so put me off the hooks, that you must excuse particulars as to our foreign travels. But I writ to Truby from Cologne, and what's better I sent the Hock wine I bet him, and if you ride over, mayhap he will let you look at a bottle and the letter at the same time. At this present, we are at Coblentz, where we have taken lodgings for a month. The truth is, it is all on poor Kate's account, for foreign travelling is harder work than in England, for females, and I shall not be sorry myself to fetch up my sleep, for between shipboard and outlandish short beds, and strange bedding, and the musical disturbances at Bonn, I have never had one good night's rest since I left the Tower stairs.

But you must not go to suppose, old friend, from the month's lodgings that I have better hopes of myself, or of a longer run; but there were no apartments to be had for a shorter time, and I was sick of the bustle of the hotel.

If I

was foolish enough to try to forget my dispensation, I should have been reminded by two German funerals that passed this very morning to the parish church of St. Castor's, hard by. As you may like to know the ceremony the hearse, very like a

“FYE, LET US A' TO THE bridal.

deer-cart, was covered by a black pall with a large white cross, and the letters B. S., which I suppose meant Burial Society; for, besides a cross-bearer and a flag-bearer, there were about a score of regular attendants, all carrying lighted tapers, and singing a hymn, though the solemnity of the thing was a little put out of sorts by the jerking antics of one man who kept rolling his head about like a Harlequin with St. Vitus's dance. The mourners walked behind the hearse, with a prodigious long train of friends and towns-folk; but after the service they all dispersed at the Church door, whereby, the ground being a good mile out of town, the poor old gentleman went to his grave with only a boy with a cross before him, and nobody at all behind him; just as if he had gone off in a huff; or been sent to Coventry by all that belonged to him. The same, to our English notions looking rather neglectful and disrespectful, and to my mind, not in character with such a romantical, feeling and sentimental people as the Germans, whereby I have made Frank promise to go to the ground, and see the last of me till I am fairly earthed. And it won't be long, poor fellow, before he is called to his sad duties. I feel sensibly worse since beginning this letter, and as such, old friend, your card of condolement was only wrong in point of date, and by the time this comes to hand may be a true bill, down to the hatbands and gloves.

Since the above there has been another guess-sort of procession to old St. Castor's Church, namely, a marriage. Having lived single so long, without enlarging on my opinions of wedlock, you may guess their nature by what I may call my silent vote on the subject. But, to judge by the young fellow who played bridegroom, I must have been wrong all my days; for there must be as great difference of quality between single blessedness and the other, as between single Gloster and Stilton. Frank has sketched him off with his “tail,” — but blacklead pencil can give no notion of his action and movable airs. Zounds! you would have thought a Benendict was as much above a Bachelor as a thoroughbred to a cart-horse. And mayhap so he is; but for my part, as Frank said, I could not make myself such a walking object in public, for the best of women. What's more, I cannot even guess

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