being first-rate, especially one which
was sung by a huge engine-driver, with shoulders about a yard broad, and
a beard like the inverted shako of a guardsman. It ran thus--

SONG OF THE ENGINE-DRIVER.

Oh--down by the river and close by the lake
We skim like the swallow and cut though the brake;
Over the mountain and round by the lea,
Though the black tunnel and down to the sea.
Clatter and bang by the wild riven shore,
We mingle our shriek with the ocean's roar.
We strain and we struggle, we rush and we fly--
We're a terrible pair, my steed and I.

_Chorus_--Whistle and puff the whole day round,
Over the hills and underground.
Rattling fast and rattling free--
Oh! a life on the line is the life for me.

With our hearts a-blazing in every chink,
With coals for food and water to drink,
We plunge up the mountain and traverse the moor,
And startle the grouse in our daily tour.
We yell at the deer in their lonely glen,
Shoot past the village and circle the Ben,
We flash through the city on viaducts high,
As straight as an arrow, my steed and I.

_Chorus_--Whistle and puff, etcetera.

The Norseman of old, when quaffing his mead,
Delighted to boast of his "ocean steed;"
The British tar, in his foaming beer,
Drinks to his ship as his mistress dear.
The war-horse good is the trooper's theme--
But what are all these to the horse of steam?
Such a riotous, rollicking roadster is he--
Oh!--the Iron Horse is the steed for me!

_Chorus_--Whistle and puff, etcetera.

The collation also, or, according to Bob Marrot, the "blow-out," was
superb. Joseph Tipps declared it to be eminently satisfactory, and the
men of the line evidently held the same opinion, if we may judge from
the fact that they consumed it all, and left not a scrap behind.

The speeches, also, were excellent. Of course the great one of the
evening was the best being, delivered by Mr Abel, who not unnaturally
made a remarkably able oration.

When that gentleman rose with a beautiful silver model of a locomotive
in his hand, which he had been deputed by the men of the line to present
as a mark of their regard, admiration, and esteem, to John Marrot, he
took the worthy ex-engine-driver very much by surprise, and caused Mrs
Marrot to be seized with such a fit of choking that the baby (not the
new one, but the old) found it as hard work to beat her out of it, as
she had formerly found it to be