The Pantomime of Life - Page 2

and riches, the better. What a wild hallo is raised over his
prostrate carcase by the shouting mob; how they whoop and yell as
he lies humbled beneath them! Mark how eagerly they set upon him
when he is down; and how they mock and deride him as he slinks
away. Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.

Of all the pantomimic dramatis personae, we consider the pantaloon
the most worthless and debauched. Independent of the dislike one
naturally feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in
pursuits highly unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot
conceal from ourselves the fact that he is a treacherous, worldly-
minded old villain, constantly enticing his younger companion, the
clown, into acts of fraud or petty larceny, and generally standing
aside to watch the result of the enterprise. If it be successful,
he never forgets to return for his share of the spoil; but if it
turn out a failure, he generally retires with remarkable caution
and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until the affair has
blown over. His amorous propensities, too, are eminently
disagreeable; and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street
at noon-day is down-right improper, being usually neither more nor
less than a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the
waist, after committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed
(as well he may be) of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing,
nevertheless, to ogle and beckon to them from a distance in a very
unpleasant and immoral manner.

Is there any man who cannot count a dozen pantaloons in his own
social circle? Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at
the west end of the town on a sunshiny day or a summer's evening,
going through the last-named pantomimic feats with as much
liquorish energy, and as total an absence of reserve, as if they
were on the very stage itself? We can tell upon our fingers a
dozen pantaloons of our acquaintance at this moment--capital
pantaloons, who have been performing all kinds of strange freaks,
to the great amusement of their friends and acquaintance, for years
past; and who to this day are making such comical and ineffectual
attempts to be young and dissolute, that all beholders are like to
die with laughter.

Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the Cafe de
l'Europe in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense
of the young man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part
at the door of the tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of
the hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the
dinner, the savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips, are
all characteristics of his great prototype. He hobbles away
humming an opera tune, and