_Nursery Tale._-- I saddled my sow with a sieve full of buttermilk, put my
foot into the stirrup, and leaped nine miles beyond the moon into the land
of temperance, where there was nothing but hammers and hatchets and
candlesticks, and there lay bleeding Old Noles. I let him lie, and sent for
Old Hippernoles, and asked him if he could grind green steel nine times
finer than wheat flour. He said he could not. Gregory's wife was up in the
pear-tree gathering nine corns of buttered peas to pay Saint James' rent.
Saint James was in the meadow mowing oat cakes; he heard a noise, hung his
scythe at his heels, stumbled at the battledore, tumbled over the barn-door
ridge, and broke his shins against a bag of moonshine that stood behind the
stairsfoot door, and if that isn't true you know as well as I.