(_By a Mournful Moralist._)
Each day my heart with pity throbs;
Can sympathy refuse
The ready tears, the frequent sobs,
When reading City news?
Not long ago I daily found
That you were good and "strong"--
You gained but little, I'll be bound,
Nor kept that little long;
Yet I was happy, since it meant
That, for a blissful term,
You were so very excellent,
So "steady" and so "firm."
Prosperity brings pride to all;
You rose too high to sell.
Then--pride must always have a fall--
You lamentably fell.
Think what your altered state has cost.
Alas, you must confess
That you are ruined since you lost
Your noble steadiness!
"Unsettled" then--oh, feeble will!--
"Inactive" you were too.
There's Someone "finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
"Why be inactive? All should work.
Rise then, and do not seek
Good honest enterprise to shirk,
Because you're rather "weak."
Alas, what use exhorting that
Your fall you should annul?
When some remark that you are "flat,"
And others call you "dull."
At times I hoped that you would turn,
And mend your evil ways,
That you were "better," I would learn,
And "quiet" on some days.
But now your baseness fitly ends,
"Irregular"--and so
You are "neglected" by your friends,
Who all pronounce you "low."
This conduct gives me such a shock,
I wipe my streaming eyes--
I want to sell some railway stock;
I'm waiting for the rise!
* * * * *
THE "ULTRA FASHIONABLE DINNER-HOUR" WHEN DICKENS WROTE _MARTIN
CHUZZLEWIT_.--It is mentioned by _Montague Tigg_, when that typical
swindler gives _Jonas Chuzzlewit_ an invitation to a little dinner.
It was "seven." Very few have guessed it, but most correspondents have
referred to the dinner-hour at _Todgers's_. But _Todgers's_ was a very
second-class establishment.
SOMEBODY proposes another Dickensian query:--SCENE--_The wedding at
Wardle's._ TIME--_After the wedding breakfast:_--"At dinner they met
again, after a five-and-twenty-mile walk." Where did they breakfast,
and where did they dine, and how many hours did men of _Mr.
Pickwick's_ and _Mr. Tupman's_ build take to do a twenty-five-mile
walk in?
* * * * *
THE GOLFER'S PARADISE.--_Link_-ed sweetness long drawn out.
* * * * *