Comic Sketches from the Wassail Bowl
by Albert Richard Smith (9781459042841)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COMIC SKETCHES. CHRISTMAS PANTOMIMES. Uzza for Christmas: the hobbling old year has nearly limped away, and with it, we hope, all of grief or sadness that has occurred to dim its progress; the time has arrived again when all that remains of harmless misrule and revelry in merrie England is about to revive from its long twelvemonth's trance, and once more kindle our hearts to enter (f into the honest mirth and hospitality ofourfore- t'i fathers, before they became too expensive in their pleasures, and too knowing for such simple merriment. True it is, that the ancient glories of Christmas have faded around our hearths since the blaze of the yule-log threw its cheerful light over the bright armour and quaint mouldings, the rollicking guests and antique furniture, of the old family-hall. The din of the mummers, and the potent spirits of the wassail-bowl, no longer contribute to our revelry; the sickly melancholy of the modern drawingroom ballad has supplanted the homely Anglo-Norman carol; but, still, Christinas has returned, and with it such fun and joyousness as refinement now allows us to partake of. At the head of all its gaieties, at least in our still childish opinion, stands the Pantomime. We really anticipate it for months before, and when, at last, the name is announced in the bills, our expectation has arrived at a pitch that is actually intolerable. Come with us to the theatre, dear reader, and take your place beside us. But you must go to the pit if you are our companion, for we mean, in all good truth, to enjoy ourselves and scream with laughter. Besides, we have never seen a pantomime from any other part of the house since we were very little, and we wish to enter as much as possible into old Christmas feelings and associations, and forget all of sorrow ...

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