44 Tht Club-Room. ^JAN. 



I know no better cellar. But I thought that the lover had carried her 

 off at the last Newmarket meeting. 



Lancer. No : he has besieged her twice the yeard of Troy, and is 

 yet far enough from a capitulation. To do the poor devil justice, 

 nothing could be more persevering. He first made his approaches in the 

 regular way, talked in the tenderest style of a rational admirer, 

 and proposed an immediate junction of the messuages, tenements, fish- 

 ponds, and poultry-yards, &c., on both sides ; but this failed. 



His next experiment was in the conventicle style. "He boo'ed, and 

 sighed, and sobbed, anc. turned up the whites o' his een ;" but the saint- 

 ship failed. Another experiment was in store. He kicked off the 

 saint, like Sterne in Languedoc, one slipper into one ditch, and ano- 

 ther into another, and fell to captivation as a regular Newmarket hero. 

 The papers give him credit for having lately exhibited on the back of a 

 horse, riding upwards of six miles within the hour, to the astonishment 

 of the whole course, with the closest possible resemblance to the grace 

 of a young Alexander. 



Culverin. And the lady, still unmelted and unmoved ? 



" Dwells such an iron heart in beauty's ribs ?" 



Lancer. Aye ; hard as her own hunting-cap, and tough as her fa- 

 vourite leather pantaloons. The story goes, among the Newmarket 

 population, that the Venus told the Adonis, as her final answer, that 

 there were eleven things on the face of the earth to which she had a 

 particular aversion : ten tall boys and girls in a house, and the papa 

 of the one, and the lord of the other. 



" I cannot say how the truth may be, 

 I tell the tale as 'twas told to me/' 



Rat. But we have wandered from the question before us. I conceive 

 the lady to be one who claims with the blood royal, and who has 

 given as much trouble as if she were Queen Caroline herself. It must 

 be the Princess Olivia of Poland, Brunswick, and Little Britain. 



The Chairman. Is there any truth in the report that she is going to be 

 married to Harrington ; and that his resignation of the " Bedchamber" 

 is preparatory to his adopting the royal liveries ? 



Rat. Rowan has already been ordered to send in a list of all the tailors 

 between Whitehall and Whitechapel, with a detailed account of every 

 button in their custody, to prevent the insurrection. 



Culverin. Ha, ha, ha ! The colonel will do it con amore. But Har- 

 rington never will be entangled in the trammels of woman : he is 

 too busy with his patent for a new wash-ball. He has been annoyed with 

 the report, even to the dislocation of his whiskers ; and is said to have 

 retaliated in his own pleasant style by a lampoon on a certain great house 

 near the Kensington road. Where the report was first heard, perhaps 

 Flourish can tell. 



The Chairman. Flourish, let us have the lampoon. Sing or say it, 

 which you please. 



Flourish. I am only too happy in your favourable opinion. (He 

 coughs.) This confoundedly foggy weather would destroy a prima don- 

 na. But the song is not by Harrington : he notoriously flies all spinsters 

 from a fear of being caught in some among their spinnings ; and the 

 nine ladies of Helicon, living unmarried, are of his terrors. The song 



