erected for the occasion, the festivities instantly commenced by the
Vice-Goose, Sir EDWARD LYTTON ERLE BULWER, proposing the health of the
gallant Chairman, the Great-grand Goose:--

"Mr. Chairman and prize goose,--The feelings which now agitate my
sensorium on this Michaelmasian occasion stimulate the vibratetiuncles of
the heartiean hypothesis, so as to paralyse the oracular and articulative
apparatus of my loquacious confirmation, overwhelming my soul-fraught
imagination, as the boiling streams of liquid lava, buried in one vast
cinereous mausoleum--the palace-crowded city of the engulphed Pompeii.
(_Immense cheers_.)--I therefore propose a Methusalemic elongation of the
duration of the vital principle of the presiding anserian paragon."
(_Stentorian applause, continued for half-an-hour after the rising of the
Prize Goose_) who said--

"Fellow Geese and Goslings,--Julius Cæsar, when he laid the first stone
of the rock of Gibraltar--Mr. Carstairs, the celebrated caligrapher, when
he indited the inscription on the Rosetta stone--Cleopatra, when she
hemmed Anthony's bandanna with her celebrated needle--the Colossus of
Rhodes, when he walked and won his celebrated match against Captain
Barclay--Galileo, when he discovered and taught his grandmother the mode
of sucking eggs--could not feel prouder than I do upon the present
occasion. (_Cheers_.) These reminiscences, I can assure you, will ever
stick in my grateful gizzard."

Here the gallant Colonel sat down, overcome by his feelings and several
glasses of Betts' best British brandy.

Song--"Goosey, goosey gander."