Hurrah! the Season's past at last;
At length we've "done" our pleasure.
Dear "Pater," if you _only_ knew
How much I've _longed_ for home and you,--
Our own green lawn and leisure!
And then the pets! One half forgets
The dear dumb friends--in Babel.
I hope my special fish is fed;--
I long to see poor Nigra's head
Pushed at me from the stable!
I long to see the cob and "Rob,"--
Old Bevis and the Collie;
And _won't_ we read in "Traveller's Rest"!
Home readings after all are best;--
None else seem half so "jolly!"
One misses your dear kindly store
Of fancies quaint and funny;
One misses, too, your kind _bon-mot_;--
The Mayfair wit I mostly know
Has more of gall than honey!
How tired one grows of "calls and balls!"
This "_toujours perdrix_" wearies;
I'm longing, quite, for "Notes on Knox";
(_Apropos_, I've the loveliest box
For holding _Notes and Queries_!)
A change of place would suit my case.
You'll take me?--on probation?
As "Lady-help," then, let it be;
I feel (as Lavender shall see),
That Jams are _my_ vocation!
How's Lavender? My love to her.
Does Briggs still flirt with Flowers?--
Has Hawthorn stubbed the common clear?--
You'll let me give _some_ picnics, Dear,
And ask the Vanes and Towers?
I met Belle Vane. "HE'S" still in Spain!
Sir John won't let them marry.
Aunt drove the boys to Brompton Rink;
And Charley,--changing Charley,--think,
Is now _au mieux_ with Carry!
And NO. You know what "_No_" I mean--
There's no one yet at present:
The Benedick I have in view
Must be a something wholly new,--
One's father's _far_ too pleasant.
So hey, I say, for home and you!
Good-by to Piccadilly;
Balls, beaux, and Bolton-row, adieu!
Expect me, Dear, at half-past two;
Till then,--your Own Fond--MILLY.
"PREMIERS AMOURS."
_Old Loves and old dreams,--_
_"Requiescant in pace."_
_How strange now it seems,--_
_"Old" Loves and "old" dreams!_
_Yet we once wrote you reams
_Maude, Alice, and Gracie!_
_Old Loves and old dreams,--_
_"Requiescant in pace."_
When I called at the "Hollies" to-day,
In the room with the cedar-wood presses,
Aunt Deb. was just folding away
What she calls her "memorial dresses."
She'd the frock that she wore at fifteen,--
Short-waisted, of course--my abhorrence;
She'd "the loveliest"--something in "een"
That she wears in her portrait by Lawrence;
She'd the "jelick" she used--"as a Greek," (!)
She'd the habit she got her bad fall in;
She had e'en the blue _moiré antique_
That she opened Squire Grasshopper's ball in:--
New and old they were all of them there:--
Sleek velvet and bombazine stately,--
She had hung them each over a chair
To the "_paniers_" she's taken to lately
(Which she showed me, I think, by mistake).
And I conned o'er the forms and the fashions,
Till the faded old shapes seemed to wake
All the ghosts of my passed-away "passions;"--
From the days of love's youthfullest dream,
When the height of my shooting idea
Was to burn, like a young Polypheme,
For a somewhat mature Galatea.
There was Lucy, who "tiffed" with her first,
And who threw me as soon as her third came;
There was Norah, whose cut was the worst,
For she told me to wait till my "berd" came;
Pale Blanche, who subsisted on salts;
Blonde Bertha, who doted on Schiller;
Poor Amy, who taught me to waltz;
Plain Ann, that I wooed for the "siller;"--
All danced round my head in a ring,
Like "The Zephyrs" that somebody painted,
All shapes of the feminine thing--
Shy, scornful, seductive, and sainted,--
To my Wife, in the days she was young....
"How, Sir," says that lady, disgusted,
"Do you dare to include ME among
Your loves that have faded and rusted?"
"Not at all!"--I benignly retort.
(I was just the least bit in a temper!)
"Those, alas! were the fugitive sort,
But you are my--_eadem semper_!"
Full stop,--and a Sermon. Yet think,--
There was surely good ground for a quarrel,--
She had checked me when just on the brink
Of--I feel--a remarkable MORAL.