“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 own’d, a little silly;
And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor!
[Pg 319]
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 tête-à-tête
’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, stretch’d on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;
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 sho............