My Beef Burnt to a Cinder
The family of the Spintexts have, it appears, very lately put forth a scion, in the person of a learned divine, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, being appointed a Select Preacher in 1835, delivered a discourse of the extraordinary duration of an hour and a half! The present Father of the University and Master of Peter-house, Dr. Francis Barnes, upwards of ninety years of age, was one of the heads present. He sat out the first three quarters of an hour, but then began to be fidgetty. Another quarter of an hour expired,—the preacher was still in the midst of his discourse. The Doctor (now become right down impatient,) being seated the lowest (next to the Vice-Chancellor) in Golgotha, or the “Place of Skulls,” as it is called, he moved, first one seat higher (the preacher is still on his legs,) then to a third, then to a fourth, then to a fifth; and before the hour and a half had quite expired, he joined one of the junior esquire bedells at the top, to whom he observed, with that original expression of face for which he is so remarkable, “my beef is burnt to a cinder.”