Bepiped

From early dawn, agricolous county men, on unruly colts—Brunswickers and Brabanters, bebritched, bepiped, and bestride of parturient mares—Creoles by the cart-full, with the garçons gambolling in the rear—all poured in to see the show—“performance to commence at one o’clock precisely, and for one day only.”

Probably but few are aware of the dense mass of thriving, unemployed, or only partially employed youth, boys particularly, to be seen in the neighbourhoods of Castlegate, towards Moldgreen, and in Upperhead-row; youth with no other means of instruction in their way than such a school as the twopenny theatre in Ramsden-street, where, nightly may be seen bepiped boys and some few idle girls, sitting haggard and unwholesome, listening to the teachings of “Gil Blas,” &c., worse corrupted.

They know it is vacation-time; they assign it to the class of violent improbabilities that I should be what I seem; they are aware that I ought not to be there; and they conclude that my half-dressed form, recumbent on three chairs, slippered as to its feet, bepiped and tobacco-smoked as to its mouth, and situated directly in front of the only window through which a little street-disgusted air finds its way, is but a mockery, an unsubstantial thing with fear of which to scare young mice, who should be asleep and are not, into the arms of the mousey Morpheus.

Having been granted official permission to smoke while at the wheel, the taxicab drivers of London have abused the privilege to such an extent that a storm of protest has arisen from ladies who remember how different were conditions in the days of the hansom. All of which has moved the laureate of the Daily Mail to this [?]:[…]A common pipe? Alack and fie for shame![…]Foully bepiped, thou takest beauty’s tip / (All undeserved because thy ways are vile,) / Nor do clenched teeth or firm prehensile lip / Part in the faintest semblance of a smile.

Instead of the black cat for bad luck today, let us present our good luck token—a bespectacled, bepiped white dog.

If many of us who do not share his viewpoint are forced to wait for what we think is right, we may be permanently removed from the political scene, which I am sure would suit Barron and his beaded, bearded and bepiped contemporaries to a T.