I once had a dog that went mad,
And sorry I was that I got him;
It came to a run,
And a man with a gun
Pepper’d me when he ought to have shot him.
[Pg 193]
My profits have gone to the dogs,
My trade has been such a deceiver,
I fear that my aim
Is a mere losing game,
Unless I can find a Retriever.
THE KANGAROOS.
A FABLE.
A PAIR of married kangaroos
(The case is oft a human one too)
Were greatly puzzled once to choose
A trade to put their eldest son to:
A little brisk and busy chap,
As all the little K.’s just then are—
About some two months off the lap,—
They’re not so long in arms as men are.
A twist in each parental muzzle
Betray’d the hardship of the puzzle—
So much the flavour of life’s cup
Is framed by early wrong or right,
And Kangaroos we know are quite
Dependent on their “rearing up.”
The question, with its ins and outs,
Was intricate and full of doubts;
And yet they had no squeamish carings
For trades unfit or fit for gentry,
Such notion never had an entry,
For they had no armorial bearings.
Howbeit they’re not the last on earth
That might indulge in pride of birth;
[Pg 194]
Whoe’er has seen their infant young
Bob in and out their mother’s pokes,
Would own, with very ready tongue,
They are not born like common folks.
Well, thus the serious subject stood,
It kept the old pair watchful nightly,
Debating for young hopeful’s good,
That he might earn his livelihood,
And go through life (like them) uprightly.
Arms would not do at all; no, marry,
In that line all his race miscarry;
And agriculture was not proper,
Unless they meant the lad to tarry
For ever as a mere clod-hopper.
He was not well cut out for preaching,
At least in any striking style;
And as for being mercantile—
He was not form’d for over-reaching.
The law—why there still fate ill-starr’d him,
And plainly from the bar debarr’d him:
A doctor—who would ever fee him?
In music he could scarce engage,
And as for going on the stage
In tragic socks I think I see him!
He would not make a rigging-mounter;
A haberdasher had some merit,
But there the counter still ran counter,
For just suppose
A lady chose
To ask him for a yard of ferret!
A gardener digging up his beds,
The puzzled parents shook their heads.
[Pg 195]
“A tailor would not do because—”
They paused and glanced upon his paws.
Some parish post, though fate should place it
Before him, how could he embrace it?
In short each anxious Kangaroo
Discuss’d the matter through and through;
By day they seem’d to get no nearer,
’Twas posing quite—
And in the night
Of course they saw their way no clearer!
At last thus musing on their knees—
Or hinder elbows if you please—
It came—no thought was ever brighter!
In weighing every why and whether,
They jump’d upon it both together—
“Let’s make the imp a short-hand writer!”
MORAL.
I wish all human parents so
Would argue what their sons are fit for;
Some would-be critics that I know
Would be in trades they have more wit for.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. II.
TO do justice to the climate of “stout and original Scotland,” it promised to act kindly by the constitution committed to its care. The air evidently agreed with the natives; and auld Robin Grays and John Andersons were plenty as blackberries, and Auld Lang Syne himself seemed to walk, bonneted, amongst
[Pg 196]
 these patriarchal figures in the likeness of an old man covered with a mantle. The effect on myself was rather curious—for I seemed to have come amongst a generation that scarcely belonged to my era; mature spinsters, waning bachelors, very motherly matrons, and experienced fathers, that I should have set down as uncles and aunts, called themselves my cousins; reverend personages, apparently grandfathers and grandmothers, were simply great uncles and aunts: and finally I enjoyed an interview with a relative oftener heard of traditionally, than encountered in the body—a great-great grandmother—still a tall woman and a tolerable pedestrian, going indeed down the hill, but with the wheel well locked. It was like coming amongst the Struldbrugs; and truly, for any knowledge to the contrary, many of these Old Mortalities are still living, enjoying their sneeshing, their toddy, their cracks, and particular reminiscences. The very phrase of being “Scotch’d, but not killed,” seems to refer to this Caledonian tenacity of life, of which the well-known Walking Stewart was an example: he was an annuitant in the County-office, and as the actuaries would say, died very hard. It must be difficult for the teatotallers to reconcile this longevity with the imputed enormous consumption of ardent spirits beyond the Tweed. Scotia, according to the evidence of Mr. Buckingham’s committee, is an especially drouthie bodie, who drinks whiskey at christenings, and at buryings, and on all possible occasions besides. Her sons drink not by the hour or by the day, but by the week,—witness Souter Johnny:—
“Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither,
They had been fou for weeks thegither.”
Swallowing no thin washy potation, but a strong overproof spirit, with a smack of smoke—and “where there is smoke there is fire,” yet without flashing off, according to temperance theories, by spontaneous combustion. On the contrary, the canny northerns are noted for soundness of constitution and clearness
[Pg 197]
 of head, with such a strong principle of vitality as to justify the poetical prediction of C***, that the world’s longest liver, or Last Man, will be a Scotchman.
All these favourable signs I duly noted; and prophetically refrained from delivering the letter of introduction to Doctor C——, which was to place me under his medical care. As the sick man said, when he went into the gin-shop instead of the hospital, I “trusted to natur.” Whenever the weather permitted, therefore, which was generally when there were no new books to the fore, I haunted the banks and braes, or paid flying visits to the burns, with a rod intended to punish that rising ge............