When I was a bachelor I lived by myself;
All the bread and cheese I had, I laid upon the shelf.
But the rats and the mice they made such a strife,
I was forced to go to London to buy myself a wife.
The roads were so bad, and the lanes were so narrow,
I had to bring my wife home in a wheelbarrow.
The wheelbarrow broke. My wife had a fall;
Deuce take the wheelbarrow, my wife, and all.
The above lines were written when the author was quite advanced in
years; when he had solved, in his humble way, the great problem of life,
and discovered the futility of mundane things generally, and t
undesirableness of an unsuccessful or unfortunate existence; when he
could look back through a long vista of years, and see the follies of
his youth and the mistakes of his manhood. It should have been placed at
the end of his book, with only the word Finis after it; but somehow,
either by mistake of the author or of the publisher, it was placed among
the records of the simple events of the village, and thus loses half its
force. However, let the history, placed as it is, be a warning to rash
young men who contemplate matrimony; and let them give heed to it, lest
they also have cause to repent of their doings and exclaim with the
poet:--
"The deuce take it."
Observe how pathetic and touching his reminiscence of his lost youth and
the priceless boon of liberty. He commences in a quiet descriptive way,
leaving one at a loss to know whether it is to be a joyful lyric a dirge
he intends singing.
"When I was a bachelor I lived by myself;
All the bread and cheese I had I laid upon the shelf."
Here we have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in
the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the
brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in
solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his
bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he had left his
parental abode, and the ministering and watchful care of his maternal
parent.
There must, of course, have been a cause for such a step. Some reason
why the gentle being should have been wrought up to that pitch, when he
daringly throws off all restraint, and steps into the world to act and
think for himself. It may have been the want of sympathy that drove him
to the act. They were plain folks, and didn't appreciate his peculiar
turn of mind, and so only laughed at him, and ridiculed his pretensions.
That there was a quarrel there is no manner of doubt, and it was
probably caused by the mortifying act of his mother in fainting when he
read her the poetry he had written at her request. That, in itself, was
enough to break all ties between them. She was horrified and overwhelmed
with dismay that a child of hers could be guilty of such atrocious
rhymes; and he, in turn, was disgusted that a mother of his should be so
unappreciative and earthly. And so, by mutual consent, they separated.
That accounts for his bachelor habit of laying his bread and cheese on
the shelf that he might have it handy, and not forget where he had
placed it. But as
"The rats and mice made such a strife,"
he found that would never do. Something else must be thought of; and
being an inventive genius, he tried putting it in his trunk, but it
scented his Sunday jacket and trousers, and the girls all turned up
their noses at the odd perfume. So, driven to extremity, he in an evil
hour decided, as many another has since done, that the remedy for his
ills was matrimony, and that it was not well for man to live alone.
A Prophet is without honor in his own country, and so ofttimes is a
Poet. To his bashful supplication of "Wilt thou?" the young maidens if
his village unhesitatingly refused to wilt, and thus it was that
circumstances forced him
"To go to London to buy himself a wife."
How fortunate that he should give us, inadvertently as it were, the
information so necessary to the unlucky young men of this later day, the
best place to go shopping for wives! No man after reading the above need
say "he doesn't marry because he cannot, as no one will have him." He
need not stop for that hereafter, but just go to London, pick out one to
suit, pay the price, and bag the article. It can all be done in a day,
and save time wonderfully.
He bought his wife--a cheap one undoubtedly--and gave his promise to
pay; then started homeward, feeling his importance as a married man, and
chuckling over the idea of the astonishment and dismay of the rats and
mice when he should set his wife after them, and thereby deprive them of
their daily rations. But while musing thus, he discovers his wile shows
signs of fatigue, as
"The roads were bad, and the lanes were narrow,"
and not wishing to have her exhausted before commencing business, he
gallantly determined to give her a ride, well knowing she would need all
her strength for the battle he intended she should win.
So borrowing a wheelbarrow of a trusting neighbor, he seated her
therein, and amid great rejoicing at his extraordinary "luck" he set
forward. But now comes the sad part of the story:
"The wheelbarrow broke--my wife had a fall."
And what a fall was there, my countrymen! Words are inadequate. The
scene was indescribable, and we leave a blank that each may picture it
to suit themselves.
After the excitement occasioned by the catastrophe was somewhat abated,
he picked up the pieces and tried to put the wheelbarrow together again.
But it was too far gone; it was un-put-togetherable, and so he, more in
sorrow than anger, stood gazing at the wreck, while his wife, being a
woman, could not resist the impulse to cry exultingly, "I told you so; I
knew it." That on top of all the rest of his trouble was a little too
much; and after fumbling over the pieces a while, "I told you so"
ringing in his ears, he completely lost his temper, and vented his
passion in the words:--
"The deuce take the wheelbarrow."--
and then in a low voice, cautiously turning his head aside, he added:--
"My wife and all."
Together they trudged homeward. Fearful misgivings as to the wisdom of
his step came swooping down upon him, and he almost wished he had not
tried to mend matters, but had patiently borne with the rats, when
suddenly--the vision of a _cat_ swept athwart his mind, and he groaned
aloud in bitterness of spirit.
Not even the ever after clean hearth-stone, with the dead bodies of his
enemies, the rats, piled thereon, could make him forget that one moment
of agonizing consciousness, when he realized for the first time that he
had burdened himself with a wife when a cat would have answered as well.
* * * * *