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OMNIBUS POLITICIANS. 



As we descended Ludgate Hill, and approached Farringdon Street, 

 that most awful of all crossings on a market-day, and which neither the 

 piety nor patriotism of the monumental members, Wilks or Waithman, 

 can shield from danger, there was a halt for about ten minutes. The 

 train of vehicles was, as usual, very great, and the difficulty of progres- 

 sion considerably increased by the a\";kward movemeilts of some fifty or 

 sixty oxen on their route to that bourne whence not even oxen return. 

 These poor animals had a kind of presentiment that the boys who drove 

 them, meant them no good, and showed a strange disposition to move 

 in any direction but that which the juvenile drivers wished. The 

 crowd of pedestrians increased not a little the difficulties, as it inclined 

 to one side or the other, like the long heavy swell of the ocean after a 

 gale. A shrill female voice now called on the conductor to take up and 

 save her from these orrible hoxen. The conductor, with an air of sullen 

 magnanimity, placed between her and the object of her fears his pigmy 

 person, assuring her, she had now nothing to fear. 



The Bus drew up close to the curb-stones, the door opened, and Miss 

 Tomkins was handed in. As she sat down, the conductor smiled at her 

 alarm, " though, to be sure," said he, " one isnOtolways quite safe in a 

 drove such as that ere one, which don't belong neither to the neuter 

 gender," chuckling a smile at his wit. Miss Tomkins, unfortunately, 

 happened to be one of those poor souls, whose duties in another world, 

 tradition, superstition, or some other ition, very ungallantly says, will 

 be to lead blind apes. But this, after all, is but a lying gipsy tale, yet 

 however it mav be as well to keep up the delusion, — it may make hand- 

 some women a little less fastidious. 



My position was near the door, and which, though sometimes con- 

 venient, I found just now very disagreeable, as my proximity to the 

 conductor exposed me to the merciless infliction of his vulgar wit. 

 "Did you ever see, sir," addressing himself to me, "such & fearful 

 timbersomc creature as that ere lady — will you believe it, sir, if she did 

 not think them ere hoxen were going for to eat her, I am not a living 

 man." Fortunately for me, there were two men near me, one of whom 

 sat opposite me, and who caught up the tone of the conductor's last 

 speech, and enlarged cDpiously upon the horrors of old maids, old 

 women, old prejudices, — in short, everything old, except, as his friend 

 who sat close to me said, old port. This sweeping censure upon every- 

 thing old, sounded like a direct attack upon an old man who ^at on the 

 opposite side, and who, unfortunately, had too much of the irritable 

 feelings which usually hang about men, who, though really old, wish to 

 be considered young. This man took some exceptions to the speech of 

 this aforesaid hater of everything old, and presently a war of words 

 arose, which even the rumbling of our omnibus could not dro*w'n. The 



