George Cruikshank

“ Perhaps the mountebank was jealous of the ass! Can we assume that, in the nature of a mountebank balancing on his chin a ladder surmounted by a long-eared brute, there is no room for vanity? Can we imagine a donkey-balancer incapable of feeling annoyed, when he sees his subordinate—the agent through whom his own abilities are to be demonstrated—creating peals of laughter by doing nothing, trotting off with the spoils he did not win, and cropping every thistle of fame that belongs to another? ”

“ Sometimes taking the seas clean over her broadside; at others almost buried beneath the waves that broke over as she rushed stem on, the deck of the cutter was now distinctly visible, as the crew, in wild despair, were clinging to the rigging; but what was Frank's agony when, by the aid of a glass he recognized the vessel to be the pretty little yacht that he had inspected, as she laid at anchor before Mr. Wendover's house, at Fowey; and as he could distinguish the white dresses of females, he made no doubt that Helen and her mother were on board. ”

“ In the centre of the sacred apartment has been detected a small sable intruder. A cry of horror from one young lady—"Oh! my good gracious, there's a great black beadle!" brings every other young lady's heart into her mouth. In an instant the room resounds with wild piercing screams. Every chair has its pedestalled votary of Fear, its statue of Alarm exquisitely embodied; the sofa boasts a rare cluster of affrighted nymphs—more agonised by far than if they had been, by some wicked bachelor of a magician, locked for life into a nunnery. ”

“ How many wits have been set wandering by roadside horrors, raised up from the elements of the ridiculous! The simplest objects become the means of deadly mischief. A donkey in the deep shadow, a cow in the dim moonlight, a stump of an old tree, a white finger-post at the corner of a by-path, have produced in myriads an agony of agitation; but what are these to the good old English country ghost, the elements that compose which we here set in their uncombined, and therefore unterrifying forms, before the spectator. ”

“ Euphemius is hardly seventeen yet—quite a child! What an age of genius this is! Euphemius, my dear, will you read?—Martha, you can take away.—Beg pardon, any more tea, Miss Dibsley? No!—not half a cup?—Take away, Martha. Euphemius, dear, proceed with your poetry."—"Hadn't I better read it for myself?" said Miss Dibsley. "No, I thank you," returned Euphemius; "you won't find out the jokes so well as I shall, 'cause I haven't put 'em all in italics." (Euphemius reads.)
The world rests on a tortoise,
And a teapot rests on that,
And on the teapot sitteth
Earth's Emperor fierce and fat. ”

“ Youth, beauty, rank, and fashion graced the festival in the parlours and drawing-room of the hall, whilst Ben and Sambo, who had come up on purpose to the wedding, kept the kitchen guests in one continued round of merriment, till overpowered by respect for his master, veneration for his mistress, and attachment to Frank, Ben's brains began to whirl, his steps became exceedingly erratic as if his feet were mocking each other, and he was carried off to bed by Sambo, where he was snugly deposited under the lee of his nightcap. ”

“ Peach removed his hat and wig, and the patch from his eye. "I knew I was right," said he: "Brady, do you know me now?"
"Well, well," returned the lawyer quietly, "this is kind of you, too—more than I expected—but how did you find me out—come, come, friend Shaft, sit down; we will not heed yon spectre," his aberration took another turn. "Ha," he shouted, "it is you who have betrayed me, old man; traitor! monster! it is you who have denounced your friend. Acteon Shaft, I defy you to the very teeth." ”

“ There is a world of language in the human eye that carries with it its own translation; and when Mrs. Heartwell saw the bright orbs of the lawyer as he looked round the room, a strange thrill came over her bosom—an indefinable sensation that sickened her very heart: she had never, [46] to her recollection, seen Mr. Brady before that moment; yet the piercing keenness of his eyes was vividly pictured on her memory—they were familiar to the mind as having at some former period occasioned much distress, but where or when, or with what connexion, baffled remembrance was utterly at fault. ”

“ The clock had not struck nine when they passed through the spacious area of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the trees in which had already become leafless, and gave an air of desolation to the dingy scenery. What a crowd of reflections do our Inns of Court give rise to—and yet how few who pass through them ever bestow one thought on the thousands who are toiling daily, and many nightly, within those walls to render perfect and secure for others the property which without the aid of the law would be unsafe! ”

“ The elaborate, and long meditated impromptu of the reputed wit fell still-born, while one of Jack's unstudied gay-hearted sallies burst like a rocket, and showered sparkles over the room.
Everybody went away convinced that there was one human being in the world whose oasis of life had no surrounding desert. Jack lived but for enjoyment. The links of the chain that bound him to existence, were of pure gold—there was no rough iron clanking between. He seemed sent into the world to show how many may be amused, cheered, comforted, by one light heart. ”

“ Jack-o'lantern has some attractive shape for every age and condition. In childhood, he lures us, by overhanging clusters of cherries and currants, into regions consecrated to steel-traps and spring-guns; in after-age, he takes us irresistibly into the still more dangerous region of love and romance, winning us by his best lights—the bright eyes of woman; and to the very end of our days he finds some passion or prejudice wherewith to woo us successfully—some straw wherewith to tickle us, how wise-soever, and unwilling we may be. ”

“ With a fine breeze the captain steered for Sicily, and found the fleet at Syracuse, preparing to get under weigh; the despatches were delivered, the supernumeraries of the frigate were transferred to the flag-ship—the Vanguard; and thus Frank and his two humble friends, Ben and Sambo, had the honour of being within the same heart-of-oak with the gallant hero whose fame has been immortalised throughout the world, and whose name is sanctified by a nation's gratitude. ”

“ Helen experienced this as the seas came breaking over the cutter, and she beheld her relatives upon the shore. But her principal remembrances were devoted to Frank; and as the swimmer approached, and his features became more distinct, she fancied she could trace a resemblance to him of whom she was thinking; the bare conjecture caused a sudden thrill through every vein; but when she heard the voice of her lover as he ascended to the deck and gained the taffrail, even the appalling danger was almost forgotten in the sudden delight of her heart at his noble and generous conduct. ”

“ Frank would have again plunged into the waves; but on passing through a group, near where the boat had been thrown up, he heard the voice of Mr. Wendover, in earnest entreaty for them "to save his child." He seemed to be almost bereft of reason, as he wildly clutched his hair in agony, and pointed to the cutter, where a female was discerned clinging to the taffrail.
"Launch the boat again!" he loudly shouted, "I will go myself if no one will accompany me;" and then with imploring cries he offered the most lavish rewards to any one who should save his child from such imminent danger. ”

“ The beautiful country—the cheerful "public," with its porch, its honeysuckle and roses—the sign which bade the "weary traveller rest" on the seat beneath the spreading elm;—these are no more!—This is the iron age—fire and steam are as the breath of our nostrils—we speak by the flash of lightning—we have given life to emptiness, and fly upon the wings of a vacuum—our path is through the blasted rock, the cold dark dreary tunnel—through cheerless banks, which shut us from the world like a living grave—on—on—on—we speed! The dying must die! ”

“ We'll caulk the old ship; we'll repair our old sail; we'll mend our old clothes; we'll darn our old stockings, and then to sea again. Hurrah!—hurrah!"
Thus did they continue to drink and carouse until, if they had had any eyes left in their head, they never could have seen visually; but ghosts see mentally, and in the midst of their mirth and jollity, they saw some tall objects coming down gradually and peeping over the rocks, probably attracted by the fiddle of Dirk Spattrel.
"The natives!"—cried Jansen, "the natives!—now, my men, recollect the captain's orders—don't be rude to the women." ”

“ One day, when he went to cash a draft for five dollars, the lovely Miss Rebecca Abednego chanced to be in the room. Ah, Lorenzo, Lorenzo! better for you to have remained at home studying the Pons Asinorum; better still for you to have been at church, listening to the soul-stirring discourses of Father Windbeutel; better for you to have been less learned and more pious: then you would not have been so likely to go astray, or allow your fancy to be inflamed by the charms of wicked Jewesses, that all Christian men should shun like poison. ”

“ We have had gifted horses, who should have been elected F.R.S.'s; learned pigs, who should have been chosen LL.D.'s; humane dogs, who merit statues like Howard's; and industrious fleas, who do the work of hot water in putting lobsters to the blush. But such an ass as the Lad on the Ladder eye never beheld but that once. His face spread before our curious and inquiring gaze, like a map of the world, and we traced in recollection an infinite variety of character. ”

“ The postilion is a veritable centaur—a human quadruped partaking of the two natures, the stable and the bed and bolster, "three-pennorth o' brandy," and the nose-bag. He is a poet, superior to that genuine pastoral, the haymaker, if familiarity with Apollo (and if Apollo be the sun) constitutes a poet. The sickle-wielder of Autumn burns not with such fervid inspiration. Look on his countenance—"that index to the soul"—and imagine how full of fire that soul must be, when the proverbial brevity of an index contains so much—"to overflowing full." ”

“ But it is not merely in the army and on the stage, at the bar and in literature, in the walks of commerce and in the world of fashion, that we daily detect some living prototype of the long-eared animal in the ascendant. If public meetings exhibit them, public schools do so no less abundantly. There is a great deal of ladder-climbing going on at the universities; and not a proctor in the precincts of learning but could tell many tales of asinine ambition. ”

“ It might be supposed that, the boy not being hired, there would be a little difficulty in procuring a substitute for the ass: not so; only blow a trumpet or beat a drum in the street, and you are surrounded in less than no time with able and willing volunteers. This boy entered into the soul of the ass's part; he did not hug, and hang on the ladder mechanically, or like one who had done the same thing a dozen times before, that very day. There was the freshness of the young aspiration, the delicious novelty of the first grand step in life—in the attempt. ”

“ FRANK HEARTWELL; OR, FIFTY YEARS AGO. BY BOWMAN TILLER.
CHAPTER XI.
An awful but instructive scene is the death-bed of the guilty. Shipkins experienced, by anticipation, the agonizing terrors of a future state. Despair took possession of his mind; but it was the despair of the coward who trembles to meet his judge, and not that of the penitent, who, prompted by hope, implores for mercy. He had lived a desperate life of crime, and his hearers shuddered as vivid recollection of the past seemed to flash upon him like sudden visions forcing him to reveal the enormities he had perpetrated. ”

“ Then the idea of loneliness preyed upon her mind; and, there is something so cold and chilling in the thoughts of being left alone in the world, cut off from connexions that were once eminently endearing to the affections, to sit hour after hour, and day after day, communing with one's own sad heart, to pass the nights in sleepless retrospection, as visions of past enjoyment flit in pleasing array before the imagination, and then to turn the mind's eye to the obscure but dreaded events of the coming future, where all is darkened by gloomy forebodings ”

“ When we see a vulgar jack, in virtue of his office raised to the rank of gentleman, treating a poor suitor, who asks for his own, as if he were a beggar asking alms; or a sleek-headed, rosy-gilled idiot, who lives only in his own breeches-pocket, pretending to patronise talent because he doles out, for its exercise, what scarcely keeps its possessor from starving, we are very apt to call to recollection the ass on the ladder. ”