, as if they had corns; and City
officers in scarlet, playing at soldiers, but looking anything but
soldierly; two trumpeters before and behind, blowing an occasional
blast....

"How that old coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly
gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle
feeds--for, reader, it was Sir William Curtis!...

"As the ark of copper, plate glass, and enamel crept slowly up the
incline, a luckless sweeper-boy (in those days such dwarfed lads were
forced to climb chimneys) sidled up to one of the fore horses, and
sought to detach a pink bow from his mane. The creature felt his honours
diminishing, and turned to snap at the blackee. The sweep screamed, the
horse neighed, the mob shouted, and Sir William turned on his pivot
cushion to learn what the noise meant; and thus we were enabled to gaze
on a Lord Mayor's face. In sooth he was a goodly gentleman, burly, and
with three fingers' depth of fat on his portly person, yet every feature
evinced kindliness and benevolence of no common order."

The men in armour were from time immemorial important features in the
show, and the subjects of many a jest. Hogarth introduces them in one of
his series, "Industry and Idleness," and _Punch_ has cast many a missile
at those disconsolate warriors, who all but perished under their weight
of armour, degenerate race that we are!

The suits of burnished mail, though generally understood to be kindly
lent for the occasion by the custodian of the Tower armoury, seem now
and then to have been borrowed from the playhouse, possibly for the
reason that the imitation accoutrements were more showy and superb than
the real.

This was at any rate the case (says Mr. Dutton Cook) in 1812, when Sir
Claudius Hunter was Lord Mayor, and Mr. Elliston was manager of the
Surrey Theatre. A melodramatic play was in preparation, and for this
special object the manager had provided, at some considerable outlay,
two magnificent suits of brass and steel armour of the fourteenth
century, expressly manufactured for him by Mr. Marriott of Fleet Street.
No expense had been spared in rendering this harness as complete and
splendid as could be. Forthwith Sir Claudius applied to Elliston for the
loan of the new armour to enhance the glories of the civic pageant. The
request was acceded to with the proviso that the suit of steel could
only be lent in the event of the ensuing 9th of November proving free
from damp and fog