the fat farmers and their fatter beasts have waddled off the scene, while their smart wives and daughters have appeared upon it, and are walking about in raiment, compared with which Joseph's coat was a mere joke, exchanging jests and cracking jokes with their friends, and looking—thanks to the exceeding heat—very uneasy and exceedingly moist. Behind and about prance their maidservants and hinds; every Jill who has a Jack hangs fondly to his arm, and while her large crinoline bangs affectionately against his legs, she casts scornful and triumphant glances at the unappropriated Jill who sidles by, deeply conscious of her forlorn and degraded state.
Hard-by Punch is setting a bright example to the British house-holder as to the management of his wife and family, and we pause under the shadow of Lawyer Trask's door to see the instructive little drama played out, and the ends of justice defeated.
In the market-place is a queer edifice that looks like a gigantic house of cards, and upon the steps thereof, apparently too solid for the shabby structure, stands a man beating a gong that rends the air with its hideous tom-tom!—that is the circus. To our right a crowd of white-waistcoated, blue-coated, shiny-faced youths are shooting for nuts at a gallery which is presided over by a young person with black eyes and blacker ringlets, a brazen countenance, and a nimble tongue. She seems to have as unlimited a supply of chaff as of nuts, and holds her own against all comers. Farther on is the peep-show, beyond that the merry-go-round, upon whose wooden horses the boys and girls are clinging with such giddy, delighted grasp, and round the corner the fat woman bursts upon our view, or rather her picture does, which has much the same effect. She wears a low-necked gown and short skirts, displaying a calf of which the circumference is about equal to our united waists. Her neck——— We turn away shuddering.
"Now what are we going to see first?" asks Jack.
