senting a steeplechase in the act of jumping a trench, and a water-nymph in the very décolleté undress of "puris naturalibus" weltering on a rushy bed.
We proceeded thither upon the giddy summit of a Royal Oak omnibus, and on arriving in the vestibulum, were peremptorily commanded to undergo total abstinence from our umbrellas.
Being accompanied by the span-new silken affair with the golden head, which, as I have narrated supra, I was so lucky to obtain promiscuously after witnessing the Adelphi of the Westminster college boys, I naturally protested vehemently against such arbitrary and tyrannical regulations, urging the risk of my unprotected umbrella being feloniously abducted during unavoidable absence by some unprincipled and illegitimate claimant.
But, alack! I was confronted with the official ultimatum and sine quâ non, and have subsequently learnt that the cause of this self-denying ordinance is due to the uncontrollable enthusiasm of British Public for works of art, which leads them to signify approbation by puncturing innumerable orifices by dint of sticks or umbrellas in the process of pointing out tit-bits of painting, and on account of the detrimental influence on the marketable value of pictures thus distinguished by the plerophory of the Vox Populi.
Nevertheless, my heart was oppressed with
