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diff --git a/933-h/933-h.htm b/933-h/933-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b933f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/933-h/933-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5507 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>More Bab Ballads, by W. S. Gilbert</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .5em; + text-decoration: none;} + span.red { color: red; } + body {background-color: #ffffc0; } + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, More Bab Ballads, by W. S. Gilbert + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: More Bab Ballads + + +Author: W. S. Gilbert + + + +Release Date: August 14, 2019 [eBook #933] +[This file was first posted on June 3, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE BAB BALLADS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1920 Macmillan and Co edition of +“The Bab Ballads”, also from “Fifty Bab +Ballads” 1884 George Routledge and Sons edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/cover.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Public domain cover" +title= +"Public domain cover" + src="images/cover.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>MORE BAB BALLADS</h1> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Bumboat Woman’s +Story</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page214">214</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Two Ogres</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page221">221</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Little Oliver</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page229">229</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Mister William</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page235">235</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Pasha Bailey Ben</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page242">242</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel Flare</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page248">248</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Lost Mr. Blake</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page256">256</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Baby’s Vengeance</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page265">265</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Captain and the +Mermaids</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page273">273</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Annie Protheroe</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page280">280</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">An Unfortunate Likeness</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page287">287</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Gregory Parable, LL.D.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page294">294</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The King of Canoodle-dum</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page301">301</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">First Love</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page309">309</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Brave Alum Bey</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page317">317</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Sir Barnaby Bampton Boo</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page324">324</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Modest Couple</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page330">330</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Martinet</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page338">338</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Sailor Boy to his Lass</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page348">348</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Reverend Simon Magus</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page356">356</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Damon </span><span +class="smcap"><i>v.</i></span><span class="smcap"> +Pythias</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page363">363</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">My Dream</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page368">368</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo +Again</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page376">376</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Worm will Turn</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page383">383</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Haughty Actor</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page391">391</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Two Majors</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page399">399</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Emily, John, James, And I</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page405">405</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Perils of Invisibility</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page413">413</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Old Paul and Old Tim</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page420">420</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Mystic Selvagee</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page426">426</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Cunning Woman</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page433">433</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Phrenology</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page440">440</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Fairy Curate</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page446">446</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Way of Wooing</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page454">454</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Hongree and Mahry</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page460">460</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Etiquette</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page541">541</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>THE +BUMBOAT WOMAN’S STORY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">I’m</span> old, my +dears, and shrivelled with age, and work, and grief,<br /> +My eyes are gone, and my teeth have been drawn by Time, the +Thief!<br /> +For terrible sights I’ve seen, and dangers great I’ve +run—<br /> +I’m nearly seventy now, and my work is almost done!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah! I’ve been young in my time, and +I’ve played the deuce with men!<br /> +I’m speaking of ten years past—I was barely sixty +then:<br /> +My cheeks were mellow and soft, and my eyes were large and +sweet,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Poll Pineapple’s</span> eyes were the +standing toast of the Royal Fleet!</p> +<p class="poetry">A bumboat woman was I, and I faithfully served +the ships<br /> +With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny +dips,<br /> +And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at +nights,<br /> +And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking +midshipmites.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of all the kind commanders who anchored in +Portsmouth Bay,<br /> +By far the sweetest of all was kind <span +class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span>.’<br /> +<span class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span> commanded the +gunboat <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>,<br /> +She was seven and thirty feet in length, and she carried a +gun.</p> +<p class="poetry">With a laudable view of enhancing his +country’s naval pride,<br /> +When people inquired her size, <span class="smcap">Lieutenant +Belaye</span> replied,<br /> +“Oh, my ship, my ship is the first of the Hundred and +Seventy-ones!”<br /> +Which meant her tonnage, but people imagined it meant her +guns.</p> +<p class="poetry">Whenever I went on board he would beckon me +down below,<br /> +“Come down, Little Buttercup, come” (for he loved to +call me so),<br /> +And he’d tell of the fights at sea in which he’d +taken a part,<br /> +And so <span class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span> won poor +<span class="smcap">Poll Pineapple’s</span> heart!</p> +<p class="poetry">But at length his orders came, and he said one +day, said he,<br /> +“I’m ordered to sail with the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i> to +the German Sea.”<br /> +And the Portsmouth maidens wept when they learnt the evil day,<br +/> +For every Portsmouth maid loved good <span +class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">And I went to a back back street, with plenty +of cheap cheap shops,<br /> +And I bought an oilskin hat and a second-hand suit of slops,<br +/> +And I went to <span class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span> (and +he never suspected <i>me</i>!)<br /> +And I entered myself as a chap as wanted to go to sea.</p> +<p class="poetry">We sailed that afternoon at the mystic hour of +one,—<br /> +Remarkably nice young men were the crew of the <i>Hot Cross +Bun</i>,<br /> +I’m sorry to say that I’ve heard that sailors +sometimes swear,<br /> +But I never yet heard a <i>Bun</i> say anything wrong, I +declare.</p> +<p class="poetry">When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a +“Messmate, ho! What cheer?”<br /> +But here, on the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>, it was “How do you +do, my dear?”<br /> +When Jack Tars growl, I believe they growl with a big big +D—<br /> +But the strongest oath of the <i>Hot Cross Buns</i> was a mild +“Dear me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet, though they were all well-bred, you could +scarcely call them slick:<br /> +Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick;<br /> +And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and +fair,<br /> +They spent more time than a sailor should on his back back +hair.</p> +<p class="poetry">They certainly shivered and shook when ordered +aloft to run,<br /> +And they screamed when <span class="smcap">Lieutenant +Belaye</span> discharged his only gun.<br /> +And as he was proud of his gun—such pride is hardly +wrong—<br /> +The Lieutenant was blazing away at intervals all day long.</p> +<p class="poetry">They all agreed very well, though at times you +heard it said<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Bill</span> had a way of his own of +making his lips look red—<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Joe</span> looked quite his age—or +somebody might declare<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Barnacle’s</span> long pig-tail +was never his own own hair.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Belaye</span> would admit +that his men were of no great use to him,<br /> +“But, then,” he would say, “there is little to +do on a gunboat trim<br /> +I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun +too—<br /> +And it <i>is</i> such a treat to sail with a gentle well-bred +crew.”</p> +<p class="poetry">I saw him every day. How the happy +moments sped!<br /> +Reef topsails! Make all taut! There’s dirty +weather ahead!<br /> +(I do not mean that tempests threatened the <i>Hot Cross +Bun</i>:<br /> +In <i>that</i> case, I don’t know whatever we <i>should</i> +have done!)</p> +<p class="poetry">After a fortnight’s cruise, we put into +port one day,<br /> +And off on leave for a week went kind <span +class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span>,<br /> +And after a long long week had passed (and it seemed like a +life),<br /> +<span class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span> returned to his ship +with a fair young wife!</p> +<p class="poetry">He up, and he says, says he, “O crew of +the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>,<br /> +Here is the wife of my heart, for the Church has made us +one!”<br /> +And as he uttered the word, the crew went out of their wits,<br +/> +And all fell down in so many separate fainting-fits.</p> +<p class="poetry">And then their hair came down, or off, as the +case might be,<br /> +And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me,<br /> +Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor’s blue +array,<br /> +To follow the shifting fate of kind <span +class="smcap">Lieutenant Belaye</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">It’s strange to think that <i>I</i> +should ever have loved young men,<br /> +But I’m speaking of ten years past—I was barely sixty +then,<br /> +And now my cheeks are furrowed with grief and age, I trow!<br /> +And poor <span class="smcap">Poll Pineapple’s</span> eyes +have lost their lustre now!</p> +<h2><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span>THE +TWO OGRES</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Good</span> children, list, +if you’re inclined,<br /> + And wicked children too—<br /> +This pretty ballad is designed<br /> + Especially for you.</p> +<p class="poetry">Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold—<br /> + Each <i>traits</i> distinctive had:<br /> +The younger was as good as gold,<br /> + The elder was as bad.</p> +<p class="poetry">A wicked, disobedient son<br /> + Was <span class="smcap">James M’Alpine</span>, +and<br /> +A contrast to the elder one,<br /> + Good <span class="smcap">Applebody Bland</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span +class="smcap">M’Alpine</span>—brutes like him are +few—<br /> + In greediness delights,<br /> +A melancholy victim to<br /> + Unchastened appetites.</p> +<p class="poetry">Good, well-bred children every day<br /> + He ravenously ate,—<br /> +All boys were fish who found their way<br /> + Into <span +class="smcap">M’Alpine’s</span> net:</p> +<p class="poetry">Boys whose good breeding is innate,<br /> + Whose sums are always right;<br /> +And boys who don’t expostulate<br /> + When sent to bed at night;</p> +<p class="poetry">And kindly boys who never search<br /> + The nests of birds of song;<br /> +And serious boys for whom, in church,<br /> + No sermon is too long.</p> +<p class="poetry">Contrast with <span +class="smcap">James’s</span> greedy haste<br /> + And comprehensive hand,<br /> +The nice discriminating taste<br /> + Of <span class="smcap">Applebody Bland</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Bland</span> only eats bad +boys, who swear—<br /> + Who <i>can</i> behave, but +<i>don’t</i>—<br /> +Disgraceful lads who say “don’t care,”<br /> + And “shan’t,” and +“can’t,” and “won’t.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Who wet their shoes and learn to box,<br /> + And say what isn’t true,<br /> +Who bite their nails and jam their frocks,<br /> + And make long noses too;</p> +<p class="poetry">Who kick a nurse’s aged shin,<br /> + And sit in sulky mopes;<br /> +And boys who twirl poor kittens in<br /> + Distracting zoëtropes.</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">James</span>, when he +was quite a youth,<br /> + Had often been to school,<br /> +And though so bad, to tell the truth,<br /> + He wasn’t quite a fool.</p> +<p class="poetry">At logic few with him could vie;<br /> + To his peculiar sect<br /> +He could propose a fallacy<br /> + With singular effect.</p> +<p class="poetry">So, when his Mentors said, +“Expound—<br /> + Why eat good children—why?”<br /> +Upon his Mentors he would round<br /> + With this absurd reply:</p> +<p class="poetry">“I have been taught to love the +good—<br /> + The pure—the unalloyed—<br /> +And wicked boys, I’ve understood,<br /> + I always should avoid.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Why do I eat good children—why?<br +/> + Because I love them so!”<br /> +(But this was empty sophistry,<br /> + As your Papa can show.)</p> +<p class="poetry">Now, though the learning of his friends<br /> + Was truly not immense,<br /> +They had a way of fitting ends<br /> + By rule of common sense.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Away, away!” his Mentors cried,<br +/> + “Thou uncongenial pest!<br /> +A quirk’s a thing we can’t abide,<br /> + A quibble we detest!</p> +<p class="poetry">“A fallacy in your reply<br /> + Our intellect descries,<br /> +Although we don’t pretend to spy<br /> + Exactly where it lies.</p> +<p class="poetry">“In misery and penal woes<br /> + Must end a glutton’s joys;<br /> +And learn how ogres punish those<br /> + Who dare to eat good boys.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Secured by fetter, cramp, and chain,<br +/> + And gagged securely—so—<br /> +You shall be placed in Drury Lane,<br /> + Where only good lads go.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Surrounded there by virtuous boys,<br /> + You’ll suffer torture wus<br /> +Than that which constantly annoys<br /> + Disgraceful <span class="smcap">Tantalus</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">(“If you would learn the woes that vex<br +/> + Poor <span class="smcap">Tantalus</span>, down +there,<br /> +Pray borrow of Papa an ex-<br /> +Purgated <span class="smcap">Lempriere</span>.)</p> +<p class="poetry">“But as for <span +class="smcap">Bland</span> who, as it seems,<br /> + Eats only naughty boys,<br /> +We’ve planned a recompense that teems<br /> + With gastronomic joys.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Where wicked youths in crowds are +stowed<br /> + He shall unquestioned rule,<br /> +And have the run of Hackney Road<br /> + Reformatory School!”</p> +<h2><a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +229</span>LITTLE OLIVER</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Earl Joyce</span> he was a +kind old party<br /> + Whom nothing ever could put out,<br /> +Though eighty-two, he still was hearty,<br /> + Excepting as regarded gout.</p> +<p class="poetry">He had one unexampled daughter,<br /> + The <span class="smcap">Lady Minnie-haha +Joyce</span>,<br /> +Fair <span class="smcap">Minnie-haha</span>, “Laughing +Water,”<br /> + So called from her melodious voice.</p> +<p class="poetry">By Nature planned for lover-capture,<br /> + Her beauty every heart assailed;<br /> +The good old nobleman with rapture<br /> + Observed how widely she prevailed</p> +<p class="poetry">Aloof from all the lordly flockings<br /> + Of titled swells who worshipped her,<br /> +There stood, in pumps and cotton stockings,<br /> + One humble lover—<span +class="smcap">Oliver</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">He was no peer by Fortune petted,<br /> + His name recalled no bygone age;<br /> +He was no lordling coronetted—<br /> + Alas! he was a simple page!</p> +<p class="poetry">With vain appeals he never bored her,<br /> + But stood in silent sorrow by—<br /> +He knew how fondly he adored her,<br /> + And knew, alas! how hopelessly!</p> +<p class="poetry">Well grounded by a village tutor<br /> + In languages alive and past,<br /> +He’d say unto himself, “Knee-suitor,<br /> + Oh, do not go beyond your last!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But though his name could boast no handle,<br +/> + He could not every hope resign;<br /> +As moths will hover round a candle,<br /> + So hovered he about her shrine.</p> +<p class="poetry">The brilliant candle dazed the moth well:<br /> + One day she sang to her Papa<br /> +The air that <span class="smcap">Marie</span> sings with <span +class="smcap">Bothwell</span><br /> + In <span class="smcap">Neidermeyer’s</span> +opera.</p> +<p class="poetry">(Therein a stable boy, it’s stated,<br /> + Devoutly loved a noble dame,<br /> +Who ardently reciprocated<br /> + His rather injudicious flame.)</p> +<p class="poetry">And then, before the piano closing<br /> + (He listened coyly at the door),<br /> +She sang a song of her composing—<br /> + I give one verse from half a score:</p> +<h3><span class="smcap">Ballad</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><i>Why</i>, <i>pretty page</i>, <i>art ever +sighing</i>?<br /> +<i>Is sorrow in thy heartlet lying</i>?<br /> + <i>Come</i>, <i>set +a-ringing</i><br /> + <i>Thy laugh +entrancing</i>,<br /> + <i>And ever singing</i><br /> + <i>And ever +dancing</i>.<br /> + <i>Ever singing</i>, <i>Tra</i>! +<i>la</i>! <i>la</i>!<br /> + <i>Ever dancing</i>, <i>Tra</i>! +<i>la</i>! <i>la</i>!<br /> + <i>Ever +singing</i>, <i>ever dancing</i>,<br /> + <i>Ever +singing</i>, <i>Tra</i>! <i>la</i>! <i>la</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">He skipped for joy like little muttons,<br /> + He danced like Esmeralda’s kid.<br /> +(She did not mean a boy in buttons,<br /> + Although he fancied that she did.)</p> +<p class="poetry">Poor lad! convinced he thus would win her,<br +/> + He wore out many pairs of soles;<br /> +He danced when taking down the dinner—<br /> + He danced when bringing up the coals.</p> +<p class="poetry">He danced and sang (however laden)<br /> + With his incessant “Tra! la! la!”<br /> +Which much surprised the noble maiden,<br /> + And puzzled even her Papa.</p> +<p class="poetry">He nourished now his flame and fanned it,<br /> + He even danced at work below.<br /> +The upper servants wouldn’t stand it,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Bowles</span> the butler +told him so.</p> +<p class="poetry">At length on impulse acting blindly,<br /> + His love he laid completely bare;<br /> +The gentle Earl received him kindly<br /> + And told the lad to take a chair.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, sir,” the suitor uttered +sadly,<br /> + “Don’t give your indignation vent;<br /> +I fear you think I’m acting madly,<br /> + Perhaps you think me insolent?”</p> +<p class="poetry">The kindly Earl repelled the notion;<br /> + His noble bosom heaved a sigh,<br /> +His fingers trembled with emotion,<br /> + A tear stood in his mild blue eye:</p> +<p class="poetry">For, oh! the scene recalled too plainly<br /> + The half-forgotten time when he,<br /> +A boy of nine, had worshipped vainly<br /> + A governess of forty-three!</p> +<p class="poetry">“My boy,” he said, in tone +consoling,<br /> + “Give up this idle fancy—do—<br /> +The song you heard my daughter trolling<br /> + Did not, indeed, refer to you.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I feel for you, poor boy, acutely;<br /> + I would not wish to give you pain;<br /> +Your pangs I estimate minutely,—<br /> + I, too, have loved, and loved in vain.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But still your humble rank and +station<br /> + For <span class="smcap">Minnie</span> surely are not +meet”—<br /> +He said much more in conversation<br /> + Which it were needless to repeat.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now I’m prepared to bet a guinea,<br /> + Were this a mere dramatic case,<br /> +The page would have eloped with <span +class="smcap">Minnie</span>,<br /> + But, no—he only left his place.</p> +<p class="poetry">The simple Truth is my detective,<br /> + With me Sensation can’t abide;<br /> +The Likely beats the mere Effective,<br /> + And Nature is my only guide.</p> +<h2><a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +235</span>MISTER WILLIAM</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Oh</span>, listen to the +tale of <span class="smcap">Mister William</span>, if you +please,<br /> +Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas.<br /> +He forged a party’s will, which caused anxiety and +strife,<br /> +Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life.</p> +<p class="poetry">He was a kindly goodly man, and naturally +prone,<br /> +Instead of taking others’ gold, to give away his own.<br /> +But he had heard of Vice, and longed for only once to +strike—<br /> +To plan <i>one</i> little wickedness—to see what it was +like.</p> +<p class="poetry">He argued with himself, and said, “A +spotless man am I;<br /> +I can’t be more respectable, however hard I try!<br /> +For six and thirty years I’ve always been as good as +gold,<br /> +And now for half an hour I’ll plan infamy untold!</p> +<p class="poetry">“A baby who is wicked at the early age of +one,<br /> +And then reforms—and dies at thirty-six a spotless son,<br +/> +Is never, never saddled with his babyhood’s defect,<br /> +But earns from worthy men consideration and respect.</p> +<p class="poetry">“So one who never revelled in +discreditable tricks<br /> +Until he reached the comfortable age of thirty-six,<br /> +May then for half an hour perpetrate a deed of shame,<br /> +Without incurring permanent disgrace, or even blame.</p> +<p class="poetry">“That babies don’t commit such +crimes as forgery is true,<br /> +But little sins develop, if you leave ’em to accrue;<br /> +And he who shuns all vices as successive seasons roll,<br /> +Should reap at length the benefit of so much self-control.</p> +<p class="poetry">“The common sin of +babyhood—objecting to be drest—<br /> +If you leave it to accumulate at compound interest,<br /> +For anything you know, may represent, if you’re alive,<br +/> +A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Still, I wouldn’t take advantage +of this fact, but be content<br /> +With some pardonable folly—it’s a mere experiment.<br +/> +The greater the temptation to go wrong, the less the sin;<br /> +So with something that’s particularly tempting I’ll +begin.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I would not steal a penny, for my +income’s very fair—<br /> +I do not want a penny—I have pennies and to spare—<br +/> +And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till,<br /> +The sin would be enormous—the temptation being +<i>nil</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But if I broke asunder all such +pettifogging bounds,<br /> +And forged a party’s Will for (say) Five Hundred Thousand +Pounds,<br /> +With such an irresistible temptation to a haul,<br /> +Of course the sin must be infinitesimally small.</p> +<p class="poetry">“There’s <span +class="smcap">Wilson</span> who is dying—he has wealth from +Stock and rent—<br /> +If I divert his riches from their natural descent,<br /> +I’m placed in a position to indulge each little +whim.”<br /> +So he diverted them—and they, in turn, diverted him.</p> +<p class="poetry">Unfortunately, though, by some unpardonable +flaw,<br /> +Temptation isn’t recognized by Britain’s Common +Law;<br /> +Men found him out by some peculiarity of touch,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">William</span> got a “lifer,” +which annoyed him very much.</p> +<p class="poetry">For, ah! he never reconciled himself to life in +gaol,<br /> +He fretted and he pined, and grew dispirited and pale;<br /> +He was numbered like a cabman, too, which told upon him so<br /> +That his spirits, once so buoyant, grew uncomfortably low.</p> +<p class="poetry">And sympathetic gaolers would remark, +“It’s very true,<br /> +He ain’t been brought up common, like the likes of me and +you.”<br /> +So they took him into hospital, and gave him mutton chops,<br /> +And chocolate, and arrowroot, and buns, and malt and hops.</p> +<p class="poetry">Kind Clergymen, besides, grew interested in his +fate,<br /> +Affected by the details of his pitiable state.<br /> +They waited on the Secretary, somewhere in Whitehall,<br /> +Who said he would receive them any day they liked to call.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Consider, sir, the hardship of this +interesting case:<br /> +A prison life brings with it something very like disgrace;<br /> +It’s telling on young <span class="smcap">William</span>, +who’s reduced to skin and bone—<br /> +Remember he’s a gentleman, with money of his own.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He had an ample income, and of course he +stands in need<br /> +Of sherry with his dinner, and his customary weed;<br /> +No delicacies now can pass his gentlemanly lips—<br /> +He misses his sea-bathing and his continental trips.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He says the other prisoners are +commonplace and rude;<br /> +He says he cannot relish uncongenial prison food.<br /> +When quite a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad,<br +/> +And other educational advantages he’s had.</p> +<p class="poetry">“A burglar or garotter, or, indeed, a +common thief<br /> +Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef,<br /> +Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford,—<br +/> +A cut above the diet in a common workhouse ward.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But beef and mutton-broth don’t +seem to suit our <span class="smcap">William’s</span> +whim,<br /> +A boon to other prisoners—a punishment to him.<br /> +It never was intended that the discipline of gaol<br /> +Should dash a convict’s spirits, sir, or make him thin or +pale.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Good Gracious Me!” that +sympathetic Secretary cried,<br /> +“Suppose in prison fetters <span class="smcap">Mister +William</span> should have died!<br /> +Dear me, of course! Imprisonment for <i>Life</i> his +sentence saith:<br /> +I’m very glad you mentioned it—it might have been For +Death!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Release him with a +ticket—he’ll be better then, no doubt,<br /> +And tell him I apologize.” So <span +class="smcap">Mister William’s</span> out.<br /> +I hope he will be careful in his manuscripts, I’m sure,<br +/> +And not begin experimentalizing any more.</p> +<h2><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +242</span>PASHA BAILEY BEN</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">proud</span> Pasha was +<span class="smcap">Bailey Ben</span>,<br /> +His wives were three, his tails were ten;<br /> +His form was dignified, but stout,<br /> +Men called him “Little Roundabout.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Importance</i></p> +<p class="poetry">Pale Pilgrims came from o’er the sea<br +/> +To wait on <span class="smcap">Pasha Bailey</span> B.,<br /> +All bearing presents in a crowd,<br /> +For B. was poor as well as proud.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Presents</i></p> +<p class="poetry">They brought him onions strung on ropes,<br /> +And cold boiled beef, and telescopes,<br /> +And balls of string, and shrimps, and guns,<br /> +And chops, and tacks, and hats, and buns.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>More of them</i></p> +<p class="poetry">They brought him white kid gloves, and +pails,<br /> +And candlesticks, and potted quails,<br /> +And capstan-bars, and scales and weights,<br /> +And ornaments for empty grates.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Why I mention these</i></p> +<p class="poetry">My tale is not of these—oh no!<br /> +I only mention them to show<br /> +The divers gifts that divers men<br /> +Brought o’er the sea to <span class="smcap">Bailey +Ben</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Confidant</i></p> +<p class="poetry">A confidant had <span +class="smcap">Bailey</span> B.,<br /> +A gay Mongolian dog was he;<br /> +I am not good at Turkish names,<br /> +And so I call him <span class="smcap">Simple James</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Confidant’s +Countenance</i></p> +<p class="poetry">A dreadful legend you might trace<br /> +In <span class="smcap">Simple James’s</span> honest +face,<br /> +For there you read, in Nature’s print,<br /> +“A Scoundrel of the Deepest Tint.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Character</i></p> +<p class="poetry">A deed of blood, or fire, or flames,<br /> +Was meat and drink to <span class="smcap">Simple James</span>:<br +/> +To hide his guilt he did not plan,<br /> +But owned himself a bad young man.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Author to his Reader</i></p> +<p class="poetry">And why on earth good <span +class="smcap">Bailey Ben</span><br /> +(The wisest, noblest, best of men)<br /> +Made <span class="smcap">Simple James</span> his right-hand +man<br /> +Is quite beyond my mental span.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The same</i>, +<i>continued</i></p> +<p class="poetry">But there—enough of gruesome deeds!<br /> +My heart, in thinking of them, bleeds;<br /> +And so let <span class="smcap">Simple James</span> take +wing,—<br /> +’Tis not of him I’m going to sing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Pasha’s Clerk</i></p> +<p class="poetry">Good <span class="smcap">Pasha Bailey</span> +kept a clerk<br /> +(For <span class="smcap">Bailey</span> only made his mark),<br /> +His name was <span class="smcap">Matthew Wycombe Coo</span>,<br +/> +A man of nearly forty-two.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Accomplishments</i></p> +<p class="poetry">No person that I ever knew<br /> +Could “yödel” half as well as <span +class="smcap">Coo</span>,<br /> +And Highlanders exclaimed, “Eh, weel!”<br /> +When <span class="smcap">Coo</span> began to dance a reel.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>His Kindness to the +Pasha’s Wives</i></p> +<p class="poetry">He used to dance and sing and play<br /> +In such an unaffected way,<br /> +He cheered the unexciting lives<br /> +Of <span class="smcap">Pasha Bailey’s</span> lovely +wives.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Author to his Reader</i></p> +<p class="poetry">But why should I encumber you<br /> +With histories of <span class="smcap">Matthew Coo</span>?<br /> +Let <span class="smcap">Matthew Coo</span> at once take +wing,—<br /> +’Tis not of <span class="smcap">Coo</span> I’m going +to sing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Author’s Muse</i></p> +<p class="poetry">Let me recall my wandering Muse;<br /> +She <i>shall</i> be steady if I choose—<br /> +She roves, instead of helping me<br /> +To tell the deeds of <span class="smcap">Bailey</span> B.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Pasha’s +Visitor</i></p> +<p class="poetry">One morning knocked, at half-past eight,<br /> +A tall Red Indian at his gate.<br /> +In Turkey, as you’re p’raps aware,<br /> +Red Indians are extremely rare.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Visitor’s +Outfit</i></p> +<p class="poetry">Mocassins decked his graceful legs,<br /> +His eyes were black, and round as eggs,<br /> +And on his neck, instead of beads,<br /> +Hung several Catawampous seeds.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>What the Visitor said</i></p> +<p class="poetry">“Ho, ho!” he said, “thou +pale-faced one,<br /> +Poor offspring of an Eastern sun,<br /> +You’ve <i>never</i> seen the Red Man skip<br /> +Upon the banks of Mississip!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Author’s +Moderation</i></p> +<p class="poetry">To say that <span class="smcap">Bailey</span> +oped his eyes<br /> +Would feebly paint his great surprise—<br /> +To say it almost made him die<br /> +Would be to paint it much too high.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Author to his Reader</i></p> +<p class="poetry">But why should I ransack my head<br /> +To tell you all that Indian said;<br /> +We’ll let the Indian man take wing,—<br /> +’Tis not of him I’m going to sing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>The Reader to the Author</i></p> +<p class="poetry">Come, come, I say, that’s quite enough<br +/> +Of this absurd disjointed stuff;<br /> +Now let’s get on to that affair<br /> +About <span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel Flare</span>.</p> +<h2><a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +248</span>LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FLARE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> earth has armies +plenty,<br /> + And semi-warlike bands,<br /> +I dare say there are twenty<br /> + In European lands;<br /> +But, oh! in no direction<br /> + You’d find one to compare<br /> +In brotherly affection<br /> + With that of <span class="smcap">Colonel +Flare</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">His soldiers might be rated<br /> + As military Pearls.<br /> +As unsophisticated<br /> + As pretty little girls!<br /> +They never smoked or ratted,<br /> + Or talked of Sues or Polls;<br /> +The Sergeant-Major tatted,<br /> + The others nursed their dolls.</p> +<p class="poetry">He spent his days in teaching<br /> + These truly solemn facts;<br /> +There’s little use in preaching,<br /> + Or circulating tracts.<br /> +(The vainest plan invented<br /> + For stifling other creeds,<br /> +Unless it’s supplemented<br /> + With charitable <i>deeds</i>.)</p> +<p class="poetry">He taught his soldiers kindly<br /> + To give at Hunger’s call:<br /> +“Oh, better far give blindly,<br /> + Than never give at all!<br /> +Though sympathy be kindled<br /> + By Imposition’s game,<br /> +Oh, better far be swindled<br /> + Than smother up its flame!”</p> +<p class="poetry">His means were far from ample<br /> + For pleasure or for dress,<br /> +Yet note this bright example<br /> + Of single-heartedness:<br /> +Though ranking as a Colonel,<br /> + His pay was but a groat,<br /> +While their reward diurnal<br /> + Was—each a five-pound note.</p> +<p class="poetry">Moreover,—this evinces<br /> + His kindness, you’ll allow,—<br /> +He fed them all like princes,<br /> + And lived himself on cow.<br /> +He set them all regaling<br /> + On curious wines, and dear,<br /> +While he would sit pale-ale-ing,<br /> + Or quaffing ginger-beer.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then at his instigation<br /> + (A pretty fancy this)<br /> +Their daily pay and ration<br /> + He’d take in change for his;<br /> +They brought it to him weekly,<br /> + And he without a groan,<br /> +Would take it from them meekly<br /> + And give them all his own!</p> +<p class="poetry">Though not exactly knighted<br /> + As knights, of course, should be,<br /> +Yet no one so delighted<br /> + In harmless chivalry.<br /> +If peasant girl or ladye<br /> + Beneath misfortunes sank,<br /> +Whate’er distinctions made he,<br /> + They were not those of rank.</p> +<p class="poetry">No maiden young and comely<br /> + Who wanted good advice<br /> +(However poor or homely)<br /> + Need ask him for it twice.<br /> +He’d wipe away the blindness<br /> + That comes of teary dew;<br /> +His sympathetic kindness<br /> + No sort of limit knew.</p> +<p class="poetry">He always hated dealing<br /> + With men who schemed or planned;<br /> +A person harsh—unfeeling—<br /> + The Colonel could not stand.<br /> +He hated cold, suspecting,<br /> + Official men in blue,<br /> +Who pass their lives detecting<br /> + The crimes that others do.</p> +<p class="poetry">For men who’d shoot a sparrow,<br /> + Or immolate a worm<br /> +Beneath a farmer’s harrow,<br /> + He could not find a term.<br /> +Humanely, ay, and knightly<br /> + He dealt with such an one;<br /> +He took and tied him tightly,<br /> + And blew him from a gun.</p> +<p class="poetry">The earth has armies plenty,<br /> + And semi-warlike bands,<br /> +I’m certain there are twenty<br /> + In European lands;<br /> +But, oh! in no direction<br /> + You’d find one to compare<br /> +In brotherly affection<br /> + With that of <span class="smcap">Colonel +Flare</span>.</p> +<h2><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 256</span>LOST +MR. BLAKE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Mr. Blake</span> was a +regular out-and-out hardened sinner,<br /> + Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to +speak,<br /> +He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass +of grog on a Sunday after dinner,<br /> +And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or—if +Good Friday or Christmas Day happened to come in it—three +times a week.</p> +<p class="poetry">He was quite indifferent as to the particular +kinds of dresses<br /> + That the clergyman wore at church where he used to +go to pray,<br /> +And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap’s +distresses,<br /> + He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, +hole-and-corner sort of way.</p> +<p class="poetry">I have known him indulge in profane, +ungentlemanly emphatics,<br /> + When the Protestant Church has been divided on the +subject of the proper width of a chasuble’s hem;<br /> +I have even known him to sneer at albs—and as for +dalmatics,<br /> + Words can’t convey an idea of the contempt he +expressed for <i>them</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">He didn’t believe in persons who, not +being well off themselves, are obliged to confine their +charitable exertions to collecting money from wealthier +people,<br /> + And looked upon individuals of the former class as +ecclesiastical hawks;<br /> +He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with +his priest’s robes than with his church or his steeple,<br +/> + And that he did not consider his soul imperilled +because somebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to +dress himself up like an exaggerated <span class="smcap">Guy +Fawkes</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably +shameless<br /> + That he actually went a-courting a very respectable +and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of <span +class="smcap">Biggs</span>.<br /> +She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always +been particularly blameless;<br /> + Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate +competence, owing to some fortunate speculations in the matter of +figs.</p> +<p class="poetry">She was an excellent person in every +way—and won the respect even of <span class="smcap">Mrs. +Grundy</span>,<br /> + She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn’t +have wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.<br /> +She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of +Sunday,<br /> + And being a good economist, and charitable besides, +she took all the bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts +and candle-ends (when she had quite done with them), and made +them into an excellent soup for the deserving poor.</p> +<p class="poetry">I am sorry to say that she rather took to <span +class="smcap">Blake</span>—that outcast of society,<br /> + And when respectable brothers who were fond of her +began to look dubious and to cough,<br /> +She would say, “Oh, my friends, it’s because I hope +to bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and +propriety,”<br /> + And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his +faults, was uncommonly well off.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when <span class="smcap">Mr. +Blake’s</span> dissipated friends called his attention to +the frown or the pout of her,<br /> + Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to +savour of an unmentionable place,<br /> +He would say that “she would be a very decent old girl when +all that nonsense was knocked out of her,”<br /> + And his method of knocking it out of her is one that +covered him with disgrace.</p> +<p class="poetry">She was fond of going to church services four +times every Sunday, and, four or five times in the week, and +never seemed to pall of them,<br /> + So he hunted out all the churches within a +convenient distance that had services at different hours, so to +speak;<br /> +And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their +going to all of them,<br /> + So they contrived to do about twelve churches every +Sunday, and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in +the course of the week.</p> +<p class="poetry">She was fond of dropping his sovereigns +ostentatiously into the plate, and she liked to see them stand +out rather conspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns and +shillings,<br /> + So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by +any extraordinary chance there wasn’t a charity sermon +anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one for him and +one for her) into the poor-box at the door;<br /> +And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the +housekeeping money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets +and frillings,<br /> + She soon began to find that even charity, if you +allow it to interfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an +intolerable bore.</p> +<p class="poetry">On Sundays she was always melancholy and +anything but good society,<br /> + For that day in her household was a day of sighings +and sobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads:<br /> +She wouldn’t hear of a button being sewn on a glove, +because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,<br /> + And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing +themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the +drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlour +dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">Blake</span> even went +further than that, and said that people should do their own works +of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a menial +situation,<br /> + So he wouldn’t allow his servants to do so +much as even answer a bell.<br /> +Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the +second floor, much against her inclination,—<br /> + And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates +these ballads has put him in a cocked hat is more than I can +tell.</p> +<p class="poetry">After about three months of this sort of thing, +taking the smooth with the rough of it,<br /> + (Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes +was not her notion of connubial bliss),<br /> +<span class="smcap">Mrs. Blake</span> began to find that she had +pretty nearly had enough of it,<br /> + And came, in course of time, to think that <span +class="smcap">Blake’s</span> own original line of conduct +wasn’t so much amiss.</p> +<p class="poetry">And now that wicked person—that +detestable sinner (“<span class="smcap">Belial +Blake</span>” his friends and well-wishers call him for his +atrocities),<br /> + And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian +brothers dislike and pity so,<br /> +Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and +occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial +fondlings and affectionate reciprocities,<br /> + And I should like to know where in the world (or +rather, out of it) they expect to go!</p> +<h2><a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 265</span>THE +BABY’S VENGEANCE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Weary</span> at heart and +extremely ill<br /> +Was <span class="smcap">Paley Vollaire</span> of +Bromptonville,<br /> +In a dirty lodging, with fever down,<br /> +Close to the Polygon, Somers Town.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Paley Vollaire</span> was +an only son<br /> +(For why? His mother had had but one),<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Paley</span> inherited gold and +grounds<br /> +Worth several hundred thousand pounds.</p> +<p class="poetry">But he, like many a rich young man,<br /> +Through this magnificent fortune ran,<br /> +And nothing was left for his daily needs<br /> +But duplicate copies of mortgage-deeds.</p> +<p class="poetry">Shabby and sorry and sorely sick,<br /> +He slept, and dreamt that the clock’s “tick, +tick,”<br /> +Was one of the Fates, with a long sharp knife,<br /> +Snicking off bits of his shortened life.</p> +<p class="poetry">He woke and counted the pips on the walls,<br +/> +The outdoor passengers’ loud footfalls,<br /> +And reckoned all over, and reckoned again,<br /> +The little white tufts on his counterpane.</p> +<p class="poetry">A medical man to his bedside came.<br /> +(I can’t remember that doctor’s name),<br /> +And said, “You’ll die in a very short while<br /> +If you don’t set sail for Madeira’s isle.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Go to Madeira? goodness me!<br /> +I haven’t the money to pay your fee!”<br /> +“Then, <span class="smcap">Paley Vollaire</span>,” +said the leech, “good bye;<br /> +I’ll come no more, for you’re sure to die.”</p> +<p class="poetry">He sighed and he groaned and smote his +breast;<br /> +“Oh, send,” said he, “for <span +class="smcap">Frederick West</span>,<br /> +Ere senses fade or my eyes grow dim:<br /> +I’ve a terrible tale to whisper him!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Poor was <span +class="smcap">Frederick’s</span> lot in life,—<br /> +A dustman he with a fair young wife,<br /> +A worthy man with a hard-earned store,<br /> +A hundred and seventy pounds—or more.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Frederick</span> came, and +he said, “Maybe<br /> +You’ll say what you happened to want with me?”<br /> +“Wronged boy,” said <span class="smcap">Paley +Vollaire</span>, “I will,<br /> +But don’t you fidget yourself—sit still.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">“’Tis now some thirty-seven years +ago<br /> + Since first began the plot that I’m +revealing,<br /> +A fine young woman, whom you ought to know,<br /> + Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing.<br +/> +Herself by means of mangling reimbursing,<br /> +And now and then (at intervals) wet-nursing.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Two little babes dwelt in their humble +cot:<br /> + One was her own—the other only lent to her:<br +/> +<i>Her own she slighted</i>. Tempted by a lot<br /> + Of gold and silver regularly sent to her,<br /> +She ministered unto the little other<br /> +In the capacity of foster-mother.</p> +<p class="poetry">“<i>I was her own</i>. Oh! how I +lay and sobbed<br /> + In my poor cradle—deeply, deeply cursing<br /> +The rich man’s pampered bantling, who had robbed<br /> + My only birthright—an attentive nursing!<br /> +Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother,<br /> +I gnashed my gums—which terrified my mother.</p> +<p class="poetry">“One day—it was quite early in the +week—<br /> + I <i>in</i> <span class="GutSmall">MY</span> +<i>cradle having placed the bantling</i>—<br /> +Crept into his! He had not learnt to speak,<br /> + But I could see his face with anger mantling.<br /> +It was imprudent—well, disgraceful maybe,<br /> +For, oh! I was a bad, black-hearted baby!</p> +<p class="poetry">“So great a luxury was food, I think<br +/> + No wickedness but I was game to try for it.<br /> +<i>Now</i> if I wanted anything to drink<br /> + At any time, I only had to cry for it!<br /> +<i>Once</i>, if I dared to weep, the bottle lacking,<br /> +My blubbering involved a serious smacking!</p> +<p class="poetry">“We grew up in the usual way—my +friend,<br /> + My foster-brother, daily growing thinner,<br /> +While gradually I began to mend,<br /> + And thrived amazingly on double dinner.<br /> +And every one, besides my foster-mother,<br /> +Believed that either of us was the other.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I came into <i>his</i> wealth—I +bore <i>his</i> name,<br /> + I bear it still—<i>his</i> property I +squandered—<br /> +I mortgaged everything—and now (oh, shame!)<br /> + Into a Somers Town shake-down I’ve +wandered!<br /> +I am no <span class="smcap">Paley</span>—no, <span +class="smcap">Vollaire</span>—it’s true, my boy!<br +/> +The only rightful <span class="smcap">Paley</span> V. is +<i>you</i>, my boy!</p> +<p class="poetry">“And all I have is yours—and yours +is mine.<br /> + I still may place you in your true position:<br /> +Give me the pounds you’ve saved, and I’ll resign<br +/> + My noble name, my rank, and my condition.<br /> +So far my wickedness in falsely owning<br /> +Your vasty wealth, I am at last atoning!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Frederick</span> he was a +simple soul,<br /> +He pulled from his pocket a bulky roll,<br /> +And gave to <span class="smcap">Paley</span> his hard-earned +store,<br /> +A hundred and seventy pounds or more.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Paley Vollaire</span>, with +many a groan,<br /> +Gave <span class="smcap">Frederick</span> all that he called his +own,—<br /> +Two shirts and a sock, and a vest of jean,<br /> +A Wellington boot and a bamboo cane.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Fred</span> (entitled +to all things there)<br /> +He took the fever from <span class="smcap">Mr. +Vollaire</span>,<br /> +Which killed poor <span class="smcap">Frederick +West</span>. Meanwhile<br /> +<span class="smcap">Vollaire</span> sailed off to Madeira’s +isle.</p> +<h2><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 273</span>THE +CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS</h2> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">sing</span> a legend of +the sea,<br /> +So hard-a-port upon your lee!<br /> + A ship on starboard tack!<br /> +She’s bound upon a private cruise—<br /> +(This is the kind of spice I use<br /> + To give a salt-sea smack).</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold, on every afternoon<br /> +(Save in a gale or strong Monsoon)<br /> + Great <span class="smcap">Captain +Capel Cleggs</span><br /> +(Great morally, though rather short)<br /> +Sat at an open weather-port<br /> + And aired his shapely legs.</p> +<p class="poetry">And Mermaids hung around in flocks,<br /> +On cable chains and distant rocks,<br /> + To gaze upon those limbs;<br /> +For legs like those, of flesh and bone,<br /> +Are things “not generally known”<br /> + To any Merman <span +class="smcap">Timbs</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">But Mermen didn’t seem to care<br /> +Much time (as far as I’m aware)<br /> + With <span +class="smcap">Cleggs’s</span> legs to spend;<br /> +Though Mermaids swam around all day<br /> +And gazed, exclaiming, “<i>That’s</i> the way<br /> + A gentleman should end!</p> +<p class="poetry">“A pair of legs with well-cut knees,<br +/> +And calves and ankles such as these<br /> + Which we in rapture hail,<br /> +Are far more eloquent, it’s clear<br /> +(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),<br /> + Than any nasty tail.”</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Cleggs</span>—a +worthy kind old boy—<br /> +Rejoiced to add to others’ joy,<br /> + And, when the day was dry,<br /> +Because it pleased the lookers-on,<br /> +He sat from morn till night—though con-<br /> + Stitutionally shy.</p> +<p class="poetry">At first the Mermen laughed, “Pooh! +pooh!”<br /> +But finally they jealous grew,<br /> + And sounded loud recalls;<br /> +But vainly. So these fishy males<br /> +Declared they too would clothe their tails<br /> + In silken hose and smalls.</p> +<p class="poetry">They set to work, these water-men,<br /> +And made their nether robes—but when<br /> + They drew with dainty touch<br /> +The kerseymere upon their tails,<br /> +They found it scraped against their scales,<br /> + And hurt them very much.</p> +<p class="poetry">The silk, besides, with which they chose<br /> +To deck their tails by way of hose<br /> + (They never thought of shoon),<br +/> +For such a use was much too thin,—<br /> +It tore against the caudal fin,<br /> + And “went in ladders” +soon.</p> +<p class="poetry">So they designed another plan:<br /> +They sent their most seductive man<br /> + This note to him to show—<br +/> +“Our Monarch sends to <span class="smcap">Captain +Cleggs</span><br /> +His humble compliments, and begs<br /> + He’ll join him down +below;</p> +<p class="poetry">“We’ve pleasant homes below the +sea—<br /> +Besides, if <span class="smcap">Captain Cleggs</span> should +be<br /> + (As our advices say)<br /> +A judge of Mermaids, he will find<br /> +Our lady-fish of every kind<br /> + Inspection will repay.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Good <span class="smcap">Capel</span> sent a +kind reply,<br /> +For <span class="smcap">Capel</span> thought he could descry<br +/> + An admirable plan<br /> +To study all their ways and laws—<br /> +(But not their lady-fish, because<br /> + He was a married man).</p> +<p class="poetry">The Merman sank—the Captain too<br /> +Jumped overboard, and dropped from view<br /> + Like stone from catapult;<br /> +And when he reached the Merman’s lair,<br /> +He certainly was welcomed there,<br /> + But, ah! with what result?</p> +<p class="poetry">They didn’t let him learn their law,<br +/> +Or make a note of what he saw,<br /> + Or interesting mem.:<br /> +The lady-fish he couldn’t find,<br /> +But that, of course, he didn’t mind—<br /> + He didn’t come for them.</p> +<p class="poetry">For though, when <span class="smcap">Captain +Capel</span> sank,<br /> +The Mermen drawn in double rank<br /> + Gave him a hearty hail,<br /> +Yet when secure of <span class="smcap">Captain Cleggs</span>,<br +/> +They cut off both his lovely legs,<br /> + And gave him <i>such</i> a +tail!</p> +<p class="poetry">When <span class="smcap">Captain Cleggs</span> +returned aboard,<br /> +His blithesome crew convulsive roar’d,<br /> + To see him altered so.<br /> +The Admiralty did insist<br /> +That he upon the Half-pay List<br /> + Immediately should go.</p> +<p class="poetry">In vain declared the poor old salt,<br /> +“It’s my misfortune—not my fault,”<br /> + With tear and trembling +lip—<br /> +In vain poor <span class="smcap">Capel</span> begged and +begged.<br /> +“A man must be completely legged<br /> + Who rules a British +ship.”</p> +<p class="poetry">So spake the stern First Lord aloud—<br +/> +He was a wag, though very proud,<br /> + And much rejoiced to say,<br /> +“You’re only half a captain now—<br /> +And so, my worthy friend, I vow<br /> + You’ll only get +half-pay!”</p> +<h2><a name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +280</span>ANNIE PROTHEROE</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A LEGEND OF +STRATFORD-LE-BOW</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Oh</span>! listen to the +tale of little <span class="smcap">Annie Protheroe</span>.<br /> +She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of <span +class="smcap">Bow</span>;<br /> +She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day—<br +/> +A gentle executioner whose name was <span class="smcap">Gilbert +Clay</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">I think I hear you say, “A dreadful +subject for your rhymes!”<br /> +O reader, do not shrink—he didn’t live in modern +times!<br /> +He lived so long ago (the sketch will show it at a glance)<br /> +That all his actions glitter with the lime-light of Romance.</p> +<p class="poetry">In busy times he laboured at his gentle craft +all day—<br /> +“No doubt you mean his Cal-craft,” you amusingly will +say—<br /> +But, no—he didn’t operate with common bits of +string,<br /> +He was a Public Headsman, which is quite another thing.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when his work was over, they would ramble +o’er the lea,<br /> +And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Annie’s</span> simple prattle +entertained him on his walk,<br /> +For public executions formed the subject of her talk.</p> +<p class="poetry">And sometimes he’d explain to her, which +charmed her very much,<br /> +How famous operators vary very much in touch,<br /> +And then, perhaps, he’d show how he himself performed the +trick,<br /> +And illustrate his meaning with a poppy and a stick.</p> +<p class="poetry">Or, if it rained, the little maid would stop at +home, and look<br /> +At his favourable notices, all pasted in a book,<br /> +And then her cheek would flush—her swimming eyes would +dance with joy<br /> +In a glow of admiration at the prowess of her boy.</p> +<p class="poetry">One summer eve, at supper-time, the gentle +<span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> said<br /> +(As he helped his pretty <span class="smcap">Annie</span> to a +slice of collared head),<br /> +“This reminds me I must settle on the next ensuing day<br +/> +The hash of that unmitigated villain <span class="smcap">Peter +Gray</span>.”</p> +<p class="poetry">He saw his <span class="smcap">Annie</span> +tremble and he saw his <span class="smcap">Annie</span> start,<br +/> +Her changing colour trumpeted the flutter at her heart;<br /> +Young <span class="smcap">Gilbert’s</span> manly bosom rose +and sank with jealous fear,<br /> +And he said, “O gentle <span class="smcap">Annie</span>, +what’s the meaning of this here?”</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Annie</span> answered, +blushing in an interesting way,<br /> +“You think, no doubt, I’m sighing for that felon +<span class="smcap">Peter Gray</span>:<br /> +That I was his young woman is unquestionably true,<br /> +But not since I began a-keeping company with you.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Then <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span>, who +was irritable, rose and loudly swore<br /> +He’d know the reason why if she refused to tell him +more;<br /> +And she answered (all the woman in her flashing from her eyes)<br +/> +“You mustn’t ask no questions, and you won’t be +told no lies!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Few lovers have the privilege enjoyed, +my dear, by you,<br /> +Of chopping off a rival’s head and quartering him too!<br +/> +Of vengeance, dear, to-morrow you will surely take your +fill!”<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> ground his molars as he +answered her, “I will!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Young <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> rose +from table with a stern determined look,<br /> +And, frowning, took an inexpensive hatchet from its hook;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Annie</span> watched his movements with +an interested air—<br /> +For the morrow—for the morrow he was going to prepare!</p> +<p class="poetry">He chipped it with a hammer and he chopped it +with a bill,<br /> +He poured sulphuric acid on the edge of it, until<br /> +This terrible Avenger of the Majesty of Law<br /> +Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Annie</span> said, +“O <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span>, dear, I do not +understand<br /> +Why ever you are injuring that hatchet in your hand?”<br /> +He said, “It is intended for to lacerate and flay<br /> +The neck of that unmitigated villain <span class="smcap">Peter +Gray</span>!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Now, <span +class="smcap">Gilbert</span>,” <span +class="smcap">Annie</span> answered, “wicked headsman, just +beware—<br /> +I won’t have <span class="smcap">Peter</span> tortured with +that horrible affair;<br /> +If you appear with that, you may depend you’ll rue the +day.”<br /> +But <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> said, “Oh, shall +I?” which was just his nasty way.</p> +<p class="poetry">He saw a look of anger from her eyes distinctly +dart,<br /> +For <span class="smcap">Annie</span> was a <i>woman</i>, and had +pity in her heart!<br /> +She wished him a good evening—he answered with a glare;<br +/> +She only said, “Remember, for your <span +class="smcap">Annie</span> will be there!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">The morrow <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> +boldly on the scaffold took his stand,<br /> +With a vizor on his face and with a hatchet in his hand,<br /> +And all the people noticed that the Engine of the Law<br /> +Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.</p> +<p class="poetry">The felon very coolly loosed his collar and his +stock,<br /> +And placed his wicked head upon the handy little block.<br /> +The hatchet was uplifted for to settle <span class="smcap">Peter +Gray</span>,<br /> +When <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span> plainly heard a +woman’s voice exclaiming, “Stay!”</p> +<p class="poetry">’Twas <span class="smcap">Annie</span>, +gentle <span class="smcap">Annie</span>, as you’ll easily +believe.<br /> +“O <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span>, you must spare him, +for I bring him a reprieve,<br /> +It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago,<br /> +And passed through that post-office which I used to keep at +Bow.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I loved you, loved you madly, and you +know it, <span class="smcap">Gilbert Clay</span>,<br /> +And as I’d quite surrendered all idea of <span +class="smcap">Peter Gray</span>,<br /> +I quietly suppressed it, as you’ll clearly understand,<br +/> +For I thought it might be awkward if he came and claimed my +hand.</p> +<p class="poetry">“In anger at my secret (which I could not +tell before),<br /> +To lacerate poor <span class="smcap">Peter Gray</span> +vindictively you swore;<br /> +I told you if you used that blunted axe you’d rue the +day,<br /> +And so you will, young <span class="smcap">Gilbert</span>, for +I’ll marry <span class="smcap">Peter +Gray</span>!”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">[<i>And so she did</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>AN +UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">I’ve</span> painted +<span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> all my life—<br /> + “An infant” (even then at +“play”!)<br /> +“A boy,” with stage-ambition rife,<br /> + Then “Married to <span class="smcap">Ann +Hathaway</span>.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“The bard’s first ticket +night” (or “ben.”),<br /> + His “First appearance on the stage,”<br +/> +His “Call before the curtain”—then<br /> + “Rejoicings when he came of age.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The bard play-writing in his room,<br /> + The bard a humble lawyer’s clerk.<br /> +The bard a lawyer <a name="citation287a"></a><a +href="#footnote287a" class="citation">[287a]</a>—parson <a +name="citation287b"></a><a href="#footnote287b" +class="citation">[287b]</a>—groom <a +name="citation287c"></a><a href="#footnote287c" +class="citation">[287c]</a>—<br /> + The bard deer-stealing, after dark.</p> +<p class="poetry">The bard a tradesman <a +name="citation288a"></a><a href="#footnote288a" +class="citation">[288a]</a>—and a Jew <a +name="citation288b"></a><a href="#footnote288b" +class="citation">[288b]</a>—<br /> + The bard a botanist <a name="citation288c"></a><a +href="#footnote288c" class="citation">[288c]</a>—a beak <a +name="citation288d"></a><a href="#footnote288d" +class="citation">[288d]</a>—<br /> +The bard a skilled musician <a name="citation288e"></a><a +href="#footnote288e" class="citation">[288e]</a> too—<br /> + A sheriff <a name="citation288f"></a><a +href="#footnote288f" class="citation">[288f]</a> and a surgeon <a +name="citation288g"></a><a href="#footnote288g" +class="citation">[288g]</a> eke!</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet critics say (a friendly stock)<br /> + That, though it’s evident I try,<br /> +Yet even I can barely mock<br /> + The glimmer of his wondrous eye!</p> +<p class="poetry">One morning as a work I framed,<br /> + There passed a person, walking hard:<br /> +“My gracious goodness,” I exclaimed,<br /> + “How very like my dear old bard!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, what a model he would +make!”<br /> + I rushed outside—impulsive me!—<br /> +“Forgive the liberty I take,<br /> + But you’re so +very”—“Stop!” said he.</p> +<p class="poetry">“You needn’t waste your breath or +time,—<br /> + I know what you are going to say,—<br /> +That you’re an artist, and that I’m<br /> + Remarkably like <span +class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>. Eh?</p> +<p class="poetry">“You wish that I would sit to +you?”<br /> + I clasped him madly round the waist,<br /> +And breathlessly replied, “I do!”<br /> + “All right,” said he, “but please +make haste.”</p> +<p class="poetry">I led him by his hallowed sleeve,<br /> + And worked away at him apace,<br /> +I painted him till dewy eve,—<br /> + There never was a nobler face!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, sir,” I said, “a fortune +grand<br /> + Is yours, by dint of merest chance,—<br /> +To sport <i>his</i> brow at second-hand,<br /> + To wear <i>his</i> cast-off countenance!</p> +<p class="poetry">“To rub <i>his</i> eyes whene’er +they ache—<br /> + To wear <i>his</i> baldness ere you’re +old—<br /> +To clean <i>his</i> teeth when you awake—<br /> + To blow <i>his</i> nose when you’ve a +cold!”</p> +<p class="poetry">His eyeballs glistened in his eyes—<br /> + I sat and watched and smoked my pipe;<br /> +“Bravo!” I said, “I recognize<br /> + The phrensy of your prototype!”</p> +<p class="poetry">His scanty hair he wildly tore:<br /> + “That’s right,” said I, “it +shows your breed.”<br /> +He danced—he stamped—he wildly swore—<br /> + “Bless me, that’s very fine +indeed!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Sir,” said the grand Shakesperian +boy<br /> + (Continuing to blaze away),<br /> +“You think my face a source of joy;<br /> + That shows you know not what you say.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Forgive these yells and cellar-flaps:<br +/> + I’m always thrown in some such state<br /> +When on his face well-meaning chaps<br /> + This wretched man congratulate.</p> +<p class="poetry">“For, oh! this face—this pointed +chin—<br /> + This nose—this brow—these eyeballs +too,<br /> +Have always been the origin<br /> + Of all the woes I ever knew!</p> +<p class="poetry">“If to the play my way I find,<br /> + To see a grand Shakesperian piece,<br /> +I have no rest, no ease of mind<br /> + Until the author’s puppets cease.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Men nudge each +other—thus—and say,<br /> + ‘This certainly is <span +class="smcap">Shakespeare’s</span> son,’<br /> +And merry wags (of course in play)<br /> + Cry ‘Author!’ when the piece is +done.</p> +<p class="poetry">“In church the people stare at me,<br /> + Their soul the sermon never binds;<br /> +I catch them looking round to see,<br /> + And thoughts of <span +class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> fill their minds.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And sculptors, fraught with cunning +wile,<br /> + Who find it difficult to crown<br /> +A bust with <span class="smcap">Brown’s</span> insipid +smile,<br /> + Or <span class="smcap">Tomkins’s</span> +unmannered frown,</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yet boldly make my face their own,<br /> + When (oh, presumption!) they require<br /> +To animate a paving-stone<br /> + With <span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s</span> +intellectual fire.</p> +<p class="poetry">“At parties where young ladies gaze,<br +/> + And I attempt to speak my joy,<br /> +‘Hush, pray,’ some lovely creature says,<br /> + ‘The fond illusion don’t +destroy!’</p> +<p class="poetry">“Whene’er I speak, my soul is +wrung<br /> + With these or some such whisperings:<br /> +‘’Tis pity that a <span +class="smcap">Shakespeare’s</span> tongue<br /> + Should say such un-Shakesperian things!’</p> +<p class="poetry">“I should not thus be criticised<br /> + Had I a face of common wont:<br /> +Don’t envy me—now, be advised!”<br /> + And, now I think of it, I don’t!</p> +<h2><a name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +294</span>GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">leafy</span> cot, where +no dry rot<br /> +Had ever been by tenant seen,<br /> +Where ivy clung and wopses stung,<br /> +Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed,<br /> +Where treeses grew and breezes blew—<br /> +A thatchy roof, quite waterproof,<br /> +Where countless herds of dicky-birds<br /> +Built twiggy beds to lay their heads<br /> +(My mother begs I’ll make it “eggs,”<br /> +But though it’s true that dickies do<br /> +Construct a nest with chirpy noise,<br /> +With view to rest their eggy joys,<br /> +’Neath eavy sheds, yet eggs and beds,<br /> +As I explain to her in vain<br /> +Five hundred times, are faulty rhymes).<br /> +’Neath such a cot, built on a plot<br /> +Of freehold land, dwelt <span class="smcap">Mary</span> and<br /> +Her worthy father, named by me<br /> +<span class="smcap">Gregory Parable</span>, LL.D.</p> +<p class="poetry">He knew no guile, this simple man,<br /> +No worldly wile, or plot, or plan,<br /> +Except that plot of freehold land<br /> +That held the cot, and <span class="smcap">Mary</span>, and<br /> +Her worthy father, named by me<br /> +<span class="smcap">Gregory Parable</span>, LL.D.</p> +<p class="poetry">A grave and learned scholar he,<br /> +Yet simple as a child could be.<br /> +He’d shirk his meal to sit and cram<br /> +A goodish deal of Eton Gram.<br /> +No man alive could him nonplus<br /> +With vocative of <i>filius</i>;<br /> +No man alive more fully knew<br /> +The passive of a verb or two;<br /> +None better knew the worth than he<br /> +Of words that end in <i>b</i>, <i>d</i>, <i>t</i>.<br /> +Upon his green in early spring<br /> +He might be seen endeavouring<br /> +To understand the hooks and crooks<br /> +Of <span class="smcap">Henry</span> and his Latin books;<br /> +Or calling for his “Cæsar on<br /> +The Gallic War,” like any don;<br /> +Or, p’raps, expounding unto all<br /> +How mythic <span class="smcap">Balbus</span> built a wall.<br /> +So lived the sage who’s named by me<br /> +<span class="smcap">Gregory Parable</span>, LL.D.</p> +<p class="poetry">To him one autumn day there came<br /> +A lovely youth of mystic name:<br /> +He took a lodging in the house,<br /> +And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse,<br /> +For, oh! that mild scholastic one<br /> +Let shooting for a single gun.</p> +<p class="poetry">By three or four, when sport was o’er,<br +/> +The Mystic One laid by his gun,<br /> +And made sheep’s eyes of giant size,<br /> +Till after tea, at <span class="smcap">Mary</span> P.<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Mary</span> P. (so kind was she),<br /> +She, too, made eyes of giant size,<br /> +Whose every dart right through the heart<br /> +Appeared to run that Mystic One.<br /> +The Doctor’s whim engrossing him,<br /> +He did not know they flirted so.<br /> +For, save at tea, “<i>musa musæ</i>,”<br /> +As I’m advised, monopolised<br /> +And rendered blind his giant mind.<br /> +But looking up above his cup<br /> +One afternoon, he saw them spoon.<br /> +“Aha!” quoth he, “you naughty lass!<br /> +As quaint old <span class="smcap">Ovid</span> says, +‘Amas!’”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Mystic Youth avowed the truth,<br /> +And, claiming ruth, he said, “In sooth<br /> +I love your daughter, aged man:<br /> +Refuse to join us if you can.<br /> +Treat not my offer, sir, with scorn,<br /> +I’m wealthy though I’m lowly born.”<br /> +“Young sir,” the aged scholar said,<br /> +“I never thought you meant to wed:<br /> +Engrossed completely with my books,<br /> +I little noticed lovers’ looks.<br /> +I’ve lived so long away from man,<br /> +I do not know of any plan<br /> +By which to test a lover’s worth,<br /> +Except, perhaps, the test of birth.<br /> +I’ve half forgotten in this wild<br /> +A father’s duty to his child.<br /> +It is his place, I think it’s said,<br /> +To see his daughters richly wed<br /> +To dignitaries of the earth—<br /> +If possible, of noble birth.<br /> +If noble birth is not at hand,<br /> +A father may, I understand<br /> +(And this affords a chance for you),<br /> +Be satisfied to wed her to<br /> +A <span class="smcap">Boucicault</span> or <span +class="smcap">Baring</span>—which<br /> +Means any one who’s very rich.<br /> +Now, there’s an Earl who lives hard by,—<br /> +My child and I will go and try<br /> +If he will make the maid his bride—<br /> +If not, to you she shall be tied.”</p> +<p class="poetry">They sought the Earl that very day;<br /> +The Sage began to say his say.<br /> +The Earl (a very wicked man,<br /> +Whose face bore Vice’s blackest ban)<br /> +Cut short the scholar’s simple tale,<br /> +And said in voice to make them quail,<br /> +“Pooh! go along! you’re drunk, no doubt—<br /> +Here, <span class="smcap">Peters</span>, turn these people +out!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Sage, rebuffed in mode uncouth,<br /> +Returning, met the Mystic Youth.<br /> +“My darling boy,” the Scholar said,<br /> +“Take <span class="smcap">Mary</span>—blessings on +your head!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Mystic Boy undid his vest,<br /> +And took a parchment from his breast,<br /> +And said, “Now, by that noble brow,<br /> +I ne’er knew father such as thou!<br /> +The sterling rule of common sense<br /> +Now reaps its proper recompense.<br /> +Rejoice, my soul’s unequalled Queen,<br /> +For I am <span class="smcap">Duke of Gretna +Green</span>!”</p> +<h2><a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 301</span>THE +KING OF CANOODLE-DUM</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> story of <span +class="smcap">Frederick Gowler</span>,<br /> + A mariner of the sea,<br /> +Who quitted his ship, the <i>Howler</i>,<br /> + A-sailing in Caribbee.<br /> +For many a day he wandered,<br /> + Till he met in a state of rum<br /> +<span class="smcap">Calamity Pop Von Peppermint Drop</span>,<br +/> + The King of Canoodle-Dum.</p> +<p class="poetry">That monarch addressed him gaily,<br /> + “Hum! Golly de do to-day?<br /> +Hum! Lily-white Buckra Sailee”—<br /> + (You notice his playful way?)—<br /> +“What dickens you doin’ here, sar?<br /> + Why debbil you want to come?<br /> +Hum! Picaninnee, dere isn’t no sea<br /> + In City Canoodle-Dum!”</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Gowler</span> he +answered sadly,<br /> + “Oh, mine is a doleful tale!<br /> +They’ve treated me werry badly<br /> + In Lunnon, from where I hail.<br /> +I’m one of the Family Royal—<br /> + No common Jack Tar you see;<br /> +I’m <span class="smcap">William the Fourth</span>, far up +in the North,<br /> + A King in my own countree!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Bang-bang! How the tom-toms thundered!<br +/> + Bang-bang! How they thumped this gongs!<br /> +Bang-bang! How the people wondered!<br /> + Bang-bang! At it hammer and tongs!<br /> +Alliance with Kings of Europe<br /> + Is an honour Canoodlers seek,<br /> +Her monarchs don’t stop with <span class="smcap">Peppermint +Drop</span><br /> + Every day in the week!</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Fred</span> told them that +he was <i>un</i>done,<br /> + For his people all went insane,<br /> +And fired the Tower of London,<br /> + And Grinnidge’s Naval Fane.<br /> +And some of them racked St. James’s,<br /> + And vented their rage upon<br /> +The Church of St. Paul, the Fishmongers’ Hall,<br /> + And the Angel at Islington.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Calamity Pop</span> +implored him<br /> + In his capital to remain<br /> +Till those people of his restored him<br /> + To power and rank again.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Calamity Pop</span> he made him<br /> + A Prince of Canoodle-Dum,<br /> +With a couple of caves, some beautiful slaves,<br /> + And the run of the royal rum.</p> +<p class="poetry">Pop gave him his only daughter,<br /> + <span class="smcap">Hum Pickety Wimple +Tip</span>:<br /> +<span class="smcap">Fred</span> vowed that if over the water<br +/> + He went, in an English ship,<br /> +He’d make her his Queen,—though truly<br /> + It is an unusual thing<br /> +For a Caribbee brat who’s as black as your hat<br /> + To be wife of an English King.</p> +<p class="poetry">And all the Canoodle-Dummers<br /> + They copied his rolling walk,<br /> +His method of draining rummers,<br /> + His emblematical talk.<br /> +For his dress and his graceful breeding,<br /> + His delicate taste in rum,<br /> +And his nautical way, were the talk of the day<br /> + In the Court of Canoodle-Dum.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Calamity Pop</span> most +wisely<br /> + Determined in everything<br /> +To model his Court precisely<br /> + On that of the English King;<br /> +And ordered that every lady<br /> + And every lady’s lord<br /> +Should masticate jacky (a kind of tobaccy),<br /> + And scatter its juice abroad.</p> +<p class="poetry">They signified wonder roundly<br /> + At any astounding yarn,<br /> +By darning their dear eyes roundly<br /> + (’T was all they had to darn).<br /> +They “hoisted their slacks,” adjusting<br /> + Garments of plantain-leaves<br /> +With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches,<br /> + Instead of a dress like <span +class="smcap">Eve’s</span>!)</p> +<p class="poetry">They shivered their timbers proudly,<br /> + At a phantom forelock dragged,<br /> +And called for a hornpipe loudly<br /> + Whenever amusement flagged.<br /> +“Hum! Golly! him <span class="smcap">Pop</span> +resemble,<br /> + Him Britisher sov’reign, hum!<br /> +<span class="smcap">Calamity Pop Von Peppermint Drop</span>,<br +/> + De King of Canoodle-Dum!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The mariner’s lively +“Hollo!”<br /> + Enlivened Canoodle’s plain<br /> +(For blessings unnumbered follow<br /> + In Civilization’s train).<br /> +But Fortune, who loves a bathos,<br /> + A terrible ending planned,<br /> +For <span class="smcap">Admiral D. Chickabiddy</span>, C.B.,<br +/> + Placed foot on Canoodle land!</p> +<p class="poetry">That rebel, he seized <span class="smcap">King +Gowler</span>,<br /> + He threatened his royal brains,<br /> +And put him aboard the <i>Howler</i>,<br /> + And fastened him down with chains.<br /> +The <i>Howler</i> she weighed her anchor,<br /> + With <span class="smcap">Frederick</span> nicely +nailed,<br /> +And off to the North with <span class="smcap">William the +Fourth</span><br /> + These horrible pirates sailed.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Calamity</span> said (with +folly),<br /> + “Hum! nebber want him again—<br /> +Him civilize all of us, golly!<br /> + <span class="smcap">Calamity</span> suck him +brain!”<br /> +The people, however, were pained when<br /> + They saw him aboard his ship,<br /> +But none of them wept for their <span +class="smcap">Freddy</span>, except<br /> + <span class="smcap">Hum Pickety Wimple +Tip</span>.</p> +<h2><a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +309</span>FIRST LOVE</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">clergyman</span> in +Berkshire dwelt,<br /> + The <span class="smcap">Reverend Bernard +Powles</span>,<br /> +And in his church there weekly knelt<br /> + At least a hundred souls.</p> +<p class="poetry">There little <span class="smcap">Ellen</span> +you might see,<br /> + The modest rustic belle;<br /> +In maidenly simplicity,<br /> + She loved her <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> +well.</p> +<p class="poetry">Though <span class="smcap">Ellen</span> wore a +plain silk gown<br /> + Untrimmed with lace or fur,<br /> +Yet not a husband in the town<br /> + But wished his wife like her.</p> +<p class="poetry">Though sterner memories might fade,<br /> + You never could forget<br /> +The child-form of that baby-maid,<br /> + The Village Violet!</p> +<p class="poetry">A simple frightened loveliness,<br /> + Whose sacred spirit-part<br /> +Shrank timidly from worldly stress,<br /> + And nestled in your heart.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Powles</span> woo’d +with every well-worn plan<br /> + And all the usual wiles<br /> +With which a well-schooled gentleman<br /> + A simple heart beguiles.</p> +<p class="poetry">The hackneyed compliments that bore<br /> + World-folks like you and me,<br /> +Appeared to her as if they wore<br /> + The crown of Poesy.</p> +<p class="poetry">His winking eyelid sang a song<br /> + Her heart could understand,<br /> +Eternity seemed scarce too long<br /> + When <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> squeezed her +hand.</p> +<p class="poetry">He ordered down the martial crew<br /> + Of <span class="smcap">Godfrey’s</span> +Grenadiers,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Coote</span> conspired with <span +class="smcap">Tinney</span> to<br /> + Ecstaticise her ears.</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath her window, veiled from eye,<br /> + They nightly took their stand;<br /> +On birthdays supplemented by<br /> + The Covent Garden band.</p> +<p class="poetry">And little <span class="smcap">Ellen</span>, +all alone,<br /> + Enraptured sat above,<br /> +And thought how blest she was to own<br /> + The wealth of <span +class="smcap">Powles’s</span> love.</p> +<p class="poetry">I often, often wonder what<br /> + Poor <span class="smcap">Ellen</span> saw in him;<br +/> +For calculated he was <i>not</i><br /> + To please a woman’s whim.</p> +<p class="poetry">He wasn’t good, despite the air<br /> + An M.B. waistcoat gives;<br /> +Indeed, his dearest friends declare<br /> + No greater humbug lives.</p> +<p class="poetry">No kind of virtue decked this priest,<br /> + He’d nothing to allure;<br /> +He wasn’t handsome in the least,—<br /> + He wasn’t even poor.</p> +<p class="poetry">No—he was cursed with acres fat<br /> + (A Christian’s direst ban),<br /> +And gold—yet, notwithstanding that,<br /> + Poor <span class="smcap">Ellen</span> loved the +man.</p> +<p class="poetry">As unlike <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> as +could be<br /> + Was poor old <span class="smcap">Aaron +Wood</span><br /> +(Disgraceful <span class="smcap">Bernard’s</span> curate +he):<br /> + He was extremely good.</p> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">Bayard</span> in his +moral pluck<br /> + Without reproach or fear,<br /> +A quiet venerable duck<br /> + With fifty pounds a year.</p> +<p class="poetry">No fault had he—no fad, except<br /> + A tendency to strum,<br /> +In mode at which you would have wept,<br /> + A dull harmonium.</p> +<p class="poetry">He had no gold with which to hire<br /> + The minstrels who could best<br /> +Convey a notion of the fire<br /> + That raged within his breast.</p> +<p class="poetry">And so, when <span class="smcap">Coote</span> +and <span class="smcap">Tinney’s</span> Own<br /> + Had tootled all they knew,<br /> +And when the Guards, completely blown,<br /> + Exhaustedly withdrew,</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Nell</span> began to +sleepy feel,<br /> + Poor <span class="smcap">Aaron</span> then would +come,<br /> +And underneath her window wheel<br /> + His plain harmonium.</p> +<p class="poetry">He woke her every morn at two,<br /> + And having gained her ear,<br /> +In vivid colours <span class="smcap">Aaron</span> drew<br /> + The sluggard’s grim career.</p> +<p class="poetry">He warbled Apiarian praise,<br /> + And taught her in his chant<br /> +To shun the dog’s pugnacious ways,<br /> + And imitate the ant.</p> +<p class="poetry">Still <span class="smcap">Nell</span> seemed +not, how much he played,<br /> + To love him out and out,<br /> +Although the admirable maid<br /> + Respected him, no doubt.</p> +<p class="poetry">She told him of her early vow,<br /> + And said as <span +class="smcap">Bernard’s</span> wife<br /> +It might be hers to show him how<br /> + To rectify his life.</p> +<p class="poetry">“You are so pure, so kind, so true,<br /> + Your goodness shines so bright,<br /> +What use would <span class="smcap">Ellen</span> be to you?<br /> + Believe me, you’re all right.”</p> +<p class="poetry">She wished him happiness and health,<br /> + And flew on lightning wings<br /> +To <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> with his dangerous +wealth<br /> + And all the woes it brings.</p> +<h2><a name="page317"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +317</span>BRAVE ALUM BEY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Oh</span>, big was the +bosom of brave <span class="smcap">Alum Bey</span>,<br /> +And also the region that under it lay,<br /> +In safety and peril remarkably cool,<br /> +And he dwelt on the banks of the river Stamboul.</p> +<p class="poetry">Each morning he went to his garden, to cull<br +/> +A bunch of zenana or sprig of bul-bul,<br /> +And offered the bouquet, in exquisite bloom,<br /> +To <span class="smcap">Backsheesh</span>, the daughter of <span +class="smcap">Rahat Lakoum</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">No maiden like <span +class="smcap">Backsheesh</span> could tastily cook<br /> +A kettle of kismet or joint of tchibouk,<br /> +As <span class="smcap">Alum</span>, brave fellow! sat pensively +by,<br /> +With a bright sympathetic ka-bob in his eye.</p> +<p class="poetry">Stern duty compelled him to leave her one +day—<br /> +(A ship’s supercargo was brave <span class="smcap">Alum +Bey</span>)—<br /> +To pretty young <span class="smcap">Backsheesh</span> he made a +salaam,<br /> +And sailed to the isle of Seringapatam.</p> +<p class="poetry">“O <span +class="smcap">Alum</span>,” said she, “think again, +ere you go—<br /> +Hareems may arise and Moguls they may blow;<br /> +You may strike on a fez, or be drowned, which is wuss!”<br +/> +But <span class="smcap">Alum</span> embraced her and spoke to her +thus:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Cease weeping, fair <span +class="smcap">Backsheesh</span>! I willingly swear<br /> +Cork jackets and trousers I always will wear,<br /> +And I also throw in a large number of oaths<br /> +That I never—no, <i>never</i>—will take off my +clothes!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">They left Madagascar away on their right,<br /> +And made Clapham Common the following night,<br /> +Then lay on their oars for a fortnight or two,<br /> +Becalmed in the ocean of Honololu.</p> +<p class="poetry">One day <span class="smcap">Alum</span> saw, +with alarm in his breast,<br /> +A cloud on the nor-sow-sow-nor-sow-nor-west;<br /> +The wind it arose, and the crew gave a scream,<br /> +For they knew it—they knew it!—the dreaded +Hareem!!</p> +<p class="poetry">The mast it went over, and so did the sails,<br +/> +Brave <span class="smcap">Alum</span> threw over his casks and +his bales;<br /> +The billows arose as the weather grew thick,<br /> +And all except <span class="smcap">Alum</span> were terribly +sick.</p> +<p class="poetry">The crew were but three, but they +holloa’d for nine,<br /> +They howled and they blubbered with wail and with whine:<br /> +The skipper he fainted away in the fore,<br /> +For he hadn’t the heart for to skip any more.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ho, coward!” said <span +class="smcap">Alum</span>, “with heart of a child!<br /> +Thou son of a party whose grave is defiled!<br /> +Is <span class="smcap">Alum</span> in terror? is <span +class="smcap">Alum</span> afeard?<br /> +Ho! ho! If you had one I’d laugh at your +beard.”</p> +<p class="poetry">His eyeball it gleamed like a furnace of +coke;<br /> +He boldly inflated his clothes as he spoke;<br /> +He daringly felt for the corks on his chest,<br /> +And he recklessly tightened the belt at his breast.</p> +<p class="poetry">For he knew, the brave <span +class="smcap">Alum</span>, that, happen what might,<br /> +With belts and cork-jacketing, <i>he</i> was all right;<br /> +Though others might sink, he was certain to swim,—<br /> +No Hareem whatever had terrors for him!</p> +<p class="poetry">They begged him to spare from his personal +store<br /> +A single cork garment—they asked for no more;<br /> +But he couldn’t, because of the number of oaths<br /> +That he never—no, never!—would take off his +clothes.</p> +<p class="poetry">The billows dash o’er them and topple +around,<br /> +They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned.<br /> +A terrible wave o’er the quarter-deck breaks,<br /> +And the vessel it sinks in a couple of shakes!</p> +<p class="poetry">The dreadful Hareem, though it knows how to +blow,<br /> +Expends all its strength in a minute or so;<br /> +When the vessel had foundered, as I have detailed,<br /> +The tempest subsided, and quiet prevailed.</p> +<p class="poetry">One seized on a cork with a yelling “Ha! +ha!”<br /> +(Its bottle had ’prisoned a pint of Pacha)—<br /> +Another a toothpick—another a tray—<br /> +“Alas! it is useless!” said brave <span +class="smcap">Alum Bey</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To holloa and kick is a very bad +plan:<br /> +Get it over, my tulips, as soon as you can;<br /> +You’d better lay hold of a good lump of lead,<br /> +And cling to it tightly until you are dead.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Just raise your hands over your pretty +heads—so—<br /> +Right down to the bottom you’re certain to go.<br /> +Ta! ta! I’m afraid we shall not meet +again”—<br /> +For the truly courageous are truly humane.</p> +<p class="poetry">Brave <span class="smcap">Alum</span> was +picked up the very next day—<br /> +A man-o’-war sighted him smoking away;<br /> +With hunger and cold he was ready to drop,<br /> +So they sent him below and they gave him a chop.</p> +<p class="poetry">O reader, or readress, whichever you be,<br /> +You weep for the crew who have sunk in the sea?<br /> +O reader, or readress, read farther, and dry<br /> +The bright sympathetic ka-bob in your eye.</p> +<p class="poetry">That ship had a grapple with three iron +spikes,—<br /> +It’s lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes!<br /> +They haul it aboard with a British “heave-ho!”<br /> +And what it has fished the drawing will show.</p> +<p class="poetry">There was <span class="smcap">Wilson</span>, +and <span class="smcap">Parker</span>, and <span +class="smcap">Tomlinson</span>, too—<br /> +(The first was the captain, the others the crew)—<br /> +As lively and spry as a Malabar ape,<br /> +Quite pleased and surprised at their happy escape.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Alum</span>, brave +fellow, who stood in the fore,<br /> +And never expected to look on them more,<br /> +Was really delighted to see them again,<br /> +For the truly courageous are truly humane.</p> +<h2><a name="page324"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 324</span>SIR +BARNABY BAMPTON BOO</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">This</span> is <span +class="smcap">Sir Barnaby Bampton Boo</span>,<br /> + Last of a noble race,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Barnaby Bampton</span>, coming to woo,<br /> + All at a deuce of a pace.<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Barnaby Bampton Boo</span>,<br /> + + +Here is a health to you:<br /> + Here is wishing you luck, you +elderly buck—<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Barnaby Bampton Boo</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">The excellent women of Tuptonvee<br /> + Knew <span class="smcap">Sir Barnaby Boo</span>;<br +/> +One of them surely his bride would be,<br /> + But dickens a soul knew who.<br /> + + +Women of Tuptonvee,<br /> + + +Here is a health to ye<br /> + For a Baronet, dears, you would +cut off your ears,<br /> + + +Women of Tuptonvee!</p> +<p class="poetry">Here are old <span class="smcap">Mr</span>. and +<span class="smcap">Mrs. de Plow</span><br /> + (<span class="smcap">Peter</span> his Christian +name),<br /> +They kept seven oxen, a pig, and a cow—<br /> + Farming it was their game.<br /> + + +Worthy old <span class="smcap">Peter de Plow</span>,<br /> + + +Here is a health to thou:<br /> + Your race isn’t run, though +you’re seventy-one,<br /> + + +Worthy old <span class="smcap">Peter de Plow</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">To excellent <span class="smcap">Mr</span>. and +<span class="smcap">Mrs. de Plow</span><br /> + Came <span class="smcap">Sir Barnaby Boo</span>,<br +/> +He asked for their daughter, and told ’em as how<br /> + He was as rich as a Jew.<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Barnaby Bampton’s</span> wealth,<br /> + + +Here is your jolly good health:<br /> + I’d never repine if you came +to be mine,<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Barnaby Bampton’s</span> wealth!</p> +<p class="poetry">“O great <span class="smcap">Sir Barnaby +Bampton Boo</span>”<br /> + (Said <span class="smcap">Plow</span> to that titled +swell),<br /> +“My missus has given me daughters two—<br /> + <span class="smcap">Amelia</span> and <span +class="smcap">Volatile Nell</span>!”<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Amelia</span> and <span +class="smcap">Volatile Nell</span>,<br /> + + +I hope you’re uncommonly well:<br /> + You two pretty pearls—you +extremely nice girls—<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Amelia</span> and <span +class="smcap">Volatile Nell</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Amelia</span> is +passable only, in face,<br /> + But, oh! she’s a worthy girl;<br /> +Superior morals like hers would grace<br /> + The home of a belted Earl.”<br /> + + +Morality, heavenly link!<br /> + + +To you I’ll eternally drink:<br /> + I’m awfully fond of that +heavenly bond,<br /> + + +Morality, heavenly link!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Now <span +class="smcap">Nelly’s</span> the prettier, p’raps, of +my gals,<br /> + But, oh! she’s a wayward chit;<br /> +She dresses herself in her showy fal-lals,<br /> + And doesn’t read <span +class="smcap">Tupper</span> a bit!”<br /> + + +O <span class="smcap">Tupper</span>, philosopher true,<br /> + + +How do you happen to do?<br /> + A publisher looks with respect on +your books,<br /> + + +For they <i>do</i> sell, philosopher true!</p> +<p class="poetry">The Bart. (I’ll be hanged if I +drink him again,<br /> + Or care if he’s ill or well),<br /> +He sneered at the goodness of <span class="smcap">Milly the +Plain</span>,<br /> + And cottoned to <span class="smcap">Volatile +Nell</span>!<br /> + + +O <span class="smcap">Volatile Nelly de</span> P.!<br /> + + +Be hanged if I’ll empty to thee:<br /> + I like worthy maids, not mere +frivolous jades,<br /> + + +<span class="smcap">Volatile Nelly de</span> P.!</p> +<p class="poetry">They bolted, the Bart. and his frivolous +dear,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Milly</span> was left to +pout;<br /> +For years they’ve got on very well, as I hear,<br /> + But soon he will rue it, no doubt.<br /> + + +O excellent <span class="smcap">Milly de Plow</span>,<br /> + + +I really can’t drink to you now;<br /> + My head isn’t strong, and +the song has been long,<br /> + + +Excellent <span class="smcap">Milly de Plow</span>!</p> +<h2><a name="page330"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 330</span>THE +MODEST COUPLE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> man and maiden +meet, I like to see a drooping eye,<br /> +I always droop my own—I am the shyest of the shy.<br /> +I’m also fond of bashfulness, and sitting down on +thorns,<br /> +For modesty’s a quality that womankind adorns.</p> +<p class="poetry">Whenever I am introduced to any pretty maid,<br +/> +My knees they knock together, just as if I were afraid;<br /> +I flutter, and I stammer, and I turn a pleasing red,<br /> +For to laugh, and flirt, and ogle I consider most ill-bred.</p> +<p class="poetry">But still in all these matters, as in other +things below,<br /> +There is a proper medium, as I’m about to show.<br /> +I do not recommend a newly-married pair to try<br /> +To carry on as <span class="smcap">Peter</span> carried on with +<span class="smcap">Sarah Bligh</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Betrothed they were when very +young—before they’d learnt to speak<br /> +(For <span class="smcap">Sarah</span> was but six days old, and +<span class="smcap">Peter</span> was a week);<br /> +Though little more than babies at those early ages, yet<br /> +They bashfully would faint when they occasionally met.</p> +<p class="poetry">They blushed, and flushed, and fainted, till +they reached the age of nine,<br /> +When <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> good papa (he was a +Baron of the Rhine)<br /> +Determined to endeavour some sound argument to find<br /> +To bring these shy young people to a proper frame of mind.</p> +<p class="poetry">He told them that as <span +class="smcap">Sarah</span> was to be his <span +class="smcap">Peter’s</span> bride,<br /> +They might at least consent to sit at table side by side;<br /> +He begged that they would now and then shake hands, till he was +hoarse,<br /> +Which <span class="smcap">Sarah</span> thought indelicate, and +<span class="smcap">Peter</span> very coarse.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> in a +tremble to the blushing maid would say,<br /> +“You must excuse papa, <span class="smcap">Miss +Bligh</span>,—it is his mountain way.”<br /> +Says <span class="smcap">Sarah</span>, “His behaviour +I’ll endeavour to forget,<br /> +But your papa’s the coarsest person that I ever met.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He plighted us without our leave, when +we were very young,<br /> +Before we had begun articulating with the tongue.<br /> +His underbred suggestions fill your <span +class="smcap">Sarah</span> with alarm;<br /> +Why, gracious me! he’ll ask us next to walk out +arm-in-arm!”</p> +<p class="poetry">At length when <span class="smcap">Sarah</span> +reached the legal age of twenty-one,<br /> +The Baron he determined to unite her to his son;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Sarah</span> in a fainting-fit for weeks +unconscious lay,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> blushed so hard you might +have heard him miles away.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when the time arrived for taking <span +class="smcap">Sarah</span> to his heart,<br /> +They were married in two churches half-a-dozen miles apart<br /> +(Intending to escape all public ridicule and chaff),<br /> +And the service was conducted by electric telegraph.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when it was concluded, and the priest had +said his say,<br /> +Until the time arrived when they were both to drive away,<br /> +They never spoke or offered for to fondle or to fawn,<br /> +For <i>he</i> waited in the attic, and <i>she</i> waited on the +lawn.</p> +<p class="poetry">At length, when four o’clock arrived, and +it was time to go,<br /> +The carriage was announced, but decent <span +class="smcap">Sarah</span> answered “No!<br /> +Upon my word, I’d rather sleep my everlasting nap,<br /> +Than go and ride alone with <span class="smcap">Mr. Peter</span> +in a trap.”</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> +over-sensitive and highly-polished mind<br /> +Wouldn’t suffer him to sanction a proceeding of the +kind;<br /> +And further, he declared he suffered overwhelming shocks<br /> +At the bare idea of having any coachman on the box.</p> +<p class="poetry">So <span class="smcap">Peter</span> into one +turn-out incontinently rushed,<br /> +While <span class="smcap">Sarah</span> in a second trap sat +modestly and blushed;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Mr. Newman’s</span> coachman, on +authority I’ve heard,<br /> +Drove away in gallant style upon the coach-box of a third.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now, though this modest couple in the matter of +the car<br /> +Were very likely carrying a principle too far,<br /> +I hold their shy behaviour was more laudable in them<br /> +Than that of <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> brother +with <span class="smcap">Miss Sarah’s</span> sister <span +class="smcap">Em</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Alphonso</span>, who in +cool assurance all creation licks,<br /> +He up and said to <span class="smcap">Emmie</span> (who had +impudence for six),<br /> +“<span class="smcap">Miss Emily</span>, I love +you—will you marry? Say the word!”<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Emily</span> said, “Certainly, +<span class="smcap">Alphonso</span>, like a bird!”</p> +<p class="poetry">I do not recommend a newly-married pair to +try<br /> +To carry on as <span class="smcap">Peter</span> carried on with +<span class="smcap">Sarah Bligh</span>,<br /> +But still their shy behaviour was more laudable in them<br /> +Than that of <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> brother +with <span class="smcap">Miss Sarah’s</span> sister <span +class="smcap">Em</span>.</p> +<h2><a name="page338"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 338</span>THE +MARTINET</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Some</span> time ago, in +simple verse<br /> + I sang the story true<br /> +Of <span class="smcap">Captain Reece</span>, the +<i>Mantelpiece</i>,<br /> + And all her happy crew.</p> +<p class="poetry">I showed how any captain may<br /> + Attach his men to him,<br /> +If he but heeds their smallest needs,<br /> + And studies every whim.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now mark how, by Draconic rule<br /> + And <i>hauteur</i> ill-advised,<br /> +The noblest crew upon the Blue<br /> + May be demoralized.</p> +<p class="poetry">When his ungrateful country placed<br /> + Kind <span class="smcap">Reece</span> upon +half-pay,<br /> +Without much claim <span class="smcap">Sir Berkely</span> +came,<br /> + And took command one day.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sir Berkely</span> was a +martinet—<br /> + A stern unyielding soul—<br /> +Who ruled his ship by dint of whip<br /> + And horrible black-hole.</p> +<p class="poetry">A sailor who was overcome<br /> + From having freely dined,<br /> +And chanced to reel when at the wheel,<br /> + He instantly confined!</p> +<p class="poetry">And tars who, when an action raged,<br /> + Appeared alarmed or scared,<br /> +And those below who wished to go,<br /> + He very seldom spared.</p> +<p class="poetry">E’en he who smote his officer<br /> + For punishment was booked,<br /> +And mutinies upon the seas<br /> + He rarely overlooked.</p> +<p class="poetry">In short, the happy <i>Mantelpiece</i>,<br /> + Where all had gone so well,<br /> +Beneath that fool <span class="smcap">Sir Berkely’s</span> +rule<br /> + Became a floating hell.</p> +<p class="poetry">When first <span class="smcap">Sir +Berkely</span> came aboard<br /> + He read a speech to all,<br /> +And told them how he’d made a vow<br /> + To act on duty’s call.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then <span class="smcap">William Lee</span>, he +up and said<br /> + (The Captain’s coxswain he),<br /> +“We’ve heard the speech your honour’s made,<br +/> + And werry pleased we be.</p> +<p class="poetry">“We won’t pretend, my lad, as +how<br /> + We’re glad to lose our <span +class="smcap">Reece</span>;<br /> +Urbane, polite, he suited quite<br /> + The saucy <i>Mantelpiece</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But if your honour gives your mind<br /> + To study all our ways,<br /> +With dance and song we’ll jog along<br /> + As in those happy days.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I like your honour’s looks, and +feel<br /> + You’re worthy of your sword.<br /> +Your hand, my lad—I’m doosid glad<br /> + To welcome you aboard!”</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sir Berkely</span> looked +amazed, as though<br /> + He didn’t understand.<br /> +“Don’t shake your head,” good <span +class="smcap">William</span> said,<br /> + “It is an honest hand.</p> +<p class="poetry">“It’s grasped a better hand than +yourn—<br /> + Come, gov’nor, I insist!”<br /> +The Captain stared—the coxswain glared—<br /> + The hand became a fist!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Down, upstart!” said the hardy +salt;<br /> + But <span class="smcap">Berkely</span> dodged his +aim,<br /> +And made him go in chains below:<br /> + The seamen murmured “Shame!”</p> +<p class="poetry">He stopped all songs at 12 p.m.,<br /> + Stopped hornpipes when at sea,<br /> +And swore his cot (or bunk) should not<br /> + Be used by aught than he.</p> +<p class="poetry">He never joined their daily mess,<br /> + Nor asked them to his own,<br /> +But chaffed in gay and social way<br /> + The officers alone.</p> +<p class="poetry">His First Lieutenant, <span +class="smcap">Peter</span>, was<br /> + As useless as could be,<br /> +A helpless stick, and always sick<br /> + When there was any sea.</p> +<p class="poetry">This First Lieutenant proved to be<br /> + His foster-sister <span class="smcap">May</span>,<br +/> +Who went to sea for love of he<br /> + In masculine array.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when he learnt the curious fact,<br /> + Did he emotion show,<br /> +Or dry her tears or end her fears<br /> + By marrying her? No!</p> +<p class="poetry">Or did he even try to soothe<br /> + This maiden in her teens?<br /> +Oh, no!—instead he made her wed<br /> + The Sergeant of Marines!</p> +<p class="poetry">Of course such Spartan discipline<br /> + Would make an angel fret;<br /> +They drew a lot, and <span class="smcap">William</span> shot<br +/> + This fearful martinet.</p> +<p class="poetry">The Admiralty saw how ill<br /> + They’d treated <span class="smcap">Captain +Reece</span>;<br /> +He was restored once more aboard<br /> + The saucy <i>Mantelpiece</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page348"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 348</span>THE +SAILOR BOY TO HIS LASS</h2> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">go</span> away this +blessed day,<br /> + To sail across the sea, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +My vessel starts for various parts<br /> + At twenty after three, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +I hardly know where we may go,<br /> + Or if it’s near or far, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +For <span class="smcap">Captain Hyde</span> does not confide<br +/> + In any ’fore-mast tar, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath my ban that mystic man<br /> + Shall suffer, <i>coûte qui coûte</i>, +<span class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +What right has he to keep from me<br /> + The Admiralty route, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>?<br /> +Because, forsooth! I am a youth<br /> + Of common sailors’ lot, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +Am I a man on human plan<br /> + Designed, or am I not, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>?</p> +<p class="poetry">But there, my lass, we’ll let that +pass!<br /> + With anxious love I burn, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +I want to know if we shall go<br /> + To church when I return, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>?<br /> +Your eyes are red, you bow your head;<br /> + It’s pretty clear you thirst, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +To name the day—What’s that you say?—<br /> + “You’ll see me further first,” +<span class="smcap">Matilda</span>?</p> +<p class="poetry">I can’t mistake the signs you make,<br /> + Although you barely speak, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>;<br /> +Though pure and young, you thrust your tongue<br /> + Right in your pretty cheek, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +My dear, I fear I hear you sneer—<br /> + I do—I’m sure I do, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +With simple grace you make a face,<br /> + Ejaculating, “Ugh!” <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Oh, pause to think before you drink<br /> + The dregs of Lethe’s cup, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br /> + Before you give me up, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +Recall again the mental pain<br /> + Of what I’ve had to do, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +And be assured that I’ve endured<br /> + It, all along of you, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">Do you forget, my blithesome pet,<br /> + How once with jealous rage, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +I watched you walk and gaily talk<br /> + With some one thrice your age, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>?<br /> +You squatted free upon his knee,<br /> + A sight that made me sad, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +You pinched his cheek with friendly tweak,<br /> + Which almost drove me mad, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">I knew him not, but hoped to spot<br /> + Some man you thought to wed, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +I took a gun, my darling one,<br /> + And shot him through the head, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +I’m made of stuff that’s rough and gruff<br /> + Enough, I own; but, ah, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +It <i>did</i> annoy your sailor boy<br /> + To find it was your pa, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">I’ve passed a life of toil and strife,<br +/> + And disappointments deep, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>;<br /> +I’ve lain awake with dental ache<br /> + Until I fell asleep, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!<br /> +At times again I’ve missed a train,<br /> + Or p’rhaps run short of tin, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +And worn a boot on corns that shoot,<br /> + Or, shaving, cut my chin, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">But, oh! no trains—no dental +pains—<br /> + Believe me when I say, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +No corns that shoot—no pinching boot<br /> + Upon a summer day, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>—<br /> +It’s my belief, could cause such grief<br /> + As that I’ve suffered for, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +My having shot in vital spot<br /> + Your old progenitor, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Bethink you how I’ve kept the vow<br /> + I made one winter day, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>—<br /> +That, come what could, I never would<br /> + Remain too long away, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +And, oh! the crimes with which, at times,<br /> + I’ve charged my gentle mind, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +To keep the vow I made—and now<br /> + You treat me so unkind, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">For when at sea, off Caribbee,<br /> + I felt my passion burn, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +By passion egged, I went and begged<br /> + The captain to return, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +And when, my pet, I couldn’t get<br /> + That captain to agree, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +Right through a sort of open port<br /> + I pitched him in the sea, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">Remember, too, how all the crew<br /> + With indignation blind, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +Distinctly swore they ne’er before<br /> + Had thought me so unkind, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +And how they’d shun me one by one—<br /> + An unforgiving group, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>—<br /> +I stopped their howls and sulky scowls<br /> + By pizening their soup, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">So pause to think, before you drink<br /> + The dregs of Lethe’s cup, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>;<br /> +Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br /> + Before you give me up, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>.<br /> +Recall again the mental pain<br /> + Of what I’ve had to do, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>,<br /> +And be assured that I’ve endured<br /> + It, all along of you, <span +class="smcap">Matilda</span>!</p> +<h2><a name="page356"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 356</span>THE +REVEREND SIMON MAGUS</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">rich</span> advowson, +highly prized,<br /> +For private sale was advertised;<br /> +And many a parson made a bid;<br /> +The <span class="smcap">Reverend Simon Magus</span> did.</p> +<p class="poetry">He sought the agent’s: “Agent, I<br +/> +Have come prepared at once to buy<br /> +(If your demand is not too big)<br /> +The Cure of Otium-cum-Digge.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ah!” said the agent, +“<i>there’s</i> a berth—<br /> +The snuggest vicarage on earth;<br /> +No sort of duty (so I hear),<br /> +And fifteen hundred pounds a year!</p> +<p class="poetry">“If on the price we should agree,<br /> +The living soon will vacant be;<br /> +The good incumbent’s ninety five,<br /> +And cannot very long survive.</p> +<p class="poetry">“See—here’s his +photograph—you see,<br /> +He’s in his dotage.” “Ah, dear me!<br /> +Poor soul!” said <span class="smcap">Simon</span>. +“His decease<br /> +Would be a merciful release!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The agent laughed—the agent +blinked—<br /> +The agent blew his nose and winked—<br /> +And poked the parson’s ribs in play—<br /> +It was that agent’s vulgar way.</p> +<p class="poetry">The <span class="smcap">Reverend Simon</span> +frowned: “I grieve<br /> +This light demeanour to perceive;<br /> +It’s scarcely <i>comme il faut</i>, I think:<br /> +Now—pray oblige me—do not wink.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Don’t dig my waistcoat into +holes—<br /> +Your mission is to sell the souls<br /> +Of human sheep and human kids<br /> +To that divine who highest bids.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Do well in this, and on your head<br /> +Unnumbered honours will be shed.”<br /> +The agent said, “Well, truth to tell,<br /> +I <i>have</i> been doing very well.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“You should,” said <span +class="smcap">Simon</span>, “at your age;<br /> +But now about the parsonage.<br /> +How many rooms does it contain?<br /> +Show me the photograph again.</p> +<p class="poetry">“A poor apostle’s humble house<br +/> +Must not be too luxurious;<br /> +No stately halls with oaken floor—<br /> +It should be decent and no more.</p> +<p class="poetry">“No billiard-rooms—no stately +trees—<br /> +No croquêt-grounds or pineries.”<br /> +“Ah!” sighed the agent, “very true:<br /> +This property won’t do for you.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“All these about the house you’ll +find.”—<br /> +“Well,” said the parson, “never mind;<br /> +I’ll manage to submit to these<br /> +Luxurious superfluities.</p> +<p class="poetry">“A clergyman who does not shirk<br /> +The various calls of Christian work,<br /> +Will have no leisure to employ<br /> +These ‘common forms’ of worldly joy.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To preach three times on Sabbath +days—<br /> +To wean the lost from wicked ways—<br /> +The sick to soothe—the sane to wed—<br /> +The poor to feed with meat and bread;</p> +<p class="poetry">“These are the various wholesome ways<br +/> +In which I’ll spend my nights and days:<br /> +My zeal will have no time to cool<br /> +At croquet, archery, or pool.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The agent said, “From what I hear,<br /> +This living will not suit, I fear—<br /> +There are no poor, no sick at all;<br /> +For services there is no call.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The reverend gent looked grave, “Dear +me!<br /> +Then there is <i>no</i> ‘society’?—<br /> +I mean, of course, no sinners there<br /> +Whose souls will be my special care?”</p> +<p class="poetry">The cunning agent shook his head,<br /> +“No, none—except”—(the agent +said)—<br /> +“The <span class="smcap">Duke of</span> A., the <span +class="smcap">Earl of</span> B.,<br /> +The <span class="smcap">Marquis</span> C., and <span +class="smcap">Viscount</span> D.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But you will not be quite alone,<br /> +For though they’ve chaplains of their own,<br /> +Of course this noble well-bred clan<br /> +Receive the parish clergyman.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, silence, sir!” said <span +class="smcap">Simon</span> M.,<br /> +“Dukes—Earls! What should I care for them?<br +/> +These worldly ranks I scorn and flout!”<br /> +“Of course,” the agent said, “no +doubt!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yet I might show these men of birth<br +/> +The hollowness of rank on earth.”<br /> +The agent answered, “Very true—<br /> +But I should not, if I were you.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Who sells this rich advowson, +pray?”<br /> +The agent winked—it was his way—<br /> +“His name is <span class="smcap">Hart</span>; ’twixt +me and you,<br /> +He is, I’m grieved to say, a Jew!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“A Jew?” said <span +class="smcap">Simon</span>, “happy find!<br /> +I purchase this advowson, mind.<br /> +My life shall be devoted to<br /> +Converting that unhappy Jew!”</p> +<h2><a name="page363"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +363</span>DAMON <i>v.</i> PYTHIAS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Two</span> better friends +you wouldn’t pass<br /> + Throughout a summer’s day,<br /> +Than <span class="smcap">Damon</span> and his <span +class="smcap">Pythias</span>,—<br /> + Two merchant princes they.</p> +<p class="poetry">At school together they contrived<br /> + All sorts of boyish larks;<br /> +And, later on, together thrived<br /> + As merry merchants’ clerks.</p> +<p class="poetry">And then, when many years had flown,<br /> + They rose together till<br /> +They bought a business of their own—<br /> + And they conduct it still.</p> +<p class="poetry">They loved each other all their lives,<br /> + Dissent they never knew,<br /> +And, stranger still, their very wives<br /> + Were rather friendly too.</p> +<p class="poetry">Perhaps you think, to serve my ends,<br /> + These statements I refute,<br /> +When I admit that these dear friends<br /> + Were parties to a suit?</p> +<p class="poetry">But ’twas a friendly action, for<br /> + Good <span class="smcap">Pythias</span>, as you +see,<br /> +Fought merely as executor,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Damon</span> as trustee.</p> +<p class="poetry">They laughed to think, as through the throng<br +/> + Of suitors sad they passed,<br /> +That they, who’d lived and loved so long,<br /> + Should go to law at last.</p> +<p class="poetry">The junior briefs they kindly let<br /> + Two sucking counsel hold;<br /> +These learned persons never yet<br /> + Had fingered suitors’ gold.</p> +<p class="poetry">But though the happy suitors two<br /> + Were friendly as could be,<br /> +Not so the junior counsel who<br /> + Were earning maiden fee.</p> +<p class="poetry">They too, till then, were friends. At +school<br /> + They’d done each other’s sums,<br /> +And under Oxford’s gentle rule<br /> + Had been the closest chums.</p> +<p class="poetry">But now they met with scowl and grin<br /> + In every public place,<br /> +And often snapped their fingers in<br /> + Each other’s learned face.</p> +<p class="poetry">It almost ended in a fight<br /> + When they on path or stair<br /> +Met face to face. They made it quite<br /> + A personal affair.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when at length the case was called<br /> + (It came on rather late),<br /> +Spectators really were appalled<br /> + To see their deadly hate.</p> +<p class="poetry">One junior rose—with eyeballs tense,<br +/> + And swollen frontal veins:<br /> +To all his powers of eloquence<br /> + He gave the fullest reins.</p> +<p class="poetry">His argument was novel—for<br /> + A verdict he relied<br /> +On blackening the junior<br /> + Upon the other side.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh,” said the Judge, in robe and +fur,<br /> + “The matter in dispute<br /> +To arbitration pray refer—<br /> + This is a friendly suit.”</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Pythias</span>, in +merry mood,<br /> + Digged <span class="smcap">Damon</span> in the +side;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Damon</span>, tickled with the feud,<br +/> + With other digs replied.</p> +<p class="poetry">But oh! those deadly counsel twain,<br /> + Who were such friends before,<br /> +Were never reconciled again—<br /> + They quarrelled more and more.</p> +<p class="poetry">At length it happened that they met<br /> + On Alpine heights one day,<br /> +And thus they paid each one his debt,<br /> + Their fury had its way—</p> +<p class="poetry">They seized each other in a trice,<br /> + With scorn and hatred filled,<br /> +And, falling from a precipice,<br /> + They, both of them, were killed.</p> +<h2><a name="page368"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 368</span>MY +DREAM</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> other night, +from cares exempt,<br /> +I slept—and what d’you think I dreamt?<br /> +I dreamt that somehow I had come<br /> +To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom—</p> +<p class="poetry">Where vice is virtue—virtue, vice:<br /> +Where nice is nasty—nasty, nice:<br /> +Where right is wrong and wrong is right—<br /> +Where white is black and black is white.</p> +<p class="poetry">Where babies, much to their surprise,<br /> +Are born astonishingly wise;<br /> +With every Science on their lips,<br /> +And Art at all their finger-tips.</p> +<p class="poetry">For, as their nurses dandle them<br /> +They crow binomial theorem,<br /> +With views (it seems absurd to us)<br /> +On differential calculus.</p> +<p class="poetry">But though a babe, as I have said,<br /> +Is born with learning in his head,<br /> +He must forget it, if he can,<br /> +Before he calls himself a man.</p> +<p class="poetry">For that which we call folly here,<br /> +Is wisdom in that favoured sphere;<br /> +The wisdom we so highly prize<br /> +Is blatant folly in their eyes.</p> +<p class="poetry">A boy, if he would push his way,<br /> +Must learn some nonsense every day;<br /> +And cut, to carry out this view,<br /> +His wisdom teeth and wisdom too.</p> +<p class="poetry">Historians burn their midnight oils,<br /> +Intent on giant-killers’ toils;<br /> +And sages close their aged eyes<br /> +To other sages’ lullabies.</p> +<p class="poetry"><i>Our</i> magistrates, in duty bound,<br /> +Commit all robbers who are found;<br /> +But there the Beaks (so people said)<br /> +Commit all robberies instead.</p> +<p class="poetry"><i>Our</i> Judges, pure and wise in tone,<br /> +Know crime from theory alone,<br /> +And glean the motives of a thief<br /> +From books and popular belief.</p> +<p class="poetry">But there, a Judge who wants to prime<br /> +His mind with true ideas of crime,<br /> +Derives them from the common sense<br /> +Of practical experience.</p> +<p class="poetry">Policemen march all folks away<br /> +Who practise virtue every day—<br /> +Of course, I mean to say, you know,<br /> +What we call virtue here below.</p> +<p class="poetry">For only scoundrels dare to do<br /> +What we consider just and true,<br /> +And only good men do, in fact,<br /> +What we should think a dirty act.</p> +<p class="poetry">But strangest of these social twirls,<br /> +The girls are boys—the boys are girls!<br /> +The men are women, too—but then,<br /> +<i>Per contra</i>, women all are men.</p> +<p class="poetry">To one who to tradition clings<br /> +This seems an awkward state of things,<br /> +But if to think it out you try,<br /> +It doesn’t really signify.</p> +<p class="poetry">With them, as surely as can be,<br /> +A sailor should be sick at sea,<br /> +And not a passenger may sail<br /> +Who cannot smoke right through a gale.</p> +<p class="poetry">A soldier (save by rarest luck)<br /> +Is always shot for showing pluck<br /> +(That is, if others can be found<br /> +With pluck enough to fire a round).</p> +<p class="poetry">“How strange!” I said to one I +saw;<br /> +“You quite upset our every law.<br /> +However can you get along<br /> +So systematically wrong?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Dear me!” my mad informant +said,<br /> +“Have you no eyes within your head?<br /> +You sneer when you your hat should doff:<br /> +Why, we begin where you leave off!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Your wisest men are very far<br /> +Less learned than our babies are!”<br /> +I mused awhile—and then, oh me!<br /> +I framed this brilliant repartee:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Although your babes are wiser far<br /> +Than our most valued sages are,<br /> +Your sages, with their toys and cots,<br /> +Are duller than our idiots!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But this remark, I grieve to state,<br /> +Came just a little bit too late<br /> +For as I framed it in my head,<br /> +I woke and found myself in bed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Still I could wish that, ’stead of +here,<br /> +My lot were in that favoured sphere!—<br /> +Where greatest fools bear off the bell<br /> +I ought to do extremely well.</p> +<h2><a name="page376"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 376</span>THE +BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN</h2> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">often</span> wonder +whether you<br /> +Think sometimes of that Bishop, who<br /> +From black but balmy Rum-ti-Foo<br /> + Last summer +twelvemonth came.<br /> +Unto your mind I p’r’aps may bring<br /> +Remembrance of the man I sing<br /> +To-day, by simply mentioning<br /> + That <span +class="smcap">Peter</span> was his name.</p> +<p class="poetry">Remember how that holy man<br /> +Came with the great Colonial clan<br /> +To Synod, called Pan-Anglican;<br /> + And kindly +recollect<br /> +How, having crossed the ocean wide,<br /> +To please his flock all means he tried<br /> +Consistent with a proper pride<br /> + And manly +self-respect.</p> +<p class="poetry">He only, of the reverend pack<br /> +Who minister to Christians black,<br /> +Brought any useful knowledge back<br /> + To his Colonial +fold.<br /> +In consequence a place I claim<br /> +For “<span class="smcap">Peter</span>” on the scroll +of Fame<br /> +(For <span class="smcap">Peter</span> was that Bishop’s +name,<br /> + As I’ve +already told).</p> +<p class="poetry">He carried Art, he often said,<br /> +To places where that timid maid<br /> +(Save by Colonial Bishops’ aid)<br /> + Could never hope +to roam.<br /> +The Payne-cum-Lauri feat he taught<br /> +As he had learnt it; for he thought<br /> +The choicest fruits of Progress ought<br /> + To bless the +Negro’s home.</p> +<p class="poetry">And he had other work to do,<br /> +For, while he tossed upon the Blue,<br /> +The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo<br /> + Forgot their +kindly friend.<br /> +Their decent clothes they learnt to tear—<br /> +They learnt to say, “I do not care,”<br /> +Though they, of course, were well aware<br /> + How folks, who +say so, end.</p> +<p class="poetry">Some sailors, whom he did not know,<br /> +Had landed there not long ago,<br /> +And taught them “Bother!” also, +“Blow!”<br /> + (Of wickedness +the germs).<br /> +No need to use a casuist’s pen<br /> +To prove that they were merchantmen;<br /> +No sailor of the Royal N.<br /> + Would use such +awful terms.</p> +<p class="poetry">And so, when <span class="smcap">Bishop +Peter</span> came<br /> +(That was the kindly Bishop’s name),<br /> +He heard these dreadful oaths with shame,<br /> + And chid their +want of dress.<br /> +(Except a shell—a bangle rare—<br /> +A feather here—a feather there<br /> +The South Pacific Negroes wear<br /> + Their native +nothingness.)</p> +<p class="poetry">He taught them that a Bishop loathes<br /> +To listen to disgraceful oaths,<br /> +He gave them all his left-off clothes—<br /> + They bent them +to his will.<br /> +The Bishop’s gift spreads quickly round;<br /> +In <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> left-off clothes they +bound<br /> +(His three-and-twenty suits they found<br /> + In fair +condition still).</p> +<p class="poetry">The Bishop’s eyes with water fill,<br /> +Quite overjoyed to find them still<br /> +Obedient to his sovereign will,<br /> + And said, +“Good Rum-ti-Foo!<br /> +Half-way I’ll meet you, I declare:<br /> +I’ll dress myself in cowries rare,<br /> +And fasten feathers in my hair,<br /> + And dance the +‘Cutch-chi-boo!’”</p> +<p class="poetry">And to conciliate his See<br /> +He married <span class="smcap">Piccadillillee</span>,<br /> +The youngest of his twenty-three,<br /> + +Tall—neither fat nor thin.<br /> +(And though the dress he made her don<br /> +Looks awkwardly a girl upon,<br /> +It was a great improvement on<br /> + The one he found +her in.)</p> +<p class="poetry">The Bishop in his gay canoe<br /> +(His wife, of course, went with him too)<br /> +To some adjacent island flew,<br /> + To spend his +honeymoon.<br /> +Some day in sunny Rum-ti-Foo<br /> +A little <span class="smcap">Peter</span>’ll be on view;<br +/> +And that (if people tell me true)<br /> + Is like to +happen soon.</p> +<h2><a name="page383"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 383</span>A +WORM WILL TURN</h2> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">love</span> a man +who’ll smile and joke<br /> + When with misfortune crowned;<br +/> +Who’ll pun beneath a pauper’s yoke,<br /> +And as he breaks his daily toke,<br /> + Conundrums gay propound.</p> +<p class="poetry">Just such a man was <span class="smcap">Bernard +Jupp</span>,<br /> + He scoffed at Fortune’s +frown;<br /> +He gaily drained his bitter cup—<br /> +Though Fortune often threw him up,<br /> + It never cast him down.</p> +<p class="poetry">Though years their share of sorrow bring,<br /> + We know that far above<br /> +All other griefs, are griefs that spring<br /> +From some misfortune happening<br /> + To those we really love.</p> +<p class="poetry">E’en sorrow for another’s woe<br /> + Our <span +class="smcap">Bernard</span> failed to quell;<br /> +Though by this special form of blow<br /> +No person ever suffered so,<br /> + Or bore his grief so well.</p> +<p class="poetry">His father, wealthy and well clad,<br /> + And owning house and park,<br /> +Lost every halfpenny he had,<br /> +And then became (extremely sad!)<br /> + A poor attorney’s clerk.</p> +<p class="poetry">All sons it surely would appal,<br /> + Except the passing meek,<br /> +To see a father lose his all,<br /> +And from an independence fall<br /> + To one pound ten a week!</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">Jupp</span> shook off +this sorrow’s weight,<br /> + And, like a Christian son,<br /> +Proved Poverty a happy fate—<br /> +Proved Wealth to be a devil’s bait,<br /> + To lure poor sinners on.</p> +<p class="poetry">With other sorrows <span +class="smcap">Bernard</span> coped,<br /> + For sorrows came in packs;<br /> +His cousins with their housemaids sloped—<br /> +His uncles forged—his aunts eloped—<br /> + His sisters married blacks.</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">Bernard</span>, far +from murmuring<br /> + (Exemplar, friends, to us),<br /> +Determined to his faith to cling,—<br /> +He made the best of everything,<br /> + And argued softly thus:</p> +<p class="poetry">“’Twere harsh my uncles’ +forging knack<br /> + Too rudely to condemn—<br /> +My aunts, repentant, may come back,<br /> +And blacks are nothing like as black<br /> + As people colour them!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Still Fate, with many a sorrow rife,<br /> + Maintained relentless fight:<br /> +His grandmamma next lost her life,<br /> +Then died the mother of his wife,<br /> + But still he seemed all right.</p> +<p class="poetry">His brother fond (the only link<br /> + To life that bound him now)<br /> +One morning, overcome by drink,<br /> +He broke his leg (the right, I think)<br /> + In some disgraceful row.</p> +<p class="poetry">But did my <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> +swear and curse?<br /> + Oh no—to murmur loth,<br /> +He only said, “Go, get a nurse:<br /> +Be thankful that it isn’t worse;<br /> + You might have broken +both!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But worms who watch without concern<br /> + The cockchafer on thorns,<br /> +Or beetles smashed, themselves will turn<br /> +If, walking through the slippery fern,<br /> + You tread upon their corns.</p> +<p class="poetry">One night as <span class="smcap">Bernard</span> +made his track<br /> + Through Brompton home to bed,<br +/> +A footpad, with a vizor black,<br /> +Took watch and purse, and dealt a crack<br /> + On <span +class="smcap">Bernard’s</span> saint-like head.</p> +<p class="poetry">It was too much—his spirit rose,<br /> + He looked extremely cross.<br /> +Men thought him steeled to mortal foes,<br /> +But no—he bowed to countless blows,<br /> + But kicked against this loss.</p> +<p class="poetry">He finally made up his mind<br /> + Upon his friends to call;<br /> +Subscription lists were largely signed,<br /> +For men were really glad to find<br /> + Him mortal, after all!</p> +<h2><a name="page391"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 391</span>THE +HAUGHTY ACTOR</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span class="smcap">An</span> +actor—<span class="smcap">Gibbs</span>, of Drury +Lane—<br /> + Of very decent station,<br /> + Once happened in a part to gain<br /> + Excessive approbation:<br /> + It sometimes turns a fellow’s brain<br /> + And makes him singularly vain<br /> +When he believes that he receives<br /> + Tremendous approbation.</p> +<p class="poetry"> His great success half drove +him mad,<br /> + But no one seemed to mind him;<br +/> + Well, in another piece he had<br /> + Another part assigned him.<br /> + This part was smaller, by a bit,<br /> + Than that in which he made a hit.<br /> +So, much ill-used, he straight refused<br /> + To play the part assigned him.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><i>That night that actor slept</i>, <i>and +I’ll attempt</i><br /> +<i>To tell you of the vivid dream he dreamt</i>.</p> +<h3>THE DREAM.</h3> +<p class="poetry"> In fighting with a robber +band<br /> + (A thing he loved sincerely)<br /> + A sword struck <span class="smcap">Gibbs</span> upon +the hand,<br /> + And wounded it severely.<br /> + At first he didn’t heed it much,<br /> + He thought it was a simple touch,<br /> +But soon he found the weapon’s bound<br /> + Had wounded him severely.</p> +<p class="poetry"> To Surgeon <span +class="smcap">Cobb</span> he made a trip,<br /> + Who’d just effected +featly<br /> + An amputation at the hip<br /> + Particularly neatly.<br /> + A rising man was Surgeon <span +class="smcap">Cobb</span><br /> + But this extremely ticklish job<br /> +He had achieved (as he believed)<br /> + Particularly neatly.</p> +<p class="poetry"> The actor rang the +surgeon’s bell.<br /> + “Observe my wounded +finger,<br /> + Be good enough to strap it well,<br /> + And prithee do not linger.<br /> + That I, dear sir, may fill again<br /> + The Theatre Royal Drury Lane:<br /> +This very night I have to fight—<br /> + So prithee do not +linger.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> “I don’t strap +fingers up for doles,”<br /> + Replied the haughty surgeon;<br /> + “To use your cant, I don’t play +rôles<br /> + Utility that verge on.<br /> + First amputation—nothing less—<br /> + That is my line of business:<br /> +We surgeon nobs despise all jobs<br /> + Utility that verge on</p> +<p class="poetry"> “When in your hip there +lurks disease”<br /> + (So dreamt this lively +dreamer),<br /> + “Or devastating <i>caries</i><br /> + In <i>humerus</i> or +<i>femur</i>,<br /> + If you can pay a handsome fee,<br /> + Oh, then you may remember me—<br /> +With joy elate I’ll amputate<br /> + Your <i>humerus</i> or +<i>femur</i>.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> The disconcerted actor +ceased<br /> + The haughty leech to pester,<br /> + But when the wound in size increased,<br /> + And then began to fester,<br /> + He sought a learned Counsel’s lair,<br /> + And told that Counsel, then and there,<br /> +How <span class="smcap">Cobb’s</span> neglect of his +defect<br /> + Had made his finger fester.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Oh, bring my action, +if you please,<br /> + The case I pray you urge on,<br /> + And win me thumping damages<br /> + From <span +class="smcap">Cobb</span>, that haughty surgeon.<br /> + He culpably neglected me<br /> + Although I proffered him his fee,<br /> +So pray come down, in wig and gown,<br /> + On <span +class="smcap">Cobb</span>, that haughty surgeon!”</p> +<p class="poetry"> That Counsel learned in the +laws,<br /> + With passion almost trembled.<br +/> + He just had gained a mighty cause<br /> + Before the Peers assembled!<br /> + Said he, “How dare you have the face<br /> + To come with Common Jury case<br /> +To one who wings rhetoric flings<br /> + Before the Peers +assembled?”</p> +<p class="poetry"> Dispirited became our +friend—<br /> + Depressed his moral +pecker—<br /> + “But stay! a thought!—I’ll gain my +end,<br /> + And save my poor exchequer.<br /> + I won’t be placed upon the shelf,<br /> + I’ll take it into Court myself,<br /> +And legal lore display before<br /> + The Court of the +Exchequer.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> He found a Baron—one of +those<br /> + Who with our laws supply +us—<br /> + In wig and silken gown and hose,<br /> + As if at <i>Nisi Prius</i>.<br /> + But he’d just given, off the reel,<br /> + A famous judgment on Appeal:<br /> +It scarce became his heightened fame<br /> + To sit at <i>Nisi Prius</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Our friend began, with easy +wit,<br /> + That half concealed his terror:<br +/> + “Pooh!” said the Judge, “I only +sit<br /> + In <i>Banco</i> or in Error.<br /> + Can you suppose, my man, that I’d<br /> + O’er <i>Nisi Prius</i> Courts preside,<br /> +Or condescend my time to spend<br /> + On anything but Error?”</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Too bad,” said +<span class="smcap">Gibbs</span>, “my case to shirk!<br /> + You must be bad innately,<br /> + To save your skill for mighty work<br /> + Because it’s valued +greatly!”<br /> + But here he woke, with sudden start.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry"> He wrote to say he’d +play the part.<br /> +I’ve but to tell he played it well—<br /> + The author’s words—his native wit<br /> + Combined, achieved a perfect +“hit”—<br /> + The papers +praised him greatly.</p> +<h2><a name="page399"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 399</span>THE +TWO MAJORS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">An</span> excellent soldier +who’s worthy the name<br /> + Loves officers dashing and strict:<br /> +When good, he’s content with escaping all blame,<br /> + When naughty, he likes to be licked.</p> +<p class="poetry">He likes for a fault to be bullied and +stormed,<br /> + Or imprisoned for several days,<br /> +And hates, for a duty correctly performed,<br /> + To be slavered with sickening praise.</p> +<p class="poetry">No officer sickened with praises his +<i>corps</i><br /> + So little as <span class="smcap">Major La +Guerre</span>—<br /> +No officer swore at his warriors more<br /> + Than <span class="smcap">Major Makredi +Prepere</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Their soldiers adored them, and every grade<br +/> + Delighted to hear their abuse;<br /> +Though whenever these officers came on parade<br /> + They shivered and shook in their shoes.</p> +<p class="poetry">For, oh! if <span class="smcap">La +Guerre</span> could all praises withhold,<br /> + Why, so could <span class="smcap">Makredi +Prepere</span>,<br /> +And, oh! if <span class="smcap">Makredi</span> could bluster and +scold,<br /> + Why, so could the mighty <span class="smcap">La +Guerre</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“No doubt we deserve it—no mercy we +crave—<br /> + Go on—you’re conferring a boon;<br /> +We would rather be slanged by a warrior brave,<br /> + Than praised by a wretched poltroon!”</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Makredi</span> would say +that in battle’s fierce rage<br /> + True happiness only was met:<br /> +Poor <span class="smcap">Major Makredi</span>, though fifty his +age,<br /> + Had never known happiness yet!</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">La Guerre</span> would +declare, “With the blood of a foe<br /> + No tipple is worthy to clink.”<br /> +Poor fellow! he hadn’t, though sixty or so,<br /> + Yet tasted his favourite drink!</p> +<p class="poetry">They agreed at their mess—they agreed in +the glass—<br /> + They agreed in the choice of their +“set,”<br /> +And they also agreed in adoring, alas!<br /> + The Vivandière, pretty <span +class="smcap">Fillette</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Agreement, you see, may be carried too far,<br +/> + And after agreeing all round<br /> +For years—in this soldierly “maid of the +bar,”<br /> + A bone of contention they found!</p> +<p class="poetry">It may seem improper to call such a +pet—<br /> + By a metaphor, even—a bone;<br /> +But though they agreed in adoring her, yet<br /> + Each wanted to make her his own.</p> +<p class="poetry">“On the day that you marry her,” +muttered <span class="smcap">Prepere</span><br /> + (With a pistol he quietly played),<br /> +“I’ll scatter the brains in your noddle, I swear,<br +/> + All over the stony parade!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“I cannot do <i>that</i> to you,” +answered <span class="smcap">La Guerre</span>,<br /> + “Whatever events may befall;<br /> +But this <i>I can</i> do—<i>if you</i> wed her, <i>mon +cher</i>!<br /> + I’ll eat you, moustachios and all!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The rivals, although they would never +engage,<br /> + Yet quarrelled whenever they met;<br /> +They met in a fury and left in a rage,<br /> + But neither took pretty <span +class="smcap">Fillette</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I am not afraid,” thought <span +class="smcap">Makredi Prepere</span>:<br /> + “For country I’m ready to fall;<br /> +But nobody wants, for a mere Vivandière,<br /> + To be eaten, moustachios and all!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Besides, though <span class="smcap">La +Guerre</span> has his faults, I’ll allow<br /> + He’s one of the bravest of men:<br /> +My goodness! if I disagree with him now,<br /> + I might disagree with him then.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“No coward am I,” said <span +class="smcap">La Guerre</span>, “as you guess—<br /> + I sneer at an enemy’s blade;<br /> +But I don’t want <span class="smcap">Prepere</span> to get +into a mess<br /> + For splashing the stony parade!”</p> +<p class="poetry">One day on parade to <span +class="smcap">Prepere</span> and <span class="smcap">La +Guerre</span><br /> + Came <span class="smcap">Corporal Jacot +Debette</span>,<br /> +And trembling all over, he prayed of them there<br /> + To give him the pretty <span +class="smcap">Fillette</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“You see, I am willing to marry my +bride<br /> + Until you’ve arranged this affair;<br /> +I will blow out my brains when your honours decide<br /> + Which marries the sweet +Vivandière!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, take her,” said both of them +in a duet<br /> + (A favourite form of reply),<br /> +“But when I am ready to marry <span +class="smcap">Fillette</span>.<br /> + Remember you’ve promised to die!”</p> +<p class="poetry">He married her then: from the flowery plains<br +/> + Of existence the roses they cull:<br /> +He lived and he died with his wife; and his brains<br /> + Are reposing in peace in his skull.</p> +<h2><a name="page405"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +405</span>EMILY, JOHN, JAMES, AND I.</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A DERBY +LEGEND</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Emily Jane</span> was a +nursery maid,<br /> + <span class="smcap">James</span> was a bold Life +Guard,<br /> +<span class="smcap">John</span> was a constable, poorly paid<br +/> + (And I am a doggerel bard).</p> +<p class="poetry">A very good girl was <span class="smcap">Emily +Jane</span>,<br /> + <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> was good and +true,<br /> +<span class="smcap">John</span> was a very good man in the +main<br /> + (And I am a good man too).</p> +<p class="poetry">Rivals for <span class="smcap">Emmie</span> +were <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> and <span +class="smcap">James</span>,<br /> + Though <span class="smcap">Emily</span> liked them +both;<br /> +She couldn’t tell which had the strongest claims<br /> + (And <i>I</i> couldn’t take my oath).</p> +<p class="poetry">But sooner or later you’re certain to +find<br /> + Your sentiments can’t lie hid—<br /> +<span class="smcap">Jane</span> thought it was time that she made +up her mind<br /> + (And I think it was time she did).</p> +<p class="poetry">Said <span class="smcap">Jane</span>, with a +smirk, and a blush on her face,<br /> + “I’ll promise to wed the boy<br /> +Who takes me to-morrow to Epsom Race!”<br /> + (Which I would have done, with joy).</p> +<p class="poetry">From <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> escaped +an expression of pain,<br /> + But Jimmy said, “Done with you!<br /> +I’ll take you with pleasure, my <span class="smcap">Emily +Jane</span>!”<br /> + (And I would have said so too).</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">John</span> lay on the +ground, and he roared like mad<br /> + (For <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> was sore +perplexed),<br /> +And he kicked very hard at a very small lad<br /> + (Which <i>I</i> often do, when vexed).</p> +<p class="poetry">For <span class="smcap">John</span> was on duty +next day with the Force,<br /> + To punish all Epsom crimes;<br /> +Young people <i>will</i> cross when they’re clearing the +course<br /> + (I do it myself, sometimes).</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">The Derby Day sun glittered gaily on cads,<br +/> + On maidens with gamboge hair,<br /> +On sharpers and pickpockets, swindlers and pads,<br /> + (For I, with my harp, was there).</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> went down +with his <span class="smcap">Jane</span> that day,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">John</span> by the collar or +nape<br /> +Seized everybody who came in his way<br /> + (And <i>I</i> had a narrow escape).</p> +<p class="poetry">He noticed his <span class="smcap">Emily +Jane</span> with <span class="smcap">Jim</span>,<br /> + And envied the well-made elf;<br /> +And people remarked that he muttered “Oh, dim!”<br /> + (I often say “dim!” myself).</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">John</span> dogged them all +day, without asking their leaves;<br /> + For his sergeant he told, aside,<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> and <span +class="smcap">Jane</span> were notorious thieves<br /> + (And I think he was justified).</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">James</span> +wouldn’t dream of abstracting a fork,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Jenny</span> would blush +with shame<br /> +At stealing so much as a bottle or cork<br /> + (A bottle I think fair game).</p> +<p class="poetry">But, ah! there’s another more serious +crime!<br /> + They wickedly strayed upon<br /> +The course, at a critical moment of time<br /> + (I pointed them out to <span +class="smcap">John</span>).</p> +<p class="poetry">The constable fell on the pair in a +crack—<br /> + And then, with a demon smile,<br /> +Let <span class="smcap">Jenny</span> cross over, but sent <span +class="smcap">Jimmy</span> back<br /> + (I played on my harp the while).</p> +<p class="poetry">Stern <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> their +agony loud derides<br /> + With a very triumphant sneer—<br /> +They weep and they wail from the opposite sides<br /> + (And <i>I</i> shed a silent tear).</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Jenny</span> is crying +away like mad,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> is swearing +hard;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> is looking uncommonly +glad<br /> + (And I am a doggerel bard).</p> +<p class="poetry">But <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> he +ventured on crossing again<br /> + The scenes of our Isthmian Games—<br /> +<span class="smcap">John</span> caught him, and collared him, +giving him pain<br /> + (I felt very much for <span +class="smcap">James</span>).</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">John</span> led him away +with a victor’s hand,<br /> + And <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span> was shortly +seen<br /> +In the station-house under the grand Grand Stand<br /> + (As many a time <i>I’ve</i> been).</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Jimmy</span>, bad boy, +was imprisoned for life,<br /> + Though <span class="smcap">Emily</span> pleaded +hard;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Johnny</span> had <span +class="smcap">Emily Jane</span> to wife<br /> + (And I am a doggerel bard).</p> +<h2><a name="page413"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 413</span>THE +PERILS OF INVISIBILITY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Old Peter</span> led a +wretched life—<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> had a furious wife;<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> too was truly stout,<br /> +He measured several yards about.</p> +<p class="poetry">The little fairy <span +class="smcap">Picklekin</span><br /> +One summer afternoon looked in,<br /> +And said, “Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span>, how de +do?<br /> +Can I do anything for you?</p> +<p class="poetry">“I have three gifts—the first will +give<br /> +Unbounded riches while you live;<br /> +The second health where’er you be;<br /> +The third, invisibility.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O little fairy <span +class="smcap">Picklekin</span>,”<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> answered with a grin,<br /> +“To hesitate would be absurd,—<br /> +Undoubtedly I choose the third.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“’Tis yours,” the fairy said; +“be quite<br /> +Invisible to mortal sight<br /> +Whene’er you please. Remember me<br /> +Most kindly, pray, to <span class="smcap">Mrs</span>. +P.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Mrs. Peter</span> +overheard<br /> +Wee <span class="smcap">Picklekin’s</span> concluding +word,<br /> +And, jealous of her girlhood’s choice,<br /> +Said, “That was some young woman’s voice!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> let her +scold and swear—<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span>, bless him, didn’t +care.<br /> +“My dear, your rage is wasted quite—<br /> +Observe, I disappear from sight!”</p> +<p class="poetry">A well-bred fairy (so I’ve heard)<br /> +Is always faithful to her word:<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> vanished like a shot,<br /> +Put then—<i>his suit of clothes did not</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">For when conferred the fairy slim<br /> +Invisibility on <i>him</i>,<br /> +She popped away on fairy wings,<br /> +Without referring to his “things.”</p> +<p class="poetry">So there remained a coat of blue,<br /> +A vest and double eyeglass too,<br /> +His tail, his shoes, his socks as well,<br /> +His pair of—no, I must not tell.</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Mrs. Peter</span> soon +began<br /> +To see the failure of his plan,<br /> +And then resolved (I quote the Bard)<br /> +To “hoist him with his own petard.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> woke next +day and dressed,<br /> +Put on his coat, and shoes, and vest,<br /> +His shirt and stock; <i>but could not find</i><br /> +<i>His only pair of</i>—never mind!</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> was a +decent man,<br /> +And though he twigged his lady’s plan,<br /> +Yet, hearing her approaching, he<br /> +Resumed invisibility.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Dear <span class="smcap">Mrs</span>. P., +my only joy,”<br /> +Exclaimed the horrified old boy,<br /> +“Now, give them up, I beg of you—<br /> +You know what I’m referring to!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But no; the cross old lady swore<br /> +She’d keep his—what I said before—<br /> +To make him publicly absurd;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Mrs. Peter</span> kept her word.</p> +<p class="poetry">The poor old fellow had no rest;<br /> +His coat, his stick, his shoes, his vest,<br /> +Were all that now met mortal eye—<br /> +The rest, invisibility!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Now, madam, give them up, I +beg—<br /> +I’ve had rheumatics in my leg;<br /> +Besides, until you do, it’s plain<br /> +I cannot come to sight again!</p> +<p class="poetry">“For though some mirth it might afford<br +/> +To see my clothes without their lord,<br /> +Yet there would rise indignant oaths<br /> +If he were seen without his clothes!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But no; resolved to have her quiz,<br /> +The lady held her own—and his—<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> left his humble cot<br /> +To find a pair of—you know what.</p> +<p class="poetry">But—here’s the worst of the +affair—<br /> +Whene’er he came across a pair<br /> +Already placed for him to don,<br /> +He was too stout to get them on!</p> +<p class="poetry">So he resolved at once to train,<br /> +And walked and walked with all his main;<br /> +For years he paced this mortal earth,<br /> +To bring himself to decent girth.</p> +<p class="poetry">At night, when all around is still,<br /> +You’ll find him pounding up a hill;<br /> +And shrieking peasants whom he meets,<br /> +Fall down in terror on the peats!</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Peter</span> walks +through wind and rain,<br /> +Resolved to train, and train, and train,<br /> +Until he weighs twelve stone’ or so—<br /> +And when he does, I’ll let you know.</p> +<h2><a name="page420"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 420</span>OLD +PAUL AND OLD TIM</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> rival adorers +come courting a maid,<br /> +There’s something or other may often be said,<br /> +Why <i>he</i> should be pitched upon rather than <i>him</i>.<br +/> +This wasn’t the case with Old <span +class="smcap">Paul</span> and Old <span +class="smcap">Tim</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">No soul could discover a reason at all<br /> +For marrying <span class="smcap">Timothy</span> rather than <span +class="smcap">Paul</span>;<br /> +Though all could have offered good reasons, on oath,<br /> +Against marrying either—or marrying both.</p> +<p class="poetry">They were equally wealthy and equally old,<br +/> +They were equally timid and equally bold;<br /> +They were equally tall as they stood in their shoes—<br /> +Between them, in fact, there was nothing to choose.</p> +<p class="poetry">Had I been young <span +class="smcap">Emily</span>, I should have said,<br /> +“You’re both much too old for a pretty young maid,<br +/> +Threescore at the least you are verging upon”;<br /> +But I wasn’t young <span class="smcap">Emily</span>. +Let us get on.</p> +<p class="poetry">No coward’s blood ran in young <span +class="smcap">Emily’s</span> veins,<br /> +Her martial old father loved bloody campaigns;<br /> +At the rumours of battles all over the globe<br /> +He pricked up his ears like the war-horse in +“Job.”</p> +<p class="poetry">He chuckled to hear of a sudden +surprise—<br /> +Of soldiers, compelled, through an enemy’s spies,<br /> +Without any knapsacks or shakos to flee—<br /> +For an eminent army-contractor was he.</p> +<p class="poetry">So when her two lovers, whose patience was +tried,<br /> +Implored her between them at once to decide,<br /> +She told them she’d marry whichever might bring<br /> +Good proofs of his doing the pluckiest thing.</p> +<p class="poetry">They both went away with a qualified joy:<br /> +That coward, Old <span class="smcap">Paul</span>, chose a very +small boy,<br /> +And when no one was looking, in spite of his fears,<br /> +He set to work boxing that little boy’s ears.</p> +<p class="poetry">The little boy struggled and tugged at his +hair,<br /> +But the lion was roused, and Old <span class="smcap">Paul</span> +didn’t care;<br /> +He smacked him, and whacked him, and boxed him, and kicked<br /> +Till the poor little beggar was royally licked.</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Tim</span> knew a trick +worth a dozen of that,<br /> +So he called for his stick and he called for his hat.<br /> +“I’ll cover myself with cheap glory—I’ll +go<br /> +And wallop the Frenchmen who live in Soho!</p> +<p class="poetry">“The German invader is ravaging France<br +/> +With infantry rifle and cavalry lance,<br /> +And beautiful Paris is fighting her best<br /> +To shake herself free from her terrible guest.</p> +<p class="poetry">“The Frenchmen in London, in craven +alarms,<br /> +Have all run away from the summons to arms;<br /> +They haven’t the pluck of a pigeon—I’ll go<br +/> +And wallop the Frenchmen who skulk in Soho!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Timothy</span> tried it +and found it succeed:<br /> +That day he caused many French noses to bleed;<br /> +Through foggy Soho he spread fear and dismay,<br /> +And Frenchmen all round him in agony lay.</p> +<p class="poetry">He took care to abstain from employing his +fist<br /> +On the old and the crippled, for they might resist;<br /> +A crippled old man may have pluck in his breast,<br /> +But the young and the strong ones are cowards confest.</p> +<p class="poetry">Old <span class="smcap">Tim</span> and Old +<span class="smcap">Paul</span>, with the list of their foes,<br +/> +Prostrated themselves at their <span +class="smcap">Emily’s</span> toes:<br /> +“Oh, which of us two is the pluckier blade?”<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Emily</span> answered and <span +class="smcap">Emily</span> said:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Old <span class="smcap">Tim</span> has +thrashed runaway Frenchmen in scores,<br /> +Who ought to be guarding their cities and shores;<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Paul</span> has made little chaps’ +noses to bleed—<br /> +Old <span class="smcap">Paul</span> has accomplished the pluckier +deed!”</p> +<h2><a name="page426"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 426</span>THE +MYSTIC SELVAGEE</h2> +<p class="poetry">Perhaps already you may know<br /> +<span class="smcap">Sir Blennerhasset Portico</span>?<br /> +A Captain in the Navy, he—<br /> +A Baronet and K.C.B.<br /> + + +You do? I thought so!<br /> +It was that Captain’s favourite whim<br /> +(A notion not confined to him)<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Rodney</span> was the greatest tar<br /> +Who ever wielded capstan-bar.<br /> + + +He had been taught so.</p> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Benbow</span>! +<span class="smcap">Cornwallis</span>! <span +class="smcap">Hood</span>!—Belay!<br /> +Compared with <span class="smcap">Rodney</span>”—he +would say—<br /> +“No other tar is worth a rap!<br /> +The great <span class="smcap">Lord Rodney</span> was the chap<br +/> + + +The French to polish!<br /> +Though, mind you, I respect <span class="smcap">Lord +Hood</span>;<br /> +<span class="smcap">Cornwallis</span>, too, was rather good;<br +/> +<span class="smcap">Benbow</span> could enemies repel,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Lord Nelson</span>, too, was pretty +well—<br /> + + +That is, tol-lol-ish!”</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sir Blennerhasset</span> +spent his days<br /> +In learning <span class="smcap">Rodney’s</span> little +ways,<br /> +And closely imitated, too,<br /> +His mode of talking to his crew—<br /> + + +His port and paces.<br /> +An ancient tar he tried to catch<br /> +Who’d served in <span class="smcap">Rodney’s</span> +famous batch;<br /> +But since his time long years have fled,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Rodney’s</span> tars are mostly +dead:<br /> + + +<i>Eheu fugaces</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">But after searching near and far,<br /> +At last he found an ancient tar<br /> +Who served with <span class="smcap">Rodney</span> and his crew<br +/> +Against the French in ’Eighty-two,<br /> + + +(That gained the peerage).<br /> +He gave him fifty pounds a year,<br /> +His rum, his baccy, and his beer;<br /> +And had a comfortable den<br /> +Rigged up in what, by merchantmen,<br /> + + +Is called the steerage.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Now, <span +class="smcap">Jasper</span>”—’t was that +sailor’s name—<br /> +“Don’t fear that you’ll incur my blame<br /> +By saying, when it seems to you,<br /> +That there is anything I do<br /> + + +That <span class="smcap">Rodney</span> wouldn’t.”<br +/> +The ancient sailor turned his quid,<br /> +Prepared to do as he was bid:<br /> +“Ay, ay, yer honour; to begin,<br /> +You’ve done away with ‘swifting in’—<br +/> + + +Well, sir, you shouldn’t!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Upon your spars I see you’ve +clapped<br /> +Peak halliard blocks, all iron-capped.<br /> +I would not christen that a crime,<br /> +But ’twas not done in <span +class="smcap">Rodney’s</span> time.<br /> + + +It looks half-witted!<br /> +Upon your maintop-stay, I see,<br /> +You always clap a selvagee!<br /> +Your stays, I see, are equalized—<br /> +No vessel, such as <span class="smcap">Rodney</span> prized,<br +/> + + +Would thus be fitted!</p> +<p class="poetry">“And <span class="smcap">Rodney</span>, +honoured sir, would grin<br /> +To see you turning deadeyes in,<br /> +Not <i>up</i>, as in the ancient way,<br /> +But downwards, like a cutter’s stay—<br /> + + +You didn’t oughter;<br /> +Besides, in seizing shrouds on board,<br /> +Breast backstays you have quite ignored;<br /> +Great <span class="smcap">Rodney</span> kept unto the last<br /> +Breast backstays on topgallant mast—<br /> + + +They make it tauter.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sir Blennerhasset</span> +“swifted in,”<br /> +Turned deadeyes up, and lent a fin<br /> +To strip (as told by <span class="smcap">Jasper Knox</span>)<br +/> +The iron capping from his blocks,<br /> + + +Where there was any.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Sir Blennerhasset</span> does away,<br /> +With selvagees from maintop-stay;<br /> +And though it makes his sailors stare,<br /> +He rigs breast backstays everywhere—<br /> + + +In fact, too many.</p> +<p class="poetry">One morning, when the saucy craft<br /> +Lay calmed, old <span class="smcap">Jasper</span> toddled aft.<br +/> +“My mind misgives me, sir, that we<br /> +Were wrong about that selvagee—<br /> + + +I should restore it.”<br /> +“Good,” said the Captain, and that day<br /> +Restored it to the maintop-stay.<br /> +Well-practised sailors often make<br /> +A much more serious mistake,<br /> + + +And then ignore it.</p> +<p class="poetry">Next day old <span class="smcap">Jasper</span> +came once more:<br /> +“I think, sir, I was right before.”<br /> +Well, up the mast the sailors skipped,<br /> +The selvagee was soon unshipped,<br /> + + +And all were merry.<br /> +Again a day, and <span class="smcap">Jasper</span> came:<br /> +“I p’r’aps deserve your honour’s +blame,<br /> +I can’t make up my mind,” said he,<br /> +“About that cursed selvagee—<br /> + + +It’s foolish—very.</p> +<p class="poetry">“On Monday night I could have sworn<br /> +That maintop-stay it should adorn,<br /> +On Tuesday morning I could swear<br /> +That selvagee should not be there.<br /> + + +The knot’s a rasper!”<br /> +“Oh, you be hanged,” said <span +class="smcap">Captain</span> P.,<br /> +“Here, go ashore at Caribbee.<br /> +Get out—good bye—shove off—all right!”<br +/> +Old <span class="smcap">Jasper</span> soon was out of +sight—<br /> + + +Farewell, old <span class="smcap">Jasper</span>!</p> +<h2><a name="page433"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 433</span>THE +CUNNING WOMAN</h2> +<p class="poetry">On all Arcadia’s sunny plain,<br /> + On all Arcadia’s hill,<br /> +None were so blithe as <span class="smcap">Bill</span> and <span +class="smcap">Jane</span>,<br /> + So blithe as <span class="smcap">Jane</span> and +<span class="smcap">Bill</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">No social earthquake e’er occurred<br /> + To rack their common mind:<br /> +To them a Panic was a word—<br /> + A Crisis, empty wind.</p> +<p class="poetry">No Stock Exchange disturbed the lad<br /> + With overwhelming shocks—<br /> +<span class="smcap">Bill</span> ploughed with all the shares he +had,<br /> + <span class="smcap">Jane</span> planted all her +stocks.</p> +<p class="poetry">And learn in what a simple way<br /> + Their pleasures they enhanced—<br /> +<span class="smcap">Jane</span> danced like any lamb all day,<br +/> + <span class="smcap">Bill</span> piped as well as +danced.</p> +<p class="poetry">Surrounded by a twittling crew,<br /> + Of linnet, lark, and thrush,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Bill</span> treated his young lady to<br /> + This sentimental gush:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, <span class="smcap">Jane</span>, how +true I am to you!<br /> + How true you are to me!<br /> +And how we woo, and how we coo!<br /> + So fond a pair are we!</p> +<p class="poetry">“To think, dear <span +class="smcap">Jane</span>, that anyways.<br /> + Your chiefest end and aim<br /> +Is, one of these fine summer days,<br /> + To bear my humble name!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Quoth <span class="smcap">Jane</span>, +“Well, as you put the case,<br /> + I’m true enough, no doubt,<br /> +But then, you see, in this here place<br /> + There’s none to cut you out.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But, oh! if anybody came—<br /> + A Lord or any such—<br /> +I do not think your humble name<br /> + Would fascinate me much.</p> +<p class="poetry">“For though your mates, you often +boast.<br /> + You distance out-and-out;<br /> +Still, in the abstract, you’re a most<br /> + Uncompromising lout!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Poor <span class="smcap">Bill</span>, he gave a +heavy sigh,<br /> + He tried in vain to speak—<br /> +A fat tear started to each eye<br /> + And coursed adown each cheek.</p> +<p class="poetry">For, oh! right well in truth he knew<br /> + That very self-same day,<br /> +The <span class="smcap">Lord de Jacob Pillaloo</span><br /> + Was coming there to stay!</p> +<p class="poetry">The <span class="smcap">Lord de Jacob +Pillaloo</span><br /> + All proper maidens shun—<br /> +He loves all women, it is true,<br /> + But never marries one.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now <span class="smcap">Jane</span>, with all +her mad self-will,<br /> + Was no coquette—oh no!<br /> +She really loved her faithful <span class="smcap">Bill</span>,<br +/> + And thus she tuned her woe:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, willow, willow, o’er the +lea!<br /> + And willow once again!<br /> +The Peer will fall in love with me!<br /> + Why wasn’t I made plain?”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">A cunning woman lived hard by,<br /> + A sorceressing dame,<br /> +<span class="smcap">MacCatacomb de Salmon-Eye</span><br /> + Was her uncommon name.</p> +<p class="poetry">To her good <span class="smcap">Jane</span>, +with kindly yearn<br /> + For <span class="smcap">Bill’s</span> +increasing pain,<br /> +Repaired in secrecy to learn<br /> + How best to make her plain.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, <span +class="smcap">Jane</span>,” the worthy woman said,<br /> + “This mystic phial keep,<br /> +And rub its liquor in your head<br /> + Before you go to sleep.</p> +<p class="poetry">“When you awake next day, I trow,<br /> + You’ll look in form and hue<br /> +To others just as you do now—<br /> + But not to <span class="smcap">Pillaloo</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">“When you approach him, you will find<br +/> + He’ll think you coarse—unkempt—<br +/> +And rudely bid you get behind,<br /> + With undisguised contempt.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The <span class="smcap">Lord de Pillaloo</span> +arrived<br /> + With his expensive train,<br /> +And when in state serenely hived,<br /> + He sent for <span class="smcap">Bill</span> and +<span class="smcap">Jane</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, spare her, <span class="smcap">Lord +of Pillaloo</span>!<br /> + (Said <span class="smcap">Bill</span>) if wed you +be,<br /> +There’s anything <i>I’d</i> rather do<br /> + Than flirt with <span class="smcap">Lady</span> +P.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Lord he gazed in Jenny’s eyes,<br /> + He looked her through and through:<br /> +The cunning woman’s prophecies<br /> + Were clearly coming true.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Lord Pillaloo</span>, the +Rustic’s Bane<br /> + (Bad person he, and proud),<br /> +<i>He laughed Ha</i>! <i>ha</i>! <i>at pretty</i> <span +class="smcap">Jane</span>,<br /> + <i>And sneered at her aloud</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">He bade her get behind him then,<br /> + And seek her mother’s stye—<br /> +Yet to her native countrymen<br /> + She was as fair as aye!</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">MacCatacomb</span>, +continue green!<br /> + Grow, <span class="smcap">Salmon-Eye</span>, in +might,<br /> +Except for you, there might have been<br /> + The deuce’s own delight</p> +<h2><a name="page440"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +440</span>PHRENOLOGY</h2> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Come</span>, collar +this bad man—<br /> + Around the throat he knotted me<br /> +Till I to choke began—<br /> + In point of fact, garotted me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">So spake <span class="smcap">Sir Herbert +Write</span><br /> + To <span class="smcap">James</span>, Policeman +Thirty-two—<br /> +All ruffled with his fight<br /> + <span class="smcap">Sir Herbert</span> was, and +dirty too.</p> +<p class="poetry">Policeman nothing said<br /> + (Though he had much to say on it),<br /> +But from the bad man’s head<br /> + He took the cap that lay on it.</p> +<p class="poetry">“No, great <span class="smcap">Sir +Herbert White</span>—<br /> + Impossible to take him up.<br /> +This man is honest quite—<br /> + Wherever did you rake him up?</p> +<p class="poetry">“For Burglars, Thieves, and Co.,<br /> + Indeed, I’m no apologist,<br /> +But I, some years ago,<br /> + Assisted a Phrenologist.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Observe his various bumps,<br /> + His head as I uncover it:<br /> +His morals lie in lumps<br /> + All round about and over it.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Now take him,” said <span +class="smcap">Sir White</span>,<br /> + “Or you will soon be rueing it;<br /> +Bless me! I must be right,—<br /> + I caught the fellow doing it!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Policeman calmly smiled,<br /> + “Indeed you are mistaken, sir,<br /> +You’re agitated—riled—<br /> + And very badly shaken, sir.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Sit down, and I’ll explain<br /> + My system of Phrenology,<br /> +A second, please, remain”—<br /> + (A second is horology).</p> +<p class="poetry">Policeman left his beat—<br /> + (The Bart., no longer furious,<br /> +Sat down upon a seat,<br /> + Observing, “This is curious!”)</p> +<p class="poetry">“Oh, surely, here are signs<br /> + Should soften your rigidity:<br /> +This gentleman combines<br /> + Politeness with timidity.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Of Shyness here’s a lump—<br +/> + A hole for Animosity—<br /> +And like my fist his bump<br /> + Of Impecuniosity.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Just here the bump appears<br /> + Of Innocent Hilarity,<br /> +And just behind his ears<br /> + Are Faith, and Hope, and Charity.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He of true Christian ways<br /> + As bright example sent us is—<br /> +This maxim he obeys,<br /> + ‘<i>Sorte tuâ contentus +sis</i>.’</p> +<p class="poetry">“There, let him go his ways,<br /> + He needs no stern admonishing.”<br /> +The Bart., in blank amaze,<br /> + Exclaimed, “This is astonishing!</p> +<p class="poetry">“I <i>must</i> have made a mull,<br /> + This matter I’ve been blind in it:<br /> +Examine, please, <i>my</i> skull,<br /> + And tell me what you find in it.”</p> +<p class="poetry">That Crusher looked, and said,<br /> + With unimpaired urbanity,<br /> +“<span class="smcap">Sir Herbert</span>, you’ve a +head<br /> + That teems with inhumanity.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Here’s Murder, Envy, Strife<br /> + (Propensity to kill any),<br /> +And Lies as large as life,<br /> + And heaps of Social Villany.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Here’s Love of Bran-New +Clothes,<br /> + Embezzling—Arson—Deism—<br /> +A taste for Slang and Oaths,<br /> + And Fraudulent Trusteeism.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Here’s Love of Groundless +Charge—<br /> + Here’s Malice, too, and Trickery,<br /> +Unusually large<br /> + Your bump of Pocket-Pickery—”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Stop!” said the Bart., “my +cup<br /> + Is full—I’m worse than him in all;<br /> +Policeman, take me up—<br /> + No doubt I am some criminal!”</p> +<p class="poetry">That Pleeceman’s scorn grew large<br /> + (Phrenology had nettled it),<br /> +He took that Bart. in charge—<br /> + I don’t know how they settled it.</p> +<h2><a name="page446"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 446</span>THE +FAIRY CURATE</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Once</span> a fairy<br /> + Light and airy<br /> +Married with a mortal;<br /> + Men, however,<br /> + Never, never<br /> +Pass the fairy portal.<br /> + Slyly stealing,<br /> + She to Ealing<br /> +Made a daily journey;<br /> + There she found him,<br /> + Clients round him<br /> +(He was an attorney).</p> +<p class="poetry"> Long they tarried,<br /> + Then they married.<br /> +When the ceremony<br /> + Once was ended,<br /> + Off they wended<br /> +On their moon of honey.<br /> + Twelvemonth, maybe,<br /> + Saw a baby<br /> +(Friends performed an orgie).<br /> + Much they prized him,<br /> + And baptized him<br /> +By the name of <span class="smcap">Georgie</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Georgie</span> grew up;<br /> + Then he flew up<br /> +To his fairy mother.<br /> + Happy meeting—<br /> + Pleasant greeting—<br /> +Kissing one another.<br /> + “Choose a calling<br /> + Most enthralling,<br /> +I sincerely urge ye.”<br /> + “Mother,” said he<br /> + (Rev’rence made he),<br /> +“I would join the clergy.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Give permission<br /> + In addition—<br /> +Pa will let me do it:<br /> + There’s a living<br /> + In his giving—<br /> +He’ll appoint me to it.<br /> + Dreams of coff’ring,<br /> + Easter off’ring,<br /> +Tithe and rent and pew-rate,<br /> + So inflame me<br /> + (Do not blame me),<br /> +That I’ll be a curate.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> She, with pleasure,<br /> + Said, “My treasure,<br /> +’T is my wish precisely.<br /> + Do your duty,<br /> + There’s a beauty;<br /> +You have chosen wisely.<br /> + Tell your father<br /> + I would rather<br /> +As a churchman rank you.<br /> + You, in clover,<br /> + I’ll watch over.”<br /> +<span class="smcap">Georgie</span> said, “Oh, thank +you!”</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Georgie</span> scudded,<br /> + Went and studied,<br /> +Made all preparations,<br /> + And with credit<br /> + (Though he said it)<br /> +Passed examinations.<br /> + (Do not quarrel<br /> + With him, moral,<br /> +Scrupulous digestions—<br /> + ’Twas his mother,<br /> + And no other,<br /> +Answered all the questions.)</p> +<p class="poetry"> Time proceeded;<br /> + Little needed<br /> +<span class="smcap">Georgie</span> admonition:<br /> + He, elated,<br /> + Vindicated<br /> +Clergyman’s position.<br /> + People round him<br /> + Always found him<br /> +Plain and unpretending;<br /> + Kindly teaching,<br /> + Plainly preaching,<br /> +All his money lending.</p> +<p class="poetry"> So the fairy,<br /> + Wise and wary,<br /> +Felt no sorrow rising—<br /> + No occasion<br /> + For persuasion,<br /> +Warning, or advising.<br /> + He, resuming<br /> + Fairy pluming<br /> +(That’s not English, is it?)<br /> + Oft would fly up,<br /> + To the sky up,<br /> +Pay mamma a visit.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry"> Time progressing,<br /> + <span class="smcap">Georgie’s</span> +blessing<br /> +Grew more Ritualistic—<br /> + Popish scandals,<br /> + Tonsures—sandals—<br /> +Genuflections mystic;<br /> + Gushing meetings—<br /> + Bosom-beatings—<br /> +Heavenly ecstatics—<br /> + Broidered spencers—<br /> + Copes and censers—<br /> +Rochets and dalmatics.</p> +<p class="poetry"> This quandary<br /> + Vexed the fairy—<br /> +Flew she down to Ealing.<br /> + “<span class="smcap">Georgie</span>, stop +it!<br /> + Pray you, drop it;<br /> +Hark to my appealing:<br /> + To this foolish<br /> + Papal rule-ish<br /> +Twaddle put an ending;<br /> + This a swerve is<br /> + From our Service<br /> +Plain and unpretending.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> He, replying,<br /> + Answered, sighing,<br /> +Hawing, hemming, humming,<br /> + “It’s a pity—<br /> + They’re so pritty;<br /> +Yet in mode becoming,<br /> + Mother tender,<br /> + I’ll surrender—<br /> +I’ll be unaffected—”<br /> + But his Bishop<br /> + Into <i>his</i> shop<br /> +Entered unexpected!</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Who is this, +sir,—<br /> + Ballet miss, sir?”<br /> +Said the Bishop coldly.<br /> + “’T is my mother,<br /> + And no other,”<br /> +<span class="smcap">Georgie</span> answered boldly.<br /> + “Go along, sir!<br /> + You are wrong, sir;<br /> +You have years in plenty,<br /> + While this hussy<br /> + (Gracious mussy!)<br /> +Isn’t two and twenty!”</p> +<p class="poetry"> (Fairies clever<br /> + Never, never<br /> +Grow in visage older;<br /> + And the fairy,<br /> + All unwary,<br /> +Leant upon his shoulder!)<br /> + Bishop grieved him,<br /> + Disbelieved him;<br /> +<span class="smcap">George</span> the point grew warm on;<br /> + Changed religion,<br /> + Like a pigeon, <a name="citation452"></a><a +href="#footnote452" class="citation">[452]</a><br /> +And became a Mormon!</p> +<h2><a name="page454"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 454</span>THE +WAY OF WOOING</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">maiden</span> sat at her +window wide,<br /> +Pretty enough for a Prince’s bride,<br /> + Yet nobody came to claim her.<br /> +She sat like a beautiful picture there,<br /> +With pretty bluebells and roses fair,<br /> + And jasmine-leaves to frame her.<br /> +And why she sat there nobody knows;<br /> +But this she sang as she plucked a rose,<br /> + The leaves around her strewing:<br /> +“I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br /> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br /> + But the gallant’s <i>way</i> of +wooing!”</p> +<p class="poetry">A lover came riding by awhile,<br /> +A wealthy lover was he, whose smile<br /> + Some maids would value greatly—<br /> +A formal lover, who bowed and bent,<br /> +With many a high-flown compliment,<br /> + And cold demeanour stately,<br /> +“You’ve still,” said she to her suitor +stern,<br /> +“The ’prentice-work of your craft to learn,<br /> + If thus you come a-cooing.<br /> +I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br /> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br /> + As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of +wooing!”</p> +<p class="poetry">A second lover came ambling by—<br /> +A timid lad with a frightened eye<br /> + And a colour mantling highly.<br /> +He muttered the errand on which he’d come,<br /> +Then only chuckled and bit his thumb,<br /> + And simpered, simpered shyly.<br /> +“No,” said the maiden, “go your way;<br /> +You dare but think what a man would say,<br /> + Yet dare to come a-suing!<br /> +I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br /> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br /> + As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of +wooing!”</p> +<p class="poetry">A third rode up at a startling pace—<br +/> +A suitor poor, with a homely face—<br /> + No doubts appeared to bind him.<br /> +He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist,<br /> +And off he rode with the maiden, placed<br /> + On a pillion safe behind him.<br /> +And she heard the suitor bold confide<br /> +This golden hint to the priest who tied<br /> + The knot there’s no undoing;<br /> +“With pretty young maidens who can choose,<br /> +’Tis not so much the gallant who woos,<br /> + As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of +wooing!”</p> +<h2><a name="page460"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +460</span>HONGREE AND MAHRY</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A RICHARDSON +MELODRAMA</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> sun was setting +in its wonted west,<br /> +When <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores,<br /> +Met <span class="smcap">Mahry Daubigny</span>, the Village +Rose,<br /> +Under the Wizard’s Oak—old trysting-place<br /> +Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine.</p> +<p class="poetry">They thought themselves unwatched, but they +were not;<br /> +For <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores,<br /> +Found in <span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles +Dubosc</span><br /> +A rival, envious and unscrupulous,<br /> +Who thought it not foul scorn to dodge his steps,<br /> +And listen, unperceived, to all that passed<br /> +Between the simple little Village Rose<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores.</p> +<p class="poetry">A clumsy barrack-bully was <span +class="smcap">Dubosc</span>,<br /> +Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact<br /> +That animates a proper gentleman<br /> +In dealing with a girl of humble rank.<br /> +You’ll understand his coarseness when I say<br /> +He would have married <span class="smcap">Mahry +Daubigny</span>,<br /> +And dragged the unsophisticated girl<br /> +Into the whirl of fashionable life,<br /> +For which her singularly rustic ways,<br /> +Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude),<br /> +Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical),<br /> +Would absolutely have unfitted her.<br /> +How different to this unreflecting boor<br /> +Was <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores.</p> +<p class="poetry">Contemporary with the incident<br /> +Related in our opening paragraph,<br /> +Was that sad war ’twixt Gallia and ourselves<br /> +That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes;<br /> +And so <span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles +Dubosc</span><br /> +(Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style)<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores,<br /> +Were sent by <span class="smcap">Charles</span> of France against +the lines<br /> +Of our Sixth <span class="smcap">Henry</span> (Fourteen +twenty-nine),<br /> +To drive his legions out of Aquitaine.</p> +<p class="poetry">When <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, +Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br /> +Returned, suspecting nothing, to his camp,<br /> +After his meeting with the Village Rose,<br /> +He found inside his barrack letter-box<br /> +A note from the commanding officer,<br /> +Requiring his attendance at head-quarters.<br /> +He went, and found <span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel +Jooles</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Young <span +class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br /> +This night we shall attack the English camp:<br /> +Be the ‘forlorn hope’ yours—you’ll lead +it, sir,<br /> +And lead it too with credit, I’ve no doubt.<br /> +As every man must certainly be killed<br /> +(For you are twenty ’gainst two thousand men),<br /> +It is not likely that you will return.<br /> +But what of that? you’ll have the benefit<br /> +Of knowing that you die a soldier’s death.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Obedience was young <span +class="smcap">Hongree’s</span> strongest point,<br /> +But he imagined that he only owed<br /> +Allegiance to his <span class="smcap">Mahry</span> and his +King.<br /> +“If <span class="smcap">Mahry</span> bade me lead these +fated men,<br /> +I’d lead them—but I do not think she would.<br /> +If <span class="smcap">Charles</span>, my King, said, ‘Go, +my son, and die,’<br /> +I’d go, of course—my duty would be clear.<br /> +But <span class="smcap">Mahry</span> is in bed asleep, I hope,<br +/> +And <span class="smcap">Charles</span>, my King, a hundred +leagues from this.<br /> +As for <span class="smcap">Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles +Dubosc</span>,<br /> +How know I that our monarch would approve<br /> +The order he has given me to-night?<br /> +My King I’ve sworn in all things to obey—<br /> +I’ll only take my orders from my King!”<br /> +Thus <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores,<br /> +Interpreted the terms of his commission.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, who was +wise as he was good,<br /> +Disguised himself that night in ample cloak,<br /> +Round flapping hat, and vizor mask of black,<br /> +And made, unnoticed, for the English camp.<br /> +He passed the unsuspecting sentinels<br /> +(Who little thought a man in this disguise<br /> +Could be a proper object of suspicion),<br /> +And ere the curfew bell had boomed “lights out,”<br +/> +He found in audience Bedford’s haughty Duke.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Your Grace,” he said, “start +not—be not alarmed,<br /> +Although a Frenchman stands before your eyes.<br /> +I’m <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores.<br /> +My Colonel will attack your camp to-night,<br /> +And orders me to lead the hope forlorn.<br /> +Now I am sure our excellent <span class="smcap">King +Charles</span><br /> +Would not approve of this; but he’s away<br /> +A hundred leagues, and rather more than that.<br /> +So, utterly devoted to my King,<br /> +Blinded by my attachment to the throne,<br /> +And having but its interest at heart,<br /> +I feel it is my duty to disclose<br /> +All schemes that emanate from <span class="smcap">Colonel +Jooles</span>,<br /> +If I believe that they are not the kind<br /> +Of schemes that our good monarch would approve.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But how,” said Bedford’s +Duke, “do you propose<br /> +That we should overthrow your Colonel’s scheme?”<br +/> +And <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores,<br /> +Replied at once with never-failing tact:<br /> +“Oh, sir, I know this cursed country well.<br /> +Entrust yourself and all your host to me;<br /> +I’ll lead you safely by a secret path<br /> +Into the heart of <span class="smcap">Colonel +Jooles</span>’ array,<br /> +And you can then attack them unprepared,<br /> +And slay my fellow-countrymen unarmed.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The thing was done. The <span +class="smcap">Duke of Bedford</span> gave<br /> +The order, and two thousand fighting men<br /> +Crept silently into the Gallic camp,<br /> +And slew the Frenchmen as they lay asleep;<br /> +And Bedford’s haughty Duke slew <span class="smcap">Colonel +Jooles</span>,<br /> +And gave fair <span class="smcap">Mahry</span>, pride of +Aquitaine,<br /> +To <span class="smcap">Hongree</span>, Sub-Lieutenant of +Chassoores.</p> +<h2><a name="page541"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +541</span>ETIQUETTE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> +<i>Ballyshannon</i> foundered off the coast of Cariboo,<br /> +And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;<br /> +Down went the owners—greedy men whom hope of gain +allured:<br /> +Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.</p> +<p class="poetry">Besides the captain and the mate, the owners +and the crew,<br /> +The passengers were also drowned excepting only two:<br /> +Young <span class="smcap">Peter Gray</span>, who tasted teas for +<span class="smcap">Baker</span>, <span +class="smcap">Croop</span>, <span class="smcap">and +Co</span>.,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Somers</span>, who from Eastern shores +imported indigo.</p> +<p class="poetry">These passengers, by reason of their clinging +to a mast,<br /> +Upon a desert island were eventually cast.<br /> +They hunted for their meals, as <span class="smcap">Alexander +Selkirk</span> used,<br /> +But they couldn’t chat together—they had not been +introduced.</p> +<p class="poetry">For <span class="smcap">Peter Gray</span>, and +<span class="smcap">Somers</span> too, though certainly in +trade,<br /> +Were properly particular about the friends they made;<br /> +And somehow thus they settled it without a word of +mouth—<br /> +That <span class="smcap">Gray</span> should take the northern +half, while <span class="smcap">Somers</span> took the south.</p> +<p class="poetry">On <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> +portion oysters grew—a delicacy rare,<br /> +But oysters were a delicacy <span class="smcap">Peter</span> +couldn’t bear.<br /> +On <span class="smcap">Somers</span>’ side was turtle, on +the shingle lying thick,<br /> +Which <span class="smcap">Somers</span> couldn’t eat, +because it always made him sick.</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Gray</span> gnashed his +teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store<br /> +Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature’s shore.<br /> +The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved,<br /> +For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.</p> +<p class="poetry">And <span class="smcap">Somers</span> sighed in +sorrow as he settled in the south,<br /> +For the thought of <span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> +oysters brought the water to his mouth.<br /> +He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff:<br /> +He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.</p> +<p class="poetry">How they wished an introduction to each other +they had had<br /> +When on board the <i>Ballyshannon</i>! And it drove them +nearly mad<br /> +To think how very friendly with each other they might get,<br /> +If it wasn’t for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!</p> +<p class="poetry">One day, when out a-hunting for the <i>mus +ridiculus</i>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Gray</span> overheard his fellow-man +soliloquizing thus:<br /> +“I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on,<br +/> +<span class="smcap">M‘Connell</span>, S. B. <span +class="smcap">Walters</span>, <span class="smcap">Paddy +Byles</span>, and <span class="smcap">Robinson</span>?”</p> +<p class="poetry">These simple words made <span +class="smcap">Peter</span> as delighted as could be,<br /> +Old chummies at the Charterhouse were <span +class="smcap">Robinson</span> and he!<br /> +He walked straight up to <span class="smcap">Somers</span>, then +he turned extremely red,<br /> +Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and +said:</p> +<p class="poetry">“I beg your pardon—pray forgive me +if I seem too bold,<br /> +But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old.<br /> +You spoke aloud of <span class="smcap">Robinson</span>—I +happened to be by.<br /> +You know him?” “Yes, extremely +well.” “Allow me, so do I.”</p> +<p class="poetry">It was enough: they felt they could more +pleasantly get on,<br /> +For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew <span +class="smcap">Robinson</span>!<br /> +And Mr. <span class="smcap">Somers</span>’ turtle was at +<span class="smcap">Peter’s</span> service quite,<br /> +And Mr. <span class="smcap">Somers</span> punished <span +class="smcap">Peter’s</span> oyster-beds all night.</p> +<p class="poetry">They soon became like brothers from community +of wrongs:<br /> +They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;<br +/> +They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;<br /> +On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s +lives.</p> +<p class="poetry">They felt quite melancholy when they parted for +the night,<br /> +And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;<br /> +Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon,<br /> +And all because it happened that they both knew <span +class="smcap">Robinson</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">They lived for many years on that inhospitable +shore,<br /> +And day by day they learned to love each other more and more.<br +/> +At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day,<br /> +They saw a frigate anchored in the offing of the bay.</p> +<p class="poetry">To <span class="smcap">Peter</span> an idea +occurred. “Suppose we cross the main?<br /> +So good an opportunity may not be found again.”<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Somers</span> thought a minute, then +ejaculated, “Done!<br /> +I wonder how my business in the City’s getting +on?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But stay,” said Mr. <span +class="smcap">Peter</span>: “when in England, as you +know,<br /> +I earned a living tasting teas for <span +class="smcap">Baker</span>, <span class="smcap">Croop</span>, +<span class="smcap">and Co</span>.,<br /> +I may be superseded—my employers think me dead!”<br +/> +“Then come with me,” said <span +class="smcap">Somers</span>, “and taste indigo +instead.”</p> +<p class="poetry">But all their plans were scattered in a moment +when they found<br /> +The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound;<br /> +When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very +kind,<br /> +To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.</p> +<p class="poetry">As both the happy settlers roared with laughter +at the joke,<br /> +They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke:<br /> +’Twas <span class="smcap">Robinson</span>—a convict, +in an unbecoming frock!<br /> +Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!</p> +<p class="poetry">They laughed no more, for <span +class="smcap">Somers</span> thought he had been rather rash<br /> +In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> thought a foolish tack he +must have gone upon<br /> +In making the acquaintance of a friend of <span +class="smcap">Robinson</span>.</p> +<p class="poetry">At first they didn’t quarrel very openly, +I’ve heard;<br /> +They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word:<br +/> +The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head,<br +/> +And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.</p> +<p class="poetry">To allocate the island they agreed by word of +mouth,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> takes the north again, and +<span class="smcap">Somers</span> takes the south;<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Peter</span> has the oysters, which he +hates, in layers thick,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Somers</span> has the turtle—turtle +always makes him sick.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote287a"></a><a href="#citation287a" +class="footnote">[287a]</a> “Go with me to a +Notary—seal me there<br /> +Your single bond.”—<i>Merchant of Venice</i>, Act I., +sc. 3.</p> +<p><a name="footnote287b"></a><a href="#citation287b" +class="footnote">[287b]</a> “And there shall she, at +Friar Lawrence’ cell,<br /> +Be shrived and married.”—<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Act +II., sc. 4.</p> +<p><a name="footnote287c"></a><a href="#citation287c" +class="footnote">[287c]</a> “And give the fasting +horses provender.”—<i>Henry the Fifth</i>, Act IV., +sc. 2.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288a"></a><a href="#citation288a" +class="footnote">[288a]</a> “Let us, like merchants, +show our foulest wares.”—<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, +Act I., sc. 3.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288b"></a><a href="#citation288b" +class="footnote">[288b]</a> “Then must the Jew be +merciful.”—<i>Merchant of Venice</i>, Act IV., sc. +1.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288c"></a><a href="#citation288c" +class="footnote">[288c]</a> “The spring, the +summer,<br /> +The chilling autumn, angry winter, change<br /> +Their wonted liveries.”—<i>Midsummer Night Dream</i>, +Act IV., sc. 1.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288d"></a><a href="#citation288d" +class="footnote">[288d]</a> “In the county of +Glo’ster, justice of the peace and +<i>coram</i>.”—<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, Act I., +sc. 1.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288e"></a><a href="#citation288e" +class="footnote">[288e]</a> “What lusty trumpet thus +doth summon us?”—<i>King John</i>, Act V., sc. 2.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288f"></a><a href="#citation288f" +class="footnote">[288f]</a> “And I’ll provide +his executioner.”—<i>Henry the Sixth</i> (Second +Part), Act III., sc. 1.</p> +<p><a name="footnote288g"></a><a href="#citation288g" +class="footnote">[288g]</a> “The lioness had torn +some flesh away,<br /> +Which all this while had bled.”—<i>As You Like +It</i>, Act IV., sc. 3.</p> +<p><a name="footnote452"></a><a href="#citation452" +class="footnote">[452]</a> “Like a bird.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE BAB BALLADS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 933-h.htm or 933-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/9/3/933 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the 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