"
Detachments come wheeling into the field of battle from all imaginable and
unimaginable quarters;--and you now see before you all the cats in
Edinburgh, Stockbridge, and the suburbs--about as many, I should suppose,
as the proposed constituents of our next city member.
_Shepherd._--The Town-Council are naething to them in nummers. The
back-green's absolutely composed o' cats.
_Tickler._--Up fly a thousand windows from ground-flat to attic, and
what an exhibition of night-caps! Here elderly gentlemen, apparently in
their shirts, with head night-gear from Kilmarnock, worthy of Tappitoury's
self,--behind them their wives--grandmothers at the least--poking their
white faces, like those of sheeted corpses, over the shoulders of the
fathers of their numerous progeny--there chariest maids, prodigal enough
to unveil their beauties to the moon, yet, in their alarm, folding the
frills of their chemises across their bosoms--and lo! yonder the Captain
of the Six Feet Club, with his gigantic shadow frightening that pretty
damsel back to her couch, and till morning haunting her troubled dreams.
"Fire! Fire!" "Murder! Murder!" is the cry--and there is wrath and
wonderment at the absence of the police-officers and engines. A most
multitudinous murder is in process of perpetration there--but as yet fire
is there none; when lo! and hark! the flash and peal of musketry---and
then the music of the singing slugs slaughtering the Catti, while bouncing
up into the air, with Tommy Tortoise clinging to his carcass, the Red
Rover yowls wolfishly to the moon, and then descending like lead into the
stone area, gives up his nine-ghosts, never to chew cheese more, and dead
as a herring.
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