CHAPTER II--HOW THE PARLOURS ADDED A FEW WORDS


I have the honour of presenting myself by the name of Jackman. I esteem
it a proud privilege to go down to posterity through the instrumentality
of the most remarkable boy that ever lived,--by the name of JEMMY JACKMAN
LIRRIPER,--and of my most worthy and most highly respected friend, Mrs.
Emma Lirriper, of Eighty-one, Norfolk Street, Strand, in the County of
Middlesex, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

It is not for me to express the rapture with which we received that dear
and eminently remarkable boy, on the occurrence of his first Christmas
holidays. Suffice it to observe that when he came flying into the house
with two splendid prizes (Arithmetic, and Exemplary Conduct), Mrs.
Lirriper and myself embraced with emotion, and instantly took him to the
Play, where we were all three admirably entertained.

Nor is it to render homage to the virtues of the best of her good and
honoured sex--whom, in deference to her unassuming worth, I will only
here designate by the initials E. L.--that I add this record to the
bundle of papers with which our, in a most distinguished degree,
remarkable boy has expressed himself delighted, before re-consigning the
same to the left-hand glass closet of Mrs. Lirriper's little bookcase.

Neither is it to obtrude the name of the old original superannuated
obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham's, long (to
his elevation) of Lirriper's. If I could be consciously guilty of that
piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, now that
the name is borne by JEMMY JACKMAN LIRRIPER.