4T1fc h Vu.- Class Book ^:esa21j. -+-■ tr FHKSKNTCl) BY ^^Ti ■c£/ ^-^ '1/ A -^ "^Cc/iUJ. 0:C. ^^ ^ HOG D'S OWN SELECTED PAPERS. WU^ (Cnrait SllnstrntinnH. NEW-YORK: G. P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY 1852. a. vc ILLUSTKATIONS « Take care of the Pence, and the Pounds will take care OF Themselves" ..... 10 Over the Way ...... 22 A Moderate Income . . . . . . 30 The Sublime and the Ridiculous 31 Refusing Tithe ...... 64 " By Gum him Turban Afire" .... 59 French and English ...... 61 The Lady of « Our Village" . . 64 Captain Rock ...... 73 Pompey's Pillar ..... 74 " Accustomed to the Care of Children" 76 Fanny ....... 77 « Your Very Humble Servant" .... 81 « Oh My Prophetic Soul— My Uncle ! " . 85 " Where r ....... 92 A Storm in Table Bay ..... 94 A Ruff Sea 96 Long Commons and Short Commons 98 The Short and Long of It . 99 Protecting the Fare . . . . 100 Tom Bowling ....... 103 War Dance.— The Opening of the Ball 106 Something above the Common . • . • 116 An Illuminated MS. ..... 119 IV Ketching its Prey The Stamp Duty on Scotch Linen HiS-TRIONIC .... "Pennsylvania" The Pound of Flesh In Embarrassed Circumstances A Good Action meets its Own Reward Single Blessedness A Tea-Garden . . . . " I'll Take a Bed with You !" " I wish I was well through it !" " The Last in Bed to put out the Light" " Kissing goes by Favour" " None of your Sauce" CouNTi^Y Quarters ** Why did you Sup on Pork ?" Home's Douglas .... Practice Drives me Mad " Lord, John, here's a Burrow !" " Meet me by Moonlight alone " St. Blaise .... " Posse Cometatis " . . . The Harvest Moon See-Saw .... " Friend, dost thee call this the Pacific 1" The Best Bower Anchor " Bear about the Mockery of Woe" " It cAN't be helped " . A General Peace " Why don't you look out for Work 1" The Family Library . . . CONTENTS. PAGE Miss Norman ....... 9 Over the Wat ...... 22 A Letter from a Market Gardener to the Secretary of THE Horticultural Society . . . .27 Domestic Asides ; or, Truth in Parentheses . . 29 The Parish Revolution . . . . .31 Poem, — from the Polish . . . . .43 Epicurean Reminiscences of a Sentimentalist . . 46 The Discovery ...... 49 Rhyme and Reason . . . . . .63 The Double Knock ..... 55 Letter from a Parish Clerk in Barbadoes to one in Hamp- shire, WITH AN Enclosure . . . .66 French and English . . . . . 61 Our Village .... . . 63 The Scrape-Book ...... 69 A True Story . . . . . . .72 The Carelesse Nurse Mayd .... 76 To Fanny . . . . • . .77 Poems, by a Poor Gentleman .... 80 Life of Zimmermann . . . . . .87 The Compass, with Variations .... 93 Paired, not Matched . . . • . .98 The Duel. — A Serious Ballad . . • . 100 There's no Romance in That .... 102 VI FACE. A Waterloo Ballad . . . . .105 A Zoological Report . . , . . 109 The Boy at the Nore . . . . '114 johnsoniana . . . . . . 117 Lines to a Lady on her Departure for Indla. . .123 Sonnet to a Scotch Girl, Washing Linen after her Country Fashion ...... 125 Pain in a Pleasure-Boat. — A Sea Eclogue . .126 Ode to Perry, the Inventor of the Patent Perryan Pen 129 The Island ....... 136 Number One. — Versified from the Prose of a young Lady 142 The Abstraction ...... 144 The Drowning Ducks ..... 150 The Domestic Dilemma. — A True Story . . .153 Love and Lunacy . . . . . 172 The Comet. — An Astronomical Anecdote . . .197 The Ocean. — Considered per se . . . 201 The Quakers' Conversazione .... 222 Sketches on the Road ..... 233 My Son and Heir ...... 237 PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. The favourable reception of the comprehensive selection from Thomas Hood's writings in the volumes of " Poems," and " Prose and Verse," published a few years since by the subscriber — in a form of general similarity to the present series — has induced the under- taking of the completion, in this popular style, of the most important of this author's numerous productions. The author of " The Pugs- ley Papers," « The Dream of Eugene Aram," and « The Song of the Shirt," left much behind him engrafted with the humour, the gaiety, sentiment, the deep feeling of these well-known writings. In the few years which have elapsed since his death, it has been abundantly proved that in his peculiar walk he has left no successor. No man furnishes us, with so free a hand, such innocent lighUhearted mirth, no one's jests play more gracefully, in the happy illustration of the old poet, about the heart. It was well remarked at the time of his death by an able critic in the AtheruEum ;— « The secrets of these effects, if analysed, would give the characteristics of one of the most original and powerful geniuses which ever was dropped by Faery into infant's cradle, and oddly nursed up by man into a treasure, quaint, special, cameleon- coloured in the changefulness of its tints, yet complete and self con- sistent. Of all the humorists Hood was the most poetical. When dealing with the most familiar subjects, whether it might be a Sweep bewailing the suppression of his cry, or a Mother searching through St, Giles's for her lost infant, or a Miss Kilmansegg's golden child- viii hood — ^there was hardly a verse ia which some touches of heart, or some play of fancy, did not beckon the laughing reader away into far other worlds than the Jester's." This is the spirit of all Hood's volumes, playful and poetical ; light as gossamer, but profound enough too, if you look into them ; and, above all other jesting — innocent. The volumes of Hood which will appear immediately in this series are, " Whimsicalities, a Periodical Gathering," made by himself, of some of his best papers ; the capital volume of the school of Hum- phrey Clinker, " Up the Rhine ; " with a new collection of Miscella- neous Prose and Verse under the author's title of " Hood's Own." These will be illustrated with the author's quaint and humorous designs, which are frequently independent of the text, and always laughable epigrams in themselves. G. P. PUTNAM. New-York, March, 1852. HOOD'S OWN. There are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels, they are dangerous ; with four, generally cruel inven- tions, tasking one animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse think proper to die on the road, you have no survivor to drag your carriage through the rest of the stage ; or to be sent off gallopping with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor. That was precisely Miss Norman's dilemma. If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he had drawn the Lady in daily air- ings to a point just short of the Binn Gate ; — because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence ; a sum which Miss Nor- man could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a hmited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to drop down stone dead ; as if determined that his mis- tress should have to walk every inch of it, to her own house. 1* 10 HOOD^S OWN. But Miss Norman never walked. Pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable with the poor, and to some people, as Postmen, Bankers' clerks, Hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily exertion very dero- gatory to persons of birth and breeding. So far was this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain rather humble obsequies, " she would rather live for ever than have a walking funeral!" On another occasion, when the great per- "TAKE CAREOy THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE OF TH E MS ELV E S ." formance of Captain Barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was submitted to her opinion, she said " it was a step she did not approve." It might be surmised from such declarations, that she was in- MISS NORMAN. 11 capable of personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance, such as results from the rickets ; whereas, so far from allowing any deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to her feet. Miss Norman professed to have the per- fect command of all her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she could not dance. It was quite another weakness than any bodily one which restricted her pro- menades, and made her feet almost as useless to her as those of the female Chinese. Pride was in fault ; and partly her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestoi-s that he was a descendant of William the First of England : a notion which, after turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength of the " Norman " and some dubious old pedigree, that the Conqueror was their great Progenitor. The hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character, according to the temperament of the indi- vidual who happened to be head of the family : with Miss Nor- man, the last of her line, it took the form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had always ridden " in their own carriage." I am not quite sure whether she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the invention of " little houses on wheels " would warrant ; however, it held good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot, a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the sudden death of Plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the Binn Gate. To glance at the whole set- out, nobody would ever have attributed high birth and inherent 12 HOOD'S OWN. gentility to its owner. 'Twas ne\ r of a piece. For once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison, looked more ancient than the quarterings. The crest was much oftener renewed than the hammer-cloth ; and Humphrey, the coachman, evidently never got a new suit all at once. He had always old drab to bran-new bright sky-blue plush ; or vice versa. Sometimes a hat in its first gloss got the better of its old tarnished band ; sometimes the fresh gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. The same with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern ; at other times, a short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake. In short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially to Miss Norman because they belonged so little to each other. A few minutes made a great change in her possessions ; instead of a living horse, hight Plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights of dogs'-meat. It was just at this moment that I came up with my gig ; and knowing something of the lady's character, I pulled up in expecta- tion of a scene. Lea\ing my own bay, who would stand as steady as a mute at death's door, I proceeded to assist the coach- man in extricating his horse ; but the nag of royal hne was stone dead: and I accompanied Humphrey to the carriage-door to make his report. A recent American author has described as an essential attri- bute of high birth and breeding in England, a certain sort of quakerly composure, in all possible sudden emergencies, such as an alarm of the house on fire, or a man falling into a fit by one's side : — in fact, the same kind of self-command which Pope praises MISS NORMAN. 13 in a lady who is " mistress of herself, though china fall." In this particular Miss Norman's conduct justified her pretensions. She was mistress of hei'self, though her horse fell. She did not start — exclaim — put her head out of the window, or even let down the front glass : she only adjusted herself more exactly in the middle of the seat, drew herself bolt upright, and fixed her eyes on the back of the coach-box. In this posture Humphrey found her. " If you please, Ma'am, Planty-ginit be dead." The lady ac- quiesced with the smallest nod ever made. " I've took oflf the collar, and the bitt out, and got un out o' harness entirely ; but he be as unanimate as his own shoes ;'* and the informant looked earnestly at the lady to observe the effect of the communication. But she never moved a muscle; and honest Humphrey was just shutting the coach-door, to go and finish the laying out of the corpse, when he was recalled. "Humphrey!" " What's your pleasure. Ma'am ? " " Remember, another time " "Yes, Ma'am." " When a horse of mine is deceased " " Yes, Ma'am." "Touch your hat." The abashed coachman instantly paid up the salute in arrear. Unblest by birthright with self-possession, he had not even the advantage of experience in the first families, where he might have learned a little from good example : he was a raw uncouth country servant, with the great merit of being cheap, whom Miss Norman had undertaken to educate ; but he was still so far from profi- cient, that in the importance of breaking the death to his mistress, 14 HOOD'S OWN. he had omitted one of those minor tokens of respect which she always rigorously enacted. It was now my own turn to come forward, and as deferentially as if she had been indeed the last of the Conqueror's Normandy pippins, I tendered a seat in my chaise, which she tacitly declined, with a gracious gesture of head and hand. " If you please, Ma'am," said Humphrey, taking care to touch his hat, and shutting his head into the carriage so that I might not overhear him, " he's a respectable kind of gentleman enough, and connected with some of the first houses." " The gentleman's name ? " "To be sure. Ma'am, the gentleman can't help his name," answered Humphrey, fully aware of the peculiar prejudices of his mistress ; " but it be Huggins." "Shut the door." It appeared, on explanation with the coachman, that he had mistaken me for a person in the employ of the opulent firm of Naylor and Co., whose province it was to travel throughout Britain with samples of hardware in the box-seat of his gig. I did not take the trouble to undeceive him, but determining to see the end of the affair, I affected to hope that the lady would change her mind ; and accordingly I renewed, from time to time, my offer of accommodation, which was always stiffly declined. After a tolerably long pause on all sides, my expectation was excited by the appearance of the W coach coming through the Binn Gate, the only public vehicle that used the road. At sight of the dead horse, the driver, (the noted Jem Wade) pulled up — alighted — and standing at the carriage-door with his hat off, as if ho knew his customer, made an offer of his services. But Miss Norman, more dignified than ever, waived him off with her hand. MISS NORMAJS. 15 Jem became more pressing, and the lady more rigid. "She never rode," she condescended to say, " in public vehicles." Jem entreated again ; but *' she was accustomed to be driven by her own coachman." It was in vain that in answer he praised the quietness of his team, the safety of his patent boxes, besides pro- mising the utmost steadiness and sobriety on his own part. Miss Norman still looked perseveringly at the back of her coach-box ; which, on an unlucky assurance that " he would take as much care of her as of his own mother," she exchanged for a steady gaze at the side-window, opposite to the coachman, so long as he remained in the presence. " By your leave. Ma'am," said Humphrey, putting his hand to his hat, and keeping it there, " Mr. Wade be a very civil-spoken careful whip, and his coach loads very respectable society. There's Sir Vincent Ball on the box." " If Sir Vincent chooses to degrade himself, it is no rule for we,", retorted the lady, without turning her head ; when, lo ! Sir Vincent appeared himself, and pohtely endeavoured to persuade her out of her prejudices. It was useless. Miss Norman's ancestors had one and all expressed a very decided opinion against stage-coaches, by never getting into one ; and " she did not feel disposed to disgrace a line longer than common, by riding in any carriage but her own." Sir Vincent bowed and retreated. So did Jem Wade, without bowing, fervently declaring "he would never do the civil thing to the old female sex again ! " The stage rattled away at an indignant gallop ; and we were left once more to our own resources. By way of passing the time, I thrice repeated my offers to the obdurate old maiden, and endured as many rebuffs. I was contemplating a fourth trial. 16 HOOD'S OWN. when a signal was made from the carriage-window, awd Hum- phrey, hat in hand, opened the door. " Procm-e me a post chaise." " A po-shay ! " echoed Humphrey, but, Mke an Irish echo, with some variation from his original — " Lord help ye, Ma'am, there bean't such a thing to be had ten miles round — no, not for love nor money. Why, bless ye, it be election time, and there bean't coach, cart, nor dog-barrow, but what be gone to it ! " " No matter," said the mistress, drawing herself up with an air of lofty resignation. " I revoke my order ; for it is far, very far, from the kind of riding that I prefer. And Humphrey " " Yes, Ma'am." " Another time — " "Yes, Ma'am." " Remember once for all — " "Yes, Ma'am." " I do not choose to be blest, or the Lord to help me." Another pause in our proceedings, during which a company of ragged boys, who had been black-beriying, came up, and planted themselves, with every symptom of vulgar curiosity, around the carriage. Miss Norman had now no single glass through which she could look without encountering a group of low-life faces star- ing at her with all their might. Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred remarks as, " Vy don't the frizzle- vigged old Guy get into the gemman's drag ? " Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same five words : MISS NORMAN. 17 "I CHOOSE to be alone." It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one's choice. The black-berry boys chose to remain ; and in reply to each conge, only proved by a general grin how very much teeth are set off to advantage by purple mouths. I confess I took pity on the pangs even of unwarrantable pride, and urged my pro- posal again with some warmth ; but it was repelled with absolute scorn. " Fellow, you are insolent." " Quis Deus vult perdere," thought I, and I determined to let her take her fate, merely staying to mark the result. After a tedious interval, in which her mind had doubtless looked abroad as well as inward, it appeared that the rigour of the condition, as to riding only in her own carriage, had been somewhat relaxed to meet the exigency of the case. A fresh tapping at the window summoned the obsequious Humphrey to receive orders. " Present my comphments at the Grove — and the loan of the chariot will be esteemed a favour." " By your leave, Ma'am, if I may speak — " " You may wo<." Humphrey closed the door, but remained for a minute gazing on the panel, at a blue arm, with a red carving-knife in its hand, defending a black and white rolling-pin. If he meditated any expostulation, he gave it up, and proceeded to drive away the boys, one of whom was astride on the dead Plantagenet, a second grinning through his collar, and two more .preparing to play at horses with the reins. It seemed a strange mode enough that he took to secure the harness, by hanging it, collar and all, on his own back and shoulders ; but by an aside to me, he explained the mystery, in a grumble. 18 HOOD'S OWN. "It be no use in the world. I see the charrot set off for Lonnon. I shan't go com^Mmendng no Grove. I'se hang about a bit at the George, and com-pMment a pint o' beer." Away he went, intending, no doubt, to be fully as good as his word ; and I found the time grow tedious in his absence. I had almost made up my mind to follow his example, when hope revived at the sound of wheels ; and up came a tax-cart, carrying four insides, namely, two well-gi-own porkers, Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark, or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker. They were both a trifle " the worse for hquor," if such a phrase might honestly be applied to men who were only a little more courageous, more generous, and civil and obliging to the fair sex, than their wont when perfectly sober. The Sticker, especially — in his most temperate moments a perfect sky-blue-bodied, red-faced, bowing and smirking pattern of politeness to females, was now, under the influence of good ale, a very Sir Calidore, ready to comfort and succour distressed damsels, to fight for them, live or die for them, with as much of the chivalrous spirit as remains in our times. They inquired, and I explained in a few words the lady's dilemma, taking care to forewarn them, by relating the issue of my own attempts in her behalf. " Mayhap you warn't half purhte or pressing enough," ob- served Sam, with a side wink at his master. " It an't a bit of a scrape, and a civil word, as will get a strange lady up into a strange gemman's gig. It wants warmth-like, and making on her feel at home. Only let me alone with her, for a persuader, and I'll have her up in our cart — my master's that is to say — afore you can see whether she has feet or hoofs." In a moment the speaker was at the carriage-door, stroking MISS NORMAN. 19 down his sleek forelocks, bowing, and using his utmost elo- quence, even to the repeating most of his arguments twice over. She would be perfectly safe, he told her, sitting up between him and master, and quite pleasant, for the pigs would keep them- selves to themselves at the back of the cart, and as for the horse, he was nothing but a, good one, equal to twelve mile an hour — with much more to the same purpose. It was quite unneces- sary for Miss Norman to say she had never ridden in a cart with two pigs and two butchers ; and she did not say it. She merely turned away her head from the man, to be addressed by the master, at the other window, the glass of which she had just let down for a little air. " A taxed cart, Madam," he said, " mayn't be exactly the welycle, accustomed to, and so forth ; but thereby, considering respective ranks of Ufes, why, the more honour done to your humbles, which, as I said afore, will take every care, and observe the respectful ; likewise in distancing the two hogs. Whereby, every thing considered, namely, necessity and so forth, I will make so bold as hope. Madam, excusing more pressing, and the like, and dropping cerempny for the time being, you will em- brace us at once, as you shall be most heartily welcome to, and be considered, by your humbles, as a favour besides." The sudden drawing-up of the window, so violently as to shiver the glass, showed sufficiently in what light Miss Norman viewed Master Bardell's behaviour. It was an unlucky smash, for it afforded what the tradesman would have called " an advan- tageous opening" for pouring in a fresh stream of eloquence ; and the Sticker, who shrewdly estimated the convenience of the breach, came round the back of the carriage, and as junior counsel " fol- lowed on the same side." But he took nothing by the motion. The lady was invincible, or, as the discomfited pair mutually 20 HOOD'S OWN. agreed, " as hard for to be convinced into a cart, as any thing on four legs." The blackberry boys had departed, the evening began to close in, and no Humphrey made his appearance. The butcher's horse was on the fret, and his swine grumbled at the delay. The master and man fell into consultation, and favoured me afterwards with the result, the Sticker .being the orator. It was man's duty, he said, to look after women, pretty or ugly, young or old ; it was what we all came into the world to do, namely, to make ourselves comfortable and agreeable to the fair sex. As for himself, purtecting females was his nature, and he should never lie easy agin, if so be he left the lady on the road ; and providing a female wouldn't be purtected with her own free will, she ought to be forced to, like any other live beast unsensible of its own good. Them was his sentiments, and his master fol- lowed 'em up. They knowed Miss Norman, name and fame, and was both well-known respectable men in their hues, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby, supposing I approved, they'd have her, right and tight, in their cart, afore she felt her- self respectfully off her legs. Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed paii. I attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe. Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the carriage. Miss Norman was in fits ! We contrived to get her seated on the step of the vehi- cle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes, but MISS NORMAN. 21 when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught up, and there she sat, in the cart, right and tight, between the two butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed ; but I had lost my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping into W . Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue, and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of the place, who knew Miss Korman quite as well, by sight, as " her own carriage !" 22 OVKR THE WAY, (DDBr tjiB JSutt " I sat over against a window where there stood a pot with very pretty flowers ; and had my eyes fixed on it, when on a sudden the window opened, and a young lady appeared whose beauty struck me." — Arabian Nights, Alas ! the flames of an unhappy lover About my heart and on my vitals prey ; I've caught a fever that I can't get over, Over the way ! Oh ! why are eyes of hazel ? noses Grecian? I've lost my rest by night, my peace by day, For want of some brown Holland or Venetian, Over the way. OVER THE WAY. 23 I've gazed too often, till my heart's as lost As any needle in a stack of hay : Crosses belong to love, and mine is crossed Over the way ! I cannot read or write, or thoughts relax — Of what avail Lord Althorp or Earl Grey 1 They cannot ease me of my window-tax Over the way ! Even on Sunday my devotions vary, And from St. Bennet Fink they go astray To dear St. Mary Overy — the Mary Over the way ! Oh ! if my godmother were but a fairy, With magic wand, how I would beg and pray That she would change me into that canary Over the way ! I envy every thing that's near Miss Lindo, A pug, a poll, a squirrel or a jay — Blest blue-bottles ! that buz about the window Over the way ! Even at even, for there be no shutters, I see her reading on, from grave to gay, Some tale or poem, till the candle gutters, Over the way ! And then — oh ! then — while the clear waxen taper Emits, two stories high, a starlike ray, I see twelve auburn curls put into paper Over the way ! But how breathe unto her my deep regards, Or ask her for a whispered ay or nay, — Or offer her my hand, some thirty yards Over the way 1 24: HOOD'S OWN. Cold as the pole she is to my adoring ; — Like Captain Lyon, at Repulse's Bay, I meet an icy end to my exploring Over the way ! Each dirty little Savoyard that dances She looks on — Punch — or chimney-sweeps in May ; Zounds ! wherefore cannot I attract her glances Over the way 1 Half out she leans to watch a tumbling brat, Or yelping cur, run over by a dray ; But I'm in love — she never pities that ! Over the way ! I go to the same church — a love-lost labour ; Haunt all her walks, and dodge her at the play ; She does not seem to know she has a neighbour Over the way ! At private theatres she never acts ; No Crown-and-Anchor balls her fancy sway ; She never visits gentlemen with tracts Over the way ! To billets-doux by post she shows no fa- our— In short, there is no plot that I can lay To break my winTiow-pains to my ensl;!\ -i Over the way ! I play the flute — she heeds not my chromatics — No friend an introduction can purvey ; I vdsh a fire would break out in the attics Over the way ! My wasted form ought of itself to touch her ; My baker feels my appetite's decay ; And as for butcher's meat — oh ! she's my butcher Over the way ! OVER THE WAY. 25 At beef I turn ; iit lamb or veal 1 pout, I never ring now to bring up the tray ; My stomach grumbles at my dining out Over the way ! I'm weary of my life ; without regret . I could resign this miserable clay To lie within that box of mignonette Over the way ! I've fitted bullets to my pistol-bore ; I've vowed at times to rush where trumpets bray, • Quite sick of number one — and number four Over the way ! Sometimes my, fancy builds up castles airy, Sometimes it only paints a ferme ornee, A horse — a cow — six fowls — a pig — and Mary, Over the way ! Sometimes I dream of her in bridal white, Standing before the alter, like a fay ; Sometimes of balls, and neighbourly invite Over the way ! I've coo'd with her in dreams, like any turtle, I've snatch'd her from the Clyde, the Tweed, and Tay ; Thrice I have made a grove of that one myrtle Over the way ! Thrice I have rowed her in a fairy shallop. Thrice raced to Gretna in a neat " po-shay," And show^er'd crowns to make the horses gallop Over the way ! And thrice I've started up from dreams appalling Of killing rivals in a bloody fray — There is a young man very fond of calling Over the way ! 26 HOOD'S OWN. Oh ! happy man — above all kings in glory, Whoever in her ear may say his say, And add a tale of love to that one story Over the vi^ay ! Nabob of Arcot — Despot of Japan — Sultan of Persia — Emperor of Cathay — Much rather would I be the happy man Over the way ! With such a lot my heart would be in clover- But what — O horror ! — what do I survey ! Postilions and white favours ! — all is over Over the way ! 27 a ttiln frnm a 3Market dpartontr tn tljt imriiitt( nf tb Inrtirultnrnl Inrirfit. Sir, The Satiety having Bean pleasd to Complement Me before I beg Leaf to he before Them agin as follows in particuUers witch I hop They will luck upon with a Sowth Aspic. Sir — last year I paid my Atentions to a Tater & the Satiety was pleasd to be gratifid at the Innlargement of my Kidnis. This ear I have turnd my Eyes to Gozberris. — I am happy to Say I have allmost sucksidid in Making them too Big for Bottlin. I beg to Present sum of itch kind — Pleas obsarve a Green Goose is larger in Siz then a Red Goosebry. Sir as to Cherris my atention has Bean cheafly occupid by the Black Arts. Sum of them are as big as Crickt Balls as will be seen I send a Sample tyed on a Wauking-stick. I send lickwise a Potle of stray ber- ris witch I hop will reach. They air so large as to object to lay more nor too in a Bed. Also a Potle of Hobbies and one of my new Pins, of a remaj-kable sharp flavior. I hop they wdll cum to Hand in time to be at your Feat. Respective Black red & White Currency I have growd equely Large, so as one Bunch is not to be Put into a Galley Pot without jamming. My Pitches has not ben Strong, and their is no Show on My Walls of the Plumb line. Damsins will Be moor Plentifle & their is no Want of common Bullies about Lunnon. Please inform if propper to classify the Slow with the creepers. Concerning Graps I have bin reccommanded by mixing Wines with Warter Mellons, the later is improved in its juice — but have douts of the fack. Of the Patgonian Pickleing Coucumber, I I 28 HOOD'S OWN. hav maid Trial of, and have hops of Growing one up to Markit by sitting one End agin my front dore. On account of its Prog- gressiveness I propos caUiug it Pickleus Perriginatus if Aproved of. Sir, about Improving the common Stocks. — Of Haws I have some hops but am disponding about my Hyps. I have quite faled in cultuvating them into Cramberris. I have allso atempt- ed to Mull Blackberis, but am satisfid them & the Mulberris is of diferent Genius. Pleas observe of Aples I have found a GrafFt of the common Crab from its Straglin sideways of use to Hispal- liers. I should lick to be infourmd weather Scotch Granite is a variety of the Pom Granite & weather as sum say so pore a frute, and Nothing but Stone. Sir, — My Engine Corn has been all eat up by the Burds namely Rocks and Ravines. In like manner I had a full Shew of Pees but was distroyed by the Sparers. There as bean grate Mischef dun beside by Entymollogy — in some parts a complet Patch of Blight. Their has bean a grate Deal too of Robin by boys and men picking aud stealing but their has bean so many axidents by Steel Traps I don't hke setting on 'em. Sir I partickly wish the Satiety to be called to consider the Case what follows, as I think mite be maid Transaxtionable in the next Reports. — My Wif had a Tomb Cat that dyd. Being a torture Shell and a Grate feverit, we had Him berrid in the Guardian, and for the sake of inrichment of the Mould I had the carks deposeted under the roots of a Gosberry Bush. The Frute being up till then of the smooth kind. But the next Seson's Frute after the Cat was berrid, The Gozberris was all hairy. — & moor Remarkable the Catpilers of the same bush, was All of the same hairy Discrip- tion. I am Sir Your humble servant Thomas Frost. 29 " I really take it very kind, This visit, Mrs. Skinner ! I have not seen you such an age — (The wretch has come to dinner !) " Your daughters, too, what loves of girls — What heads for painter's easels ! Come here and kiss the infant, dears, — (And give it p'rhaps the measles !) " Your charming boys I see are home From Reverend Mr. Russel's ; 'Tvvas very kind to bring them both, — (What boots for ray new Brussels !) " What ! little Clara left at home ? Well now I call that shabby : I should have lov'd to kiss her so, — ^ (A flabby, dabby, babby !) " And Mr. S., I hope he's well, Ah ! though he lives so handy, He never now drops in to sup, — (The better for our brandy !) " Come, take a seat — 1 long to hear About Matilda's marriage ; You're come of course to spend the day ! — (Thank Heav'n, I hear the carriage !) " What ! must you go ? next time I hope You'll give me longer measure ; Nay — I shall see you down the stairs — (With most uncommon pleasure !) 30 HOOD'S OWPi. '' Good-bye ! good-bye ! remember all, Next time you'll take your dinners ! (Now, David, mind I'm not at home In future to the Skinners ! ") A MODERATE INCOME. 31 THE SUBLIME AND THE RIDICULOUS. €^t f urisji lUtmlntinn ** From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step." Alarming news from the country/ — awful insurrection at Stoke Pogis — The Military called out — Flight of the Mayor. We are concerned to state, that accounts were received in town at a late hour last night, of an alarming state of things at Stoke Pogis. Nothing private is yet made public ; but report speaks of very serious occurrences. The n v. ruber of killed is not known, as no despatches have been received. 32 HOOD'S OWN. Further Particulars, Notliing is known yet ; papers have been received down to the 4th of November, but they are not up to anything. Further further Particulars. ( Private Letter. ) It is scarcely possible for you, my dear Charles, to conceive the difficulties and anarchical manifestations of turbulence, which threaten and disturb your old birth-place, poor Stoke Pogis. To the reflecting mind, the circumstances which hourly transpire afford ample food for speculation and moral reasoning. To see the constituted authorities of a place, however mistaken or mis- guided by erring benevolence, plunging into a fearful struggle with an irritated, infuriated, and I may say, armed populace, is a sight which opens a field for terrified conjecture. I look around me with doubt, agitation, and dismay ; because, whilst I venerate those to whom the sway of a part of a state may be said to be intrusted, I cannot but yield to the conviction that the abuse of power must be felt to be an ovei-step of authority in the best in- tentioned of the Magistracy. This even you will allow. Being on the spot, my dear Charles, an eye-witness of these fearful scenes, I feel how impossible it is for me to give you any idea of the prospects which surround me. To say that I think all will end well, is to trespass beyond the confines of hope ; but whilst I admit that there is strong ground for apprehending the worst, I cannot shut my eyes to the conviction, that if firm measures, tempered with concession, be resorted to, it is far from being out of the pale of probability that serenity may be re-established. In hazarding this conclusion, how^ever, you must not consider me as at all forgetting the responsibilities which attach to a decidedly formed opinion. Oh, Charles ! you who are in the quiet of Lon- THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 33 don, can little dream of the conflicting elements which form the storm of this devoted village. I fear you will be wearied with all these details ; but I thought at this distance, at which you are from me, you would wish me to run the risk of wearying you rather than omit any of the interesting circumstances. Let Edward read this ; his heart, which I know beats for the Parish, will bleed for us. I am, &c. H. J. P. P. S. — Nothing further has yet occurred, but you shall hear from me again to-morrow. Another Account. Symptoms of disunion have for some time past prevailed be- tween the authorities of Stoke Pogis, and a part of -the inhabi- tants. The primum mobile or first mobbing, originated in an order of the Mayor's, that all tavern doors should shut at eleven. Many complied, and shut, but the door of the Rampant Lion openly resisted the order. A more recent notice has produced a new and more dangerous irritation on our too combustible popu- lation. A proclamation against Guy Fauxes and Fireworks was understood to be in preparation, by command of the chief Magistrate. If his Worship had listened to the earnest and pru- dential advice of the rest of the bench, the obnoxious placard would not have been issued till the 6th, but he had it posted up on the 4th, and by his precipitation has plunged Stoke Pogis into a convulsion, that nothing but Time's soothing syrup can alleviate. From Another Quarter. We are all here in the greatest alarm ! a general rising of the inhabitants took place this morning, and thev have continued in a 2-^ 34: HOOD'S OWN. disturbed state ever since. Everybody is in a bustle and indicat- ing some popular movement. Seditious cries are heard ! the bell-man is going his rounds, and on repeating " God save the King !" is saluted with " Hang the crier I" Organised bands of boys are going about collecting sticks, &c., whether for bamcades or bonfires is not known ; many of them singing the famous Gunpowder Hymn, " Pray remember," &c. These are features that remind us of the most inflammable times. Several strangers of suspicious gentility arrived here last night, and privately en- gaged a barn ; they are now busily distributing hand-bills amongst the crowd : surely some homble tragedy is in preparation ! A later account. The alarm increases. Several families have taken flight by the wagon, and the office of Mr. Stewart, the overseer, is besieged by persons desirous of being passed to their own parish. He seems embarrassed and irresolute, and returns evasive answers. The worst fears are entertaining. JF'res h In telligence. The cause of the ovei-seer's hesitation has transpired. The pass-cart and horse have been lent to a tradesman, for a day's pleasure, and are not returned. Nothing can exceed the indigna- tion of the paupers ! they are all pouring towards the poor-house, headed by Timothy Guubins, a desperate drunken character, but the idol of the Workhouse. The constables are retiring before this formidable body. The following notice is said to be posted up at the Town-hall : " Stick No Bills." Eleven o'clock. The mob have proceeded to outrage — the poor poor-house has not a whole pane of glass in its whole frame ! The Magistrates, THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 35 with Mr. Higginbottom at their head, have agreed to call out the miHtary ; and he has sent word that he will come as soon as he has put on his uniform. A terrific column of little boys has just run do^vn the High street, it is said to see a fight at the Green Dragon. There is an immense crowd in the Market-Place. Some of the leading shop- keepers have had a conference with the Mayor, and the people are now being informed by a placard of the result. Gracious heaven ! how opposite is it to the hopes of all moderate men — " The Mare is Hobstinate — He is at the Roes and Crown — But refuses to treat." Twelve o^clocTc. The military has arrived, and is placed under his own com- mand. He has marched himself in a body to the market-place and is now drawn up one deep in front of the Pound. The mob are in possession of the walls, and have chalked upon them the following proclamation : " Stokian Pogians, be firm ! stick up for bonfires ! stand to your squibs 1" Quarter past Twelve. Mr. Wigsby, the Master of the Free School, has declared on the side of Liberty, and has obtained an audience of the Mayor. He is to return in fifteen minutes for his Worship's decision. Half past Twelve. During the interval, the JMayor has sworn in two special con- stables, and will concede nothing. When the excitement of the mob was represented to him by Mr. Wigsby, he pointed to a truncheon on a table, and answered, " They may do their wors- est." The exasperation is awful— the most frightful cries are ut- tered, " Huzza fur Guys ! Gubbins for ever ! and no Higgin- 36 HOOD'S OWIjf. bottom !" The military has been ordered to clear the streets, but his lock is not flinty enough, and his gun refuses to fire on the people. ******** The constables have just obtained a slight advantage ; they made a charge altogether, and almost upset a Guy. On the left hand side of the way they have been less successful ; Mr. Hug- gins the beadle attempted to take possession of an important street post, but was repulsed by a boy with a cracker. At the same moment Mr. Blogg, the churchwarden, was defeated in a desperate attempt to force a passage up a court. One o'clocJc. The military always dines at one, and has retreated to the Pig and Puncheon. There is a report that the head constable is taken with all his staff. Two o''clocJc. A flying watchman has just informed us that the police are victorious on all points, and the same has been confirmed by a retreating constable. He states that the Pound is full — Gubbins in the stocks, and Dobbs in the cage. That the whole mob would have been routed, but for a very corpulent man, who raUied them on running away. Half past Three. The check sustained by the mob proves to have been a reverse, the constables are the suflferers. The cage is chopped to faggots, we hav'nt a pound, and the stocks are rapidly falling. Mr. Wigsby has gone again to the Mayor with overtures, the people demand the release of Dobbs and Gubbins, and the demolition of the stocks, the pound, and the cage. As these are already de- stroyed, and Gubbins and Dobbs are at large, it is confidently THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 37 hoped by all moderate men that his Worship will accede to the terms. Four o'clock. The Mayor has rejected the terms. It is confidently affirmed that after this decision, he secretly ordered a post-chaise, and has set off with a pair of post horses as fast as they can't gallop. A meeting of the principal tradesmen has taken place, and the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the cheesemonger, and the publi- can, have agreed to compose a Provisional Government, In the mean time the mob are loud in their joy, — they are letting off squibs and crackers, and rockets, and devils, in all directions, and quiet is completely restored. We subjoin two documents, — one containing the articles drawn up by the Provisional Government and Mr. Wigsby ; the other, the genuine narrative of a spectator. Dear Charles, The events of the last few hours, since I closed my minute nar- ration, are pregnant with fate ; and no words that I can utter on paper will give you an idea of their interest. Up to the hour at which I closed my sheet, anxiety regulated the movement of every watchful bosom ; but since then, the approaches to tran- quillity have met with barriei*s and interruptions. To the medi- tative mind, these popular paroxysms have their desolating deduc- tions. Oh, my Charles, I myself am almost sunk into an Agi- tator — so much do we take the colour from the dye in which our reasoning faculties are steeped. I stop the press — yes, Charles — I stop the press of circumstances to say, that a dawn of the Pa- cific is gleaming over the Atlantic of our disturbances; and I am enabled, by the kindness of Constable Adams, to send you a Copy of the Preliminaries, which are pretty well agreed upon, 38 HOOD'S OWN. and only wait to be ratified. I close my letter in haste. That peace may descend on the Olive Tree of Stoke Pogis, is the earnest prayer of, &c. H. J. P. P. S. — Show the Articles to Edward. He will, with his benevolence, at once see that they are indeed precious articles for Stoke Pogis. CONDITIONS. 1. That for the future, widows in Stoke Pogis shall be allowed their thirds, and Novembers their fifths. 2. That the property of Guys shall be held inviolable, and their persons respected. 8. That no arson be allowed, but all bonfires shall be burnt by the common hangman. 4. That every rocket shall be allowed an hour to leave the place. 5. That the freedom of Stoke Pogis be presented to Madame Hengler, in a cartridge-box. 6. That the military shall not be called out, uncalled for. v. That the parish beadle, for the time being, be authorised to stand no nonsense. 8. That his Majesty's mail be permitted to pass on the night in question. 9. That all animosities be buried in oblivion, at the Parish expense. 10. That the ashes of old bonfires be never raked up. ( Wagstaff, High Constable. THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 39 The JVarrotiv of a High Whitness who seed every Think proceed out of a Back-winder up Fore Fears to Mrs. Humphris. Mrs. Humphris ! Littel did I Dram, at my Tim of Life, to see Wat is before me. The hole Parrish is Throne into a panni- kin ! The Revelations has reeched Stock Poggis — and the people is riz agin the Kings rain, and all the Pours that be. All this Blessed Mourning Mrs. Griggs and Me as bean sitting abscondingly at the tiptop of the Hows crying for lowness. We have lockd our too selves in the back Attical Rome, and nothing can come up to our Hanksiety. Some say it is hke the Frentch Plot — sum say sum thing moor arter the Dutch Patten is on the car-pit, and if so we shall Be flored hke Brussels. Well, I never did like them Brown lioUand brum gals ! Our Winder overlooks all the High Street, xcept jest ware Mister Higgins jutts out Behind. What a prospectus ! — All riotism and hubbub. — There is a lowd speechifying round the Gabble end of the Hows. The Mare is arranging the Populous from one of his own long winders. — Poor Man ! — for all his fine goold Cheer, who wood Sit in his shews ! 1 hobserve Mr. Tuder's bauld Hed uncommon hactiv in the Mobb, and so is Mister Wagstaff the Constable, considdering his rummatiz has only left one Harm disaffected to shew his loyal- ness with. He and his men air staving the mobbs Heds to make them Suppurate. They are trying to Custardise the Ringleders But as yet hav Captivated Noboddy. There is no end to acci- dence. Three unsensible boddies are Carrion over the way on Three Cheers, but weather N ay bres or Gyes, is dubbious. Master Gollop too, is jest gon By on one of his Ants Shuters, with a Bunch of exploded Squibs gone off in liis Trowsirs. It makes 40 HOOD'S OWN. Mrs G. and Me tremble like Axle trees, for our Hone nevvies. Wile we ware at the open Winder they sliped out. With sich Broils in the Street who nose what Scraps they may git into. Mister J. is gon off with his muskitry to militate agin the mobb ; and I fear without anny Sand Witches in his Cartrich Box. Mi-s. Griggs is in the ISam state of Singularity as meself. Onely think, Mrs. H. of two Loan Wiming looken Down on such a Heifervesence, and as Hignorant as the unbiggotted Babe of the state of our Husbandry ! to had to our Convexity, the Botcher has not Bean. No moor as the Backer and We shold here Nothing if Mister Higgins handn't hollowed up Fore Storys. What news he brakes ! That wicked Wigsby as reflfused to Reed the Riot Ax, and the Town Clark is no Schollard ! Isn't that a bad Herring ! Mrs. Humphi'is ! It is unpossible to throe ones hies from one End of Stock Poggis to the other, without grate Pane. Nothing is seed but Wivs asking for Huzbinds — nothing is heard but childerin looking for Farthers. Mr. Hatband the Undertacker as jist bean squibed and obligated for safeness to inter his own Hows. Mr. Higgins blames the unflexable Stubble- ness of the Mare and says a littel timely Concussion wood have been of Preventive Servis. Haven nose ! For my Part I dont believe all the Concussion on Hearth wood hav prevented the Regolater bein scarified by a Squib and runnin agin the Rockit — - or that it could unshatter Pore Master Gollop, or squentch Wider Welshis rix of Haze witch is now Flamming and smocking in two volumes. The ingins as been, but could not Play for want of Pips witch is too often the Case with Parrish inginuity. Wile affares are in this friteful Posturs, thank Haven I have one grate comfit. Mr. J. is cum back on his legs from Twelve to won THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 41 tired in the extreams with Being a Standing Army, and his Um- formity spatterdashed all over. He says his hone saving was onely thro leaving His retrenchments. Pore Mr. Griggs has cum In after his Wif in a state of grate exaggeration. He says the Boys hav maid a Bone Fire of his garden fence and Pales upon Pales cant put it out. Severi' Shells of a bombastic nater as been picked up in his Back Yard and the old Cro's nest as bean Perpetrated rite thi'o by a Rockit. We hav sent out the Def Shopman to here wat he can and he says there is so Manny Crackers going he dont no witch report to Belive, but the Fismongerers has Cotchd and with all his Stock compleatly Guttid. The Brazers next door is lickwise in Hashes, — but it is hopped he has assurance enuf to cover him All over. — They say nothing can save the Dwellins adjourning. O Mrs. H. how greatful ought J and I to bee that our hone Premiss and propperty is next to nothing ! The effex of the lit on Bildings is marvulous. The Turrit of St. Magnum Bonum is quit clear and you can tell wat Time it is by the Clock verry planely only it stands ! The noise is enuf to drive won deleterious ! Too Specious Conestabbles is persewing littel Tidmash down the Hi Street and Sho grate fermness, but I trembel for the Pelisse. Peple drops ki with New News every Momentum. Sum say All is Lost — and the town Criar is missin. Mrs. Griggs is quite retched at herein five littel Boys is throwd off a spirituous Cob among the Catherend Weals. But I hope it wants cobbobboration. Another Yuth its sed has had his hies Blasted by sum blowd Gun Powder. You Mrs. H. are Patrimonial, and may supose how these flying rummers Upsetts a Mothers Sperrits. Mrs. Humphris how I envy you that is not tossing on the 4r2 HOOD'S OWN. ragging bellows of these Flatulent Times, but living under a Mild Dispotic Govinment in such Sequestrated spots as Lonnon and Padington. May you never go thro such Transubstantiation as I have been riting in ! Things that stood for Sentries as bean removed in a Minuet — and the very effigis of wat was venerablest is now burning in Bone Fires. The Worshipfull chaer is emty. The Mare as gon off clandestinely with a pare of Hossis, and without his diner. They say he complanes that his Corperation did not stik to him as it shold have dun But went over to the other Side. Pore Sole — in sich a case I dont wunder he lost his Stommich. Yisterday he was at the summut of Pour. Them that hours ago ware enjoying parrish offiiciousness as been turned out of their Dignittis ! Mr. Barber says in futcr all the Perukial Authoritis will be Wigs. Pray let me no wat his Magisty and the Prim Minestir think of Stock Poggis's constitution, and believe me conclusively my deer Mrs. Humphris most frendly and trully Bridget Jones. 43 f ntra— frnra tljt l^nlislj. Some months since a young lady was much surprised at receiving, from the Cap- tain of a Whaler, a blank sheet of paper, folded in the form of a letter, and duly sealed. At last, recollecting the nature of sympathetic ink, she~placed the missive on a toasting-fork, and after holding it to the fire for a minute or two, succeeded in thawing out the following verses. From seventy-two North latitude, Dear Kitty, I indite ; But first I'd have you understand How hard it is to write. Of thoughts that breathe and words that burn My Kitty, do not think, — Before I wrote these very lines, I had to melt my ink. Of mutual flames and lover's warmth, You must not be too nice ; The sheet that I am writing^ on Was once a sheet of ice! The Polar cold is sharp enough To freeze with icy gloss The genial current of the soul, E'en in a " Man of Ross." Pope says that letters waft a sigh From Indus to the Pole ; But here I really wish the post Would only " post the coaL^'' 4:4 HOOD'S OWN. So chilly is the Northern blast, It blows me through and through ; A ton of Wallsend in a note Would be a billet-doux ! In such a frigid latitude It scarce can be a sin, Should Passion cool a little, where A fury was iced in. I'm rather tired of endless snow, And long for coals again; And would give up a Sea of Ice, For some of Lambton's Main. I'm sick of dazzling ice and snow, The sun itself I hate ; So very bright, so very cold, Just like a summer grate. For opodeldoc I would kneel, My chilblains to anoint; Kate, the needle of the north Has got a freezing point. Our food is solids, — ere we put Our meat into our crops, We take sledge-hammers to our steaks And hatchets to our chops. So very bitter is the blast, So cutting is the air, 1 never have been warm but once, When hugging with a bear. One thing I know you'll like to hear, Th' effect of Polar snows, I've left off snuff— one pinching day — From leaving off my nose. POEM,— FROM THE POLISH 45 I have no ear for music now ; My ears both left together ; And as for dancing, I have cut My toes — it's cutting w^eather. I've said that you should have my hand, Some happy day to come ; But, Kate, you only now can wed A finger and a thumb. Don't fear that any Esquimaux Can wean me from my own ; The Gii-dle of the Queen of Love Is not the Frozen Zone. At wives with large estates of snow My fancy does not bite ; I like to see a Bride — but not In such a deal of white. Give me for home a house of brick. The Kate I love at Kew ! A hand unchapped — a merry eye ; And not a nose, of blue ! To think upon the Bridge of Kew, To me a bridge of sighs ; Oh, Kate, a pair of icicles Are standing in my eyes ! God knows if I shall e'er return, In comfort to be lull'd ; But if I do get back to port. Pray let me have it mull'd. 46 (0pirTOiin EMhisrBEtBS nf c Irntinitntflfot, 'My Tables > Meat it is, I set it down ! " Hamlet. I THINK it was Spring — but not certain I am — When my passion began first to work ; But I know we were certainly looking for lamb, And the season was over for pork. 'Twas at Christmas, 1 think, when I met with Miss Chase, Yes, — for Morris had asked me to dine, — And I thought I had never beheld such a face, Or so noble a turkey and chine. Placed close by her side, it made others quite wild. With sheer envy to witness my luck ; How she blushed as I gave her some turtle, and smil'd As I afterwards offered some duck. I looked and I languished, alas, to my cost, Through three courses of dishes and meats ; Getting deeper in love — but my heart was quite lost. When it came to the trifle and sweets ! With a rent-roll that told of my houses and land, To her parents I told my designs — And then to herself I presented my hand, With a very fine pottle of pines ! EPICUREAN REMINISCENCES. 47 I asked her to have me for weal or for woe, And she did not object in the least; — I can't tell the date — but we married, I know, Just in time to have game at the feast. We went to , it certainly was the sea-side ; For the next, the most blessed of morns, I remember how fondly I gazed at my bride, Silting down to a plateful of prawns. O never may mem'ry lose sight of that year, But still hallow the time as it ought, That season the "grass" was remarkably dear, And the peas at a guinea a quart. So happy, like hours, all our days seem'd to haste, A fond pair, such as poets have drawn. So united in heart — so congenial in taste. We were both of us partial to brawn ! A long life I looked for of bliss with my bride. But then Death — I ne'er dreamt about that! Oh there's nothing is certain in life, as I cried, When my turbot eloped with the cat ! My dearest took ill at the turn of the year, But the cause no physician could nab ; But something it seem'd like consumption, I fear, It was just after supping on crab. In vain she was doctor'd, in vain she was dosed. Still her strength and her appetite pined ; She lost relish for what she had relish'd the most. Even salmon she deeply declin'd ! For months still I linger'd in hope and in doubt. While her form it grew wasted and thin ; But the last dying spark of existence wont out, As the oysters were just coming in ! 48 HOOD'S OWN. She died, and she left me the saddest of men To indulge in a widower's moan, Oh, I felt all the power of solitude then, As I ate my first natives alone ! But when I beheld Virtue's friends in their cloaks, And with sorrowful crape on their hats, O my grief poured a flood ! and the out-of-door folks Were all crying — I think it was sprats ! 49 " It's a nasty evening," said Mr. Dornton, the stockbroker, as he settled himself in the last inside place of the last Fulham coach, driven by our old friend Mat — an especial friend in need, be it remembered, to the fair sex. " I would'nt be outside," said Mr. Jones, another stockbroker, " for a trifle." " Nor I, as a speculation in options," said Mr. Parsons, another frequenter of the Alley. " I wonder what Mat is waiting for," said Mr. Tidwell, " for we are full, inside and out." Mr. Tidwell's doubt was soon solved,— the coach-door opened, and Mat somewhat ostentatiously inquired, what indeed he very well knew — " I believe every place is took up inside ?" " We 're all here," answered Mr. Jones, on behalf of the usual complement of old stagers. "I told you so. Ma'am," said Mat, to a female who stood beside him, but still leaving the door open to an invitation from within. However, nobody spoke— on the contrary, I felt Mr. Hindmarsh, my next neighbour, dilating himself like the frog in the fable. " I don't know what I shall do," exclaimed the woman ; " I've no where to go to, and it's raining cats and dogs !" " You'd better not hang about, anyhow," said Mat, " for you may ketch yom- death, — and I'm the last coach, — an't I, Mr. Jones ?" 3 50 HOOD'S OWN. "To be sure you are," said Mr. Jones, rather impatiently; " shut the door." " I told the lady the gentlemen couldn't make room for her," answered Mat, in a tone of apology, — " I'm very sorry, my dear" (turning towards the female), " you should have my seat, if you could hold the ribbons — but such a pretty one as you ought to have a coach of her own." He began slowly closing the door. " Stop, Mat, stop !" cried Mr. Dornton, and the door quickly unclosed again ; " I can't give up my place, for I'm expected home to dinner ; but if the lady wouldn't object to sit on my knees — " " Not the least in the world," answered Mat, eagerly ; " you won't object, will you, ma'am, for once in the way, with a mar- ried gentleman, and a wet night, and the last coach on the road ?" " If I thought I shouldn't uncommode," said the lady, preci- pitately furling her wet umbrella, which she handed in to one gentleman, whilst she favoured another with her muddy pattens. She then followed herself, Mat, shutting the door behind her, in such a manner as to help her in. " I'm sure I'm obliged for the favour," she said, looking round ; " but which gentleman was so kind?" " It was I who had the pleasure of proposing. Madam," said Mr. Dornton : and before he pronounced the last Avord she was in his lap, with an assurance that she would sit as lightsome as she could. Both parties seemed very well pleased with the arrangement; but to judge according to the rules of Lavater, the rest of the company were but ill at ease. For my own part, I candidly confess I was equally out of humour with myself and THE DISCOVERY. 61 the person who had set me such an example of gallantry. I, who had read the lays of the Troubadours — the awards of the old " Courts of Love,"— the hves of the "preux Chevaliers"—- the history of Sir Charles Grandison — to be outdone in courtesy to the sex by a married stockbroker ! How I grudged him the honour she conferred upon him — how Penvied his feelings ! I did not stand alone, I suspect, in this unjustifiable jealousy ; Messrs. Jones Hindmarsh, Tidwell, and Parsons, seemed equally disincHned to forgive the chivalrous act which had, as true knights, lowered all our crests and blotted our scutcheons, and cut off our spurs. Many an unfair jibe was launched at the champion of the fair, and when he attemp:^ed to enter into con- vei-sation with the lady, he was interrupted by incessant questions of "What is stirring in the Alley ?"—" What is doing in Dutch?" — " How are the Rentes ?" To all these questions Mr. Dornton incontinently returned busi- ness-hke answers according to the last Stock Exchange quotations ; and he was in the middle of an elaborate enumeration, that so and so was very firm, and so and so very low, and this rather brisk, and that getting up, and operations, and fluctuations, and so forth, when somebody ifiquired about Spanish Bonds. " They are looking up, my dear,'' answered Mr. Dornton, somewhat abstractedly ; and before the other stockbrokers had done.tittering the stage stopped. A bell was rung, and whilst Mat stood beside the open coach-door, a staid female in a calash and clogs, with a lantern in her hand, came clattering pompously down a front garden. " Is Susan Pegge come ?" inquired a shrill voice. « Yes, I be," replied the lady who had been dry-nursed from town ; — " are you, ma'am, number ten, Grove Place ?" 52 HOOD'S OWN. " This is Mr. Dornton's," said the dignified woman in the hood, advancing her lantern, — " and — mercy on us ! you're in master's lap !" - A shout of laughter from five of the inside passengers corrobo- rated the assertion, and like a literal cat out of the bag, the ci-de- vant lady, forgetting her flmbrella and her pattens, bolted out of the coach, and with feline celerity rushed up the garden, and down the area, of number ten. " Renounce the woman !" said Mr. Dornton, as he scuttled out of the stage — " Why the devil didn't she tell me she was the new cook ? " 53 Ejjtjm^ unit EBii3nii» To the Editor of the Comic Annual. SiE, — In one of your Annuals you have given insertion to " A Plan for Writing Blank Verse in Rhyme ;" but as I have seen no regular long poem constructed on its principles, I suppose the scheme did not take with the literary world. Under these cir- cumstances I feel encouraged to bring forward a novelty of my own, and I can only regret that such poets as Chaucer and Cottle, Spenser and Hayley, Milton and Pratt, Pope and Pye, Byron and Batterbee, should have died before it was invented. The great difficulty in verse is avowedly the rhyme. Dean Swift says somewhere in his letters, " that a rhyme is as hard to find with him as a guinea," — and we all know that guineas are proverbially scarce among poets. The merest versifier that ever attempted a Valentine must have met with this Orson, some untameable savage syllable that refused to chime in with society. For instance, what poetical Foxhunter — a contributor to the Sport- ing Magazine — has not drawn all the covers of Beynard, Ceynard, Deynard, Feynard, Geynard, Heynard, Keynard, Leynard, Mey- nard, Neynard, Peynard, Queynard, to find a rhyme for Reynard ? The spirit of the times is decidedly against Tithe ; and I know of no tithe more oppressive than that poetical one, in heroic measure, which requires that every tenth syllable shall pay a sound in kind. How often the Poet goes up a hne, only to be stopped at the end by an impracticable rhyme, like a bull in a 54: HOOD'S OWN. blind alley ! I have an ingenious medical friend, who might have been an eminent poet by this time, but the first line he wrote ended in ipecacuanha, and with all his physical and mental power, he has never yet been able to find a rhyme for it. ^^^'^\^^ FUSING TITHE. The plan I propose aims to obviate this hardship. My system is, to take the bull by the horns ; in short, to try at first what words will chime, before you go farther and fare worse. To say nothing of other advantages, it will at least have one good effect, — and that is, to correct the erroneous notion of the would-be poets and poetesses of the present day, that the great end of poetry is rhyme. I beg leave to present a specimen of verse, which proves quite the reveree, and am, Sir, Your most obedient servant, John Dryden Grubb. RHYME AND REASON. 55 THE DOUBLE KNOCK. Rat-tat it went upon the lion's chin, " That hat, I know it !" cried the joyful girl ; " Summer's it is, I know him by his knock, Comers like him are welcome as the day ! Lizzy ! go down and open the street-door. Busy I am to any one but him. Know him you must — he has been often here ; Show him up stairs, and tell him I'm alone." Quickly the maid went tripping down the stair ; Thickly the heart of Rose Matilda beat ; " Sure he has brought me tickets for the play — Drury — or Covent Garden — darling man I — Kemble will play — or Kean who makes the soul Tremble ; in Richard or the frenzied Moor — Farren, the stay and prop of many a farce Barren beside — or Liston, Laughter's Child — Kelly the natural, to witness whom Jelly is nothing to the public's jam — Cooper, the sensible, — and Walter Knowles Super, in William Tell — now rightly told. Better — perchance, from Andrews, brings a box, Letter of boxes for the Italian stage — Brocard ! Donzelli ! Taglioni ! Paul ! No card, — thank heaven — engages me to night ! Feathers, of course, no turban, and no* toque — Weather's against it, but I'll go in curls. Dearly I dote on white — my satin dress, Merely one night — it won't be much the worse — Cupid — the New Ballet I long to see — Stupid ! why don't she go and ope the door !" Glisten'd her eye as the impatient girl Listen'd, low bending o'er the topmost stair. Vainly, alas ! she listens and she bends, Plainly she hears this question and reply. " Axes your pardon. Sir, but what d'ye want ?" " Taxes," says he, " and shall not call again !" 56 ttiUt FROM A PARISH CLERK IN BARBADOES TO ONE IN HAMPSHIRE, WITH AN ENCLOSURE. "Thou mayest conceive, O reader, with what concern I perceived the eyea of the congregation fixed upon me."— Memoirs of P. P. My DEAR Jedidiah, Here I am safe and sound — we^ll in body, and in fine voice for my calling — though thousands and thousands of miles, I may say, from the old living Threap-Cum-Toddle. Little did I think to be ever giving out the Psalms across the Atlantic, or to be walking in the streets of Barbadoes, sun-ounded by Blackamoors, big and little ; some crying after me, " There him go — look at Massa Amen ! "* Poor African wretches ! I do hope, by my Lord Bishop's assistance, to instruct many of them, and to teach them to have more respect for ecclesiastic dignitaries. Through a ludicr6us clerical mischance, not fit for me to men- tion, we have preached but once since our arrival. Oh ! Jedidiah, how different from the row of comely, sleek, and ruddy plain English faces, that used to confront me in the Churchwarden's pew, at the old service in Hants, — Mr. Perryman's clean, shining, bald head ; Mr. Truman's respectable powdered, and Mr. Cutlet's comely and well-combed caxon! — Here, such a set of grinning * Some readers may not be aware that in the English [established] Church the " Clerk " from his desk under the pulpit, leads the responses, and gives out the psalms. LETTER. 6T sooty faces, that if I had been in any other place, I might have fancied myself at a meeting of Master Chimney-sweeps on May- Day. You know, Jedidiah, how strange thoughts and things will haunt the mind, in spite of one's self, at times the least ap- propriate : — the hne that follows " The rose is red, the violet's blue," in the old Valentine, I am ashamed to say, came across me I know not how often. Then after service, no sitting on a tomb- stone for a cheerful bit of chat wdth a neighbour — no invitation to dinner from the w^orshipful Churchwardens. The jabber of these Niggers is so outlandish or unintelligible, I can hardly say I am on speaking terms with any of our parishioners, except Mr. Pom- pey, the Governor's black, whose trips to England have made his Enghsh not quite so full of Greek as the othei*s. There is one thing, however, that is^so great a disappointment of my hopes and enjoyments, that I think, if I had foreseen it, I should not have come out, even at the Bishop's request. The song in the play- book says, you know, " While all Barbadoes' bells do ring ! " — but alas, Jedidiah, there is not a ring of bells in the whole island ! — You who remember my fondness for that melodious pastime, indeed I may say my passion, for a Grandsire Peal of Triple Bob- Majoi-s truly pulled, and the changes called by myself, as when I belonged to the Great Tom Society of Hampshire Youths, — may conceive my regret that, instead of coming here, I did not go out to Swan River — I am told they have a Peel there. I shall write a longer letter by the Nestor, Bird, which is the next ship. This comes by the Lively, Kidd, — only to inform you that I arrived here safe and well. Pray communicate the same, with my love and duty, to my dear parents and relations, not forgetting Deborah and Darius at Porkington, and Uriah at Pigstead. The same to Mrs. Pugh, the opener, — Mr. Sexton, and the rest of my 58 HOOD'S OWN. clerical friends. I have no commis>ions at present, except to beg that you will deliver the enclosed, which I have written at Mr. Pompey's dictation, to his old black fellow servant, at number 45, Portland Place. Ask for Agamemnon down the area. If an opportunity should likewise offer of mentioning in any quarter that might reach the administration, the destitute state of our Bar- barian steeples, and belfreys, pray don't omit ; and if, in the mean time, you could send out even a set of small handbells, it might prove a parochial acquisition as well as to me. Dear Jedidiah, Your faithful Friend and fellow Clerk, Habakkuk Crumpe. P. S. — I send Pompey's letter open, for you to read. — You will, see what a strange herd of black cattle I am among. [the enclosure.] I say, Aggy !— You remember me? — Yery well. — Runaway Pompey, somebody else. Me Governor's Pompey. You remember ? Me carry out Governor's piccaninny a walk. Very well. Massa Amen and me write this to say the news. Barbadoes all bustle. Nigger-mans do nothing but talkee talkee. [^Pompey's rights Jedi- diah^ The Bishop is come. Missis Bishop. Miss Bishop — all the Bishops. Yery well. The Bishop come in one ship, and him wigs come out in other ship. Bishop come one, two, three, weeks first. [Ifs too true, Jedidiah^ Him say no wig, no Bishop. Massa Amen, you remember, say so too. Yery well. Massa Amen ask me every thing about nigger-man, where him baptizes in a water. \^So I did^ Me tell him in the sea, in the river, any wheres abouts. You remember. Massa Amen ask at me again, who 'ficiates. Me tell him de Cayman. [What LETTER. 59 man, Jedidiah, could he mean ?] Very well. The day before tlie other day Bishop come to dinner with Governor and Gover- ness, up at the Big House. You remember,^-Missis Bishop too. Missis Bishop set him turban afire at a candle, and me put him out. [ With a kettle of scalding water, Jedidiah.] Pompey get nothing for that. Very well. I say, Aggy,— You know your Catechism ? Massa Amea ask him at me and my wife, Black Juno, sometimes. You re- member. Massa Amen say, you give up a Devil? very well. Then him say, you give up all work ? very well. Then him say again. Black Juno, you give up your Pompeys and vanities ? Black Juno shake her head, and say no. Massa Amen say you must, and then my wife cry ever so much. [It's a fact, Jedi- diah, the black female made this ridiculous mistake:] 60 HOOD'S OWN. Very well. Governor come to you in three months to see the King. Pompey too. You remember. Come for me to Black- wall. Me bring you some of Governor's rum. Black Juno say, tell Massa Agamemnon, he must send some fashions, sometimes. You remember ? Black Juno very smart. Him wish for a Bell Assembly. [Jedidiak, so do /.] You send him out, you re- member ? Very well. Massa Amen say write no more now. I say, pray one little word more for Agamemnon's wife. Give him good kiss from Pompey. [Jedidiah, what a heathenish message /] Black Diana a kiss too. You remember ? Veiy well. No more. 61 iftBHrji utti «tiglijsilj. 'Good Heaven 1 Why even the little children in Franco speak French !" Addison. " Allons ! Vite I " No, Mounseer, I. Never go to France Unless you know the lingo, If you do, like me, You will repent, by jingo. Staring like a fool, And silent as a mummy, There I stood alone, A nation with a dummy : n. Chaises stand for chairs. They christen letters Billies, They call their mothers mares, And all their daughters Jillies ; Vite ! Vite ! Vite !" not veat-thems w^hoats !' Strange it was to hear, I'll tell you what's a good 'un, They call their leather queer. And half their shoes are wooden. Signs I had to make For every little notion, Limbs all going like A telegraph in motion, For wine I reel'd about, To show my meaning fully, And made a pair of horns, To ask for " beef and buliv." 62 HOOD'S OWN. Moo ! I cried for milk ; I got my sweet things snugger, When I kissed Jeannette, 'Twas understood for sugar. If I wanted bread, My jaws I set a-going, And asked for new-laid eggs. By clapping hands and crowing ! V. If I wish'd a ride, I'll tell you how I got it ; On my stick astride, I made believe to trot it ; Then their cash was strange, It bored me every minute, Now here's a hog to change. How many sows are in it ! VI. Never go to France, Unless you know the lingo ; If you do, like me, You will repent, by jingo ; Staring like a fool. And silent as a mummy. There I stood alone, A nation with a dummy 1 63 dDur ©ilUg^ " Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain." Goldsmith. I HAVE a great anxiety to become a topographer, and I do not know that I can make an easier commencement of the character, than by attempting a description of our village. It will be found, as my friend the landlord over the way says, that " things are drawn mild.^^ I live opposite the Green Man. I know that to be the sign, in spite of the picture, because I am told of the fact in large gilt letters, in three several places. The whole-length portrait of " Vhomme verd^^ is rather imposing. He stands plump before you, in a sort of wrestling attitude, the legs standing distinctly apart, in a brace of decided boots, with dun tops, joined to a pair of Creole-coloured leather breeches. The rest of his dress is pecu- har ; the coat, a two-flapper, green and brown, or, as they say at the tap, half-and-half; a cocked hat on the half cock ; a short belt crossing the breast like a flat gas-pipe. The one hand stuck on the greeney-brown hip of my friend, in the other a gun with a barrel like an entire butt, and the buti like a brewer's whole stock. On one side, looking up at the vanished visage of his master, is all that remains of a liver-and-white pointer — seeming now to be some old dog from India, for his white complexion is turned yel- low, and his Uver is more than half gone ! 64 HOOD'S OWN. The inn is really a very quiet, cozey, comfortable inn, though the landlord announces a fact in larger letters, methinks, than his information warrants, viz., that he is " Licensed to deal in Foreign Wines and Spirits" All innkeepei*s, I trust, are so licensed ; there is no occasion to make so brazen a brag of this sinecure permit. ****** I had written thus far, when the tarnished gold letters of the Green Man seemed to be suddenly re-gilt ; and on looking up- wards, I perceived that a sort of sky-light had been opened in the E LADY OF OUR VILLAGE. clouds, giving entrance to a bright gleam of sunshine, which glowed with remarkable effect on a yellow post-chaise in the stable-yard, and bi-ought the ducks out beautifully white from the black horse-pond. Tempted by the appearance of the weather, I OUR VILLAGE. 65 put down my pen, and strolled out for a quarter of an hour be- fore dinner to inhale that air, without which, like the chameleon, I cannot feed. On my return, I found, with some surprise, that my papers were a good deal discomposed ; but, before I had time for much wonder, my landlady entered with one of her most oblig- ing curtseys, and observed that she had seen me writing in the morning, and it had occurred to her by chance, that I might by possibility have been writing a description of the village. I told her that 1 had actually been engaged on that very subject. " If that is the case, of course. Sir, you will begin, no doubt, about the Green Man, being so close by ; and I dare say, you would say something about the sign, and the Green Man with his top boots, and his gun, and his Indian hver-and-white pointer, though his white to be sure is turned yellow, and his hver is more than half gone." " You are perfectly right, Mrs. Ledger," I rephed, " and in one part of the description, I think I have used almost your own very words." " Well, that is curious. Sir," exclaimed Mrs. L., and physically, not arithmetically, casting up all her hands and eyes. " Moreover, what I mean to say, is this ; and I only say that to save trouble. There's a young man lodges at the Greengrocer's over the way, who has writ an account of the village already to your hand. The people about the place call him the Poet, but, anyhow, he studies a good deal, and writes beauti- ful ; and, as I said before, has made the whole village out of his own head. Now, it might save trouble, Sir, if you was to write it out, and I am sure I have a copy, that, as far as the loan goes, is at your service, Sir." My curiosity induced me to take the offer ; and as the poem really forestalled what I had to say of the hamlet, I took my landlady's advice and transcribed it, — and here it is. 66 HOOD'S OWN. OUR VILLAGE.— BY A VILLAGER. * Our village, that's to say not Miss Mitford's village, but our village of Bullock Smithy, Is come into by an avenue of trees, three oak pollards, two elders, and a withy ; And in the middle, there's a green of about not exceeding an acre and a half; It's common to all, and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs, and a calf ! Besides a pond in the middle, as is held by a similar sort of common law lease. And contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drown'd kittens, and twelve geese. Of course the green's cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket ; Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass, is sure to come and stand right before the wicket. There's fifty-five private houses, let alone barns and workshops, and pig-styes, and poultry-huts, and such-like sheds ; With plenty of public-houses — two Foxes, one Green Man, three Bunch of Grapes, one Crown, and six King's Heads. The Green Man is reckon'd the best, as the only one that for love or money can raise A postilion, a blue jacket, two deplorable lame white horses, and a ramshackled " neat post-chaise." There's one parish church for all the people, whatsoever may be their ranks in life or their degrees. Except one very damp, small, dark, freezing-cold, little Methodist chapel of Ease ; And close by the church-yard, there's a stone-mason's yard, that when the time is seasonable Will furnish with afflictions sore and marble urns and cherubims very low and reasonable. There's a cage, comfortable enough ; I've been in it with Old Jack Jeff'rey and Tom Pike ; For the Green Man next door will send you in ale, gin, or any thing else you like. OUR VILLAGE. 6T I can't speak of the stocks, as nothing remains of them but the upright post ; But the pound is kept in repairs for the sake of Cob's horse, as is always there almost. There's a smithy of course, where that queer sort of a chap in his • way, Old Joe Bradley, Perpetually hammers and stammers, for he stutters and shoes horses very badly. There's a shop of all sorts, that sells every thing, kept by the widow of Mr. Task ; But when you go there it's ten to one she's out of every thing you ask. You'll know her house by the swarm of boys, like flies, about the old sugary cask : There are six empty houses, and not so well paper'd inside as out. For bill-stickers won't beware, but sticks notices of sales and election placards all about. That's the Doctor's with a green door, where the garden pots in the windows are seen ; A weakly monthly rose that do'nt blow, and a dead geranium, and a tea-plant with five black leaves and one green. As for hollyoaks at the cottage doors, and honeysuckles and jasmines, you may go and whistle ; But the Tailor's front garden grow two cabbages, a dock, a ha'porth of pennyroyal, two dandelions, and a thistle. There are three small orchards— Mr. Busby's the schoolmaster's is the chief — With two pear-trees that dont bear ; one plum and an apple, that every year is stripped by a thief. There's another small day-school too, kept by the respectable Mrs. Gaby, A select establishment, for six little boys and one big, and four little girls and a baby ; There's a rectory, with pointed gables and strange odd chimneys that never smokes, For the rector don't live on his living like other Christian sort of folks ; There's a barber's, once a-week well filled with rough black-bearded shock-headed churls. 68 HOOD'S OWN. And a window with two feminine men's heads, and two masculine ladies in false curls ; There's a butcher's, and a carpenter's, and a plumber's, and a small greengrocer's, and a baker. But he won't bake on a Sunday, and there's a sexton that's a coal- merchant besides, and an undertaker ; And a toy-shop, but not a whole one, for a village can't compare with the London shops ; One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, batts, Clout's balls, and the other sells malt and hops. And Mrs. Brown, in domestic economy not to be a bit behind her betters. Lets her house to a milliner, a watchmaker, a rat-catcher, a cobbler, lives in it herself, and it's the post-office for letters. Now I've gone through all the village — ay, from end to end, save and except one more house, But I haven't come to that — and I hope I never shall — and that's the Village Poor-House ! 69 €)}t itrnp-aJniik " Luck'8 all. Some men seem born to be lucky. Happier than kings, For- tune's wheel has for them no revolutions. Whatever they touch turns to gold, — their path is paved with the philosopher's stone. At games of chance they have no chance ; but what is better, a certainty. They hold four suits of trumps. They get windfalls, without a breath stirring — as legacies. Prizes turn up for them in lotteries. On the turf, their horse — an outsider — always wins. They enjoy a whole season of benefits. At the very worst, in trying to drown themselves, they dive on some treasure undis- covered since the Spanish Armada ; or tie their halter to a hook, that unseals a hoard in the ceiling. That's their luck. There is another kind of fortune, called ill-luck ; so ill, that you hope it will die ; — but it don't. That's my luck. Other people keep scrap-books ; but I, a scrape-book. It is theirs to insert bon-mots, riddles, anecdotes, caricatures, facetiae of all kinds ; mine to record mischances, failures, accidents, disap- pointments ; in short, as the betters say, I have always a bad book. Witness a few extracts, bitter as extract of bark. April 1st. Married on this day : in the first week of the honeymoon, stumbled over my father-in-law's beehives ! He has 252 bees ; thanks to me, he is now able to check them. Some of the insects having an account against me, preferred to settle on 70 iioojrs OWN. my calf. Otiiorft nviiirmcA on my \m\nU. My h.-ilfl \\<','.n\ Rcemcd rt porf<;ct/ hummirif^-l,o|) ! 'IVo Imriflrcd and fifty-two fttinp^s — it Mliould 1)0 "Hinir^.H -;i(i(l arrows of outragoouH fortune !" F>ut tliat'n my liic,|<. I{,iih1i((1 hcc hlitid into tlic liorsc. j>oii(i, arirl torn out l>y 'I'i/^^T, tlio, li(»iiH(; (log. Htn^/^cffd incontinent into tlio pig-Hty, and collared l>y tlio how — huh, per coll. for kicking lior HUcklingH ; rccoJnfri<-,nd<',d oil for u\y wounds, ;ind norw, hut lamp ted to Hiiat^Ji her reticulo. Belinda'H part taken hy a hig raneal, as dariHli engine, Koon ar- rived, with ail tho cliarity Hchool. Boya arc fond of l»layiri^r — and indulged their propennity by playing intx> my hot-luck, })Ut I. have not even j>inf/-luck — at leant of tlxi nr^ht Hort. 8th. Ff>ijnd, on ^ettin^ n[», that the kitchen gardf-r) had been Htrif)pf;d by thievcH, but had the luck at night to caU-Ji norne ono in tho garden, by walking into my own trap. Afraid Uj call out, for fear of being abot at by tho gardener, who would have, hit me to a dead certainty — for Huch is jny luck ! 10th. Agricultural distress is a treat U> mine My old friend IJill — I must lienceforth call him C.'orn-bill — has, this morning, laid his unf<',<:Iirig woodou l<-.g on my terid<;r(Ht 1/k-, lik^, a tlir<;Hher. fn spiU; of DibdiD, J don't belic,vo that oak lias any hr-art : or it would not bo such a walking trea^l-rnill ! ' 12th. 'iVo piew;» of " my usual." First knocked dr;wn hy a mad bulk Hec<'>»ndly, picked up by a pick-pocket. Any body but mo would liave found one honest liumafie, man out of a whole CTOwd ; but f am born to suffer, whether done by fux;ide,nt or done by de.sign. Luckily for me and the. pIck-[K;e,ket, I vva.H ah!'; to identify him, bound over Uj prc^secuto, and hml tlie satisfaction of exporting him Vj liotany bay. I suppr^o 1 performed well in a wjurt of justir;^;, for the next day — " Encore un coup /" — I liad a summons U> servo with a Middlesex jury, at the Old iJailey, for a fortnight. 14th. My ninnber in tho lott^;ry ha.H come up a ca[»ital pri//;. Luck at last — if f had not l'»st the ticket. 72 a €xut Itnrtj, Whoe'er has seen upon the human face The yellow jaundice and the jaundice black, May form a notion of old Colonel Case With nigger Porapey waiting at his back. Case, — as the case is, many time with folks From hot Bengal, Calcutta, or Bombay, Had tint his tint, as Scottish tongues would say, And show'd two cheeks as yellow as eggs' yolks. Pompey, the chip of some old ebon block, In hue was like his master's stiff cravat. And might indeed have claimed akin to that, Coming, as he did, of an old black stock. Case wore the liver's livery that such Must wear, their past excesses to denote, Like Greenwich pensioners that take too much. And then do penance in a yellow coat. Pompey's, a deep and permanent jet dye, A stain of nature's staining — one of those We call fast colours — merely, I suppose. Because such colours never go or Jly. Pray mark this difference of dark and sallow, Pompey's black husk, and the old Colonel's yellow. The Colonel, once a pennyless beginner. From a long Indian rubber rose a winner. With plenty of pagodas in his pocket. And homeward turning his Hibernian thought, Deem'd Wicklow was the very place that ought To harbour one whose rvick was in the socket. A TRUE STORY. 73 Unhappily for Case's scheme of quiet, Wieklow just then was in a pretty riot, A fact recorded in each day's diurnals, Things, Case was not accustomed to peruse. Careless of news ; But Porapey always read these bloody journals. Full of Killmany and of Killmore work. The freaks of some O'Shaunessy's shillaly, Of morning frays by some O'Brien Burke, Or horrid, nightly outrage by some Daly; How scums deserving of the devil's ladle, Would fall upon the harmless scull and knock it. And if he found an infant in the cradle Stern Rock would hardly hesitate to rock it ;— CAPTAIN ROCK. In fact, he read of burner and of killer. And Irish ravages, day after day, Till, haunting in his dreams, he used to say, That "Pompey could not sleep on Pomfey's Pillar! 4 74 HOOD'S OWN. Judge then the horror of the nigger's face To find with such impressions of that dire land — That Case,— his master,— was a packing case For Ireland ! He saw in fearful reveries arise, Phantasmagorias of those dreadful men Whose fame associate with Irish plots is, Fitzgeralds — Tones — O'Connors — Hares — and then " Those Emmets,'' not so " little in his eyes " As Doctor Watts's ! He felt himself piked, roasted,— carv'd and hack'd, His big black burly body seemed in fact A pincushion for Terror's pins and needles, — Oh, how he wish'd himself beneath the sun Of Afric — or in far Barbadoes — one Of Bishop Coleridge's new black beadles. P O M P E Y ' s p ; Full of this fright, With broken peace and broken English choking, As black as any raven and as croaking, Pompey rushed in upon his master's sight, Plump'd on his knees, and clasp'd his sable digits, Thus stirring Cnr'iosity's sharp fidgets — A TRUE STORY. 75 " O Massa ! — Massa ! — Colonel ! — Massa Case — Not go to Ireland ! — Ireland dam bad place; Dem take our bloods — dem Irish — every drop — Oh why for Massa go so far a distance To have him life ? " '■ — Here Pompey made a stop, Putting an awful period to existence. " Not go to Ireland — not to Ireland, fellow, And murder'd — why should I be murder'd, Sirrah ? " Cried Case, with anger's tinge upon his yellow, — Pompey, for answer, pointing in a mirror The Colonel's saffron, and his own japan, — " Well, what has that to do — quick — speak outright, boy ? " " O Massa " — (so the explanation ran) "Massa be killed — 'cause Massa Orange Man, And Pompey killed — 'cause Pompey not a White Boy!^* 76 ACCUSTOMED TO THE CARE OF CHILDREN. I SAWE a Mayd sitte on a Bank, Beguiled by Wooer fayne and fond ; And whiles His flatterynge Vowes She drank, Her Nurselynge slipt within a Pond ! All Even Tide they Talkde and Kist, For She was tayre and He was Kinde ; The Sunne went down before She wist Another Sonne had sett behinde ! With angrie Hands and frownynge Browe, That deemd Her owne the Urchine's Sinne, She pluekt Him out, but he was nowe Past being Whipt for fallynge in. She then beginnes to wayle the Ladde With Shrikes that Echo answerede round — O ! foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde The Momente that lier Care was drownd ! 77 €■0. /EHtllJ " Gay being, born to flutter ! " Sale's Glee. Is this your faith, then, Fanny ! What, to chat with every Dun ! I'm the one, then, but of many, Not of many, but the One! Last night you smil'd on all, Ma'am, That appear'd in scarlet dress; And your Regimental Ball, Ma'am, Look'd a little like a Mess. 78 HOOD'S OWN. I thought that of the Sogers (As the Scotch say) one might do, And that I, slight Ensign Rogers, Was the chosen man and true. But, 'sblood ! your eye was busy With that ragamuffin mob ; — Colonel Buddell — Colonel Dizzy — And Lieutenant-Colonel Cobb. General Joblin, General Jodkin, Colonels — Kelly, Felly, with Majors — Sturgeon, Truffle, Bodkin, And the Quarter-master Smith. Major Powderum — Major Dowdrum— Major Chowdrum — Major Bye — Captain Tawney — Captain Fawney, Captain Any-one — but I ! Deuce take it ! when the regiment You so praised, I only thought That you lov'd it in abridgement, But I now" am better taught ! I went, as loving man goes. To admire thee in quadrilles ; But Fan, you dance fandangoes With just any fop that wills ! I went with notes before us. On the lay of Love to touch ; But with all the Corps in chorus, Oh ! it is indeed too much ! You once — ere you contracted For the Army — seemed my own ; But now you laugh with all the Staff, And I may sigh alone ! — TO FANNY. 79 I know not how it chances, When my passion ever dares, But the warmer my advances, Then the cooler are your airs. I am, I don't conceal it, But I am a little hurt ; You're a Fan, and I must feel it. Fit for nothing but a Flirt ? I dreamt thy smiles of beauty On myself alone did fall ; But alas ! " Cosi Fan Tutti ! " It is thus, Fan, thus will all ! You have taken quite a mob in Of new military flames ; — They would make a fine Round Robin If I gave you all their names ! A ROUND ROBIN. 80 :^nBmS; hii % '|3nnr #nitUnnin There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, The Muse found Scroggins stretched beneath a rug. Goldsmith. Poetry and poverty begin with the same letter, and, in more respects than one, are " as Hke each other as two P's. " — Nine tailors are the making of a man, but not so the nine Muses. Their votaries are notoriously only water-drinkers, eating mutton cold, and dwelling in attics. Look at the miserable lives and deaths recorded of the poets. " Butler," says Mr. D'Israeli, " Hved in a cellar, and Goldsmith in a Deserted Village. Savage ran wild, — Chatterton was carried on St. Augustine's Back like a young gipsy ; and his half-starved Rowley always said heigho, when he heard of gammon and spinach. Gray's days were ode- ious, and Gay's gaiety was fabulous. Falconer was shipwrecked. Homer was a bUnd beggar, and Pope raised a subscription for him, and went snacks. Crabbe found himself in the poorhouse. Spencer could'nt afford a great-coat, and Milton was led up and down by his daughters, to save the expense of a dog." It seems all but impossible to be a poet in easy circumstances. Pope has shown how verses are written by Ladies of Quality — and what execrable rhymes Sir Richard Blackmore composed in his chariot. In a hay-cart he might have sung like a Burns. As the editors of magazines and annuals (save one) well know, the truly poetical contributions which can be inserted, are not those which come post free, in rose-coloured tinted paper, scent- POEMS, BY A POOR GENTLEMAN. 81 ed with musk, and sealed with fancy wax. The real article ar- rives by post, unpaid, sealed with rosin, or possibly with a dab of pitch or cobbler's wax, bearing the impression of a halfpenny, or more frequently of a button, — the paper is dingy, and scant — the hand-writing has evidently come to the author by nature — there are trips in the speUing, and Priscian is a little scratch'd or so — but a rill of the true Castahan runs through the whole com- position, though its fountain-head was a broken tea-cup, instead of a silver standish. A few years ago I used to be favoured with numerous poems for insertion, which bore the signature of Fitz- Norman ; the crest on the seal had probably descended from the YOUR VERY HUMBLE SERVANT. Conquest, and the packets were invariably delivered by a Patago- nian footman in green and gold. The author was evidently rich, and the verses were as palpably poor ; they were dechned with gf2 HOOD'S OWN. the usual answer to correspondents who do not answer, and the communications ceased — as I thought for ever, but I was deceiv- ed : a few days back one of the dii-tiest and raggedest of street urchins dehvered a soiled whity brown packet, closed with a wafer, which bore the impress of a thimble. The paper had more the odour of tobacco than of rose leaves, and the writing appeared to have been perpetrated with a skewer dipped in coffee-grounds; but the old signature of Fitz-Norman had the honour to be my " very humble servant" at the foot of the letter. It was too certain that he had fallen from affluence to indigence, but the adversity which had wrought such a change upon the writing implements, had, as usual, improved his poetry. The neat crowquill never traced on the superfine Bath paper any thing so unaffected as the following : — STANZAS. WRITTEN UNDER THE FEAK OF BAILIFFS. Alas ! of all the noxious things That wait upon the poor, Most cruel is that Felon-Fear That haunts the " Debtor's Door I" Saint Sepulchre's bej^ius to toll, The Sheriffs seek the cell : — So I expect their officers, And tremble at the bell ! I look for beer, and yet I quake With fright at every tap ; And dread a double-knock, for oh ! I've not a single rap ! POEMS, BY A POOR GENTLEMAN. 83 SONNET. WRITTEN IN A WORKHOUSE. Oh, blessed ease ! no more of heaven I ask : The overseer is gone — that vandal elf — And hemp, unpick'd, may go and hang itself, While I, untask'd, except with Cowper's Task, In blessed literary leisure bask, And lose the workhouse, saving in the works Of Goldsmiths, Johnsons, Sheridans, and Burkes ; Eat prose and drink of the Castalian flask ; The themes of Locke, the anecdotes of Spence, The humorous of Gay, the Grave of Blair — Unlearned toil, unletter'd labours, hence ! But, hark ! I hear the master on the stair And Thomson's Castle, that of Indolence, Must be to me a castle in the air. SONNET. — A SOMNAMBULIST. " A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." Bybon. Me THOUGHT — for Fancy is the strangest gadder When sleep all homely mundane ties hath riven — Methought that I ascended Jacob's ladder. With heartfelt hope of getting up to Heaven : Some bell, I knew not whence, was sounding seven When I set foot upon that long one-pair ; And still I climbed when it had chimed eleven, Nor yet of landing-place became aware ; Step after step in endless flight seem'd there ; But on, with steadfast hope, I struggled still. To gain that blessed haven from all care, Where tears are wiped, and hearts forget their ill, When, lo ! I wakened on a sadder stair — Tramp — tramp — tramp — tramp — upon the Brixton Mill ! 84 HOOD'S OWN. FUGITIVE LINES ON PAWNING MY WATCH • Aurum pot-a-bile : "—Gold biles the pot. Free Tkanslation. Farewell then, my golden repeater, We're come to my Uncle's old shop ; And hunger won't be a dumb-waiter, The Cerberus growls for a sop ! To quit thee, my comrade diurnal, My feelings will certainly scotch ; But oh ! there's a riot internal. And Famine calls out for the Watch ! Oh ! hunger's a terrible trial, I really must have a relief, — So here goes the plate of your dial To fetch me some Williams's beef! As famish'd as any lost seaman, I've fasted for many a dawn, And now must play chess with the Demon, And give it a check with a pawn. I've fasted, since dining at Buncle's, Two days with true Percival zeal — And now must make up at my Uncle's, By getting a duplicate meal. No Peachum it is, or young Lockit, That rifles my fob with a snatch ; Alas ! I must pick my own pocket. And make gravy-soup of my watch ! So long I have wander'd a starver, I'm getting as keen as a hawk ; Time's long hand must take up a carver. His short hand lay hold of a fork. POEMS, BY A POOR GENTLEMAN 85 Right heavy and sad the event is, But oh ! it is Poverty's crime ; I've been such a Brownrigg's Apprentice, I thus must be " out of my Time." *'0H MY PROPHETIC SOUL — MY UNCLK! Alas ! when in Brook Street the upper, In comfort I lived betv^^een walls, I've gone to a dance for my supper ; — But now I must go to Three Balls ! Folks talk about dressing for dinner, But I have for dinner undrest ; Since Christmas, as I am a sinner, I've eaten a suit of my best. 66 HOOD'S OWN. I haven't a rag or a mummock To fetch me a chop or a steak ; I wish that the coats of my stomach Were such as my Uncle would take ! When dishes were ready with garnish My watch used to warn with a chime — But now my repeater must furnish The dinner in lieu of the time ! My craving will have no denials, I can't fob it off, if you stay, So go, — and the old Seven Dials Must tell me the time of the day. Your chimes I shall never more heai- 'em, To part is a Tic Douloureux ! But Tempus has his edax rerum, And I have my Feeding-Tinie too ! Farewell then, my golden repeater, We're come to my Uncle's old shop— And Hunger woct be a dumb-waiter, The Cerberus growls for a sop ! 87 ^t tih nf ^immnmautt (by himself). " This, this, is solitude. " LoED Bybon. I WAS born, I may almost say, an orphan : my Father died three months before I saw the light, and my Mother three hours after — thus I was left in the whole world alone, and an only child, for I had neither Brothers nor Sisters ; much of my after- passion for sohtude might be ascribed to this cause, for I believe our tendencies date themselves from a much earlier age, or> rather, youth, than is generally imagined. It was remarked that I could go alone at nine months, and I have had an aptitude to going alone all the rest of my life. The first words I learned to say, were " I by myself, I " — or thou — or he — or she — or it — but I was a long time before I could pronounce any personals in the plural ; my little games and habits were equally singular. I was fond of playing at Sohtary or at Patience, or another game of cards of my own invention, namely, whist, with three dummies. Of books, my favourite was Robinson Crusoe, especially the first part, for I was not fond of the intrusion of Friday, and thought the natives really were Savages to spoil such a sohtude. At ten years of age I was happily placed with the Rev. Mr. Steinkopff, a widower, who took in only the limited number of six pupils, and had only me to begin with : here I enjoyed myself veiy much, learning in a first and last class in school hours, and play- 88 HOOD'S OWN. ing in play time at hoop, and other pretty games not requiring partners. My playground was, in short, a garden of Eden, and I did not even sigh for an Eve, but, like Paradise, it was too hap- py to last. I was removed from Mr. Steinkopif 's to the Univer- sity of Gottingen, and at once the eyes of six hundred pupils, and the pupils of twelve hundred eyes, seemed fastened upon me ; I felt like an owl forced into day-light ; often and often I shamm'd ill, as an excuse for confining myself to my chamber, but some officious would-be friends, insisting on coming to sit with me, as they said, to enliven my solitude, I was forced as a last resource to do that which subjected me, on the principle of Howard's Prison Discipline, to soUtary confinement. But even this pleasure did not last ; the heads of the College found out that solitary confinement was no punishment, and put another student in the same cell ; in this extremity I had no alternative but to endeavour to make him a convert to my principles, and in some days I succeeded in convincing him of the individual inde- pendence of man, the solid pleasure of solitude, and the hollow one of society, — in short, he so warmly adopted my views, that in a transport of sympathy we swore an eternal friendship, and agreed to separate for ever, and keep ourselves to ourselves as much as possible. To this end we formed with our blanket a screen across our cell, and that we might not even in thought associate with each other, he soliloquised only in French, of which I was ignorant, and I in English, to which he was equally a stranger. Under this system my wishes were gratified, for I think I felt more intensely lonely than I ever remember when more strictly alone. Of course this condition had a conclusion ; we were brought out again unwillingly into the common world, and the firm of Zimmermann, Nobody, and Co., was compelled to THE LIFE OF ZIMMERMANN. 89 admit — six hundred partners. — In this extremity, my fellow prisoner Zingleman and myself had recourse to the persuasions of oratory. We preached solitude, and got quite a congregation, and of the six hundred hearers, four hundred at least became converts to our Unitarian doctrine ; every one of these disciples strove to fly to the most obscure recesses, and the little cemetery of the College had always a plenty of those who were trying to make themselves scarce. This of course was afflicting ; as in the game of puss in a corner, it was difficult to get a corner unoccu- pied to be aloiie in ; the defections and desertions from the Col- lege were consequently numerous, and for a long time the State Gazette contained daily advertisements for missing gentlemen, with a description of their persons and habits, and invariably con- cluding with this sentence : " of a melancholy turn, — calls himself a Zimmermanian, and affects solitude." In fact, as Schiller's Robbers begot Robbers, so did my solitude beget solitudinarians, but with this difference, that the dramatist's disciples fi-equented the Highways, and mine the Byeways ! The consequence was what might have been expected, which I had foreseen, and ardently desired. I was expelled from the Uni- versity of Gottingen. This was perhaps the triumph of my hfe. A grand dinner was got up by Zingleman in my honour, at which more than three hundred were present, but in tacit hom- age to my principles, they never spoke nor held any communica- tion with each other, and at a concerted signal the toast of " Zim- mermann and Solitude" was drunk, by dumb show, in appropri- ate solemn silence. I was much affected by this tribute, and left with tears in my eyes, to think, with such sentiments, how many of us might be thrown together again. Being thus left to ray- self, like a vessel with only one hand on board, I was at liberty 90 HOOD'S OWN. to steer my own course, and accordingly took a lodging at Num- ber One, in Wilderness Street, that held out the inviting prospect of a single room to let for a single man. In this congenial situa- tion I composed that, my great work on Solitude, and here I think it necessary to w^arn the reader against many spurious books, calling themselves "Companions to Zimmermann's Soli- tude," as if solitude could have society. Alas, from this work I may date the decline which my presentiment tells me will termi- nate in my death. My book, though written against populous- ness, became so popular, that its author, though in love with loneKness, could never be alone. Striving to fly from the face of man, I could never escape it, nor that of woman and child into the bargain. When I stirred abroad mobs surrounded me, and cried, " Here is the Solitary !" — when I staid at home I was equally crowded ; all the public societies of Gottingen thought proper to come up to me with addresses, and not even by deputa- tion. Flight was my only resource, but it did not avail, for I could not fly from myself. Wherever I went Zimmermann and SoKtude had got before me, and their votaries assembled to meet me. In vain I travelled throughout the European and Asiatic continent : with an enthusiasm and perseverance of which only Germans are capable, some of my countrymen were sure to haunt me, and really showed by the distance they journeyed, that they were ready to go all lengths with me and my doctrine. Some of these Pilgrims even brought their wives and children along with them, in search of my solitude ; and were so unreason- able even as to murmur at my taking the inside of a coach, or the cabin of a packet-boat to myself. From these persecutions I was released by what some persons would call an unfortunate accident, a vessel in which I sailed THE LIFE OF ZIMMERMANN. 91 from Leghorn, going down at sea with all hands excepting my own pair, which happened to have grappled a hen-coop. There was no sail in sight, nor any land to be seen — nothing but sea and sky ; and from the midst of the watery expanse it was per- haps the first and only glimpse I ever had of real and perfect soli- tude, yet so inconsistent is human nature, I could not really and perfectly enter into its enjoyment. I was picked up at length by a British brig of war ; and, schooled by the past, had the presence of mind to conceal my name, and to adopt the English one of Grundy. Under this nom de guerre^ but really a name of peace, I enjoyed comparative quiet, interrupted only by the pertinacious attendance of an unconscious countryman, who, noticing my very retired habits, endeavoured by daily lectures from my own work, to make me a convert to my own principles. In short, he so wore me out, that at last, to get rid of his importunities, I told him in confidence that I was the author himself. But the result was anything but what I expected ; and here I must blush again for the inconsistency of human nature. While Winkells knew me only as Grundy, he painted nothing but the charms of Solitude, and exhorted me to detach myself from society ; but no sooner did he learn that I was Zimmermann, than he insisted on mv going to Lady C 's rout and his own converzatione. In fact, he wanted to make me, instead of a Lion of the Desert, a Lion of the Menagerie. How I resented such a proposition may be supposed, as well as his offer to procure for me the first va- cancy that happened in the situation of Hermit at Lord P 's Hermitage ; being, as he was pleased to say, not only able to bear soUtude, but well-bred and well-informed, and fit to receive company. The effect of this unfortunate disclosure was to make me leave England, for fear of meeting with the llite of a man or 92 HOOD'S OWN. an ox that ventures to quit the common herd. I should imme- diately have been declared mad, and mobbed into lunacy, and then put into solitary confinement, with a keeper always with me, as a person beside himself, and not fit to be left alone for a moment. As such a fate would have been worse to me than death, I immediately left London, and am now living anonymous- ly in an uninhabited house, — prudence forbids me to say where^. 93 €^t (CnmimsH, initlj UiiriEtiniis. ' The Needles have sometimes been fatal to Mariners." PicTUKE OF Isle of Wight. One close of day — 'twas in the bay Of Naples, bay of glory ! While light was hanging crowns of gold On mountains high and hoary, A gallant bark got under weigh, And with her sails my story. For Leghorn she was bound di- rect. With wine and oil for cargo. Her crew of men some nine or ten. The captain's name was lago ; A good and gallant bark she was. La Donna (call'd) del Lago. Bronzed mariners were her's to view, With brown cheeks, clear or muddy, Dark, shining eyes, and coal-black hair, Meet heads for painter's study ; But 'midst their tan there stood one man, Whose cheek was fair and ruddy ; His brow was high, a loftier brow Ne'er shone in song or sonnet, His hair a little scant, and when He doff 'd his cap or bonnet, One saw that Grey had gone be- yond A premiership upon it ! His eye — a passenger was he, The cabin he had hired it, — His eye was grey, and when he look'd Around, the prospect fired it — A fine poetic light, as if The Appe-Nine inspired it. His frame was stout, in height about Six feet — well made and portly ; Of dress and manner just to give A sketch, but very shortly. His order seem'd a composite Of rustic with the courtly. He ate and quaff*'d, and joked and laugh'd, And chatted with the seamen. 94 HOOD'S OWN. And often task'd their skill and ask'd " What weather is't to be, man ? " No demonstration there appear'd That he was any demon. No sort of sign there was that he Could raise a stormy rumpas, Like Prospero make breezes blow, And rocks and billows thump us, — But little we supposed what he Could M'ith the needle compass! Soon came a storm — the sea at first Seem'd lying almost fallow — When lo ! full crash, with billowy dash, From clouds of black and yel- low. Came such a gale, as blows but once A cent'ry, like the aloe ! Our stomachs we had just pre- pared To vest a small amount in ; When, gush! a flood of brine came down The skylight — quite a fountain, And right on end the table rear'd, Just like the Table Mountain. A S- T () 11 M IN T V B I, K HAY. THE COMPASS, WITH VARIATIONS. 95 Down rush'd the soup, down As save-alls 'gainst his ending. gush'd the wine, Down fell the mate, he thought Each roll its role repeating, his fate, RoU'd down — the round of beef Cheek-mate, was close impending ! declar'd For parting — not for meating \ Down fell the cook — the cabin Off flew the fowls, and all the toy, game Their beads with fervour telling, Was « too far gone for eating ! " While alps of serge, with snowy- verge, Down knife and fork — down went Above the yards came yelling. the pork, Down fell the crew, and on their The lamb too broke its tether; knees Down mustard went — each condi- Shudder'd at each white swelling! ment — Salt — pepper — all together ! Down sunk the sun of bloody Down every thing, like craft that hue, seek His crimson light a cleaver The Downs in stormy weather. To each red rover of a wave : To eye of fancy-weaver, Down plunged the Lady of the Neptune, the God, seem'd tossing Lake, in Her timbers seem'd to sever ; A raging scarlet fever ! Down, down, a dreary derry down, Such lurch she had gone never ; Sore, sore afraid, each papist She almost seem'd about to take pray'd A bed of down for ever ! To Saint and Virgin Mary ; But one there w^as that stood Down dropt the captain's nether composed jaw, Amid the weaves' vagary ; Thus robb'd of all its uses, As staunch as rock, a true game He thought he saw the Evil One cock Beside Vesuvian sluices, 'Mid chicks of Mother Gary ! Playing at dice for soul and ship. And throwing Sink and Deuces. His ruddy cheek retain'd its streak, Down fell the steward on his ftice. No danger seem'd to shrink him : To all the Saints commending ; His step still bold, — of mortal And candles to the. Virgin vowVl, mould 96 HOOD'S OWN. The crew could hardly think him : The Lady of the Lake, he seem'd To know, could never sink him. Relax'd at last the furious gale Quite out of breath with racing ; The boiling flood in milder mood. With gentler billows chasing ; From stem to stern, with fre- quent turn, The Stranger took to pacing. And as he walk'd to self he talked. Some ancient ditty thrumming, In under tone, as not alone — Now whistling, and now hum- ming — " You're welcome, Charlie," " Cowdenknowes," " Kenmure," or " Cambell's Com- ing." Down went the wind, down went the wave, Fear quitted the most finical ; The Saints, I wot, were soon for- got. And Hope was at the pinnacle : When rose on high a frightful cry — " The Devil's in the binnacle ! " A RUFF SEA. " The Saints be near," the helms- The needle seems to alter; man cried, God only knows where China His voice with quite a falter — lies, " Steady's my helm, but every look Jamaica, or Gibraltar ! " THE COMPASS, WITH VARIATIONS. 97 The captain stared aghast at mate, The pilot at th' apprentice ; No fancy of the German Sea Of Fiction the event is : But when they at the compass look'd, It seem'd non compass mentis. Now north, now south, now east, now west. The wavering point was shaken, 'Twas past the whole philosophy Of Newton, or of Bacon ; Never by compass, till that hour, Such latitudes were taken ! With fearful speech, each after each Took turns in the inspection ; They found no gun — no iron — none To vary its direction ; It seem'd a new magnetic case Of Poles in Insurrection ! Farewell to wives, farewell their lives, And all their household riches ; Oh ! while they thought of girl or boy. And dear domestic niches. All down the side which holds the heart, That needle gave them stitches. With deep amaze, the Stranger gaz'd To see them so white-liver'd : And walk'd abaft the binnacle. To know at what they shiver'd; But when he stood beside the card, St. Josef ! how it quiver'd ! No fancy-motion, brain-begot. In eye of timid dreamer — The nervous finger of a sot Ne'er show'd a plainer tremor; To every brain it seem'd too plain, .There stood th' Infernal schemer ! Mix'd brown and blue each visage grew. Just like a pullet's gizzard ; Meanwhile the captain's wander- ing wit, From tacking like an izzard, Bore down in this plain course at last, « It's Michael Scott— theWizard !" A smile past o'er the ruddy face, " To see the poles so falter I'm puzzled, friends, as much as you. For with no fiends I palter; Michael I'm not — although a Scott— My christian name is Walter." Like oil it fell, that name, a spell On all the fearful faction ; The Captain's head (for he had read) Confess'd the Needle's action, And bow'd to Him in whom the North Has lodged its main attraction! 98 ^Bir'ii ot SKotrli'L Of wedded bliss Bards sing amiss, I cannot make a song of it ; For I am small, My wife is tall. When we debate It is my fate To always have the wrong of it ; For I am small, And she is tall. And that's the short and long of it ; And that's the short and long of it! LONG COMMONS AND SHORT COMMONS. And when I speak. For I am small, My voice is weak, And she is tall, But hers — she makes a gong of it ; And that's the short and long of it ; THE PARISH REVOLUTION. 99 She has, in brief, Against my life Command in Chief, She'll take a knife, And I'm but Aide-de-camp of it ; Or fork, and dart the prong of it ; For I am small. For I am small. And she is tall. And she is tall, And that's the short and long of it ! And that's the short and long of it ! She gives to me I sometimes think The weakest tea, I'll take to drink, And takes the whole Souchong And hector when I'm strong of of it ; it ; For I am small, For I am small, And she is tall. And she is tall, And that's the short and long of it ! And that's the short and long of it ! She '11 sometimes grip My buggy whip. And make me feel the thong of it : For I am small, And she is tall. O, if the bell Would ring her knell, I'd make a gay ding dong of it ; For I am small. And she is tall, And that's the short and long of it ! And that's the short and long of it ! ' Man wanta but little here below, Nor wants that little long." 100 PROTECTING THE FARE. €\)t iiid. A SERIOUS BALLAD. Like the two Kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay. In Brentford town, of old renown, There lived a Mister Bray, Who fell in love with Lucy Bell, And so did Mr. Clay. To see her ride from Hammer- smith, ^ By all it was allow'd, Such fair outsides are seldom seen, Such Angels on a Cloud. Said Mr. Bray to Mr. Clay, You choose to rival me, And court Miss Bell, but there your court No thoroughfiire shall be. Unless you now give up your suit. You may repent your love; I who have shot a pigeon match, Can shoot a turtle dove. THE DUEL. 101 So pray before you woo her more, Consider what you do ; If you pop aught to Lucy Bell, — I'll pop it into you. Said Mr. Clay to Mr. Bray, Your threats I quite explode ; One who has been a volunteer, Knows how to prime and load. And so I say to you unless Your passion quiet keeps, I who have shot and hit bulls' eyes. May chance to hit a sheep's. Now gold is oft for silver changed. And that for copper red ; But these two went away to give Each other change for lead. But first they sought a friend a-piece, This pleasant thought to give — When they were dead, they thus should have Two seconds still to live. To measure out the ground not long The seconds then forebore. And having taken one rash step They took a dozen more. They next prepared each pistol- pan Against the deadly strife, By putting in the prime of death Against the prime of life. Now all was ready for the foes. But when they took their stands, Fear made them tremble so they found They both were shaking hands. Said Mr. C. to Mr. B., Here one of us may fall, And like St. Paul's Cathedral now. Be doom'd to have a ball. I do confess I did attach Misconduct to your name ; If I withdraw the charge, will then Your ramrod do the same ? Said Mr. B., I do agree — But think of Honour's Courts ! If we go off without a shot. There will be strange reports. But look, the morning now is bright. Though cloudy it begun ; Why can't we aim above, as if We had call'd out the sun ? So up into the harmless air. Their bullets they did send ; And may all other duels have That upsliot in the end ! 102 €^txf^ nn EnmnttrB in tjmtl " So while I fondly imagined we were deceiving my relations, and flattered my- self that I should outwit and incense them all ; behold, my hopes are to be crushed at once, by my aunt's consent and approbation, and I am myself the only dupe. But here, Sir, — here is the picture 1 " — Lydia Languish. DATS of old, O days of Knights, Of tourneys and of tilts, When love was balk'd and valour stalk'd On high heroic stilts — Where are ye gone 1 — adventures cease, The world gets tame and flat, — We've nothing now but New Po- lice — There's no Romance in that ! 1 wish I ne'er had learn'd to read. Or Radcliffe how to write ; That Scott had been a boor on Tweed, And Lewis cloister'd quite! Would I had never drunk so deep Of dear Miss Porter's vat ; I only turn to life, and weep — There's no Romance in that ! No Bandits lurk — no turban'd Turk To Tunis bears me off — I hear no noises in the night Except my mother's cough, — No Bleeding Spectre haunts the house, No shape, — ^but owl or bat. Come flitting after moth or mouse, — There's no Romance in that ! I have not any grief profound, Or secrets to confess, My story would not fetch a pound For A. K. Newman's press ; Instead of looking thin and pale, I'm growing red and fat. As if I lived on beef and ale — There's no Romance in that ! It's very hard, by land or sea Some strange event I court, But nothing ever comes to me That's worth a pen's report : It really made my temper chafe, Each coast that I was at, I vow'd, and rail'd, and came home safe, — There's no Romance in that ! THERE S NO ROMANCE IN THAT. 103 The only time I had a chance At Brighton one fine day, My chestnut mare began to prance, Took fright, and ran away ; Alas ! no Captain of the Tenth To stop my steed came pat; A Butcher caught the rein at length, — There's no Romance in that ! Love — even love — goes smoothly on A railway sort of track — No flinty sire, no jealous Don ! No hearts upon the rack ; No Polydore, no Theodore — His ugly name is Mat, Plain Matthew Pratt and nothing more — There's no Romance in that ! OM BOW LINO. He is not dark, he is not tall, — His forehead's rather low. He is not pensive — not at all, But smiles his teeth to show ; He comes from Wales and yet in 104 HOOD'S OWN. Is really but a sprat; With sandy hair and greyish eyes — There's no Romance in that ! He wears no plumes or Spanish cloaks, Or long sword hanging down ; He dresses much like other folks, And commonly in brown ; His collar he will not discard, Or give up his cravat. Lord Byron-like — he's not a Bard— There's no Romance in that ! He's rather bald, his sight is weak. He's deaf in either drum •, Without a lisp he cannot speak, But then — he's worth a plum. He talks of stocks and three pea- cents. By way of private chat, Of Spanish Bonds, and shares, and rents, — There's no Romance in that ! I sing — ^no matter what I sing, Di Tanti — or Crudel, Tom Bowling, or God save the King, Di piacer — All's well ; He knows no more about a voice For singing than a gnat — And as to Music "has no choice," — There's no Romance in that ! Of light guitar I cannot boast. He never serenades ; He writes, and sends it by the post. He doesn't bribe the maids : No stealth, no hempen ladder — no! • He comes with loud rat-tat. That startles half of Bedford Row — There's no Romance in that ! He comes at nine, in time to choose His coffee — just two cups. And talks with Pa about the news. Repeats debates, and sups ; John helps him with his coat aright, And Jenkins hands his hat ; My lover bows, and says good night — There's no Romance in that ! I've long had Pa's and Ma's con- sent. My aunt she quite approves. My Brother wishes joy from Kent, None try to thwart our loves ; On Tuesday Reverend Mr. Mace Will make me Mrs. Pratt, Of Number Twenty, Sussex Place— There's no Romance in that ! 105 a IBntnlnB 35nHnii To Waterloo, with sad ado, And many a sigh and groan. Amongst the dead, came Patty Head, To look for Peter Stone. " O prithee tell, good sentinel. If I shall find him here ? I'm come to weep upon his corse, My Ninety-Second dear ! " Into our town a serjeant came With ribands all so fine, A-flaunting in his cap — alas ! His bow enlisted mine ! 'They taught him how to turn his toes. And stand as stiflf as starch ; I thought that it was love and May, But it was love and March ! THEIDKS or MARCH ARE COMEI 5* 106 HOOD'S OWN. " A sorry March indeed to leave The friends he might have kep',— No March of Intellect it was, But quite a foolish step. " O prithee tell, good sentinel. If hereabout he lies ? I want a corpse with reddish hair, And very sweet blue eyes." Her sorrow on the sentinel Appear'd to deeply strike : — " Walk in," he said, " among the dead, And pick out which you like." And soon she picked out Peter Stone, Half turned into a corse ; A cannon was his bolster, and His mattrass was a horse. " O Peter Stone, O Peter Stone, Lord here has been a skrim- mage ! What have they done to your poor breast That used to hold my image ?" « O Patty Head, O Patty Head, You're come to my last kissing ; Before I'm set in the Gazette As wounded, dead, and missing! WAR DANCE.— THE OPENING 07 THE BALL. A WATERLOO BALLAD. 107 « Alas ! a splinter of a shell Right in my stomach sticks ; French mortars don't agree so well With stomachs as French bricks. " This very night a merry dance At Brussels was to be ; — Instead of opening a ball, A ball has open'd me. " Its billet every bullet has, And well it does fulfil it : — I wish mine Jiadn't come so straight. But been a * crooked billet.' " And then there came a cuirassier And cut me on the chest ; He had no pity in his heart. For he had sieeVd his breast. "Next thing a lancer, with his lance. Began to thrust away ; I call'd for quarter, but, alas ! It was not Quarter-day. " He ran his spear right through my arm. Just here above the joint : — O Patty dear, it was no joke, Although it had a point. .JK TWKRE WELL THAT WK HAD NEVER MET. " With loss of blood I fainted " With kicks and cuts, and balls off, and blows. As dead as women do — I throb and ache all over ; But soon by charging over me, I'm quite convinc'd the field of The Coldstream brought me Mars to. Is not a field of clover ! 108 HOOD'S OWN. " O why did I a soldier turn For any royal Guelph ? I might have been a butcher, and In business for myself ! " O why did I the bounty take 1 (And here he gasp'd for breath) My shilling'sworth of 'list is nail'd Upon the door of death ! " Without a coffin I shall lie And sleep my sleep eternal : Not even a shell — my only chance Of being made a Kernel ! " O Patty dear, our wedding-bells Will never ring at Chester ! Here I must lie in Honour's bed» That isn't worth a tester ! " Farewell, my regimental mates, With whom I used to dress ! My corps is changed, and I am now In quite another mess. " Farewell, my Patty dear, I have No dying consolations, Except, when I am dead, you'll go And see th' Illuminations." 109 a ^nnlngiral EBpnrt- To Harvey Williams, Esq., Regents Terrace, Portland Park. HONNERED SUR, Being maid a Feller of the Zoological Satiety, and I may- say by your Honner's meens, threw the carrachter your Humbel was favered with, and witch provd sattisfacktry to the Burds and Bests, considring I was well qualifid threw having Bean for so menny hears Hed Guardner to your Honner, besides lookin arter the Pigs and Poltry. Begs to axnolige my great fullness for the* Sam, and ham quit cumfittable and happy, sow much sow as wen I ham amung the Anymills to reckin myself hke Addam in Parodies, let alone my Velvoteens. Honnerd Sur, — awar of your parshalty for Liv Stox and Ket- tle Breading, ham indust to faver with a Statement of what is dun at the Farm, havin tacken provintial Noats wile I was at Kings-ton with a Pekin elefunt for chainges of Hair. As respex a curacy beg to say, tho the Sectary drawd up his Report from his hone datums and memmorandusses, and never set his eyes on my M.E.S.S., yet we has tallys to our tails in the Mane. Honnerd Sir, — I will sit out with the Qadripids, tho weave add the wust lux with them. Scarse anny of the Annymills with fore legs has more nor one Carf. Has to the Wappity Dears, hits wus then the Babby afore King Sollyman, but their bis for one littel Dear betwin five femail she hinds. The Sambo Dear as was sent by Mr. Spring was so unnatral has to heat up her Forn and in consequins the Sing-Sing is of no use for the 110 HOODS OWN. lullabis. Has for Corsichan hits moor Boney nor ever, But the Axis on innqueries as too littel Axes about a munth hold. The Neil Gow has increst one Caif, but their his no Foles to the Quaggys. Their his too httel Zebry but one as not rum to grow ; the Report says, " the Mail Owen to the Nessessary Con- tiriement in regard to Spaice is verry smal." Honnerd Sur, the Satiety is verry rich in Assis, boath Com- mun assis and uncommon assis, and as the Report recumends will do my Inndever to git the Maltese Cross for your Honner. The Kangroses as reerd up a large smal fammily but looks to be ill nust and not well put to there feat, and at the suijesting of a feraail Feller too was put out to the long harmd Babboon to dry nus, but she was too violent and dandled the pure things to deth. The infunt Zebew is all so ded owen to Atemps with a backbord to prevent groing out of the sholdei-s, boath parrents being de- fourmd with umphs ; but the spin as is suposed was hert in the exspearmint, and it sudenly desist. Mr. Wallack will be glad to here the Wallachian Sheap has add sicks lams, but one was pisened by eating the ewes in the garden witch is fattle to kattle. Has to Gots we was going on prospus in the Kiddy line, but the Billy Gots becum so vishus and did so menny butts a weak, we was obleeged to do away with the Entire. As regards Rabits a contiguous dissorder havin got into the Stox, we got rid of the Hole let alone one Do and Brewd, witch was all in good Helth up to Good Fridy wen the Mother brekfisted on her bunnis. The increas in the Groth of Hairs as bean maid an object, and the advice tacken of Mr. Prince and Mr. Roland, who recumen- did Killin one of the Bares for the porpus of Greece. We hav , a grate number of ginny pigs — their is moor than twenty of them in one Pound. A ZOOLOGICAL REPORT. Ill About Struthus Burds the Ostreaches is in perfic helth and full of Plums. The femail Hen lade too egs wile the Committy was sittin and we hop they will atch, as we put them under a she Hemew as was sittin to Mr. Harvy. He propos breading Busturds xept we hav not got a singel specieman of the specious. Galnatious Burds. I am sory to say The Curryso has not bread. Hits the moor disapinting as we considder these Birds as our Crax. We sucksided in razing a grate menny Turkys and some intresting expearimints was maid on them by the Commity and the Counsel on Crismus day. Lickwise on Poltry Fouls with regard to their being of Utility for the Tabel and " under the latter head " the report informs " sum results hav bean ob- tained witch air considdered very satisfactry," but their will be more degested trials of the subjex as the Report says " the ex- pearimints must be repetid in order to istablish the accuracy of the deduckshuns." Wat is remarkable the hens pressented by Mr. Crockford hav not provd grate layers tho provided with a Better Yard and plentey of Turf. We hav indevoured to bread the grate Cok of the Wud onely we have no Wud for him to be Cok of — and now for acjuotic Warter Burds we hav wite Swons but they hav not any cygnitures, and the Black is very unrisen- able as to expens but Mr. Hunt has offered to black one very lo on condishun hits not aloud to go into the Warter. The Polish swons wood hav bread onely they did not lay. The Satiety con- tanes a grete number of Gease and witch thriv all most as well as they wood on a commun farm and the Sam with Dux. We wonted to have dukelings from the Mandereen Dux but they shook there Heds. Too ears a go a qantitty of flownders and also a qantitty of heals of witch an exact acount is recordid wear turned into one of the Ponds but there State as not bean 112 HOOD'S OWN. looked into since they were plaiced their out of unwillingnes to disturb the Hotter. At pressent their exists in one Pond a stock of Karps and in too others a number of Gould Fish of the com- mun Sort. The number left as bean correcly tacken and the amount checkt by the Pellycanes and Herrins and Spunbills and Gulls and other piskiverous Burds. Looking at the whole of the Farm in one Pint of Vue we hav ben most suckcesful with Rabits and Poltry and Piggins and Ginny Pigs but the breading of sich being well none to Skullboys, I beg as to their methodistical principals to refer your Honner to Master Gorge wen he cums home for the Holedays. I furgot to say the Parnassian Sheap was acomidated with a Pen to it self but produst nothin worth riting. But the attemps we have maid this here, will be prosy- cutid next here wkh new Vigors. Honnerd Sur, — their is an aggitating Skeam of witch I hum bly aprove very hiley. The plan is owen to sum of the Femail Fellers, — and that is to make the Farm a Farm Ornay. For in- stances the Buffloo and Fallo and cetra to have their horns Gildid and the Mufflons and Sheaps is to hav Pink ribbings round their nex. The munkys is to ware fancy dressis and the Ostreaches is to have their plums stuck in their beds, and tho Pecox tales will be always spred out on fraim wurks like the his- paliers. All the Bares is to be tort to Dance to Wippert's Quad- rils and the Lions mains is to be subjective to pappers and the curling-tongues. The gould and silver Fesants is to be PolHsht evry day with Plait Powder and the Cammils and Drumdearis and other defourmd anymills is to be paddid to hide their Cru- kidnes. ~Mr. Howard is to file down the tusks of the wild Bores and Peckaris and the Spoons of the Spoonbills is to be maid as like the Kings Patten as posible. The elifunt will be himbelsht A ZOOLOGICAL REPORT. 113 with a Sugger candid Castle maid by Gunter and the Flaming- goes will be toucbt up with French ruge and the Damisels will hav chaplits of heartifitial Flours. The Sloath is proposd to hav an ellegunt Stait Bed — and the Bever is to ware one of Per- ren's lite Warter Proof Hats — and the Balld. Vulters baldnes will be hided by a small Whig from Trewfits. The Grains will be put into trousirs and the Hippotomus tite laced for a waste. Ex- perience will dictait menny more imbellishing modes, with witch I conclud that I am Your Honners Very obleeged and humbel former'Servant, Stephen Humphreys. 114 €^t 3Jnti nt tliB Mnxt " Alone I did it !— Boy I " C0&10LANU8. I SAY, little Boy at the Nore, Do you come from the small Isle of Man ? Why, your history a mystery must be, — Come tell us as much as you can, Little Boy at the Nore ! You live it seems wholly on water. Which your Gambler calls living in clover ; — But how comes it, if that is the case, You're eternally half seas over, — Little Boy at the Nore? While you ride — while you dance — while you float — Never mind your imperfect orthography; — But give us as well as you can. Your watery auto-biography, Little Boy at the Nore ! LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITUR. I'm the tight little Boy at the Nore, In a sort of sea negus I dwells ; Half and half 'twixt salt water and Port, I'm reckon'd the first of the swells — I'm the Boy at the Nore ! * A buoy moored at the Nore, near the mouth of the Thames. THE BOY AT THE NORE. 115 I lives with my toes to the flounders, And watches through long days and nights ; Yet, cruelly eager, men look — To catch the first glimpse of my lights — I'm the Boy at the Nore. I never gets cold in the head, So my life on salt water is sweet, — I think I owes much of my health, To being well used to wet feet — As the Boy at the Nore. There's one thing, I'm never in debt : Nay ! — I liquidates more than I oughter* ; So the man to beat Cits as goes by. In keeping the head above water, Is the Boy at the Nore. I've seen a good deal of distress. Lots of Breakers in Ocean's Gazette ; They should do as I do — rise o'er all; Aye, a good floating capital get. Like the Boy at the Nore ! I'm a'ter the sailors own heart. And cheers him, in deep water rolling ; And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk, Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling, Is the Boy at the Nore ! Could I e'er but grow up, I'd be off" For a week to make love with my wheedles ; If the tight little Boy at the Nore Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles, We'd have tico ixi the Nore! * A word caught from some American Trader in passing. 116 HOOD'S OWN. They thinks little of sizes on water, On big waves the tiny one skulks, — While the river has Men of War on it — Yes — the Thames is oppressed with Great Hulks, And the Boy's at the Nore ! But I've done — for the water is heaving Round my body, as though it would sink it ! And I've been so long pitching and tossing, That sea-sick — you'd hardly now think it — Is the Boy at the Nore ! SOMETHING ABOVK THE COMMON, 117 Snjiiisntiiana " None despise puns but those wko cannot make them." Swift. To the JEditor of the Comic Annual. Sir, As I am but an occasional reader in the temporary indul- gence of intellectual relaxation, I have. but recently become cog- nizant of the metropolitan publication of Mr. Murray's Mr. Croker's Mr. Boswell's Dr. Johnson : a circumstance the more to be deprecated, for if I had been simultaneously aware of that amalgamation of miscellaneous memoranda, I could have contri- buted a personal quota of characteristic colloquial anecdotes to the biographical reminiscences of the multitudinous lexicographer, which, although founded on the basis of indubitable veracity, has never transpired among the multifarious effusions of that stu- pendous complication of mechanical ingenuity, which, according to the technicalities in usage in our modern nomenclature, has obtained the universal cognomen of the press. Expediency im- periously dictates that the nominal identity of the hereditary kinsman, from whom I derive my authoritative responsibilit}'^, shall be inviolably and umbrageously obscured : but in future variorum editions his voluntary addenda to the already inestima- ble concatenation of circumstantial particularisation might typo- graphically be discriminated from the literary accumulations of 118 HOOD'S OWN. the indefatigable Boswell and the vivacious Piozzi, by the signifi- cant classification of Boz, Poz, and Coz. In posthumously eliciting and philosophically elucidating the phenomena of defunct luminaries, whether in reference to corpo- real, physiognomical, or metaphysical attributes, justice demands the strictest scrupulosity, in order that the heterogeneous may not preponderate over the homogeneous in the critical analysis. Metaphorically speaking, I am rationally convinced that the ope- rative point I am about to develop will remove a pertinacious film from the eye of the biographer of the memorable Dr. John- son ; and especially with reference to that reiterated verbal aphor- ism so preposterously ascribed to his conversational inculcation, namely, that " he who would make a pun would pick a pocket ;" however irrelevant such a doctrinarian maxim to the irrefrangible fact, that in that colossal monument of etymological erudition erected by the stupendous Doctor himself (of course implying his inestimable Dictionary ), the paramount gist, scope, and ten- dency of his laborious researches was obviously to give as many meanings as possible to one word. In order, however, to place hypothesis on the immutable foundation of fact, I will, with your periodical permission, adduce a few Johnsonian repartees from my cousin's anecdotical memorabiha, which will perspicuously evolve the synthetical conclusion, that the inimitable author of Rasselas did not dogmatically predicate such an aggravated degree of moral turpitude in the perpetration of a double entendre. Apologistically requesting indulgence for the epistolary laxity of an unpremeditated effusion, I remain, Sir, Your very humble obedient servant, Septimus Reardon. Lichfield^ October 1, 1833. JOHNSONJANA. 119 "Do you really believe, Dr. Johnson," said a Liclifield lady, " in the dead walking after death ?" — " Madam," said Johnson, " I have no doubt on the subject ; I have heard the Dead March in Saul." " You really believe then, Doctor, in ghosts ?" — " Ma- dam," said Johnson, " I think appearances are in their favour." The Doctor was notoriously very superstitious. The same lady once asked him — " if he ever felt any presentiment at a winding-sheet in the candle." — " Madam," said Johnson, " if a AN ILLUMINATED MS. mould candle, it doubtless indicates death, and that somebody will go out like a snuff : but whether at Hampton WicJc or in Greece, must depend upon the graves^"* Dr. Johnson was not comfortable in the Hebrides. " Pray, Doctor, how did you sleep ?" inquired a benevolent Scotch hostess, who was so extremely hospitable that some hundreds always 120 HOOD'S OWN. occupied the same bed. — " Madam," said Johnson, " I had not a wink the whole night long ; sleep seemed to ^ee from my eyelids, and to bug from all the rest of my body." The Doctor and Boswell once lost themselves in the Isle of Muck, and the latter said they must " spier their way at the first body they met." " Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " you're a scoundrel ; you may spear anybody you like, but I am not going to ' run a-Muck and tilt at all I meet' " "What do you think of whisky. Dr. Johnson?" hiccupped Boswell after emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. " Sir," said the Doctor, " it penetrates my very soul like 'the small-still voice of conscience,' and doubtless the worm of the still is the * worm that never dies.' " Boswell afterwards inquired the Doc- tor's opinion on illicit distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between the smugglers and the Excise. " If I went by the letter of the law I should assist the Customs, but according to the spirit I should stand by the contrabands." The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the North. " Sir," he said to the young Lau*d of Icombally, who was going to join his regiment, " may Providence preserve you in battle, and especially your nether hmbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but you must import a wooden leg." At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke out. "Sir," said he to Bos- well, " Macbeth was an idiot ; he ought to have known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man's hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable : if they had a log they would make a King of it." Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a JOHNSONIANA. 121 Bishop's Palace. " Sir," said Johnson, " it must hav e been the poorest of Sees : take your Rum and Egg and Mull altogether, and they won't provide for a Bishop." East India company is the worst all company. A Lady fresh from Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson's favour by talking of nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as usual, to tiffin. " Madam," said he, in a tone that would have scared a tiger out of a jungle, " India's very well for a rubber or for a bandana, or for a cake of ink ; but what with its Bhurtpore, Phlumpore, Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singa- pore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad, Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sind- bad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it's a poor and bad country altogether." Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she would give him an apple. " My dear child," said the parent, feeling herself in the presence of a great moralist, " you ought not to be good on any consideration of gain, for 'virtue is its own reward.' You ought to be good disinte- restedly, and without thinking what you are to get for it." " Madam," said Dr. Johnson, " you are a fool ; would you have the boy good for nothing ? " The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son's robbing an orchard. " Ma- dam," said Johnson, " it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was called a judg- ment. I suppose that's why Justice is represented with a pair of scales." 122 HOOD'S OWN. Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of Dr. Johnson, whether he really considered that a man ought to be transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a double meaning. "Sir," said Johnson, "if a man means well, the more he means the better." SOW-WESTER OFF THE CAPE:— PIGS IN THE TROUGH OP THE fi-EA. 123 KETCH I NQ ITS PREY. TO A LADY ON HER DEPARTURE FOR INDIA. Go where the waves run rather Holborn-hilly And tempests make a soda-water sea, Almost as rough as our rough Piccadilly, And think of me ! Go where the mild Madeira ripens lier juice, — A Wine more praised than it deserves to be ! Go pass the Cape, just capable of ver-juice, And think of me ! 124 HOOD'S OWN. Go where the Tiger in the darkness prowleth, Making a midnight meal of he and she ; Go where the Lion in his hunger howleth, And think of me ! Go where the serpent dangerously coileth, Or lies along at full length like a tree, Go where the Suttee in her own soot broileth, And think of me ! Go where with human notes the Parrot dealeth In mono-poZZy-logue with tongue as free, And like a woman, all she can revealeth, And think of me ! Go to the land of muslin and nankeening, And parasols of straw where hats should be, Go to the land of slaves and palankeening. And think of me ! Go to the land of Jungles and of vast hills, And tall bamboos — may none bamboozle thee ! Go gaze upon their Elephants and Castles, And think of me ! Go where a cook must always be a currier. And parch the pepper'd palate like a pea. Go where the fierce musquito is a worrier. And think of me ! Go where the maiden on a marriage plan goes, Consign'd for wedlock to Calcutta's quay, Where woman goes for mart, the same as mangoes, And think of me ! Go where the sun is very hot and fervent, Go to the land of pagod and rupee, Where every black will be your slave and servant. And think of me ! 125 THE STAMP DUTY 01 COTCH LINKN. I n II u H TO A SCOTCH GIRL, WASHING LINEN AFTER HER COUNTRY FASHION. Well done and vvetly, thou Fair Maid of Perth ! Thou mak'st a washing picture well deserving The pen and pencilling of Washington Irving : Like dripping Naiad, pearly from her birth, Dashing about the water of the Firth, To cleanse the calico of Mrs. Skirving, And never from thy dance of duty swerving As there were nothing else than dirt on earth ! Yet what is thy reward ? Nay, do not start ! I do not mean to give thcc a new damper. But while thou fillest this industrious part - Of washer, wearer, mangier, presser, stamper, Deserving better character — thou art What Bodkin would but call — " a common trampcr." 126 ^uitt in n :f hnsutB-ISnnt A SEA ECLOGUE. I apprehend you 1"— Schooi, of Rbfobm. Boatman. Shove off there ! — ship the rudder, Bill — cast off ! she's under way ! Mrs. F. She's under what ? — I hope she's not ! good gracious, what a spray ! Boatman. Run out the jib, and rig the boom ! keep clear of those two brigs ! Mrs. F. I hope they don't intend some joke by running of their rigs ! Boatman. Bill, shift them bags of ballast aft — she's rather out of trim ! Mrs. F. Great bags of stones ! they're pretty things to help a boat to swim ! Boatman. The wind is fresh — if she don't scud, it's not the breeze's fault ! Mrs. F. Wind fresh, indeed, I never felt the air so full of salt ! Boatman. That Schooner, Bill, harn't left the roads, with oranges and nuts ! Mrs. F. If seas have roads, they're very rough — I never felt such ruts ! Boatman. It's neap, ye see, she's heavy lade, and couldn't pass the bar. ^ Mrs. F. The bar ! what, roads with turnpikes too ? I wonder where they are ! PAIN IN A PLEASURE-BOAT. 127 Boatman. Ho ! brig ahoy ! hard up ! hard up ! that lubber cannot steer ! Mrs. F. Yes, yes, — hard up upon a rock ! I know some danger's near ! Lord, there's a wave ! it's coming in ! and roaring like a bull ! Boatman. Nothing, Ma'am, but a little slop ! go large, Bill ! keep her full ! Mrs. F. What, keep her full ! what daring work ! when full she must go down ! Boatman. Why, Bill, it lulls ! ease off a bit — it's coming off the town ! Steady your helm ! we'll clear the Pint ! lay right for yonder pink ! Mrs. F. Be steady — well, I hope they can ! but they've got a pint of drink ! Boatman. Bill, give that sheet another haul — she'll fetch it up this reach. Mrs. F. I'm getting rather pale, I know, and they see it by that speech ! I wonder what it is, now, but — I never felt so queer ! Boatman. Bill, mind your luff — why Bill, I say, she's yawing — keep her near ! Mrs. F. Keep near ! we're going further off; the land's behind our backs. Boatman. Be easy. Ma'am, its all correct, that's only 'cause we tacks : We shall have to beat about a bit, — Bill, keep her out to see. Mrs. F. Beat who about ? keep who at sea ? — how black they look at me ! Boatman. It's veering round — I knew it would ! off with her head ! stand by ! Mrs. F. Off with her head ! whose ? where ? what with ? — an axe I seem to spy ! Boatman. She cannot keep her own, you see ; we shall have to pull her in ! Mrs. F. They'll drown me, and take all I have ! my life's not worth a pin ! 128 HOOD'S OWN. Boatman. Look out you know, be ready, Bill — just when she takes the sand! Mrs. F. The sand — O Lord ! to stop my mouth ! how everything is plann'd ! Boatman. The handspike, Bill — quick, bear a hand ! now Ma'am, just step ashore ! Mrs. F. What ! an't I going to be kill'd — and welter'd in my gore 1 Well, Heaven be praised ! but I'll not go a sailing any more ! 129 (S)lt tn f Brrt|, THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN, •• In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it— soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, — fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity — slow and retentive in cases of deliberation— never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark— never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service- all things as it were with all men,— ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mahometan,— heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew,— in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitu- tional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn."— Pkkky's Charactkbistics of a Settler. I. O ! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry ! Friend of the Goose and Gander, That now unplueked of their quill-feathers wander, Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry, About the happy Fen, Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen, For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh ! — II. Friend to all Author-kind — Whether of Poet or of Proser, — Thou art composer unto the composer Of pens, — yea, patent vehicles for Mind To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive Perrygrinations through the realms of Thought ; Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive, An Omnibus of intellectual sort! 130 HOOD'S OWN. Modem Improvements in their course we feel ; And while to iron-railroads heavy wares, Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares, Mind flies on steel. To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance. Nay, penetrates, perchance, To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts, To where the Penguin haunts ! In times bygone, when each man cut his quill. With little Perryan skill. What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade Appear'd the writing implements home-made ! What Pens were sliced, hew'd, hack'd, and haggled out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout. Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby. Stumpy and stubby ; Some capable of ladye-billets neat. Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark. Or smudge through some illegible receipt; Others in florid caligraphic plans. Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans ! V. To try in any common inkstands, then. With all their miscellaneous stocks, To find a decent pen, Was like a dip into a lucky box : You drew, — and got one very curly. And split like endive in some hurly-burly ; The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade ; The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made ; The fourth a broom ; the fifth of no avail, Turn'd upwards, like a rabbit's tail ; And last, not least, by way of a relief, A stump that Master Richard, James or John, ODE TO PERRY. 131 Had tried his cundle-cookery upon, Making " roast-beef!" Not so thy Perryan Pens ! True to their M's and N's, They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split, Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit, Or drop large dots, Huge fullstop blots. Where even semicolons were unfit. They w^ill not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge In sable sludge — Nay, bought at proper " Patent Perryan" shops, They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops : Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry — For when the Editor, whose pains compile The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile, Vaunteth his articles, not women's, men's, But lays "by the most celebrated Pens," What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry ? VII. Pleasant they are to feel ! So firm ! so flexible ! composed of steel So finely temper'd — fit for tenderest Miss To give her passion breath. Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death — But their supremest merit still is this, Write with them all your days, Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays — (No Dramatist should ever be without 'em) — And, just conceive the bliss, — There is so little of the goose about 'em. One's safe from any hiss I Ah ! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, 132 HOOD'S OWN. When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright. Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness — more f 's yet : Flush'd, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat. Add famish'd, fuddled, and fatigued, to that ; Funeral, fate-foreboding — sits in doubt. Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage. To see his Play upon the stage come out ; No stage to him ! it is Thalia's carriage, And he is sitting on the spikes behind it, Striving to look as if he didn't mind it ! IX. Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt : He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat, Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat ! Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright. Upon Rienzi's night, Gnaw'd up one long kid glove, and all her bag. Quite to a rag. Knowles has confess'd he trembled as for life. Afraid of his own " Wife ;" Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail Of water backing him, all down his spine, — " The ice-brook's temper" — pleasant to the chine ! For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail. Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental pray'r, Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows where ? Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth. While doubtful of Nell Gwynne's eventful luck, Squeeze out and suck More oranges with his one fevered mouth, Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South ? Yea, Buckstone, changing colour like a mullet. Refused, on an occasion, one, twice, thrice. From his best friend, an ice. Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet. ODE TO PERRY. . 133 Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints, During their trial ? 'Tis past denial. And does not Poeock, feeling, like a peacock, All eyes upon him, turn to very meacock ? And does not Planche, tremulous and blank. Meanwhile his personages tread the boards, Seem goaded by sharp swords. And call'd upon himself to " walk the plank 1" As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot. What have they more Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot. Than bear that capers on a hotted floor 1 XI. Thus pending — does not Mathews, at sad shift For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny ? — Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift ? — And Kenny think he's going to Kilkenny ? — Haynes Bayly feel Old ditto, with the note Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple About his arms, and Adam's apple Big as a fine Dutch codling in his throat ? Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire Or not to take a jump into the fire ? Did Wade feel as composed as music can 1 And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man 1 Lastly, don't Farley, a bewildered elf. Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater, And ere its changes ring, transform himself? — A frightful mug of human delf 1 A spirit-bottle — empty of " the cratur ?" A leaden-platter ready for the shelf? A thunderstruck dumb-waiter 1 xu. To clench the fact. Myself, once guilty of one small rash act, 134 HOOD'S OWN. Committed at the Surrey, Quite in a hurry, Felt all this flurry, Corporal worry. And spiritual scurry. Dram-devil — attic curry ! All going well, From prompter's bell, Until befell HIS-TRIONIC. A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce — There's no denying I felt in all four elements at once ! My head was swimming, while my arms were flying ! My legs for running — all the rest was frying ! ODE TO PERRY. 136 Thrice welcome, tlien, for this peculiar use, Thy pens so innocent of goose ! For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry, Discarding Port and Sherry, Drink—" Perry !" Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose To distant lands, Perry, admitted on all hands, Text, running, German, Roman, For Patent Perryans approach'd by no man ! And when, ah me ! far distant be the hour ! Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bow'r. Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many ! And Penury itself shall club its penny To raise thy monument in lofty place ; Higher than York's or any son of War ; Whilst time all meaner effigies shall bury. On due pentagonal base Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwigg'd Perry, Perch'd on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr ! "PENNSYLVANIA, 136 €^t SsUnL " Oh had I some sweet little Isle of my own I" MOOBE. If the author of the Irish Melodies had ever had a little Isle so much his own as I have possessed, he might not have found it so sweet as the song anticipates. It has been iny fortune, like Robinson Crusoe, and Alexander Selkirk, to be thrown on such a desolate spot, and I felt so lonely, though I had a follower, that I wish Moore had been there. I had the honour of being in that tremendous action off Finisterre, which proved an end of the earth to many a brave fellow. I was ordered with a boarding party to forcibly enter the Santissima Trinidada, but in the act of climbing into the quarter-gallery, which, however, gave no quarter, was rebutted by the butt-end of a marine's gun, who remained the quarter-master of the place. I fell senseless into the sea, and should no doubt have perished in the waters of oblivion, but for the kindness of John Monday, who picked me up to go adrift with him in one of the ship's boats. All our oars were carried away, that is to say, we did not carry away any oars, and while shot was raining, our feeble hailing was unheeded. In short, as Shakspeare says, we were drifted off by " the current of a heady fight." As may be supposed, our boat was anything but the jolly-boat, for we had no provisions to spare in the middle of an immense waste. We were, in fact, adrift in the cutter with nothing to cut. We had not even junk for junketing, and THE ISLAND. 137 nothing but salt-water, even if the wind should blow fresh. Famine indeed seemed to stare each of us in the face ; that is, we stared at one another; but if men turn cannibals, a great allowance must be made for a short ditto. We were truly in a very disagreeable pickle, with oceans of brine and no beef, and, THE POUND OF F L K I like Shylock, I fancy we would have exchanged a pound of gold for a pound of flesh. The more we drifted Nor, the more sharply we incHned to gnaw, — but when we drifted Sow, we found nothing like pork. No bread rose in the east, and in the oppo- site point we were equally disappointed. We could not compass a meal anyhow, but got mealy-mouth'd, notwithstanding. We could see the Sea mews to the eastward, flying over what Byron calls the Gardens of Gull. We saw plenty of Grampus, but they 138 HOOD'S OWN. were useless to all intents and porpusses, and we had no bait for catching a bottle-nose. Time hung heavily on our hands, for our fast days seemed to pass very slowly, and our strength was rapidly sinking from being so much afloat. Still we nourished Hope, though we had nothing to give her. But at last we lost all prospect of land, if one may so say when no land was in sight. The weather got thicker as we were getting thinner ; and though we kept a sharp watch, it was a very bad look-out. We could see nothing before us but nothing to eat and drink. At last the fog cleared off, and we saw something like land right a-head, but alas the wind was in our teeth as well as in our stomachs. We could do nothing but keep her near, and as we could not keep ourselves full, we luckily suited the course of the boat ; so that after a tedious beating about — for the wind not only gives blows, but takes a great deal of beating — we came incontinently to an island. Here we landed, and our first impulse on coming to- dry land was to drink. There was a little brook at hand, to which we applied oui-selves till it seemed actually to murmur at our inordinate thirst. Our next care was to look for some food, for though our hearts were full at our escape, the neighbouring i-egion was dreadfully empty. We succeeded in getting some natives out of their bed, and ate them, poor things, as fast as they got up, but with some difficulty in getting them open ; a common oyster knife would have been worth the price of a sceptre. Our next concern was to look out for a lodging, and at last we discovered an empty cave, reminding me of an old inscription at Ports- mouth, " The hole of this place to let." We took the precaution of roUing some great stones to the entrance, for fear of last lodgers, — that some bear might come home from business, or a THE ISLAND. 139 tiger to tea. Here, under the rock, we slept without rocking, and when, through the night's failing, the day broke, we saw with the first instalment of light that we were upon a small desert isle, now for the first time an Isle of Man. Accordingly, the birds in this wild solitude were so httle wild that a number of boobies and noddies allowed themselves to be taken by hand, though the asses were not such asses as to be caught. There was an abundance of rabbits, which we chased unremittingly, as Hunt runs Warren ; and when coats and trowsers fell short, we clothed our skins with theirs, till, as Monday said, we each re- presented a burrow. In this work Monday was the tailor, for like the maker of shadowy rabbits and cocks upon the wall, he could turn his hand to anything. He became a potter, a car- penter, a butcher, and a baker — that is to say, a master butcher and a master baker, for I became merely his journeyman. Re- duced to a state of nature, Monday's favourite phrase for our condition, I found my being an officer fulfilled no office ; to con- fess the truth, I made a very poor sort of savage, whereas Monday, I am pei-suaded, would have been made a chief by any tribe whatever. Our situations in Ijfe were completely reversed ; he became the leader and I the follower, or rather, to do jus- tice to his attachment and ability, he became Hke a strong big brother to a helpless little one. We remained in a state of nature five years, when at last a whaler of Hull — though- the hull was not visible — showed her masts on the horizon, an- event which was telegraphed by Mon- day, who began saying his prayers and dancing the College Hornpipe at the same time with equal fervour. We contrived by hghting a fire, literally a feu-de-joie, to make a sign of dis- tress, and a boat came to our signal deliverance. We had a 140 HOOD'S OWN. prosperous passage home, where the reader may anticipate the happiness that awaited us ; but not the trouble that was in store for me and Monday. Our parting was out of the question ; we would both rather have parted from our sheet anchor. We at- tempted to return to our relative rank, but we had lived so long in a kind of liberty and equality, tliat we could never resume our grades. The state of nature remained uppermost with us both, IN EMBARRASSED CIRCUMSTANCES. and Monday still watched over and tended me like Dominie Sampson with the boy Harry Bertram ; go where I would, he followed with the dogged pertinacity of Tom Pipes ; and do what I might, he interfered with the resolute vigour of John Dory in Wild Oats. This disposition involved us daily, nay, hourlv, in the most embarrassing circumstances; and how the THE ISLAND. 141 connexion might have terminated I know not, if it had not been speedily dissolved in a very unexpected manner. One morning poor Monday was found on his bed in a sort of convulsion, which barely enabled him to grasp my hand, and to falter out, " Good-bye, I am go — going — back — to a state of nature." A OOOD ACTION MEETS ITS OWN REWARD. 142 SINGLE BLESSEDNESS, JIumliBr (DtiB VERSIFIED FROM THE P^OSE OF A YOUNG LADY. It's very hard ! — and so it is, To live in such a row, — And witness this that every Miss But me, has got a Beau. — For Love goes calling up and down, But here he seems to shun; I'm sure ho has been asked enough To call at Number One ! I'm sick of all the double knocks That come to Number Four ! — At Number Three, I often see A Lover at the door ; — And one in blue, at Number Two, Calls daily like a dun, — I'ts very hard they come so near And not to Number One ! NUMBER ONE. 143 Miss Bell I hear has got a dear Exactly to her mind, — By sitting at the window pane Without a bit of blind ; — But I go in the balcony, Which she has never done, Yet arts that thrive at Number Five Don't take at Number One ! 'Tis hard with plenty in the street, And plenty passing by, — There's nice young men at Num- ber Ten, But only rather shy ; — And Mrs. Smith across the way Has got a grown-up son, But la ! he hardly seems to know There is a Number One ! There's Mr. Wick at Number Nine, But he's intent on pelf, And though he's pious will not love His neighbour as himself. — At Number Seven there was a sale — The goods had quite a run ! And here I've got my single lot On hand at Number One ! My mother often sits at work And talks of props and stays. And what a comfort I shall be la her declining days : — The very maids about the house Have set me down a nun. The sweethearts all belong to them That call at Number One ! Once only when the flue took fire, One Friday afternoon, Young Mr. Long came kindly in And told me not to swoon : — Why can't he come again without The Phoenix and the Sun ! — We cannot always have a flue On fire at Number One ! I am not old, I am not plain, Nor awkward in my gait — I am not crooked, like the bride That went from Number Eight : — I'm sure white satin made her look As brown as any bun — But even beauty has no chance, I think, at Number One ! At Number Six they say Miss Rose Has slain a score of hearts. And Cupid, for her sake, has been Quite prodigal of darts. The imp they show with bended bow, I wish he had a gun ! — But if he had, he'd never deign To shoot with Number One. It's very hard, and so it is To live in such a row ! And here's a ballad singer come To aggravate my woe; — take away your foolish song And tones enough to stun — There is " Nae luck about the house," 1 know, at Number One ! 144 €^t aiiBtriirtinn. ' draws honey forth that drives men mad." Lalla Rookh. The speakers were close under the bow-window of the inn, and as the sash was oj^en, Curiosity herself could not help over- hearing their conversation. So I laid down Mrs. Opie's " Illus- trations of Lying," — which I had found lying in the inn window, — and took a glance at the partners in the dialogue. One of them was much older than the other, and much taller ; he seemed to have grown hke quick-set. The other was thick- set. " I tell you, Thomas," said Quickset, " you are a flat. Before you've been a day in London, they'll have the teeth out of your very head. As for me, Fve been there twice, and know what's what. Take my advice ; never tell the truth on no account. Questions is only asked by way of pumping ; and you ought always to put 'em on a wrong scent." " But aunt is to send her man to meet me at the Old Bailey," said Thickset, "and to show rae to her house. Now if a strange man says to me, ' young man, are you Jacob Giles ? ' — an't I to tell him ?" " By no manner of means," answered Quickset ; " say you are quite another man. No one but a fiat would tell his name to a stranger about London. You see how I answered them last THE ABSTRACTION. 145 night about what was in the waggon. Brooms, says I, nothing else. A flat would have told them there was the honey-pots un- derneath ; but I've been to London before, and know a thing or two." " London must be a desperate place," said Thickset. "Mortal!" said Quickset, "fobs and pockets are nothing! Your watch is hardly safe if you carried it in your inside, and as for money " — " I'm almost sorry I left Berkshire," said Thickset. A TEA GARDEN, " Poo— poo," said Quickset, " don't be afeard. I'll look after ye ; cheat me, and they've only one more to cheat. Only mind T 146 HOOD'S OWN. my advice. Don't say anything of your own head, and don't object to anything / say. If I say black 's white, don't contra- dict. Mark that. Say everything as I say." " I understand what you mean," said Thickset ; and with this lesson in his shock head, he began to busy himself about the waggon, while his comrade went to the stable for the hoi-ses. At last Old Ball emerged from the stable-door with the head of Old Dumpling resting on his crupper; when a yell rose from the rear of the waggon, that startled even Number 55, at the Bush Inn, at Staines, and brought the company running from the re- " motest box in its retired tea-garden. " In the name of everything," said the landlord, " what's the matter ?" " It's gone — all gone, by goles !" cried Thickset, with a be- wildered look at Quickset, as if doubtful whether he ought not to have said it was not gone. " You don't mean to say the honey-pots !" said Quickset, with some alarm, and letting go the bridle of Old Ball, who very quietly led Old Dumpling back again into the stable ; " you don't mean to say the honey-pots ?" " I donU mean to say the honey-pof&," said Thickset, literally following the instructions he had received. " What made you screech out then ? " said Quickset, appealing to Thickset. "What made me screech out then?" said Thickset, appeahng to Quickset, and determined to say as he said. " The fellow's drunk," said the landlord ; " the ale's got into his head." "Ale, — what ale has he had?" inquired Quickset, rather anxiously. THE ABSTRACTION. 14:7 " Ale, — what ale have I had ?" echoed Thickset, looking sober with all his might. " He's not drunk," shouted Quickset ; " there's something the matter." "I'm not drunk; there is something the matter," bellowed Thickset, and with his forefinger he pointed to the waggon. " You don't mean to say the honey," said Quickset, his voice falling. " I donH mean to say the honey," said Thickset, his caution rising. The gesture of Thickset, however, had conveyed some vague notion of danger to his companion. With the agility of a cat he climbed on the waggon, and with the super-human activity of a demon, soon pitched down every bundle of besoms. There is a proverb that " new brooms sweep clean," and they certainly seemed to have swept every particle of honey clean out of the waggon. Quickset was thunderstruck; he stood gazing at the empty vehicle in silence ; while his hands wandered wildly through his hair, as if in search of the absent combs. When he found words at last, they were no part of the Litany. Words, however, did not suffice to vent his passion ; and he began to stamp and dance about, till the mud of the stable-yard flew round like anything you like. " A plague take him and his honey-pots, too," said the cham- bermaid, as she looked at a new pattern on her best gingham. " It's no matter," said Quickset, " I won't lose it. " The house must stand the damage. Mr. Bush, I shall look to you for the money." " He shall look to you for the money," da-capo'd Thickset. 148 HOOD'S OWN. " You may look till doomsday," said the landlord. " It's all your own fault ; I thought nobody would steal brooms. If you had told me there was honey, I would have put the waggon under lock and key." " Why, there was honey," said Quickset and Thickset. " I don't know that," said Mr. Bush, " you said last night in the kitchen there was nothing but brooms." " I heard him," said John Ostler ; " I'll take my oath to his very words !" " And so will I," roared the chambermaid, glancing at her damaged gown. " What of that ?" said Quickset ; " I know I said there was nothing but brooms." " I know," said Thickset, " I'm positive, he said there was nothing but brooms." " He confesses it himself," said the landlady. " And his own man speaks agin him," said the chambermaid. " I saw the waggon come in, and it didn't seem to have any honey in it," said the head waiter. " May be the flies have eaten it," said the postilion. " I've seen two chaps the very moral of them two at the bar of the Old Bailey," said Boots. " It's a swindle, it is," said the landlady, " and Mr. Bush shan't pay a farthing." " They deserve tossing in a blanket," said the chambermaid. " Duck 'em in the horsepond," shouted John Ostler. " I think," whispered Thickset, " they are making themselves up for mischief !" There was no time to be lost. Quickset again lugged Old Ball and Old Dumpling from the stable, while his companion THE ABSTRACTION. 149 tossed the brooms into the waggon. As soon as possible they drove out of the unlucky yard, and as they passed under the arch, I heard for the last time the voice of Thickset : " You've been to London before, and to be sure know best ; but somehow^ to my mind, the teUing the untruth don't seem to answer." The only reply was a thwack, like the report of a pistol, on the crupper of each of the horses. The poor animals broke directly into something like a canter ; and as the waggon turned a corner of the street, I shut down the sash, and resumed my " Illustrations of Lying." •^- 150 €^t irnmtiiug ffiurks- Amongst the sights that Mrs. Yet spite of drake, and ducks, Bond . and pond, Enjoy 'd yet grieved at more No little ducks had Mrs. Bond ! than others. Were little ducklings in a pond. The birds were both the best of Swimming about beside their mothers — mothers — The nests had eggs — the eggs Small things like living water had luck — lilies. The infant D.'s came forth like But yellow as the daffo-dillies. others — But there, alas! the matter " It's very hard," she used to stuck ! moan. They might as well have all died " That other people have their addle, ducklings As die when they began to pad- To grace their waters — mine die! alone Have never any pretty chuck- For when, as native instinct lings." taught her. For why! — each little yellow The mother set her brood afloat, navy They sank ere long right under Went down — all downy — to old water, Davy ! Like any over-loaded boat; They were web-footed too to see, She had a lake — a pond I mean — As ducks and spiders ought to be ! Its wave was rather thick than pearly — No peccant humour in a gander She had two ducks, their napes Brought havoc on her little were green — folks, — She had a drake, his tail was No poaching cook — a frying pan- curly, — der THE DROWNING DUCKS. 151 To appetite, — destroyed their Whene'er they launeh'd — O sight yolks,— of wonder! Beneath her very eyes, Od' rot Like fires the water "got them 'em ! under ! " They went like plummets to the bottom. No woman ever gave their lucks A better chance than Mrs. Bond The thing was strange — a contra- ,. , . ^^^*^^^ , , At last quite out of heart and It seem'd of nature and her ducks ^^ . . She gave her pond up, and de- For little ducks, beyond convic- sponded • *^^°' For death among the water-lilies, Shouldfloatwithoutthehelpof ^ried -Due ad me" to all her Great Johnson it bewildered him, To hear of ducks that could not g^yjjjj » But though resolved to breed no more. Poor Mrs. Bond ! what could she ^^^^ brooded often on this rid- do die- But change the breed— and she Alas! 'twas darker than before! tried divers ^^ ^^^^ about the summer's mid- Which dived as all seemed born d^®' ^Q ^Jq . What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or No little ones were e'er survi- °^"® "^"' yQj.g To clear the matter up the Sun Like those that copy gems, I'm * thinking. They all were given to die-sink- The thirsty Sirius, dog-like drank ing I So deep, his furious tongue to cool. In vain their downy coats were The shallow water sank and shorn ; sank, They flounder'd still!— Batch And lo, from out the wasted after batch went ! pool. The little fools seem'd only born Too hot to hold them any longer, And hatch'd for nothing but a There crawl'd some eels as big hatchment! as conger! 152 HOOD'S OWN. I wish all folks would look a The sight at once explained the bit, case, In such a case, below the sur- Makiug the Dame look rather face ; silly, But when the eels were caught The tenants of that Eely Place and split Had found the way to Pick a By Mrs. Bond, just think of her dilly^ face. And so by under-water suction. In each inside at once to spy Had wrought the little ducks' ab- A duckling turn'd to giblet-pie! duction. 153 A TRUE STORY, FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL NEMAND, CHAPTER I. " I AM perfectly at my wits' ends 1" As Madame Doppeldick said tMs, she thrust both her fat hands into the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads and hands could be of no possible avail. She was standing in a little dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. They were small beds, — pallets, — cots,' — cribs, troughs upon four legs, such as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the Nativity. Our German beds are not intended to carry double, and in such an obscure out-of-the-way village as Kleinewinkel, who would think of finding anything better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just too little for a bed, and just too large for a cof- fin ? It was between two such bedlings, then, that Madame Doppeldick was standing, when she broke out into the aforesaid exclamation — " I am perfectly at my wits' ends !" Now, the wits' ends of Madame Doppeldick scarcely extended farther fi*om her skull than the horns of a snail. They seldom 7* 154 HOOD'S OWN. protruded far beyond her nose, and that was a short one ; and moreover they were apt to recede and draw in from the fii-st ob- stacle they encountered, leaving then* proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits' ends at all. Thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. There was only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst bed- room also ; for Gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to sleep at her mother's. To be sure a shake-down might be spread in the parlour ; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts ; and to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and to be very sure, Mr. Doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down, and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer. " God forgive me," said the perplexed Madame Doppeldick, as she went slowly down the stairs ; — "but I wish Captain Schenk had been killed at the battle of Leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before he came to be billeted on us ! " *I.L TAKK A BKD WITH YOU. THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 155 CHAPTER 11. In extenuation of so unchristian-like an aspiration as the one which escaped from the Hps of Madame Doppeldick at the end of the last chapter, it must be remembered that she was a woman of great delicacy for her size. She was so corpulent, that she might safely have gone to court without a hoop, her arms were too big for legs ; and as for her legs, it passed for a miracle of industry, even amongst the laborious hard-working inhabitants of Kleine- winkel, that she knitted her own stockings. It must be confessed that she ate heartily, drank heartily, and slept heartily ; and all she ate, drank, and slept, seemed to do her good, for she never ceased growing, at least horizontally, till she di^ ample justice to the name which became her own by marriage. Still, as the bulk of her body increased, the native shrinking unobtrusive modesty of her mind remained the same ; or rather it became even more tremulously sensitive. In spite of her huge dimensions, she seemed to entertain the Utopian desire of being seen by no eyes save those of her husband ; of passing through hfe unnoticed and unknown ; in short, she was a globe-peony with the feelings of a violet. Judge then what a shock her blushing sensibilities re- ceived from the mere idea of the strange captain intruding on the shadiest haunts of domestic privacy ! Although by birth, educa- tion, and disposition, as loyal as the sunflower to the sun, in the first rash transports of her trepidation and vexation she wished anything but well to her liege sovereign the King of Prussia — wondering bitterly why his majesty could not contrive to have his reviews and sham-fights in Berlin itself; or at least in Posen, where there were spare beds to be had, and lodgings to let for single men. Then again, if the Quarter-master had but conde- 156 HOOD'S OWN. scended to give a quarter's notice, why, Mr. Doppeldick might have run up an extra room, or they might have parted off a por- tion of their own chamber with lath and plaster — or they might have done a thousand things ; for instance, they might have sold their house and left the country, instead of being thus taken un- awares in their own sanctorum by a strange gentleman, as sud- denly as if he had tumbled through the roof. " It was too bad — it was really too bad — and she wondered what Mr. Doppeldick would say to it when he came home." *'l WISH I WAS WELL THROUGH IT." CHAPTER III. Mr. Doppeldick did come home — and he said nothing to it at all. He only pulled his tobacco-bag out of one coat-pocket, and his tobacco-pipe out of the other, and then he struck a light, and fell to smoking, as complacently as if there had been no Captain Schenk in the world. The truth was, he had none of that ner- THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 167 vous nicety of feeling which his partner possessed so eminently, and accordingly, he took no more interest in her domestic dilemma than the walnut-wood chair that he sat upon. Moreover, when he once had in his mouth his favourite pipe, with a portrait of Kant on the bowl of it, he sucked through its tube a sort of Tran- scendental Philosophy which elevated him above all the ills of human life, to say nothing of such little domestic inconveniences as the present. If the house had been as big as the Hotel de Nassau, at Schlangenbad, with as many chambers and spare beds in it — or a barrack, with quarters for the captain and his company to boot — he could not have puffed on more contentedly. The very talk about beds and bedding appeared to lull him into a sort of sleep with his eyes open ; and even when the voice and words of his helpmate grew a little sharp and querulous in detail- ing all her doubts, and difficulties, and disagreeables, they could not raise even a ripple in the calm placid expanse of his forehead. How should they ? His equable German good humour might well be invulnerable to all outward attacks, which had so long withstood every internal one, — ay, in Temper's very citadel, the stomach. For instance, the better part of his' daily diet was of sours. He ate " sauer-kraut," and " sauer-braten," with sour sauce and " sauer-ampfer " by way of salad, and pickled plums by way of dessert, and " sauer-milch " with sourish brown bread — and then, to wash these down, he drank sourish " Essigberger " wine, and " sauer-wasser," of which the village of Kleinewinkel had its own peculiar brunnen. Still, I say, by all these sours, and many others not mentioned besides, his temper was never soured — nor could they turn one drop of the milk of human kindness that flowed in his bosom. Instead, therefore, of his round features being ever rumpled and crumpled, and furrowed up by the plough- 158 HOOD'S OWN. share of passion, you never saw anything on his face but the same everlasting sub-smile of phlegmatic philanthrophy. In spite of the stream of complaint that kept pouring into his ear, he forgave Captain Schenk from the bottom of his soul for being billeted on him ; and entertained no more spleen towards the King of Prussia and the Quarter-master, than he did towards the gnat that bit him last year. At length, his pipe wanting replenishing, he dropped a few comfortable words to his wife, meanwhile he re- filled the bowl, and brought the engine again into play : — " As for undressing, Malchen, — before the strange man — puff — why can't we go to bed, — puff — before he does, — puff — puff — and so put an end to the matter — puff — puff — puff' ! " " As I live upon damsons and buUases ! " (for it was the plum season,) exclaimed Madame Doppeldick, clapping her fat hands with delight, " I never thought of that ! Gretchen, my lass, get the supper ready immediately, for your good master is mortal hungry, and so am I ! — and then, my own Dietrich dear, we'll bundle off to bed as fast as we can ! " THE LAST IN BED TO PUT OUT THK LIGHT. THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 159 CHAPTER IV. The best of plots aay come to the woi-st of ends. It was no fault, however of Gretchen's ; for being in a hurry of her own to meet Ludwig Liedeback, she clapped the supper upon the table in no time at all. The transcendental pipe, with the head of Kant upon it, instantly found itself deposited in a by corner ; for Mr. Doppeldick, like his better half, was a person of substance, keep- ing a good running account with Messer and Gabel. Besides, amongst other dehcacies, the board actually displayed those rarest of all inland rarities, oysters, — a bag of which the warm-hearted Adam Kloot had sent, by way of a token of remembrance, to his old friend Dietrich ; forgetting utterly that it was full a hundred leagues from the nearest high water-mark of the sea to the village of Kleinewinkel. Of course they came like other travellers, with their mouths wide agape, to see the wonders of the place, — but, then, so much the easier they were to open ; and as the worthy couple did not contemplate any such superfluous nicety as shaving them before they swallowed them, there was a fair chance that the dehcious morsels would all be devoured before the inauspicious arrival of Captain Schenk. Some such speculation seemed to ghmmer in the eyes of both Mr. and Mrs. Doppeldick— -when, lo ! just as the sixth dead oyster had been body-snatched out of its shell, and was being flavoured up with lemon and vinegar, the door opened, and in walked a blue cap with a red band, a pair of mustachios, and a grey cloak without any arms in its sleeves. Had Madame Doppeldick held anything but an oyster in her mouth at that moment it would infallibly have choked her, the flutter of her heart in her throat was so violent. " Holy Virgin ! — Captain Schenk ! " 160 HOOD'S OWN. " At your service, Madame," answered a voice through the mustachios. " You are welcome, Captain ! " said the worthy master of the house, at the same time rising, and placing a chair for his guest at that side of the table which was farthest from the oysters. The officer, without any ceremony, threw himself into the seat, and then, resting his elbows upon the table, and his cheeks be- tween his palms, he fixed his dark eyes on the blushing face of Madame Doppeldick in a long and steady stare. It is true that he was only mentally reviewing the review^ ; or, possibly, calcu- lating the chances he had made in favour of an application he had lately forwarded to Berlin, to be exchanged into the Royal Guards ; but the circumstance sufficed to set every nerve of Ma- dame Doppeldick a vibrating, and in two minutes from his am- val, she had made up her mind that he was a very bold, forward, and presuming young man. It is astonishing, when we have once conceived a prejudice, how rapidly it grows, and how plentifully it finds nutriment ! Like the sea polypus, it extends its thousand feelers on every side, for anything they can lay hold of, and the smallest particle afloat in the ocean of conjecture cannot escape from the tenacity of their grasp. So it was with Madame Doppeldick. From mistrusting the captain's eyes, she came to suspect his nose, his mustachios, his mouth, his chin, and even the shght furrow of a sabre cut that scarred his forehead just over the left eyebrow. She felt morally sure that he had received it in no battle-field, but in some scan- dalous duel. Luckily she had never seen Mozart's celebrated opera, or she would inevitably have set down Captain Schenk as its hbertine masquerading hero, Don Giovanni himself! " You will be sharp-set for supper, Captain," said the hospita- THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 161 ble host, pushing towards his guest a dish of lean home-made bacon ; but the Captain took no more notice of the invitation than if he had been stunned stone-deaf by the artillery at the sham-fight in the morning. Possibly he did not like bacon, or, at any rate, such bacon as was set before him ; for to put the naked Truth on her bare oath, the Kleinewinkel • pigs always looked as if they got their living, like cockroaches, by creeping through cracks. However, he never changed his posture, but kept his dark intolerable eye still fixed on his hostess's full and flushed face. He might just as well have stared, if he must stare — at the shelves-full of old family china, (some of it elaborately mended and riveted) in the corner cupboard, the door of which she had left open on purpose ; but he had, apparently, no such considerate respect for female modesty. " Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand be near us!" said the disquieted Madame Doppeldick to herself. " It is hard enough for people of our years and bulk to be obliged to lie double ; — but to have a strange, wild, rakish, staring young fellow in the same chamber — I do wish that Dietrich would make more haste with his supper, that we may get into bed first 1" CHAPTER V. Honest Dietrich was in no such hurry. A rational, moral, pious man, with a due grateful sense of the sapidity of certain gifts of the Creator, ought not to swallow them with the post- haste indifference of a sow swilling her wash ; and as Dietrich Doppeldick did not taste oysters once in ten years, it was a sort of rehgious obligation, as well as a positive secular temptation, that the relish of each particular fish should be prolonged as fai' 162 HOOD'S OWN. as possible on the palate by an orderly, decorous, and deliberate deglutition. Accordingly, instead of bolting the oysters as if he had been swallowing them for a wager, he sate soberly, with his eyes fixed on the two plumpest, as if only waiting the " good night " of his guest to do ample and christian-like justice to the edible forget-me-nots of his good friend Adam Kloot. In vain his wife looked hard at him, and trod on his toes as long as she could reach them, besides being seized with a short hectic cough that was anything but constitutional " Lord help me ! " said Mrs. Doppeldick in her soul, too flut- tered to attend to the correctness of her metaphors — " It's as easy to catch the eye of a post ! — He minds me no more than if I trod on the toes of a stock-fish ! I might as well cough into the ears of a stone wall." KI88INO OOES BY FAVOUR. Y THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 163 In fact, honest Dietrich had totally forgotten the domestic dilemma. " He will never take his eyes off," thought Madame Doppel- dick, stealing a glance across the table ; " I was never so stared at, never, since I was a girl and wore pigtails ! I expect every moment he will jump up and embrace me." Whereas nothing could be further from the Captain's thought. The second batta- lion had joined that very morning, and accordingly he had kiss- ed, or been kissed by, all its eight-and-twenty officers, tall or short, fat or lean, fair or swarthy,— which was quite kissing enough for a reasonable day's ration. The truth is, he was star- ing at himself. He had just, mentally, put on a new uniform, and was looking with the back of his eyes at his own brilliant figure, as a Captain in the Royal Guards. It was, however, a stare, outwardly, at Madame Doppeldick, who took everything to herself, frogs, lace, bulHon, buttons, cuflfe, collars, epaulettes, and the Deuce knows what besides. "I would to heaven!" she wished, "he had never thought of going into the army, — or at least that the Quartermaster had never taken it into his stupid head to quarter him on us. Young gay Captains are very well to flirt with, or to waltz with, but at my years and bulk waltzing is quite out of the question 1" CHAPTER VI. At last Captain Schenk changed his posture, and averted his familiar eyes from the face of Madame Doppeldick ; but it was only to give her a fresh alarm with his free-and-easy mouth. First of all he clenched his fists— then he raised his arms at full stretch above his head, as if he wanted to be crucified, and then turning his face upwards towards the ceiling, with his eyes shut, 164 HOOD'S OWN. and his jaws open — he yawned such a yawn as panther never yawned after prowhng all day, without prey, in a ten-foot cage — " Auw-yauw-au-ya-augh-auwayawauwghf ! " "By all the Saints," thought the terrified Madame Doppel- dick, " he will be for packing off to bed at once ! " — and in the vain hope of inducing him to sup beforehand, she seized, yes, she actually seized the devoted dish of oysters, and made them re- lieve guard, with the home-made bacon, just under the Captain's nose. It was now honest Dietrich's turn to try to catch the eyes of posts, and tread on the toes of stock-fish ; however, for this time the natives were safe. " By your leave, Madame," said the abominable voice through the mustachios, " I will take nothing except a candle. What with the heavy rain at first, and then the hoi-se artillery plough- ing up our marching ground, I am really dog-tired with my day's work. If you will do me the favour, therefore, to show me to my chamber " " Not for the whole world ! " exclaimed the horrified Madame Doppeldick — "not for the whole world, I mean, till you have hob-and-nobbed with us — at least with the good man" — and, like a warm-hearted hostess, jealous of the honour of her hospitality, she snatched up the spare-candle, and hurried off to the barrel. If she could but set them down to drinking, she calculated, let who would be the second, she would herself be the first in bed, if she jumped into it with all her clothes on. It was a likely scheme enough, — but alas ! it fell through, like the rest ! — Before she had drawn half a flask of Essigberger, or Holzapfelheimer, for I forget which — she was alarmed by the double screech of two chairs pushed suddenly back on the uncarpeted floor. Then came a trampling of light and heavy feet — and although she THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 165 dropped the bottle — and forgot to turn the spigot — and carried the candle without the candlestick — and left her left slipper be- hind her, — still, in spite of all the haste she could make, she only reached the stair-foot just in time to see two Prussian-blue coat-tails, turned up with red, whisking in at the bedroom door ! CHAPTER VII. " Oh the cruel, the kilHng ill-luck that pursues us ! " exclaimed the forlorn Madame Doppeldick, as her husband returned, with his mouth watering, to the Httle parlour, where, by some sort of attraction, he was drawn into the Captain's vacant chair, instead of his own. In a few seconds the plumpest of Adam Kloot's tender souvenirs, of about the size and shape of a penny bun, was sliding over his tongue. Then another went— -and another — and another. They were a little gone or so, and no wonder ; for they had travelled up the Rhine and the Moselle, in a dry "schifF," not a "dampschiff," towed by real horse-powers, in- stead of steam-powers, against the stream. To tell the naked truth, there were only four words in the w^orld that a respectably fresh Cod's head could have said to them, namely : — NONE or YOUR SAUCE, 166 HOOD'S OWN. No matter : down they went glibly, glibly. The lemon-juice did something for them, and the vinegar still more, by making them seem sharp instead of flat. Honest Dietrich enjoyed them as mightily as Adam Kloot could have wished ; and was in no humour, you may be sure, for spinning prolix answers or long- winded speeches. " They are good — very ! — excellent ! Malchen ! — Just eat a couple." But the mind of the forlorn Malchen was occupied with any- thing but oysters : it was fixed upon things above, or at least overhead. " I do not think I can sit up all night," she mur- mured, concluding with such a gape that the tears squeezed out plentifully between her fat little eyelids. " I've found only one bad one — and that was full of black mud — schloo — oo — oo — ooop !" — slirropped honest Dietrich. N. B. — There is no established formula of minims and crotchets on the gamut to represent the swallowing of an oyster : so the afoi-esaid syllables of " schloo — oo — oo — ooop," must stand in their stead. " As for sleeping in my clothes," continued Madame Doppel- dick, " the weather is so very warm, — and the little window won't open — and with two in a bed — " " The English do it, Malchen, — schloo — oo — ooop ! " " But the English beds have curtains," said Madame Doppel- dick, "thick stuflp or canvas curtains, Dietrich, — all round, and over the top — just like a general's tent." " We can go — schloo — ooop — to bed in the dark, Malchen." " No — no," objected Madame Doppeldick, with a grave shake of her head. "We'll have no blindman's-buff work, Dietrich, — and may be blundering into wrong beds." THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 167 " Schloo — 00 — 00 — 00 — ooop." " And if ever I saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-look- ing young man, Dietrich, the Captain is one !" " Schloo — 00 — 00 — ooop." " Did you observe, Dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me ?" " Schloo — ooop." " And the cut on his forehead, Dietrich, I'll be bound he got it for no good ! " " Schloo — 00 — 00 — ooop." " Confound Adam Kloot and his oysters to boot !" exclaimed the offended Madame Doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy of her connubial partner, " I wish, I do, that the nets had bm*st in catching them ! " " Why, what can one do, Malchen ?" asked honest Dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-a- penny ones behind. " Saint Ursula only knows ! " sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. " I only know that I will never undress in the room ! " " Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo — oop. Schloo — 00 — 00 — 00 — ooop." " I believe that must be the way after all," said Ma'dame Dop- peldick, on whose mind her husband's sentence of transcenden- tal philosophy had cast a new hght. "To be sure there is a httle landing-place at the stair-head— and our bed is exactly op- posite the door — and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in — But are you sure, Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain ? Did you tell him that his was the one next the window — with the patchwork coverlet ?" 168 HOOD'S OWN. " Not a word of it !" answered honest Dietrich, who, hke all other Prussians, had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manoeuvres. " Not a word of it — we talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle — Schloo — oo — oop ! " ' *' It was done like my own dear, kind, Dietrich," exclaimed the delighted Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin. The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 169 Doppeldick saw her way before lier, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after the ice has broken up. From that morbent, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of " Schloo — 00 — 00 — 00 — ooop " was sung, as " arranged for a duet." :^r^ . CHAPTER VIII. " All is quiet, thank Heaven ! the Captain is as fast as a church," thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in noctur- nal dishabille, on the little landing-place at the stair-head. " Now then, my own Dietrich," she whispered, "are you ready to run?" For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go any^Vhere without her husband. But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth ; indeed it was always the last thing that he took oflF before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active cor- poreal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start ; his eyes star- ing, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach — that is to say, by Jeaping backwards over a winno wing-fan, with a well-poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly. " The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich." " Now then, Malchen !" " Now then, Dietrich, — and run gently — on yodr toes !" No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the 8 170 HOOD'S OWN. speed of a young wild elephant, made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came, squash ! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbhng her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead. " Santa Maria ! " sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor. "Potz-tausend!" said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab. WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK.-' " Ten thousand devils !" bellowed Captain Schenk — a sup- pressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach ; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full forc^. d THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA. 171 ********* "Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader ), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet ?" " And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand ( says the author), but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain de- termined to give it a trial — and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet I" 172 I HUB nui ruuiint. Thb Moon — who does not love the silver moon, In all her fantasies and all her phases ? Whether full-orb'd in the nocturnal noon, Shining in all the dewdrops on the daisies, To light the tripping Fairies in their mazes. Whilst stars are winking at the pranks of Puck ; Or huge and red, as on brown sheaves she gazes; Or new and thin, when coin is turned for luck ; — Who will not say that Dian is a Duck ? But, oh ! how tender, beautiful, and sweet, When in her silent round, serene, and clear, By assignation loving fancies meet, To recompense the pangs of absence drear ! So Ellen, dreaming of Lorenzo, dear, But distant from the city mapp'd by Mogg, Still saw his image in that silver sphere, Plain as the Man Wjith lantern, bush, and dog, That used to set our ancestors a-gog. And so she told him in a pretty letter. That came to hand exactly as St. Meg's Was striking ten — eleven had been better ; For then he might have eaten six more eggs, And both of the bedevill'd turkey-legs, With relishes from East, West, North, and South, Draining, beside, the teapot to the dregs. Whereas a man, whose heart is in his mouth, Is rather spoilt for hunger and for drouth. LOVE AND LUNACY. 173 And so the kidneys, broiling hot, were wasted ; The brawn— it never enter'd in his thought ; The grated Parmesan remained untasted ; The potted shrimps were left as they were bought, The capelings stood as merely good for nought, The German sausage did not tempt him better. Whilst Juno, licking her poor lips, was taught There's neither bone nor skin about a letter. Gristle, nor scalp, that one can give a setter. Heav'n bless the man who first devised a mail ! Heav'n bless that public pile which stands concealing The Goldsmiths' front with such a solid veil ! Heav'n bless the Master, and Sir Francis Freeling, The drags, the nags, the leading or the wheeling. The whips, the guards, the horns, the coats of scarlet, The boxes, bags, those evening bells a-pealing ! Heav'n bless, in short, each posting thing, and varlet. That helps a Werter to a sigh from Charlotte. So felt Lorenzo as he oped the sheet. Where, first, the darling signature he kiss'd. And then, recurring to its contents sweet With thirsty eyes, a phrase I must enlist, He gulfd the words to hasten to their gist ; In mortal ecstacy his soul was bound — When, lo ! with features all at once a-twist, He gave a whistle, wild enough in soub^ To summon Faustus's Infernal Hound ! Alas ! what little miff's and tiff's in love, A snubbish w^ord, or pouting look mistaken. Will loosen screws with sweethearts hand and glove ; Oh ! love, rock firm when chimney-pots were shaken, A pettish breath will into huff's awaken, To spit like hump-back'd cats, and snarling Towzers ! Till hearts are wreck'd and founder'd, and forsaken. As ships go to Old Davy, Lord knows how, sirs. While heav'n is blue enough for Dutchmen's trowsers ! 174 HOOD'S OWN. " The moon's at full, love, and I think of you" — Who would have thought that such a kind P.S. Could make a man turn white, then red, then blue, Then black, and knit his eyebrows and compress His teeth, as if about to effervesce Like certain people when they lose at whist ! So look'd the chafed Lorenzo, ne'ertheless. And, in a trice, the paper he had kiss'd Was crumpled like a snowball in his fist ! Ah! had he been less versed in scientifics, More ignorant, in short, of what is what : , He ne'er had flared up in such calorifics ; But he would seek societies, and trot To Clubs — Mechanics' Institutes — and got With Birkbeck — Bartley — Combe — George Robins — Rennie, And other lecturing men. And had he not That work, of weekly parts, which sells so many, The Copper-bottomed Magazine — or " Penny ?" But, of all learned pools whereon, or in. Men dive like dabchicks, or like swallows skim. Some hardly damp'd, some wetted to the skin. Some drown'd like pigs when they attempt to swim. Astronomy was most Lorenzo's whim, ('Twas studied by a Prince among the Burmans) ; He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons, While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans. Night after night, with telescope in hand, Supposing that the night was ftiir and clear. Aloft, on the housetop, he took his stand. Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere Better, I doubt, than Milton's " Starry Vere ;" Thus, reading thro' poor Ellen's fond epistle. He soon espied the flaw — the lapse so sheer. That made him raise his hair in such a bristle. And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle. LOVE AND LUNACY. 175 " The moon's at full, love, and I think of thee" — " Indeed ! I'm very much her humble debtor. But not the moon-calf she would have me be, Zounds ! does she fancy that I know no better ?" Herewith, at either corner of the letter He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull ; — " O woman ! woman ! that no vows can fetter, A moon to stay for three weeks at the full ! By Jove ; a very pretty cock-and-bull ! " The moon at full ! 'twas very finely reckon'd ! Why so she wrote me word upon the first — The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second — HO ME's DOUGLAS. Full ! — yes — it must be full enough to burst! But let her go — of all vile jilts the worst" — 176 HOOD'S OWN. Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps, Anon he blubber'd like the child that's nurs'd, And then he hit the table frightful raps, And stamp'd till he had broken both his straps. " The moon's at full — and I am in her thought — No doubt : I do believe it in my soul !" Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort Like a young horse first harness'd to a polo : " The moon is full — aye, so is this d — d bowl !" And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons, Globe — water — fishes — he dash'd down the whole. Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons ; Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons. "I fill her thoughts — her memory's vice-gerent? No, no, — some paltry puppy — three weeks old — And round as Norval's shield" — thus incoherent His fancies grew as he went on to scold ; So stormy waves are into breakers roll'd, Work'd up at last to mere chaotic wroth — This — that — heads — tails — ^thoughts jumbled uncontroll'd, As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth, By turns bob up, and splutter In the froth. " Fool that I was to let a baby face — A full one — like a hunter's — round and red — Ass that I am, to give her more a place Within this heart" — and here he struck his head. "'Sdeath, are the Almanack-compilers dead? But no — 'tis all an artifice — a trick, Some newer face — some dandy under-bred — Well — be it so — of all the sex I'm sick ! " Here Juno wonder'd why she got a kick. "*The moon is full' — where's her infernal scrawl? 'And you are in my thought: that silver ray Will ever your dear image thus recall ' — My image? Mine! She'd barter it away 4- LOVE AND LUNACY. ITT For Pretty Poll's on an Italian's tray ! Three weeks, full weeks,— it is too plain— too bad — Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day! My senses have not crazed — but if they had — Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad ! "Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip So fair for falsehood ? Wherefore have you drest Deceit so angel-like 1 " With sudden rip He tore six new buff buttons from his vest, And groped with hand impetuous at his breast, As if some flea from Juno's fleecy curls Had skipp'd to batten on a human chest. But no— the hand comes forth, and down it hurls A lady's miniature beset with pearls. Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry, Before another outrage could be plann'd : Poor Juno, who had learn'd to fetch and carry, Pick'd up and brought it to her master's hand, Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann'd; Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth. He only saw in that fair face, so bland. Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south, A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth. " I'll go to her," — herewith his hat he touch'd, And gave his arm a most heroic brandish ; "But no — I'll write" — and here a spoon he clutch'd, And ramm'd it with such fury in the standish, A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish. Came rushing forth— Oh Antics and Buffoons! Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish ; He jump'd—thmnp'd— tore— swore, more than ten dragoons. At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons ! But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing. Without a CoUinet's or Weippert's band, His rampant arms and legs left off* their prancing, And down he sat a^rain, with pen in hand, 8* 178 HOOD'S OWN. Not fiddle-headed, or King's-pattern grand, But one of Bramah's patent Caligraphics ; And many a sheet it spoil'd before he plann'd A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics, Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics. Long while he rock'd like Yankee in his chair, Staring as he would stare the wainscot through, And then he thrust his fingers in his hair, And set his crest up like a cockatoo ; And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo : At last, with many a tragic frown and start. He penn'd a billet, very far from doux, 'Twas sour, severe — but think of a man's smart Writing with lunar caustic on his heart ! The letter done and closed, he lit his taper, And sealing, as it were, his other mocks, He stamp'd a grave device upon the paper. No Cupid toying with his Psyche's locks — But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks — Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets, He dropt the bitter missive in a box. Beneath the cakes, and tarts, and sugar'd treats. In Mrs. Smelling's window-full of sweets. Soon sped the letter — thanks to modern plans, Our English mails run little in the style Of those great German wild-beast caravans, jEiZ-wagens — tho' they do not " go like iZe," — But take a good twelve minutes to the mile — On Monday morning, just at ten o'clock. As Ellen huram'd " The Young May Moon " the while, Her ear was startled by that double knock Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock ! Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning. And down into the street it dropt, or flung, Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning, The jug that o'er her ten-week-stocks had hung; LOVE AND LUNACY. 179 Then down the stairs by twos and threes, she sprung, And through the passage like a burglar darted. Alas ! how sanguine are the fond and young — She little thought, when with the coin she parted, She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted ! Too dear at any price — had she but paid Nothing and taken discount, it was dear ; Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid Oft kissed the letter in her brief career Between the lower and the upper sphere, Where, seated in a study bistre-brown, She tried to pierce a mystery as clear As that I saw once puzzling a young clown — " Reading Made Easy," but turned upside down. Yet Ellen, like most misses in the land. Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens, At one of those establishments which stand In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens : 'Twas called " The Grove," — a name that always means Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate — Each window had its close Venetian screens And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate. But when the screens were left unclosed by chance, The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead, Each upper window to a passing glance Revealed a little dimity white bed ; Each lower one a cropp'd or curly head ; And thrice a week, for soul's and health's economies. Along the road the twenty-four were lead, Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies With faces rather graver than Melpomene's. And thus their studies they pursued : — On Sunday, Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price ; Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar — of a Monday ; Tuesday— hard dumplings, globes, Chapone's Advice ; 180 HOOD'S OWN. Wednesday — fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice) ; Thursday — pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading ; Friday — beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice ; Saturday — scraps, short lessons and short feeding, Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding. From this repertory of female learning, Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter ! To gratify the eyes of parents yearning. 'Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter, Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter, PRACTICE DRIVES ME MAD. But heartily, as Jenkins says, " demollidge ;" But as for any learning, not to flatter. As often happens when girls leave their college, She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge. LOVE AND LUNACY. 181 At Long Division suras she had no cliance, And History was quite as bad a balk ; Her French, it was too small for Petty France, And Priscian suffered in her English talk : Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk ; As for the globes — the use of the terrestrial She knew when she went out to take a walk, Or take a ride ; but, touching the celestial, Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial. Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars ; Georgiura, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo, Sidus, for Master : then, for northern stars, The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go, The Bull was Farmer Giles's bull, and, ergo. The Ram the same that butted at her brother ; As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo, From coming after them, must be their mother ; The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other. As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia, She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but A private, may be, in the Kent Militia ; That Charles's Wain would stick in a deep rut, That Venus was a real West-End slut — Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony ! That Berenice's Hair would curl and cut, That Cassiopeia's Chair was good Mahogany, Nicely French-polished, — such was her cosmogony ! Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics Lorenzo's letter came now to dispense ; A lizard, crawling over hieroglyyhics, Knows quite as much of their Egytian sense ; A sort of London fog, opaque and dense, Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives. In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense — As well is known to oyster-operatives. Mere looking at the shells won't open natives. 182 HOOD'S OWN. Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers ; Words giving tongue against her, like a hound At picking out a fault — words speaking daggers. The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers. To lash their tails, but not as horses do. Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers, But like a lion's, ere he tears in two A black, to see if he is black all through. With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch. She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry. No sound — no stir — quite petrified, poor wretch ! As when Apollo, in old allegory, Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone ; In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry, Judge if a suing lover, let alone A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone : " Ellen, I will no longer call you mine, That time is past, and ne'er can come again ; However other lights undimmed may shine, And undiminishing, one truth is plain. Which I, alas ! have learned, — that love can wane. The dream is pass'd away, the veil is rent. Your heart was not intended for my reign ; A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant With one poor man in it to be content. " It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure To wander underneath the whispering bough With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure. Nay, fear not, — I absolve of every vow, — Use, — use your own celestial pleasure now. Your apogee and perigee arrange. Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how, To me that constant disk has nothing strange — A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change. LOVE AND LUNACY. 183 " Oh Ellen ! I once little thought to write Such words unto you, with so hard a pen , Yet outraged love will change its nature quite, And turn like tiger hunted to its den — How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men ! And stands abash'd, discover'd and forlorn ! Had it been only cusp'd — but gibbous — then It had gone down — but Faith drew back in scorn, And would not swallow it — without a horn ! " I am in occultation, — that is plain : My culmination's past, — that's quite as clear, But think not I will suffer your disdain To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear. Whate'er my pangs, they shall be buried here ; No murmur, — not a sigh, — shall thence exhale : Smile on, — and for your own peculiar sphere Choose some eccentric path, — you cannot fail, And pray stick on a most portentous tail ! " Farewell ! I hope you are in health and gay ; For me, I never felt so well and merry — As for the bran-new idol of the day. Monkey or man, I am indifferent — very I Nor e'en will ask who is the Happy Jerry ; My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep, But let me hint that you will want a wherry, Three weeks' spring-tide, and not a chance of neap. Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep ! " Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend. Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night — No more of that — the lover's at an end. Yet if I may advise you, as a friend. Before you next pen sentiments so fond, Study your cycles — I would recommend Our Airy — and let South be duly conn'd, And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.* •Airy, South, and Pond, English Astronomers. 184 HOOD'S OWN. "Farewell again ! it is farewell for ever! Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice, I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River, Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice, Or Boothia Felix — happy clime of ice ! For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon, Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice, Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon. Or roaming o'er — The Mountains of the Moon! "What matters where? my world no longer owns That dear meridian spot from which I dated Degrees of distance, hemispheres and zones, A globe all blank and barren and belated. What matters where my future life be fated ? With Lapland hordes, or Koords, or Afric peasant, A squatter in the western woods located. What matters where ? My bias, at the present. Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent ! " Farewell ! and if for ever, fare thee well ! As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs : I ask no sexton for his passing-bell, I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters. However I may die, transfix'd by Tartars, By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled, By shark or cayman snapt above the garters. By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled, Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled, " Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake, Or smother'd in the sandy hot simoom. Or crush'd in Chili by earth's awful quake. Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb. Or dirged by syrens and the billows' boom, Or stiffen'd to a stock 'mid Alpine snows, Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom, Or suck'd by Vampyres to a last repose, Or self destroy'd, impatient of my woes; LOVE AND LUNACY. 185 " Still fare you well, however I may fare, A fare perchance to the Lethean shore, Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air, Or dash'd down cataracts with dreadful roar : Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core, This hand you should have claim'd in church or minster, Some cannibal may gnaw" — she read no more — Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster, Losing herself, as 'twere, in Kidderminster ! Of course of such a fall the shock was great ; In rush'd the Mher, panting from the shop. In rush'd the mother, without cap on tcte. Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop ; The cook to change her apron did not stop. The charwoman next scrambled up the stair, — All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop. And then they stand and smother round the chair, Exclaiming in a chorus, " Give her air ! " One sears her nostrils with a burning feather. Another rams a phial up her nose ; A third crooks all her finger-joints together, A fourth rips up her laces and her bows, While all by turns keep trampling on her toes, And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump A sudden drench that down her thorax goes. As if in fetching her — some wits so jump — She must be fetch'd with water like a pump ! No wonder that thus drench'd, and wrench'd, and gall'd, As soon as possible, from syncope's fetter Her senses had the sense to be recall'd, " I'm better — that will do — indeed I'm better," She cried to each importunate besetter ; Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother. The prudent parent seized the lover's letter, (Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother) And read it thro' from one end to the other. 186 HOOD'S OWN. From first to last, she never skipp'd a word — For young Lorenzo of all youths was one So wise, so good, so moral she averr'd, So clever, quite above the common run — She made him sit by her, and call'd him son, No matrimonial suit, e'en Duke's or Earl's, So flatter'd her maternal feelings — none ! For mothers always think young men are pearls Who come and throw themselves before their girls. And now, at warning signal from her finger, The servants most reluctantly withdrew, But list'ning on the stairs contrived to linger ; For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue, At last the features of her parent knew, And summoning her breath and vocal pow'rs, " Oh, mother ! " she exclaimed — " Oh, is it true — Our dear Lorenzo " — the dear name drew show'rs — " Ours,'^ cried the mother, "pray don't call him ours, " I never liked him, never, in my days ! " ["Oh yes — you did " — said Ellen with a sob,] " There always was a something in his ways — " ["So sweet — so kind," said Ellen, with a throb,] "His very face was what I call a snob, And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons, He had a sort of air of the swell mob; I'm sure when he has come of afternoons To tea, I've often thought — I'll watch my spoons ! " ** The spoons! " cried Ellen, almost with a scream, "Oh cruel — false as cruel — and unjust! He that once stood so high in your esteem ! " " He ! " cried the dame, grimacing her disgust, " I like him ! — yes — as any body must An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil : Didn't he bring you Bonaparty's bust ? Lord ! when he calls I hardly can be civil — My favourite was always Mr. Neville. LOVE AND LUNACY. 187 " Lorenzo ? — I should like, of earthly things, To see him hanging forty cubits high ; Doesn't he write like Captain Rocks and Swings ? Nay, in this very letter bid you try To make yourself particular, and tie A tail on — a prodigious tail ! — Oh, daughter ! And don't he ask you down his area — fie ! And recommend to cut your being shorter. With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water ?" Alas ! to think how readers thus may vary A writer's sense ! — What mortal would have thought Lorenzo's hint about Professors Airy And Pond to such a likeness could be brought ! Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught To make a comet of poor Ellen's moon. Could furnish forth an image so distraught, As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon, Tail'd — like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon ! And yet, whate'er absurdity the brains May hatch, it ne'er wants wet-nurses to suckle it : Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it ; No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it To jingle bell-like on his empty head, No mental mud — but some will knead and knuckle it, And fancy they are making fancy-bread ; — No ass has written, but some ass has read. No dolts could lead if others did not follow 'em, No Hahnemann could give decillionth drops, If any man could not be got to swallow 'em ; But folly never comes to such full stops. As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps Of all Lorenzo's meanings, heads and tails, The father seized upon her malaprops — " My girl down areas — of a night ! 'Ods nails ! I'll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails ! 188 HOOD'S OWN. " I will ! — as sure as I was christen'd John ! A girl — well borD — and bred, — and school'd at Ditton — Accomplish'd — handsome — with a tail stuck on ! And ehuck'd — Zounds ! — ehuck'd in horseponds like a kitten ; I wish I had been by when that was written !" — And doubling to a fist each ample hand, The empty air he boxed with, a-la^Bitton, As if in training for a fight, long plann'd, With Nobody — for love — at No Man's Land. « I'll pond— I'll tail him !"— In a voice of thunder He recommenced his fury and his fuss. Loud, open-mouth'd, and wedded to his blunder. Like one of those great guns that end in buss. "I'll teach him to write ponds and tails to us !" But while so menacing this-that-and-t'others. His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus : " Men are not women — fathers can't be mothers, — Females are females" — and a few such others. So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly, She hustled him outside the chamber-door, Looking, it must be owned, a little silly ; And then she did as the Carinthian boor Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that's poor : Id est, she shut him in the outer space. With just as much apology — no more — As Boreas would present in such a case. For slamming the street door right in your face. And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept, What passed in that important tete-a-tete 'Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate — So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late. In front of Mrs. Snelling's sugar'd snacks. In such a very waspish stinging state — But now at the Old Dragon, stretched on racks, Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks; LOVE AND LUNACY. 189 Because that new fast four-inside — the Comet, Instead of keeping its appointed time, Had deviated some few minutes from it, A thing- with all astronomers a crime, And he had studied in that lore sublime ; Nor did his heat get any less or shorter For pouring upon passion's unslaked lime A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water, Mix'd stiff as starch by the Old Dragon's daughter. At length, " Fair Ellen" sounding with a flourish, The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart ; Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish The hasty spirit in Lorenzo's heart. And soon upon the roof he " topped his part," Which never had a more impatient man on. Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start Like lightning greased, — or, as at Ballyshannon Sublimed, " greased lightning shot out of a cannon !" For, ever since the letter left his hand, His mind had been in vacillating motion. Dodge-dodging like a fluster'd crab on land, That cannofask its way, and has no notion If right or left leads to the German Ocean — Hatred and Love by turns enjoy'd monopolies, Till, like a Doctor following his own potion, Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis, He went and booked himself for our metropolis. " Oh, for a horse," or rather four, — " with wings !" For so he put the wish into the plural — No relish he retained for country things. He could not join felicity with rural, His thoughts were all with London and the mural. Where architects — not paupers — heap and pile stones ; Or with the horses' muscles, called the crural. How fast they could macadamize the milestones Which pass'd as tediously as gall or bile stones. 190 HOOD'S OWN. Nor cared he more about the promised crops, If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid, For flies in turnips, or a blight in hops. Or how the barley prosper'd or decay'd; In short, no items of the farming trade, "lord, JOHN, herb's A BURROw! Peas, beans, tares, 'taters, could his mind beguile ; Nor did he answer to the servant maid. That always asked at every other mile, " Where do we change, Sir 1 " with her sweetest smile. " I wonder if her moon is full to-night ! " He mutter'd, jealous as a Spanish Don, When, lo ! — to aggravate that inward spite, In glancing at a board he spied thereon A play-bill for dramatic folks to con. In letters such as those may read, who run, « ' KING JOHN '—oh yes— I recollect King John ! 'My Lord, they say five moons'— ^te moons! — well done! I wonder Ellen was content with one ! LOVE AND LUNACY. 191 *'Five moons — all full ! — and all at once in heav'n! She should have lived in that prolific reign ! " Here he arrived in front of number seven, Th' abode of all his joy and all his pain ; A sudden tremor shot through every vein, He wish'd he'd come up by the heavy waggon, And felt an impulse to turn back again, Oh, that he ne'er had quitted the Old Dragon ! Then came a sort of longing for a flagon. His tongue and palate seem'd so parch'd with drouth, — The very knocker fill'd his soul with dread, As if it had a living lion's mouth. With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red, In which he had engaged to put his head. The bell-pull turn'd his courage into vapour, As though 't would cause a shower-bath to shed Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper — He look'd askance, and did not like the scraper. " What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster. Instead of putting out its wick at once ; She's gone — it's very evident I've lost her, — And to the wanton wind I should have toss'd her — Pish ! I will leave her with her moon, at ease. To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster, Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese. Or make a honey-moon, if so she please. *' Yes — ^here I leave her," and as thus he spoke, He plied the knocker with such needless force, It almost split the panel of sound oak ; And then he went as wildly through a course Of ringing, till he made aprubt divorce Between the bell and its dumbfounded handle. Whilst up ran Jltty, out of breath and hoarse, And thrust into his face her blown-out candle, To recognise the author of such scandal. 192 HOOD'S OWN. Who, presto ! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot, Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair, With other noise than his whose " very foot Had music in't as he came up the stair : " And then with no more manners than a bear, His hat upon his head, no matter how. No modest tap his presence to declare, He bolted in a room, without a bow. And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow ! "meet mk by moonlight alone. ' Like fond Medora, watching at her window, Yet not of any Corsair bark in search — The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo, "The Cheapest House in Town" of Todd and Sturch, The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch, The public-house, closed nightly at eleven. LOVE AND LUNACY. 193 And then that house of prayer, the parish church, Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven. Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven. Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her, She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream; As if her own belov'd full moon still orb'd her, Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme. With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme — Yet when Lorenzo touch'd her on the shoulder, She started up with an abortive scream. As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder. Had come within his bony arms to fold her. « Lorenzo ! "— " Ellen ! "—then came " Sir!" and " Madam I" They tried to speak, but hammer'd at each word, As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam ; Such broken English never else was heard. For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr'd, A chilly tremor thrill'd them through and through, Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd, They shook like jellies made without a due And proper share of common joiner's glue. " Ellen ! I'm come — to bid you — fare — farewell " They thus began to fight their verbal duel ; " Since some more hap — hap — happy man must dwell — ^" " Alas — Loren — Lorenzo ! — cru — cru — cruel ! " For so they split their words like grits for gruel. At last the Lover, as he long had plann'd. Drew out that once inestimable jewel. Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann'd, And thrust poor Ellen's face into her hand. "There — ^take it. Madam — take it back, I cra\^e, The face of one — but I must now forget her, Bestow it on whatever hapless slave Your art has last enticed into your fetter — And there are your epistles — there ! each letter ! . 9 194 HOODS OWN. I wish no record of your vow's infractions, Send them to South — or Children — you had better- They will be novelties — rare benefactions To shine in Philosophical Transactions! " Take them — pray take them — I resign them quite ! And there's the glove you gave me leave to steal — And there's the handkerchief, so pure and white Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O'Neil — » But no — you did not — cannot— do not feel A Juliet's faith, that time could only harden ! Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal ! I should have led you, — by your leave and pardon- To Bartley's Orrery, not Covent Garden ! *' And here's the birth-day ring — nor man nor devil Should once have torn it from my living hand, Perchance 'twill look as well on Mr. Neville ; And that — and that is all — and now I stand Absolved of each dissever'd tie and band — And so, farewell, till Time's eternal sickle Shall reap our lives ; in this, or foreign land, Some other may be found for truth to stickle. Almost as fair — and not so false and fickle !" And there he ceased : as truly it was time, For of the various themes that left his mouth, One half surpass'd her intellectual climb : She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth About that " Children of a larger growth," Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.'s ; Kit North v/as just as strange to her as South, Except the south the weathercock expresses. Nay, Bartley's Orrery defied her guesses. Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift She gather'd from the simple outward fact, That her own lap contained each slighted gift ; Though quite unconscious of his cause to act LOVE AND LUNACY. 196 So like Othello, with his face unblack'd ; " Alas !" she sobbed, *' your cruel course I see, These faded charais no longer can attract ; Your fancy palls, and you would wander free, And lay your own apostacy on me ! « I false ! — unjust Lorenzo ! — and to you ! Oh, aU ^e holy gospels that incline The soul to truth, bear witness I am true ! By all that lives, of earthly or divine — So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine— / false !— the world shall change its course as soon ! True as the streamlet to the stars that shine — True as the dial to the sun at noon, True as the tide to ' yonder blessed moon' 1" And as she spoke, she. pointed through the window. Somewhere above the houses' distant tops, Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo, And Todd and Sturch's cheapest of all shops For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops; — Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian, 196 HOOD'S OWN. And eyes suffused with scintillating drops, Lorenzo looked, too, o'er the blinds Venetian, To see the sphere so troubled with repletion. " The Moon !" he cried, and an electric spasm Seem'd all at once his features to distort. And fix'd his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm — His faculties benumb'd and all amort — At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort, Just like a sea-gull's wheeling round a rock — " Speak ! — Ellen ! — is your sight indeed so short ! The Moon ! — Brute ! savage that I am, and block ! The Moon ! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock !) Why that's the new Illuminated Clock !" 197 AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE ' I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same StarUng." Stebne's Sentimental. Joubnky. Amongst professors of astronomy, Adepts in the celestial economy, The name of Herschel's very often cited ; And justly so, for he is hand and glove With ev'ry bright intelligence above ; Indeed, it was his custom so to stop, Watching the stars upon the house's top. That once upon a time he got be-knighted. In his observatory thus coquetting With Venus — or with Juno gone astray, All sublunary matters quite forgetting In his flirtations with the winking stars. Acting the spy — it might be upon Mars — A new Andre ; Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping. At Dian sleeping ; Or ogling thro' his glass Some heavenly lass Tripping with pails along the Milky Way ; Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyr's • — Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky. When lo ! a something with a tail of flame Made him exclaim, •' My stars !" — he always puts that stress on my — " My stars and garters ! 198 HOOD'S OWN. " A comet, sure as I'm alive ! A noble one as I should wish to view ; It can't be Halley's though, that is not due Till eighteen thirty-five. Magnificent ! how fine his fiery trail ! Zounds ! 'tis a pity, though he comes unsought — Unask'd — unreckon'd — in no human thought — He ought — he ought — he ought To have been caught With scientific salt upon his tail !" "POSSK COMKTATIS." " I look'd no more for it, I do declare, Than the Great Bear ! As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead, It really enter'd in my head No more than Berenice's Hair !" Thus musing, Heaven's Grand Inquisitor Sat gazing on the uninvited visiter THE COMET. 199 Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper Regions, with " Please your Honour, come to supper." " Supper ! good John, to-night I shall not sup Except on that phenomenon — look up ! " " Not sup! " cried John, thinking with consternation That supping on a star must be starvation, Or ev'n to batten On Ignes Fatui would never fatten. His visage seem'd to say, — that very odd is, — But still his master the same tune ran on, " I can't come down, — go to the parlour, John, And say I'm supping with the heavenly bodies." "The heavenly bodies!" echoed John, " Ahem!" His mind still fall of famishing alarms, " 'Zooks, if your Honour sups with them., In helping, somebody must make long arms ! " He thought his master's stomach was in danger, But still in the same tone replied the Knight, " Go down, John, go, I have no appetite, Say I'm engaged with a celestial stranger." — Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs, " Wouldn't the stranger take a bit down stairs ? " '• No," said the master, smiling, and no wonder. At such a blunder, " The stranger is not quite the thing you think. He wants no meat or drink. And one may doubt quite reasonably whether He has a mouth. Seeing his head and tail are join'd together, Behold him, — there he is, John, in the South." John look'd up with his portentous eyes, Each rolling like a marble in its socket, At last the fiery tad-pole spies, And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries, " A rare good rocket ! " 200 HOOD'S OWN. " A what ! A rocket, John ! Far from it ! What you behold, John, is a comet; One of those most eccentric things That in all ages Have puzzled sages And frighten'd kings ; With fear of change that flaming meteor, John, Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range" — "Do he?" cried John; " Well, let him flare on, / haven't got no sovereigns to change ! " THE HARVEST MOON. 201 €)^t (D tie nil, CONSIDERED PER SE " A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court, have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him." — Pebicles. It was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago — before steam was — that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by way of text, to some observations on the ocean. The importance of the Mariner's Compass to the sailor is as well known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instru- ment, for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor : but its mode of action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it, after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand, are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of the land ; at least by those clod- compelling turners of the furrows, mid-country bom and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge, — who have perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window of 9* 202 HOOD'S OWN. Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its (7arc?-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian's show- box ; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of hfe and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it — long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy — that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortu- nately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the charac- teristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager ; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of proba- tion : in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains — call them pleasures rather — than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the use and properties of the Compass : he boxed it again and again for the benefit of the gaping neophyte ; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed proficiency of his pupil, — when, all of a sudden, his well-earned pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil's turning away on his heel, with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatis- fied grunt, exclaiming, — " Well, arter all, I don't see how the turning round of that *ere little needle can move about the rudder !" THE OCEAN. 203 I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not sympathized with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead. All " the dismal hiss of universal scorn," ascribed to Milton's devils, seemed condensed into his Avhistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back the Cockney-Tailor to his shop- board, sitting on his own needle — and then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection, " I wonder the poor 'gentleman's friends allows him to go about by himself !" I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go : and yet — to confess a truth — shall I ? — dare I ? — say, that to the intense sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our Palinurus, I look back with Envy ? Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up — noses which never sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me, — eyes which never glimpsed the ocean avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having learned to bel- low " Elm a-lee !" — " Ard-hup !" and " Oist away !" agree to run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil Hall swears on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six months, in " the element which never tires.'* The last of the Dibdins asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the "Meteor Flag of England," and vows to knock me down with its staff ; — nay, our Sailor King * himself repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his High Seas ! * Written in the time of William IV., who had been in the Navy 204: HOOD'S OWN. It can't be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under the sun like the Ocean for " making a clean breast of it :" — and am not I here staggering and tumbling — soberly tipsy — aboard a lubberly Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell — dreaming, when I can sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of half-turned cream or incipient butter ; — and finding, when I awake, that dreams do not go so altogether by contraries ? If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at Dordrecht, flat as single Glo'sters, will be delivered in London spherical as bowls ! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the Nore, will be a washing-tub ! I have doubts whether the salt beef, produced at this day's luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already almost a portmanteau ; — and, what is worse, every several morsel I have swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into a bolus or a pill, — whethei of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to divine. If the calm should continue, I may become — who knows ? — a Ball myself — a Master BifBn ! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities, and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan't have a good point about me ! Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in deliver- ing one's sentiments ? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable ; seeing that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger ? It is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay, — of Dibdin, Campbell, and Basil Hall, — of the Lords of the Admi- ralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport, and Gosport, to boot — in spite THE OCEAN. 205 of the Royal William, nay, in spite of my very self, the truth will out ! — not sneaking out, or stepping out, or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward style. I do evny the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders and compasses. I do detest and abominate the ocean — or to phrase it more mildly — the sea and I cannot agree with each other — there is sure to be falling out between us — we can never be bosom friends. The Marine Society must despise rae for it ; my Elder Brethren of the Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made away with by his elder brethren ; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts and distribute them, against me : the Greenwich Pensioners will bind themselves by a round robin to kick me with their knottiest legs ; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in one hand, and a dead-light in the other ; but I cannot eat my words. S K K-S A W. It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to "stand bandying compliments with your sovereign," that is, Neptune. If he were present at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell 206 HOOD'S OWN. him, from this my seat on its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it. I would flatly say to him, lying flat on my face as it now hap- pens, that a few little gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage both for show and use. For 'tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all fish-pond ; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad of my back, as I am at this present But this is bullying Taurus behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship, is a miracle I would fain see ere I beHeve in it. For my own part I cannot even step deliberately over a thread. Perhaps, without going too curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as re- gards the soul, it may hold good as concerns the body. Un- doubtedly there be some men born to sit fast upon horses ; others to fall off therefrom as if they had soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice ; others only to slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle, on ships' decks ; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and gi'ovel thereon. That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure in the saddle ; — but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grand- father was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my term you shall find me as un- safe on my soles as when I first paid my footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably prome- nading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other, like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scram- THE OCEAN. 207 bling, I trip up on nothing, and fall flat on everything. An earthquake in London, when its streets are what is called greasy, could not more puzzle my centre of gravity ; if, indeed, I was not born a mathematical monster, devoid of that material point ! By way of a clincher, Fate, who never does things by halves, whilst foredooming me incapable of standing my ground at sea, has also denied me the power of settling it. A camp-stool is sure to decamp with me ; a chair, as if it stood on Siberian ice, sud- denly throws itself on its back, and behold me in an extempore sledge ! Barrels roll from under me ; coils of rop'e sliuffle me off. Even on the plain bare hard deck, or cabin floor, I throw demi-summersets, as if I had been returned to Parhament to represent the Antipodes by sitting on the back of my head. To complete the Sea Curse, — there are three Fates, and each had a boon for me at my birth — it was ordained that, like the great Nelson, I should never sail from fresh water into salt, with- out knowing it by a general rising and commotion, which might be called figuratively, a Mutiny at the Nore. Like the standing and sitting infirmity, it is incurable. On my voyage outwards I tried every popular recipe ; the hard ones first, to wit, raw carrots, raw onions, sailors' biscuit with Dutch cheese, hard-boiled eggs, hard dumplings, raw stockfish. Next the easy ones : namely, cream cheese, Welsh rabbits, maccaroni, very hasty pudding, and insupportable soup. Then the neutrals : such as chewed blotting-paper, dry oatmeal, pounded egg-shells, scraped chalk, and unbaked dough. To wash these down, I took, by prescription, tea without milk, coffee without sugar, bark without wine, water without brandy ; and these formulae all failing, I then tried them, as witches pray, backwards ; brandy without water, wine without bark, and so 208 HOOD'S OWN. fortli. The experimental combinations followed ; rum and milk, and mustard ; eggs and wine, and camomile tea ; gin and beer, and vinegar ; sea-water and salad-oil, mulled, with sugar and nut- meg. Of which last, I drank by advice most prodigiously, the Doctors of the Marine College dispensing always on the Homoeo- pathic principle, that a large dose of anything, whereof a little would set you wrong on the land, will set you right on the sea. I need hardly say that, with my predisposed necessitarian viscera, all these infallible remedies failed of any eflfect, except to aggravate my case. Nothing short of liquid lead, maybe, or po- table plaster of Paris would have proved a settler. Happy the man who hath never been driven in his despair to test, detest, invoke; evoke, swallow, and unswallow, such drugs and draughts of the naval Pharmacopoeia ! Thrice happy ci\Tic simpleton who hath never learned how the rudder revolveth, at the risk of turning round himself. Vandergroot is visibly in course of transformation. At every visit to the cabin he looks more and more like a dutch-pin. He talks to me roundly, and gets blunter and blunter! The last time I felt, I had no small to my back. If I may guess at my own figure, it is now about an oval. I must look like one of Leda's babies, just emerged, with their insignificant buds of legs and arms, from the Qgg ! From an oval to a circle is but a step. Heaven help me when I get landed, round and sound, as they say of cherries ! How shall I get home— how get up— (there will be a short way down) — mine own staii-s ? How shall I sit ? Instead of my old libraiy chair, I must borrow its three-legged stool of the terrestial globe. Either my head swims, or the cabin is getting circular! X shall roll about in it like a bolus in its box ! If I am not merely THE OCEAN. 209 giddy, I am already as spherical as the earth ; — a little flatted, or so, that is, towards the poles. What a horrible rough calm ! I will down on my knees, if I have knees, and with clasped hands, if hands remain to me, pray, beg, and supplicate for a dismal storm to batter me into shape again, though it be but nine- bobble-square ! I get more and more candid and communicative every moment* I can keep nothing to myself: you shall have my whole heart. I abhor, loathe, execrate, the sea ! If I could throw up my hat, my cry would be " Land for ever ! " A fico for Tom Tough ! Down with Duncan, Howe, and Jervis ! No Dibdin ! If ever I get ashore, able to chalk upon a wall, you shall read — Ask for Stoke Pogis ! Try Lupton Parva ! If ever I get to a dry desk again, to write verse upon, — and the poetry of the ocean is all on the land, its prose only upon the sea, — you shall have a rare new melody, published by Power, to some such strain as this : — The sea ! the D ! The terrible horrible sea ! The stormy, tumbling, Qualmy-jumbling, Spirit-humbling, Shingle-stumbling, Sea-weed-fumbling, Wearing, crumbling, Mischief-mumbling, Growling, grumbling, Like thunder far off rumbling That last Hne halteth in its feet, as well it may, when the poet cannot keep his legs. Oh ! it is well for Cornwall, born perchance " with one foot on sea and one foot on shore " at the Land's End, — I have seen a picture of it by Turner, a bare bleak rocky pro- montory, with some nineteen gulls and cormorants sitting thereon. 210 HOOD'S OWN. each with its tail turned contemptuously towards the barren granite, feldspar, and like sordid soils which there represent land. — It is well enough for him to chaunt laudations of the briny element, and cry up those amphibia, his first cousins almost, the Nereids and Tritons. Or it may become those others, born in a berth, and christened in brine, with Neptune for sponsor, to sing slightingly of the dry ground, on which they cannot claim even a parish. But my nativity was otherwise cast — I am a grass lamb, yeaned on the green sward — oh sweet sweet sweet Cropton-le- Moor, down in dear dear Wiltshire ! That pastoral reminiscence hath made me worse. It has given me an appetite — for acres. Methinks I yearn and long and crave for nice clay, delicious mould, and crisp pebbles, in a pa- roxysm of that strange bulimy that attacks the African Dirt Eater. Something of Nebuchadnezzar's grazing propensity comes along with it. Gracious Heaven ! can it be possible that, after having been battered and shaken out of all shape, — a mere mass of living flesh, like the unlicked ursine cub,— this same Circean Jung Vrouw has taken it into her figure-head to beat, bang, bump, and rumbledy-thump me into another form, a horse, a ram, or a brindled bull ! Thrice brute and beast-hysena! Were- wolf! Dragon ! horned Devil ! that thou wast, my Land-steward, Peter Stuckey ! after counselling me before thy last audit to abate my rents, to volun- teer to reduce them thyself by absconding, across sea, with the whole receipt! Thrice Soland goose, booby, noddy, sea-calf, land-donkey, and loggerhead turtle was I, thus impoverished, in- stead of economising, to pursue thee on an element where I can- not control my out-goings ! Donner and Blitzen! what a crash! my rash prayer was THE OCEAN. 211 heard : there is a storm coming — as the Powers proposed to storm Angiers in King John's days — from all the four quarters at once ! I must needs turn in : but how vilely this bed is made with the foot two yards higher than the head ! No, the head is highest — perpendicular. I designed to lie down, and here I am standing bolt erect on my heels — no, on my head. It must be getting cold: the very trunks, stools and tables are making a move towards the stove — nay, now we are in some sudden peril, for they are all doing their best to rush up the cabin-stair. Whew — that sea last shipped must needs have put all the Dutchmen's pipes out. Another plunge ; and a flood of brine soaks me through, shirt, sheet, and blankets. There is no- washing put out here, I perceive ; 'tis all done at home. What a complex, chaotic motion, — the ship tosses and flings like a wild desert-born horse, that is trying to rear, kick up behind, turn round and round, and roll on his back at one and the same moment. This is no Dutch ship, but a Dutch fair — with the drums, gongs, speaking-trumpets, and other discords, all braying together ; and I am on the rock- ing-horse, the round-about, in the up-and-down, and each of the swings, all at once ! Another crash ! The Jung Vrouw is be- reaved of her little one, alias the long-boat. How kind of Vander- groot to come down to tell me of it, direct, through the sky-light, instead of going round by the stair ! How kind of that table, lying on its back, to catch him in its legs ! Angels of grace be near us ! He tells me, as he sways up and down, partly in High, partly in Low Dutch, that the Jung Vrouw herself is washed over-board ! But no — I misconstrued him. 'Tis only her great ruddy staring figure-head — which the blundering Holland ship- wrights had stuck astern, on the crown of the tiller — that is gone adrift. Oh how I wish from my soul of souls that I could see 212 HOOD'S OWN. the Commodore of the Thames Yachts now pulhng, within hail, in the Wenus ! Or, the last Dibdin taking a chair — or the chair taking him — in this cabin ! Or, Campbell essaying to write down a new sea-song on yon topsy-turvy table ! And oh ! to behold the author of " The deep deep Sea" sitting on the poop, singing to that floating Young Woman's head and bust, taken by mistake for a mermaid's ! Another shout. Pieter Petei-soon, in heaving the lead, hath chucked himself in along with it ! I do not wonder ; he heaveth after my own fashion, by wholesale. Have I not within the last two hours rejected, discharged, and utterly cast from me in dis- gust, the whole ocean, nay all the oceans, German, Atlantic, Pa- cific — the Arctic last, its solid calms, the next best things to Terra Firma, not so violently disagreeing with me as the rest. And do I not know and feel that I am now about to give up Neptune, trident and all, with the whole salt-water mythology ? I war- rant, ere ten minutes do come, there shall not remain within me so much as a syren's mirror, or her tortoise-shell comb : — not one solitary Triton will be left on my stomach. Some unsavoury odour about the cabin — marvellously like the smell of oil paint — hath just given me a new turn, by conjuring up all the nauseous pictures of marine allegories, which, even on steady dry land, used to stir and provoke my spleen. Oh ! that they were all here. President, R. A., and A. R. A., in a string, climbing after me up this perilous slippery stair, to the more perilous slippery deck, there to crawl on all-fours to the ship's side, and clinging like cats or monkeys to the quarter- boards, take a trembhng peep at what Vandergroot calls " den wild zee !" What an awful sight ! The tempest-tost sky is as troubled as the ocean : whilst betwixt the jagged base of the low THE OCEAN. 213 blaxjk cloud, and the still jaggeder crest of the sea, the red angry lightning restlessly darts to and fro, as if in search of whatever presuming mortal dares fare between them ! Oh tell me, Mister Elias Martin — if you a'nt dead — is the tossing crest of yonder mad black billow, that comes racing after us, at all like the black worsted fringe which your brethren are apt to hang on the necks of their marine Arabians ? But hush, yonder comes Neptune himself, in his state-coach — aye, hats off — the wind hath taught ye manners. Lo I yonder he stands, — Pshaw ! no, no, no, — Zounds ! you are all gaping at honest Hans Vander- groot. Look to starboard — to the left hand ! That's the gentle- man, without his castor, nor indeed overwell togged otherwise for wet weather — with his beard lathered but not shaved — standing up in an oyster-shell drag, and attempting, like a sorry whip as he is, to tool his team of bokickers with a potato-fork. Did you ever see four such unbroke brutes as he hath to keep together — neither reined-up, nor down, nor indeed, any ribbons to hold at all — and as I would have laid a pony to nothing, there they go, no pace at all, 'cause why ? they are just come to some in- visible sea obelisk, and each horse is for going down a road of his own. . Did you ever set eyes on such action ? No stepping out — but all pawing and prancing and putting their feet down again where they pick them up, like Ducrow's dancing stud ; as sure as 1 am a judge, they have all got the string-halt in their fore legs, because they can't have it in their hinder ones ! You may swear safely that they have four bad colds besides, — and look what a rabble of naked postilions are hanging on by their manes, because they have no saddles, and if they had, they would never be able to sit in them with those salmon tails ! Between our- selves, Elias, 'tis no great shakes of a show ; the Lord Mayor's 214 HOOD'S OWN. pageant on the water beats it all to sticks ; and if you make a picture of it, you will be a fool for your pains. Yet have I seen paintings by first-rate hands as like to this same trumpery Sadler's Wells water spectacle Murder ! murder ! Help ! help ! A surgeon and a shutter, if there be such comfortable things in this unneighbourly neigh- bourhood. ! oh ! oh ! oh ! Woe is me ! I am not — I am now certain and sure I am not a Ball 1 I have limbs and mem- bers ! legs and arms ! like other people's, only they're broke ; and a very distinct back. My head ! Oh ! my head, my head ; there are nine lumps thereon, and there are nine cabin stairs ! The real Sea-King, in resentment, I suppose, of my untimely caricature of him and his state-coach, after spitting nine gallons of foam in my face, knocked me flat with a wave, and then kick- ed me down stairs ; and here I am again trying to anoint my bruises with trunks, and bind them up with stools and tables, on the hard-hearted oak planks of the cabin-floor. Yet it is easier with me than I first feared. My legs are not broken, but merely bent. I am only bandy, and not lame for life ; but my sea-sick- ness is not cured. Am I likely to put up, better or worse, think you, with Neptune and his satellites, for this unhandsome usage ? The Jung Vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times told. She hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep- diving, German Romanticism into her wooden head, and is try- ing, plunge after plunge, to drown hei'self, and to make me com- mit wilful suicide along with her, whether I will or not. After that, there is no hope ; but oh ! yet oh, my Fates, let me die upon land. I have a hon'or of shipboard ! The idea of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonizing. Why, the very table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snufici-s to the candle- THE OCEAN. 215 stick, the extinguisher to the snuffers ! Only the burning candle is unattached, and there— there it jumps into bed ! No matter ; it could as soon set fire to the Thames. Another squall! friend! dost thek call this the pacific?" How she groans, creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in Neptune's crackers! Accursed Jung Vrouw ! thou wilt be the widowing of my poor dear old one ! Accursed Peter Stuckey, thou wilt be the murdering of my poor deaf old self ! I know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is quaking and shaking, but I suspect I am trembling like an aspen. It is impossible to hear, in the midst of this univei-sal hubbub, but methinks, I am wailing and weeping aloud. But one may as well make a manly exit. Like other men, in such 216 HOOD'S OWN. sea extremities, I would fain betake me to the rum-cask ; but either Hans Vandergroot sails on Temperance principles, or I have looked in the wrong place. I will try a stave or two instead. " Full fathom five—" Alas ! it will not go down. I am too much out of sorts for even the " delicate Ariel." It was one thing for Shakspeare, sailing, hugging the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of Bohemia, to compose such a sea-song for the wood and canvas Tempests of the stage ; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as I do, howled through hoarse ship-ropes, by TH K BEST OVVER ANCHOR. Boreas himself, in a real storm. What comfort to me that every- thing about me shall suffer a sea-change ? — that my bones shall THE OCEAN. 217 turn, forsooth, into coral ? I would not give a bad doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing the gums of the Royal Infent of Spain. I am not so blindly am- bitious as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into pearls, should shine in the British crown itself, or, what is more tempting, in the hair of the beautiful Countess of B. What if some economical jeweller — I think I feel him at it — should take it into his head to split them, for setting in a ring ? As for the Syren's knell, I would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain prosaic old sexton of St. Sepulchre's. I have no depraved yearning to be first wet-nui*sed to death, and then " lapped in Elysium," by Mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever invented to give any human fancy the ague — half-and-half monsters, neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. A whole cargo of them, nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving or eating, is not worth one loveable real woman at Billingsgate, or one of the eatable maids on her stall. I could never imagine the boldest and gallantest boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach — comb- ing the shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or try- ing to put it into her pocket, forgetting that she has no pocket, as a shy man in company does not know what to do with his hands — I could never fancy him looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a slight variation of a hne of Dibdin's, " Avert yon 'oman, gracious Heaven I" For other sea-temptations, I would not give my old white pony, that stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out 10 218 HOOD'S OWN. of it, to ride like that Lord Godolphin Arion over the seas on the fairest fish that was ever foaled. Speaking- under fear of death, I would rather, waiving all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. On my solemn word, I would far Uefer bestride even a pond perch with his dorsal fin erect. But hark ! What means that dreadful cry ? Our death-bell is tolling in Dutch — ^"Del, del, is verlooren!" I must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up unto the deck how I may. Next best unto witnessing our own funeral is the seeing how we are done to death. What a sight ! Here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as hard as they can tie it. Further back is the Skipper himself, entangled dismally by some cord or other to the stern- rails ; and yonder is his mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. The gunner, as I take him to be, with a prepos- terous superfluity of breeching, is made fast to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to a cannon ; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a stoilt rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the Lamb of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced, as if for life, unto the capstan. Adam Vaart is double-turned and double-knotted to the main-mast, and Hen- drick his brother is belayed down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat. Should the anchor be dropped, Jan Bart is sure, even fi'om head to foot, to go along with it. Poor little Yacob Yops, the apprentice, hath been turned over, and re-bound unto a ring-bolt, by articles which are called rope- yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the rattlines, THE OCEAN. 219 hangs Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, head downwards, hke a split cod left there to dry, in the main shrouds ! Oh ! that I were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis, I burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. The Skipper, honest Hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes, and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole secret. Considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance, they had been all f;\stened, at their own special wish and agreement, to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, who afterwards to provide for his safety, as he judged surest, in order that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over. That accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was able, the said Diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half-way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. That the Jung Vrow driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were, to navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes or thereby, when all of a sudden they saw Diedrick, being seized with a vertigo, let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could never recover himself ; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted the universal outcry that I heard. I am sicker of the sea than ever ! Is the safety of a Christian man's life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by such a set of Dutch Bottoms with Asses' heads on their shoulders ? Oh ! that the worthy Chairman and all the 220 HOOD'S OWN. _ Underwriters of Lloyd's were here present on this deck — the mere sight of the Skipper's countenance there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig's face, for that means to be eaten, woukl scare them from all sea-risks for ever ! Thanks be to Heaven ! yonder's a sail. It makes straight towards us — they come aboard. A Pilot ? — well said ! Oh, honest, good, dear Pilot, as you love a distressed poor country- man — as you understand the compass and how rudders are turned — if you know what a rope's end is, — take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder Dutch sea-calves a round dozen a-piece ! 'Twill cost you no great pains, seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. Pish ! never mind their offence ; they have mutinied against themselves. Smite, and spare not. I will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. Hollo there ! help me down. Take heed to my footing. Catch me, all of you, in your arms. Now I am in. No, I an't ! I an't ! I an't ! If ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, I was drown'd. My shoulder bleeds for it, but I forgive. Never heed me ; look to your helms and sails. 'Tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. I am used to it, indeed I am. Pray, what is the name of this blessed boat ? The Lively Nancy. Lively indeed ! The Jung Vrow was a Quakeress to her ! At eveiy jump she takes, my heart leaps also. Pray, pray, pray take in some canvas. You think you be sailing, but you are committing sui- cide. They mind me no more than stones. Oh ! oh ! I am out of Danger's frying-pan into its fire ! Peter Stuckey will be a murtherer after all ! What a set of dare-devils ! They grin like baboons whilst she is driving with half her deck under water ! I will shut mine eyes THE OCEAN. 221 and hold fast by something. I am worse than ever. I give my- self up. Oh ! oh ! what an awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into ! The bottom of the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat ! Hah ! Help ! help ! I am heels upward ! Why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she was going to stop short on the beach ? Stand all aside, and let me leap upon the sand. Ah ! I have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to kiss my native land ! Blessed be dry ground! Farewell, ocean! farewell, Jung Vrouw and Lively Nancy ! Take my advice, and get married both of you to young farmers. Farewell, ye hang-dogs that saved me ! Share my blessing amongst you ; 'tis all I have upon me or in me. Farewell, Neptune ! We'll part friends. If you ever come to Cropton-le-Moor, I shall be glad to see you, and not till then. Hans ! Jan ! Pieter ! ferewell one and all of you ; " and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it." Now for a sweet, safe, still, silent land-bed ! Set me but within a run and a jump of one, and in two chpped current minutes I will be fast asleep in it, even like the Irishman who forgot to say his prayers, but remembered to say amen. 222 tfjiB ditiiikBrB' intiiin0n|iniiB. " Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made ? Go not into the wilderness ; descend not into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy case- ments ; nor pour wax into the cells of thine ears, with little-faith'd, self-mistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting." — Essays of Elia. It may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood especially favoured by that respectable and sub- stantial sect. The idea originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle : the suggestion was relished ; and a conference was called, at which the scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first there was a lit- tle boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was thought, of Loquacity ; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to discourse against their own, inclination ; nay that even, amongst other persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible from a Negro " Talk," or a red Indian " Palaver," This little demur excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the subdued hum which, in that quiet- loving com- munity, is equivalent to acclamations. A secretary was formally THE QUAKERS' CONVERSAZIONE. 223 proposed, and tacitly chosen unanimously : being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Muraford. A few brief rules were then drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to — some of them, considering the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called " a multiplicity of talk." For instance, the 9 th rule provided, that " no brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse, embracing a pro- fusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand." The 10th, that " no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of speech at one and the same time ; " and the 12th, that " no member of this society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable con- tinuity, to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the matter." From the list of subjects to be " spoken to " poKtics and polemics were excluded ; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides, it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or rather, as Quakei-s ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre. For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary associations ; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read, and afterwards dis- cussed ; provided always, that they afforded any Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided " as might lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren." Such was — for it is defunct — the Tottenham Friends' Conver- 224 HOODS OWN. sazione ; of whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune, till lately, to live next door to a family of Quakers, and to make acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of their flock, being a sort of non- conformist among nonconformists, as was especially to be seen in comparing her with her yonnger sisters, wbo seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps, — mere casts of their skulls taken in muslin, — she wore an airy fanciful structure of blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on — at least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn ringlets flowed down her neck in all the " Unloveliness of Love-locks." To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty of circulation ; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence nailed to counters. Instead of screw- ing up her lips, as if she had just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright's into an east wind, she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North- West Passage, through her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs, olives, slates, and snuffy browns, — shapes which nature makes on her basin- pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds — shapes like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham THE QUAKERS^ CONVERSAZIONE. 225 High Cross, beside the Waithman ObeUsk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her glossy satin was always shot with a woof of some one of those gayer prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites, "a profanation of the Rain- bow, deserving a second deluge." As will be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more fleshy pink — in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown sort — only a brunette. With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on speaking terms ; but with the lovely and hvely Rachel my acquaintance had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that the use of the second per- son singular was an especial token of intimacy and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual accommoda- tion sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books ; for which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly hon- oured, making them payable over the back garden wall. Draw- ings and pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly, it was in return for Moore's Melodies — the exchange at the time being against me — that I received " Fox's Martyi"s." It was rather a ponderous tome for a lover of light reading ; and if St. Swithin's Festival had not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have opened its leaves, — if indeed they did not open of themselves, — thus letting fall cer- tain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the " Curiosities of Literature '* they would deserve a distinguished place. 10* 226 HOODS OWN. MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS' CONVER- SAZIONE; Established with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary unbendings. Now fii-st held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother Muraford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair. "bear about the mockkry of woe.* A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Ohver. Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an open- ing poem ; meditation thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency thereof; myself, as its THE QUAKERS' CONVERSAZIONE. 227 humble founder, very joyously elevated — even unto the shedding of tears. 17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the pre- sentation of nine several Negroes' Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded unto Sister Skeldrum's complaint, in respect of her being so ancient, namely, three-score and ten. After which. Sister Panyer's was gone through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend Black in the chair. 21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten over. Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance thereof. Friend Thome in the chair. 24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one ; Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair. 28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair. 1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay on Silence, but in so humbe a tone, that little thereof was taken inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visiter, craved to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held her peace. 5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of her- self unto sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in the chair. 8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth mine own Stanzas on Universal Love ; but my voice failing me in the midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend 228 HOOD'S OWN. Thicknesse, who did perversely c 'iitinue to pronounce Jews in- stead of Dews, whereof canae absurdity. Above all, in the line which singeth, — "Descend ye Dews on this my head." And again, — " Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews." 12. No other member being prepared with originality. Sister Rumble read forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon.; Brother Kersey in the chair, who shamefully sufifered himself to be surprised with sleep. 15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate ; only meditation. A call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before ten. 19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their convictions. Friend Roper in the chair. 22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo's Sorrows amongst us, one unto each ; the which she had caused to be im- printed at her own risk and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair. 26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy brother Upham, at his House of Welcome, to spread before us the g-eature comforts most abundant!}'-, with a great outpouring of the foreign luxury which is called Champagne ; the which was greatly discussed ; and Brother Upham thereafter rebuked for. the same, for that it was not of the kind which is still. 29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape of a Tract ; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair. THE QUAKERS' CONVERSAZIONE. 229 2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail, excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called " The Moral Gipsy." The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny. 5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent Jocularity ; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as tending to a defence of levity. A stiflf debate Ihereon, in which all the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merri- ment at Friend Sexton in his rebuking, saying " Christian gravy," instead of gravity, by a slip of the tongue. 9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Fol- lowed with silence. "it can't be helped.' 12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair. 16. At Sister Rumble's, by course of rotation. No other 230 HOOD'S 0\VN. member present, save mine own self, as by duty bound. A de- plorable falling awiiy from the cause. Whereof more hereafter. ***** :^ The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Inno- cent Jocularity and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature in applying the designation of " Quaker Poetry" to foregone lays and lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature ; the second a hint how Peace ought not to be proclaimed. SONNET. BY R. M. How sweet thus clad, in Autumn's mellow Tone, With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view ! No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew. The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue, Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool, Reflected show their slaty Shades anew In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool. Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School, In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest. And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool, And chasten'd Pigments, of our Brother West ; Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool, Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast. THE QUAKERS CONVERSAZIONE. 231 LINES ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE. BY DOBCAS DOVE. And is it thus ye welcome Peace ! From mouths of forty-pounding Bores ? Oh cease, exploding Cannons, cease ! Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores ! Not so the quiet Queen should come ; But like a Nurse to still our Fears, With Shoes of List, demurely dumb, And Wool or Cotton in her Ears ! She asks for no triumphal Arch ; No Steeples for their ropy Tongues ; Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March, Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs. She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats To tell that She is drawing nigh : . Why this Parade of scarlet Coats, When War has closed his bloodshot Eye ? Returning to Domestic Loves, When War has ceased with all its Ills, - Captains should come like sucking Doves, With Olive Branches in their Bills. No need there is of vulgar Shout, Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife and Drum, And Soldiers marching all about. To let Us know that Peace is come. O mild should be the Signs, and meek, Sweet Peace's Advent to proclaim ! Silence her noiseless Foot should speak, And Echo should repeat the same. 232 HOOD'S OWN. Lo ! where the Soldier walks, alas ! With Scars received on foreign Grounds ; Shall we consume in coloured Glass The Oil that should be pour'd in Wounds ? The bleeding Gaps of War to close, Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail ? Will Squibs enliven Orphan's Woes ? Or Crackers cheer the Widow's Tale ? A OKKERAL PEACE. 233 THE MORNING CALL. I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary- traveller than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley re- minds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem hke blankets, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets ; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling- cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach hning feels softlier squabbed ; the guard's horn plays " Lullaby." Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid ; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He shdes into imaginary slippers ; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread " all before him where to choose his place of rest." It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog- day's journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the com- pany in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been " a pint of nappy," surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slip- shod, up the staii-s to number nine. Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who fii-st invented 234 HOOD'S OWN. sleep : and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped ojQT me : I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster : " Great Nature's second course " was spread before me ; — and I fell to without a long grace ! Here's a body — there's a bed ! There's pillow — here's a head ! There's a curtain — here's a light ! There's a puff— and so Good Night ! It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion ; for I was to be roused up again at four o'clock the next morning, to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could ; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod. How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,— as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber, — nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster— or rather I must have slept " like winkin'," for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried " Sleep no more ! " It was that of Boots, calHng and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my cham- ber. "Who's there?" "It's me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon — but somehow I've oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by !" SKETCHES ON THE ROAD. 235 " The devil it is ! — then I have lost my place !" " No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon t'other end o' the town ; and if your honour wouldn't object to a bit of a run — " " That's enough — come in. Put down the light — and take up that bag — my coat over youi' arm — and waistcoat with it — and that cravat." Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed — pocketed my nightcap — screwed on my stockings — plunged into my trowsei-s — rammed my feet into wrong right and left boots — tumbled down the back stairs — burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of the stable -yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, run- ning and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one. " And you call this waking me up — for the coach. My waist- coat ! — Why I could wake myself — too late — without being called. Now my cravat — and be hanged to you ! — Confound that stone — and give me my coat. A nice road — for a run ! — I suppose you keep it — on purpose. How many gentlemen — may you do a week ? — I'll tell you what. If I — run — a foot — further—" I paused for wind ; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square ; and on the opposite side, certainly there stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me, aghast, and surveying the house from the top to the bottom ; not a wreath of smoke came from a chimney ; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. 236 HOOD'S OWN. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the in- fernal somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake — he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out. " Yes, you may well look — you have overslept yourself with a vengeance. The coach must have passed an hour ago — and they have all gone to bed again ! " "No, there be no coach, sure enough," sohloquised Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been search- ing for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a depre- cating expression on my face. " No, there's no coach — I ax a thousand pardons, your honour — but you see, sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her, and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life, your honour — why I sometimes dreams on her — and that's the case as is now 1 " WHY don't you look out for work?" 237 Ml] Intr Enir iBir I. VI. My mother bids me bind my heir, Too many of all trades there be, But not the trade where I should Like Pedlars, each has such s bind ; pack ; To place a boy — the how and A merchant selling coals'^ — we where — see It is the plague of parent-kind ! The buyer send to cellar back. II. vn. She does not hint the slightest A Hardware dealer 1 — that might plan, please, Nor what indentures to endorse ; But if his trade's foundation leans Whether to bind him to a man, — On spikes and nails, he wor.'fc Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse. have ease in. When he retires upon his means. What line to choose of likely rise, viii. To something in the Stocks at A Soldier ? — there he has not last, — nerves ; " Fast bind, fast find," the proverb A Sailor seldom lays up pelf: cries, A Baker ? — no, a baker serves I find I cannot bind so fast ! His customer before himself. IV. IX. A Statesman James can never be ; Dresser of hair ? — that's not the A Tailor? — there I only learn sort ; His chief concern is cloth, and he A Joiner jars with his desire — Is always cutting his concern. A Churchman ? — James is very V. short, A Seedsman ?— I'd not have him And cannot to a church aspire. so; X. A Grocer's plum might disappoint ; A Lawyer? — that's a hardish term ! A Butcher ? — no, not that — al- A Publisher might give him ease, though If he could into Longman's firm, I hear " the times are out of Just plunge at once " in medias joint ! " Rees." 238 HOOD'S OWN. A shop for pot, and pan, and cup, Such brittle Stock I can't advise ; A Builder running houses up, Their gains are stories — may be lies! XII. A Coppersmith I can't endure — Nor petty Usher, A, B, C-ing ; A Publican no father sure. Would be the author of his be- XIII. A Paper-maker? — come he must To rags before he sells a sheet — A Miller ? — all his toil is just • To make a meal — he does not eat. XIV. A Currier ? — that by favour goes — A Chandler gives me great mis- giving— An Undertaker ? — one of those That do not hope to get their living ! THE FAMILY LIBRARY. XV. An Auctioneer I never did- Three Golden Balls ? — I like them The victim of a slavish lot, not; Obliged to do as he is bid ! MV SON AND HEIR. 239 A Broker watching foil and rise Of Stock?— I'd rather deal in stone — A Printer? — there Ms toils com- prise Another's work beside his own. XVII, A Cooper ? — neither I nor Jem Have any taste or turn for that, — A Fish retailer ? — but with him, One part of trade is always flat. xvm. A Painter ? — long he would not live, — An Artist's a precarious craft — In trade Apothecaries give, But very seldom take, a drjiiigfht. XIX. A Glazier ? — what if he should smash ! A Crispin he shall not be "^ade — A Grazier may be losing Although he drives "a ng trade." XX. Well, something must be done ! to look On all my little works around — James is too big a boy, like book, To leave upon the shelf unbound. XXI. But what to do ? — my temples ache From evening's dew till morning's pearl. What course to take my boy to make-^— Oh could I make my boy — a girl ! THE END. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent; Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: April 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive ! LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 492 908 1 >