DUGGINS.
Sally is ripe as June or May,
And yet as cold as Christmas day;
For when she’s asked to change her lot,
Lamb’s wool,—but Sally, she wool not
[Pg 101]
HUGGINS.
Only with Peggy and with health,
I’d never wish for state or wealth;
Talking of having health and more pence,
I’d drink her health if I had fourpence.
DUGGINS.
Oh, how that day would seem to shine,
If Sally’s banns were read with mine;
She cries, when such a wish I carry,
“Marry come up!” but will not marry.
DOMESTIC DIDACTICS.
BY AN OLD SERVANT.
IT is not often when the Nine descend that they go so low as into areas; it is certain, nevertheless, that they were in the habit of visiting John Humphreys, in the kitchen of No. 189, Portland Place, disguised, no doubt, from mortal eye, as seamstresses or charwomen—at all events, as Winifred Jenkins says, “they were never ketch’d in the fact.” Perhaps it was the rule of the house to allow no followers, and they were obliged to come by stealth, and to go in the same manner; indeed, from the fragmental nature of John’s verses, they appear to have often left him very abruptly. Other pieces bear witness of the severe distraction he suffered between his domestic duty to the Umphravilles, twelve in family, with their guests, and his own secret visitors from Helicon. It must have been provoking, when seeking for a simile, to be sent in search of a salt-cellar; or when hunting for a rhyme, to have to look for a missing teaspoon. By a whimsical peculiarity, the causes of these lets and hindrances are recorded in his verses, by way of parenthesis:
[Pg 102]
 and though John’s poetry was of a decidedly serious an............