[Illustration]
Oh! the first Cook, in that ambrosial, unwithering
Halcyon, rapturous, and honeymooning prime!--
She, who, aware of HELEN'S babyish and blithering
Innocence, did a lot of mischief in her time.
Oh! for her soup, a weird, insuperable fearfulness,
Compound of arrowroot, and gelatine, and lard;
Hard, to reject it, when a bride besought, with tearfulness,
Hard, to accept, and to assimilate it, hard!
Oh! for her leather-like, her nauseating omelette,
Oh! for her cutlets and potatoes black as ink!
Oft, of necessity, would I the Buttons, TOMMY, let
Batten on luxuries that bothered him, I think.
And she would mingle, would that woman who did _that_ to me,
Proofs incontestable with everything I ate,
Whereby the veriest beginner of anatomy
Knew that she must be in complexion a _brunette_.
Wild were her sauces, like herself, devoid of reasoning;
Still I have never been indubitably clear,
_Why_ the invariable factor in her seasoning
Always reminded me so forcibly of Beer.
Why, when my darling sighed, "The weekly books are ready, TED,"
And I rejoined that _we_ were thin while _they_ were fat,--
Why, their increasing superfluities were credited
All to a manifestly unoffending cat.
Why, when a joint of whatsoever solid vastiness
Quitted the dining-room, it never came again;
Why my allusions to her culinary nastiness
Only encouraged her, it beats me to explain.
True, for our wages, which were somewhere near the "Twenty-ones,"
Great expectations would have been a trifle rash.
Still, as her perquisites, I know, were cent.-per-cent.-y ones,
Ah! how I wish a _Chef_ had fed us for the cash!
Oh! my first Cook! A gem with so much rare and rich in her,
Irreconcileable, impenetrable soul,
How I exulted when she fell against the kitchener,
Urged by a Nemesis (and legs) beyond control.
How, when my fluttered pet, believing her immaculate,
Hied to her aid, and heard, "_You ain't a Lady, Mum!_"
How I was forced to rather brutally ejaculate,
"Rum! Very rum!--you see the cause of it is '_rum_.'"
Oh! that first year of married paradise! My attitude
Somehow, my sweet, on this our second Wedding-day,
Needs must be one of unadulterated gratitude,
Since we survive the Cook, you wept to send away!
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"HAS LEFT BUT THE NAME."--The intention of the original starters of
the Aquarium was presumably to exhibit fish of all sorts, all alive
oh! and quite at home. Nowadays, very little about fish is to be found
in the advertisements. The fish are, it may be supposed, "taken for
granted." They are conspicuous by their absence; but instead you
read how "a human being dives," how somebody conjures, how there are
"miraculous feats," and "four-legged dancers," and "baby elephants"
waltzing and drum-playing; how somebody of some importance "walks
upside down in mid-air;" how there are "serpentine" dancers,
"pantomimists," "duettists," and, finally, the "boxing kangaroo," so
that altogether the Aquarium may still congratulate itself on a show
of about the "queerest, oddest fish" in the world.
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