At the expiration of which time I arose, and
set myself to work to replace the bedding, which
I had now aired to my satisfaction, and which,
in case of any more visitors arriving, it would be
as well to have in its place.

THE CLOWN'S SONG.

"HERE I am!"—and the House rejoices;
Forth I tumble from out the slips;
"Here I am!"—and a hundred voices
Welcome me on with laughing lips.
   The Master, with easy pride,
   Treads the sawdust down;
   Or quickens the horse's stride,
   And calls for his jesting clown.

"What, ho, Mr. Merriman!—Dick,
Here's a lady that wants your place."
I throw them a somerset, quick,
And grin in some beauty's face.
   I tumble, and jump, and chaff,
   And fill them with wild delights;
   Whatever my sorrow, I laugh,
   Thro' the summer and winter nights.

I joke with the men, if I dare;
Do they strike, why I cringe and stoop;
And I ride like a bird in air,
And I jump through the blazing hoop.
   Whatever they say or do,
   I am ready with joke and jibe;
   And, whenever the jests are new,
   I follow, like all my tribe.

But life is not all a jest,
Whatever the wise ones say;
For when I steal home to rest
(And I seek it at dawn of day),
   If winter, there is no fire;
   If summer, there is no air:
   My welcome's a hungry choir
   Of children, and scanty fare.

My wife is as lean a scold
As famine can make man's wife;
We are both of us sour and old
With drinking the dregs of life.
   Yet, why do I sigh? I wonder
   Would the " Pit" or the "Boxes" sigh,
   Should I wash off my paint, and, under,
   Show how a Fool must die?

OUR EYE-WITNESS.

WE are about to introduce a new personage
to the reader; or rather we are about to reveal
in his true character a person with whom the
reader is already slightly acquainted. Let the
introduction take place with all the proper
ceremony, and with due formality: Reader,
Mr. David Fudge—Mr. David Fudge, Reader.

"Very happy," says reader, " to make the
acquaintance of a gentleman with whose works I am
so familiar—remember your charming description
of—hum, ha, charming indeed—ha, hum."

And then the reader turns aside to us, the
introducer, and asks in an under tone, " Who is
he?" We reply that he is simply an observant
gentleman who goes about with his eyes and ears
open, who notes everything that comes in his
way, and who has furnished to this periodical
certain results of his faculty of observation.
We further state that Mr. Fudge is familiarly
known among his associates in labour as " the
eye-witness," because he either has, or says he
has, seen everything he describes. As our eye-
witness, he undertook to report to us what he
observed when he went to see the " Talking Fish,"
and anything that might strike him at the "Derby."
This is the report that he sends in:

Your eye-witness begs to report himself as
having returned safe from the Derby.

He has also been to see the "Talking Fish."

Concerning the first of these Institutions he
is not going to say anything except that he
started smart and joyous, and returned dirty and
penitent; that, having lost his money on
"brother to Somebody," he objects henceforth
to all race-horses who are relatives of distinguished
characters, and prefers those that go
upon their own merits; that a facetious stranger,
one of a large party on the top of an omnibus,
invited him to ascend and witness the race with
the assurance that there was '' plenty of room
on the top of the whip," and that he finally did
witness the race while executing a remarkable
"act" of balancing with one foot on the edge of
the hood of a phaeton, the other on a basket of
provisions three feet distant, and with nothing
to hold on by but the hat of a gentleman who
was much intoxicated, and who was standing
upon the spoke of a wheel, and a walking-stick.

So much for what your eye-witness observed
at the Derby. Now for what he remarked when
he assisted at the Exhibition of the Talking
Fish, on Tuesday, the thirty-first of May—a
thunderous and overcast day.

He remarked that this animal would be
described with propriety as the Talking Fish, but
for two circumstances—it is not a fish, and it
does not talk. In the nine days appropriated to
this wonder, no one appears to have noticed this
little error in description. Under these circumstances
your eye-witness is mistrustful of himself.
Is he labouring under some delusion?
Is a seal a fish? Is barking like a dog talking?

Perhaps it is. Perhaps the animal is not
exhibited in Piccadilly; perhaps Piccadilly is not
Piccadilly but Pall-mall; perhaps there is no
equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington on
Constitution-hill; perhaps it is easy to dance
with ladies who wear hoops; perhaps they don't
wear them at all; perhaps your eye-witness is
perfectly happy; perhaps he has a large fortune;
perhaps he didn't lose on the Derby; perhaps
there is not a tree outside his bedroom window
and a sparrow watching him from its branches
as he writes; perhaps there is no war in Sardinia;
perhaps the French alliance is a sound
one; perhaps the Emperor of the French is
unaffectedly fond of England; perhaps it was an
unselfish thing to get up a dissolution of
Parliament at the particular moment when it was
got up; perhaps there was no dissolution at all;
perhaps it is easy to cross over at the Regent-
circus, Oxford-street; perhaps the New Adelphi
is not a comfortable theatre; perhaps there is
no humbug in advertisements; perhaps—perhaps
a barking seal is a Talking Fish.