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MY DEAR FATHER, You and my dear mother will be pleased to hear that London continues very polite to me: that "arida nutrix leonum" enrolls me among the pet class of lions which ladies of fashion admit into the society of their lapdogs. It is somewhere about six years since I was allowed to gaze on this peep-show through the loopholes of Mr. Welby's retreat.
So telegrams are ended; mails neither come nor go. The guns fired lazily till evening, doing little harm on either side. A queer Boer ambulance, with little glass windows something between a gipsy van and a penny peep-show came in under a huge white flag, bringing some of our wounded to exchange for wounded Boers. The amenities of civilised slaughter are carefully observed.
The Heliopolitan humbug replied by sending a piece of an old grape-vine cut into pieces, which meant either: "You will cut them up," or "They will cut you up;" and Trajan, like the little boy at the peep-show who asked: "which is Lord Wellington and which is the Emperor Napoleon?" had paid his penny and might take his choice. Sometimes the oracles were quite jocular.
Sometimes I am rewarded for fretting myself so much about present matters by a quite unasked-for pleasant dream. I mean when I am asleep. This dream is as it were a present of an architectural peep-show.
Suffice it to say that they all draw forth the approving commendations of the spectators, from Mr Prothero, master, to Tom, serving-lad. When the peep-show has been duly exhibited, Netta again demands her brother's history, and a particular account of how he procured the show.
A Peep-show which had originally started with the Battle of Waterloo, and had since made it every other battle of later date by altering the Duke of Wellington's nose, tempted the student of illustrated history.
It is really a pity that the creator of this remarkable peep-show did not give references to her "records," so that one might look up this "elegant" young creature of the twelfth century who talked about "education" and said "mamma!" But this absolute failure in verisimilitude is practically universal before Scott.
We couldn't make head nor tail out of it, but for some days arterward you'd ha' thought that Bob Pretty's 'ouse was a peep-show. Everybody stared at the winders as they went by, and the children played in front of the 'ouse and stared in all day long.
One night after I had had supper and washed myself, I said to th' missus, 'There's a peep-show i' Tithebarn Street, and if you'll wash Bobby's face I'll tek him there; its nobbut a penny. You know it was one o' them shows where they hev pictures behind a piece o' calico, Paul Pry with his umbrella, Daniel i' th' lions' den, ducks swimming across a river, a giantess who was a man shaved and dressed in women's clothes, a dog wi' five legs, and a stuffed mermaid just what little lads would like.
Thirty or forty years ago, whilst the business of Parliament was carried on in a temporary building, accommodation for ladies was provided in a narrow box stationed above the Strangers' Gallery, whence they peered into the House through pigeon holes something like what you see in the framework of a peep-show.
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