FullReads

Meanwhile Miss Fudge, who loves all lions.
Your saintly, next to great and high ‘uns–
(A Viscount, be he what he may,
Would cut a Saint out any day,)
Has just announced a godly rout,
Where Murtagh’s to be first brought out,
And shown in his tame, week-day state:–
“Prayers, half-past seven, tea at eight.”
Even so the circular missive orders–
Pink cards, with cherubs round the borders.

Haste, Dick–you’re lost, if you lose time;–
Spinsters at forty-five grow giddy,
And Murtagh with his tropes sublime
Will surely carry off old Biddy,
Unless some spark at once propose,
And distance him by downright prose.
That sick, rich squire, whose wealth and lands
All pass, they say, to Biddy’s hands,
(The patron, Dick, of three fat rectories!)
Is dying of angina pectoris;–
So that, unless you’re stirring soon.
Murtagh, that priest of puff and pelf,
May come in for a honey-moon,
And be the man of it, himself!

As for me, Dick–’tis whim, ’tis folly,
But this young niece absorbs me wholly.
‘Tis true, the girl’s a vile verse-maker–
Would rhyme all nature, if you’d let her;–
But even her oddities, plague take her,
But made me love her all the better.
Too true it is, she’s bitten sadly
With this new rage for rhyming badly,
Which late hath seized all ranks and classes,
Down to that new Estate, “the masses “;
Till one pursuit all tastes combines–
One common railroad o’er Parnassus,
Where, sliding in those tuneful grooves,
Called couplets, all creation moves,
And the whole world runs mad in lines.
Add to all this–what’s even still worse,
As rhyme itself, tho’ still a curse,
Sounds better to a chinking purse–
Scarce sixpence hath my charmer got,
While I can muster just a groat;
So that, computing self and Venus,
Tenpence would clear the amount between us.
However, things may yet prove better:–
Meantime, what awful length of letter!
And how, while heaping thus with gibes
The Pegasus of modern scribes,
My own small hobby of farrago
Hath beat the pace at which even they go!

[1] “Our anxious desire is to be found on the side of the Lord.”–Record
Newspaper.

LETTER V. FROM LARRY O’BRANIGAN, IN ENGLAND, TO HIS WIFE JUDY, AT MULLINAFAD.

Dear Judy, I sind you this bit of a letther,
By mail-coach conveyance–for want of a betther–
To tell you what luck in this world I have had
Since I left the sweet cabin, at Mullinafad.
Och, Judy, that night!–when the pig which we meant
To dry-nurse in the parlor, to pay off the rent,
Julianna, the craythur–that name was the death of her–[1]
Gave us the shlip and we saw the last breath of her!
And there were the childher, six innocent sowls,
For their nate little play-fellow turning up howls;
While yourself, my dear Judy (tho’ grievin’s a folly),
Stud over Julianna’s remains, melancholy–
Cryin’, half for the craythur and half for the money,
“Arrah, why did ye die till we’d sowled you, my honey?”

But God’s will be done!–and then, faith, sure enough,
As the pig was desaiced, ’twas high time to be off.
So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch,
Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch,
Then tuk laave of each other’s sweet lips in the dark,
And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark;
The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone!
And poor I wid myself, left condolin’ alone.