Mother came in and watched his face, but at sight of her the boy fairly broke down.  Laying his head on her shoulder, “It’s like Polly coming back,” he said.

And so it was, and so it continued to be.

[Illustration:  BOGGS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD HIS PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THANKSGIVING DAY, AND EATEN A HEARTY DINNER AFTERWARD.]

THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON’S SHOW.

BY JENNIE A. OWEN.

“Aunt Jennie,” said my little godson Willie, a few days ago, “wont you go with us to see the Lord Mayor’s show?  There’ll be thirteen elephants and eight clowns, and an elephant picks a man up with his trunk and holds him there.  And then mamma’s going to take me to Sampson’s.  Do you know Sampson, Aunt Jennie?”

“I know about Samson in the Bible, Willie.”

“Oh, not that one; our Sampson is a man in a shop in Oxford street, and he makes such nice boys’ clothes, and he’s the master.”

I have just come home from the Sandwich Islands, where I have been living; I spent a few years, too, in New Zealand and Tahiti, and so have seen many wonderful things on the land and sea; but a Lord Mayor going to be sworn in to his duties, attended by thirteen elephants and a London crowd, would be a novelty to me.  I thought, too, that certain little boys and girls in the Sandwich Islands and the United States, who also call me Aunt Jennie, would like to hear all about it.

This has been an exciting week for the London children.  The fifth of November fell on Sunday, and Guy Fawkes had to wait till Monday to make his appearance.  All that day he was carried about the streets in various shapes and forms, and the naughty, ignorant little boys, in spite of enlightened school-board teaching, sang at our doors: 

  “A ha’penny loaf to feed the Pope,
  A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
  A pint of beer to wash it all down,
  And a jolly good fire to burn him.”

“Oh, papa,” said Willie, as he ran into the breakfast-room for pennies, “aren’t you glad you’re a real man and not a pope?”

At last the ninth, the Lord Mayor’s day, came.  It is also the Prince of Wales’ birthday, so the city would be very gay-looking with all the flags flying.

Alas! it was a dark, dull morning, and a heavy fog hung all over the city.  Alas for the gilt coaches, the steel armor and other braveries! and then the elephants, how could they possibly feel their way all round the city in a thick, yellow fog?  But, happily, by eleven the weather cleared, and the sun shone out brightly.  Such a crowd as there was at our railway depot!  So many bonny, happy little children never went on the same morning to the busy old town before.  It was something new for great elephants to be seen walking through the prosy business streets.  Once before, twenty-seven years ago, when Sir John Musgrave was Lord Mayor, not only elephants, but camels, deer, negroes, beehives, a ship in full sail, and Britannia seated on a car drawn by six horses, had made part of the show; since then, however, no Lord Mayor had been thoughtful enough of little and big children’s pleasure to order out such delightful things, and so this year everybody must go.  To quote from the Daily News: