Now I have heard tales, and told them too,
Hut this is beyond what I could do;
And far hae I ridden, and far hae I gane,
But burdies like these I never saw nane.
_Fraser's Magazine._
* * * * *
ELLISTON AND THE ASS' HEAD.
Elliston was, in his day, the Napoleon of Drury-lane, but, like the
conqueror at Austerlitz, he suffered his declensions, and the Surrey
became to him a St. Helena. However, once an eagle always an eagle; and
Robert William was no less aquiline in the day of adversity than in his
palmy time of patent prosperity. He was born to carry things with a high
hand, and he but fulfilled his destiny. The anecdote which we are about to
relate, is one of the ten thousand instances of his lordly bearing. When,
the season before last, "no effects" was written over the treasury-door of
Covent-garden theatre, it will be remembered that several actors proffered
their services _gratis_, in aid of the then humble, but now arrogant and
persecuting establishment.
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