_Monday_.
Tried a new chälé gown on--pretty.
No one to see me in it--pity!
Flew in a passion with Fritz, my maid;--
The Lord forgive me!--she lookt dismayed;
But got her to sing the 100th Psalm,
While she curled my hair, which made me calm.
Nothing so soothes a Christian heart
As sacred music--heavenly art!
_Tuesday_
At two a visit from Mr. Magan--
A remarkably handsome, nice young man;
And, all Hibernian tho' he be,
As civilized, strange to say, as we!
I own this young man's spiritual state
Hath much engrossed my thoughts of late;
And I mean, as soon as my niece is gone,
To have some talk with him thereupon.
At present I naught can do or say,
But that troublesome child is in the way;
Nor is there, I think, a doubt that he
Would also her absence much prefer,
As oft, while listening intent to me,
He's forced, from politeness, to look at her.
Heigho!--what a blessing should Mr. Magan
Turn out, after all, a "renewed" young man;
And to me should fall the task, on earth,
To assist at the dear youth's second birth.
Blest thought! and ah! more blest the tie,
Were it Heaven's high will, that he and I--
But I blush to write the nuptial word--
Should wed, as St. Paul says, "in the Lord";
Not _this_ world's wedlock--gross, gallant,
But pure--as when Amram married his aunt.
Our ages differ--but who would count
One's natural sinful life's amount,
Or look in the Register's vulgar page
For a regular twice-born Christian's age,
Who, blessed privilege! only then
Begins to live when he's born again?
And, counting in _this_ way--let me see--
I myself but five years old shall be.
And dear Magan, when the event takes place,
An actual new-born child of grace--
Should Heaven in mercy so dispose--
A six-foot baby, in _swaddling_ clothes.
_Wednesday_.
Finding myself, by some good fate,
With Mr. Magan left _téte-à-téte_,
Had just begun--having stirred the fire,
And drawn my chair near his--to inquire,
What his notions were of Original Sin,
When that naughty Fanny again bounced in;
And all the sweet things I had got to say
Of the Flesh and the Devil were whiskt away!
Much grieved to observe that Mr. Magan
Is actually pleased and, amused with Fan!
What charms any sensible man can see
In a child so foolishly young as she--
But just eighteen, come next Mayday,
With eyes, like herself, full of naught but play--
Is, I own, an exceeding puzzle to me.
[1] "Morning Manna, or British Verse-book, neatly done up for the pocket,"
and chiefly intended to assist the members of the British Verse
Association, whose design is, we are told, "to induce the inhabitants of
Great Britain and Ireland to commit one and the same verse of Scripture to
memory every morning. Already, it is known, several thousand persons in
Scotland, besides tens of thousands in America and Africa, _are every
morning learning the same verse_."
[2] According to the late Mr. Irving, there is even a peculiar form of
theology got up expressly for the money-market, "I know how far wide," he
says, "of the mark my views of Christ's work in the flesh will be viewed
by those who are working with the stock-jobbing theology of the religious
world." "Let these preachers." he adds, "(for I will not call them
theologians), cry up, brother like, their article,"--_Morning Watch_."--
No. iii, 442. 443.