Kingston records (regionally related)

in more modern phrase & choicer english we had a "special commissioner" present who has, however, such was the [?] of the Club's progress, only been able to report one curious circumstance - We sometimes hear of horses running away & the driver pulling them up; it was reserved for the eighth meeting of this Club to [exhibit?] the strange phenomenon of a horse standing stock still & the driver running away!!! The Club proceeded by the [fortyfork?] road to Portsmouth & so by [Ru?] to the original starting point.

Having proceeded this far, we become painfully unprepared with the fact, that according to inveterate use and want we should now become [dismally?] [?] & lugubriously funny for the amusement of the fair & distinguished audience we have the honor of addressing; but such things we never could perpetrate. Finding our own efforts in that direction most unsuccessful, we have even called

for the assistance of our friends but the state of destitution to which the Club is reduced may be imagined from the fact that even our fat facetious friend the Sheriff has declared himself bankrupt - His entire winter stock of jokes was expended in the report of our fifth meeting & no further supply is to be expected until the opening of the navigation. Our friends have however been most ready with their advice & all in one continued chorus have shouted "You can always fall back on [Graces?]" but that alas! is a subject on which we defy the [hint?] [?] [?] [going?] to say anthing funny - We have even attempted a higher flight but with as little success - We can by claim to [?] the poetic fancy of [?] [?] the fluent diction & little bit of a joker.

Let us content ourselves with the humbler task of having, with prosaic [minuteness?] detailed the mere movements of the day & console ourselves with the reflection that this plain unvarnished tale, bold & unjointed tho' it be may still serve some good purpose - - [it?] [may?] furnish data to some future Macauley, who smiling at the strange characters in which they are [?] may slip into our records, that he may tell something of the amusements of the long bygone generation which flourished under the good Queen Victoria, to some distant age who will write, not with the [?] [gone?] quill, & among whom the [test?] of respectability may be, not as now, the keeping [?] but a [point?] [steam?] [carriage?] or balloon.

[Matthew?] Combe VP.