epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Loquitur.
I’ve slept right through
The night—a rather clever thing to do.
How soundly women sleep looks at his wife.
They’re all alike. The sweetest thing in life
Is woman when she lies with folded tongue,
Its toil completed and its day-song sung.
Thump! That’s the morning paper. What a bore
That it should be delivered at the door.
There ought to be some expeditious way
To get it to one. By this long delay
The fizz gets off the news a rap is heard.
That’s Jane, the housemaid; she’s an early bird;
She’s brought it to the bedroom door, good soul.
Gets up and takes it in. Upon the whole
The system’s not so bad a one. What’s here?
Gad! if they’ve not got after—listen dear,
To sleeping wife—young Gastrotheos! Well,
If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell
She’ll shriek again—with laughter—seeing how
They treated Gast. with her. Yet I’ll allow
’Tis right if he goes dining at The Pup
With Mrs. Thing.
| Wife |
Briskly, waking up.
With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right.
|
| Jonesmith |
Continuing to “seek the light.”
What’s this about old Impycu? That’s good!
Grip—that’s the funny man—says Impy should
Be used as a decoy in shooting tramps.
I knew old Impy when he had the “stamps”
To buy us all out, and he wasn’t then
So bad a chap to have about. Grip’s pen
Is just a tickler!—and the world, no doubt,
Is better with it than it was without.
What? thirteen ladies—Jumping Jove! we know
Them nearly all!—who gamble at a low
And very shocking game of cards called “draw”!
O cracky, how they’ll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw!
Let’s see what else wife snores. Well, I’ll be blest!
A woman doesn’t understand a jest.
Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds
To take a fling at me, condemn him! Reads:
Tom Jonesmith—my name’s Thomas, vulgar cad!—
Of the new Shavings Bank—the man’s gone mad!
That’s libelous; I’ll have him up for that—
Has had his corns cut. Devil take the rat!
What business is’t of his, I’d like to know?
He didn’t have to cut them. Gods! what low
And scurril things our papers have become!
You skim their contents and you get but scum.
Here, Mary, waking wife I’ve been attacked
In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!
|
| Wife |
Reading It.
How wicked! Who do you
Suppose ’twas wrote it?
|
| Jonesmith |
Who? why, who
But Grip, the so-called funny man—he wrote
Me up because I’d not discount his note.
|
|
Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie—
He’ll think of one that’s better by and by;
Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads
A merry measure on it; kicks the shreds
And patches all about the room, and still
Performs his jig with unabated will. |
| Wife |
Warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn.
Dear, do be careful of that second corn.
|
Stanley
Noting some great man’s composition vile:
A head of wisdom and a heart of guile,
A will to conquer and a soul to dare,
Joined to the manners of a dancing bear,
Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey
Of various Nature’s compensating sway;
Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff,
To praise the one and at the other laugh;
Yearn all in vain and impotently seek
Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak
The sycophantic worship of the weak.
Not so the wise, from superstition free,
Who find small pleasure in the supple knee;
Quick to discriminate ’twixt good and bad,
And willing in the king to find the cad—
No reason seen why genius and conceit,
The power to dazzle and the will to cheat,
The love of daring and the love of gin,
Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin.
To such, great Stanley, you’re a hero still,
Despite your cradling in a tub for swill.
Your peasant manners can’t efface the mark
Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.
In you the extremes of character are wed,
To serve the quick and vilify the dead.
Hero and clown! O, man of many sides,
The Muse of Truth adores you and derides,
And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray
Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.
One of the Unfair Sex
She stood at the ticket-seller’s
Serenely removing her glove,
While hundreds of strugglers and yellers,
And some that were good at a shove,
Were clustered behind her like bats in
a cave and dissembling their love.
At night she still stood at that window
Endeavoring her money to reach;
The crowds in her rear, how they sinned—O,
How dreadfully sinned in their speech!
Ten miles and a fraction extended their
line, the historians teach.
She stands there to-day—legislation
Has failed to remove her. The trains
No longer pull up at that station;
And over the ghastly remains
Of the army that waited and died of old
age fall the snows and the rains.
The Lord’s Prayer on a Coin
Upon this quarter-eagle’s leveled face,
The Lord’s Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace.
“Our Father which”—the pronoun there is funny,
And shows the scribe to have addressed the money—
“Which art in Heaven”—an error this, no doubt:
The preposition should be stricken out.
Needless to quote; I only have designed
To praise the frankness of the pious mind
Which thought it natural and right to join,
With rare significancy, prayer and coin.
An Absurdum
Congressman Rixey, you’re a statesman—you
Yourself will hardly say that you are not;
And yet I know not what you hope to do
For those Confederates whose luckless lot
Is to have lived through storms of Yankee shot
To this our day. They draw their breath, indeed,
But from the Government no cent of what
So admirably serves your nobler need.
You work for it? Why, that all cavilers concede.
You’d call these “rebels” to the Soldiers’ Homes
On equal terms with persons whom they fought!
Whereat the “truly loyal” statesman foams
At the loud mouth of him. But that is naught—
He foams, not for he must, but for he ought:
For the Poll-patriot’s emotions flow
By taking (with much else of value) thought.
His feelings, if he have them, never blow
His cooling coal of anger to a brighter glow.
Well, well, sir, even the Devil may be right
Through ignorance or accident. ’Tis said
We’re sometimes dazzled with too great a light.
In which the blind, with customary tread
(And by a small, unblinking puppy led)
Walk prosperous courses to appointed goals.
And so your critics, though
