The excitement of the late election has subsided, and our parish
being once again restored to a state of comparative tranquillity,
we are enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who
take little share in our party contests or in the turmoil and
bustle of public life. And we feel sincere pleasure in
acknowledging here, that in collecting materials for this task we
have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung himself, who has imposed on
us a debt of obligation which we fear we can never repay. The life
of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered description: he
has undergone transitions--not from grave to gay, for he never was
grave--not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his
disposition; his fluctuations have been between poverty in the
extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic
language, 'between nothing to eat and just half enough.' He is
not, as he forcibly remarks, 'one of those fortunate men who, if
they were to dive under one side of a barge stark-naked, would come
up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for
soup in the waistcoat-pocket:' neither is he one of those, whose
spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want.
He is just one of the careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows,
who float, cork-like, on the surface, for the world to play at
hockey with: knocked here, and there, and everywhere: now to the
right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the
bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with the stream
buoyantly and merrily along. Some few months before he was
prevailed upon to stand a contested election for the office of
beadle, necessity attached him to the service of a broker; and on