 and
walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came from a closely-contiguous wall.
This occasioned its terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a
very buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the
public to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem
by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist
being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was
openly mentioned as the kettledrum. The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was
inconsistent; representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able seaman,
a strolling actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost
importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and
nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want
of toleration for him, and even - on his being detected in holy orders, and
declining to perform the funeral service - to the general indignation taking the
form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that
when, in course of time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, folded it up,
and buried it, a sulky man who had been long cooling his impatient nose against
an iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, »Now the baby's put to
bed, let's have supper!« Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping.
    Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with playful
effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt,
the public helped him out with it. As for example; on the question whether 'twas
nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining
to both opinions said »toss up for it;« and quite a Debating Society arose. When
he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he
was encouraged with loud cries of »Hear, hear!« When he appeared with his
stocking disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very
neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron), a
conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and
whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the
recorders - very like a little black flute that had just been played in the
orchestra and handed
