The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 45

The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 45

In order to prevent the shameful impositions practised upon the

credulity of minors of fashion and fortune, by unprincipled women of

no property, the Hum-Fum Gamboogees have opened establishments for

the reception of young gentlemen of worldly propensities, which are

to be placed under the surveillance of most active and pious men.

 

Similar receptacles for young ladies, whose flagrant desires lead

them into the abominable vices of dancing or singing, will be

prepared, where, in rooms hung with black, and from which the much

too comfortable glare of day will be excluded, they will be taught to

see, in their proper colours, the enormity of those crimes of which

they have been guilty, and which their sinful mothers, grandmothers,

and great grandmothers, have been rash and vile enough to commit in a

similar way.

 

It appearing to the Hum-Fum Gamboogees that the sun is by far too

great a blessing for such wretched creatures as we are, they

recommend a careful seclusion during the day, and suggest that wet or

windy nights are the most suitable occasions for taking exercise.

 

A total abstinence from wine is earnestly desired to be observed by

the young gentlemen of London, whose interests the Hum-Fums have very

near their hearts; and they mention weak black tea as a substitute,

or a proportion of that excellent succadaneum for Hyson, chopped hay,

which was seriously recommended to the attention of the world, a

short time since, through the columns of the _Morning Post_.

 

Several well-dressed and respectable elderly gentlemen, with

umbrellas, will attend in Hyde Park every day, until the abomination

of frequenting such places be utterly abolished, to escort young men

to pious ordinaries, where it is recommended they should dine, in

order to prevent those unnatural sins, flirting, dangling, and making

the amiable.

 

A vast many devout minor agents of the society will be employed to

divest the pockets of persons of snuff-boxes, it never having been

required by nature to feed one's nose.

 

It is strongly recommended that every one should abstain from

frequenting play-houses, and in order to effect this great object, or

at all events to render the performances sufficiently disagreeable

to be quite correct, it is suggested that the company of performers,

who acted at the Haymarket Theatre last season, be the only persons

licensed to exhibit in the metropolis.

 

The Hum-Fums will visit the houses of their neighbours, after the

fashion of that most excellent brother corporation, the Bible

Society, and will make it their business to enquire into the state of

every man's domestic affairs; in order, if possible, to rescue from

degradation the servants of London, whose subordination (although, by

the active endeavours of similar unions, they are getting gradually

independent of their masters and mistresses,) is derogatory to the

dignity of the human character.

 

The Hum-Fums will distribute amongst the domestics such works as

may tend to elevate their minds, open their intellects, make them

dissatisfied with debasement, and enable them, by the blessing of

Providence, to rise superior to that oppression by which the sinful

luxuries of society have humiliated them. Several Hum-Fums of the

highest character for dulness and gravity will attend in the kitchens

and servants'-halls of each parish, to edify their tenants every

evening from eight till twelve.

 

It will be the study of the Hum-Fums to impress upon the soldiers

of this kingdom the sin and shame of carrying muskets and bayonets

for pay, and of slaughtering their fellow-creatures for no cause

whatever; and by the way in which they expect to be enabled to make

their light shine, they hope to convince their brethren in arms that

officers are but men, and that obedience from one man to another is

by no means necessary to salvation.

 

The sailors they intend to leave entirely to the pious society called

the Bethel Union, convinced that nothing the Hum-Fums can do will

more effectually emasculate and sanctify at the same time the sea

service, and purge it of its worldly power to do mischief, than the

blessed exertions of that inestimable institution.

 

Riding in carriages, especially on Sundays, they most energetically

denounce; and it is proposed to solicit the several lessees of

the turnpike trusts round London to allow ministers, selected by

a council of Hum-Fums, to be placed at the different toll-gates,

to dissuade the infatuated people from enjoying the sun and air of

heaven on the only day which they have to themselves, and on which,

in obedience to the Decalogue, they do no manner of work.

 

Night agents of the society will be regularly posted at the doors of

all public-houses within the bills of mortality, to check the ingress

of sinners to such places; and in order more effectually to promote

the devout intentions of the society, Messrs. Whitbread (whose very

name inspires respect), Mr. Calvert, and Mr. Buxton have intimated

a zealous desire to leave off brewing the liquor which the wretched

sinners are so depraved as to swallow in those receptacles for vice.

 

No rank of society will be free from the surveillance of this pious

body. At the Opera, a superior class of agents will be always in

attendance to superintend the friendly intercourse of the best

families, and by an assiduous watchfulness over the manners and

conversations of the various parties, many of those heartrending

divisions in society which shock morality will be doubtless prevented.

 

The Hum-Fums earnestly recommend frequent physicking and bleeding,

with a view to the moderation of worldly appetites; and suggest, in

the hope of keeping up an incessant feeling of the wretched state to

which we are reduced, that all persons between the ages of fifteen

and sixty should wear perpetual blisters.

 

The Hum-Fums earnestly request subscriptions to carry their spiritual

benefits into effect, and they would impress upon the minds of those

who are hastening to perdition in the same abominable and destructive

road, which every one of their ancestors and relations have taken,

that all things are subservient to the principles which the Hum-Fums

teach, and that without money the Hum-Fums cannot exist.

 

After the proceedings in which this development of their views was

made, the Hum-Fums nominated thirty-five treasurers and sixty-eight

secretaries at respectable salaries. Most of the Hum-Fums being

decidedly hostile to the establishment in State as well as Church,

this was considered the only virtuous mode whereby to provide for

those persons, who, though in humbler life had always relied upon

the Hum-Fums for support, and whose laudable exertions in exciting a

proper melancholy, and a substantial discontent, deserve the highest

praise.

 

The Hum-Fums, after this part of the ceremony, proceeded to sing

psalms and hymns, the productions of the Rev. Mr. Smith, of Penzance,

whose meritorious conduct under his call, from the station of

boatswain in His Majesty's service, to the ministry, demanded their

warmest admiration.

 

Miss Rebecca Engleheart presented the society with a small pasteboard

windmill, in the hopper of which were three shillings and ninepence

halfpenny, which she had collected by the exhibition of her little

toy.

 

The great Hum-Fum Gamboogee was extremely gratified by this specimen

of pious ingenuity, and put the sails of the model into rapid motion,

which excited great gratitude and applause.

 

Two Otaheitean watermen and a New Zealand coppersmith were elected

Hum-Fums: they spoke at length of the benefits which their respective

nations had received from the exertions of the society, and the

latter presented to the society the heads of his elder brother and

his sister-in-law, which he had cut off since his notions of property

had been matured under its benign influence.

 

At this period of the proceedings an interruption took place which

threatened the unanimity of the society; this, considering the

society, as we do, to be one, of which all the members ought to hang

together, created a very unpleasant feeling.

 

One of the members, more lukewarm than the rest, inquired by what

authority the Hum-Fums were to take upon themselves the charge

of correcting their neighbours, and setting the world in general

to rights; adding a doubt as to the obedience of a nation like

England, famed for its independence, and envied for the blessings

of religious toleration, to the _dicta_ of a committee of Hum-Fums.

"For," said the pious member, "although I speak under correction,

and with all due deference to the great Hum-Fum Gamboogee and my

sanctified brethren, I do not see the right by which we, being only

men like themselves, are, in a country of liberty, to control our

fellow-creatures in their recreations and amusements; seeing, that if

they are to go to perdition for doing that, which has been ordinarily

done in Great Britain for the last four or five centuries, we are

to conclude that all our forefathers have forfeited their hopes of

happiness hereafter, because the system of Hum-Fumism did not exist;

which reflection is not only melancholy, but, as I am bound to trust,

not founded in fact. Moreover, sir," added the brother, addressing

himself to the most venerable Gamboogee, "your Lordship must know,

that in Roman Catholic countries the Sunday is universally a day of

gaiety; that dances, and even plays, are performed on that day; and

since, I believe, many of the great Hum-Fums who now hear me, voted

in another place in favour of the Roman Catholics, they should be

cautious, while they cry for the admission of such levities with

one breath, not to condemn, with another, to eternal punishment the

Protestants, who, although it must be confessed they contrive, even

in these times of distress, to enjoy themselves on Sundays, confine

themselves to a walk or drive into the country, with their wives and

children, and a harmless regale of their pipes and their pots, their

buggies and their bottles, or their carriages and their claret, as

the case may be----"

 

"Harmless!" said the great Hum-Fum, the buckles of his wig standing

on end!

 

"And I doubt much," continued the former speaker, "whether the very

proceedings we are about to adopt will not sicken those of moderately

pious lives, and----"

 

"Sicken, sir!" interrupted the great Hum-Fum--"look at the navy,

sir! Do you not perceive that the blessed institution, the Bethel

Union, of which Master Phillips and myself are the main props, has

taken the navy under its care--that we are to control the pleasures

of the sailors--to correct their propensities--dock them of their

girls and their grog--and allowance them even in pig-tail? If this

experiment succeed--if the navy submit to this most proper control

and purification, why should not the army and the laity generally

submit to it too? What did Oliver Cromwell do, sir? Had not he a

preaching army?----"

 

Here a considerable noise of coughing took place; for though the

ultra Hum-Fums were too much involved in zeal to think of analogies,

the designing and radical Hums, who had merely joined the society for

political purposes, felt that the mention of old Noll might throw the

more moderate into a train of thoughts for which they had not as yet been sufficiently prepared.