“'Twas pleasant in the battle-shock to hear our war-cry ringing:
O grant me, sweet St. Willibald, to listen to such singing!
Three hundred steel-clad gentlemen, we drove the foe before us,
And thirty score of British bows kept twanging to the chorus!
O knights, my noble ancestors! and shall I never hear
Saint Willibald for Bareacres through battle ringing clear?
I'd cut me off this strong right hand a single hour to ride,
And strike a blow for Bareacres, my fathers, at your side!
“Dash down, dash down, yon Mandolin, beloved sister mine!
Those blushing lips may never sing the glories of our line:
Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls,
The spinning Jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls.
Sing not, sing not, my Angeline! in days so base and vile,
'Twere sinful to be happy, 'twere sacrilege to smile.
I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob
I'll muse on other days, and wish--and wish I were.--A SNOB.”
“All young Hengland, I'm told, considers the poim bewtifle. They're
always writing about battleaxis and shivvlery, these young chaps; but
the ideer of Southdown in a shoot of armer, and his cuttin hoff his
'strong right hand,' is rayther too good; the feller is about 5 fit
hi,--as ricketty as a babby, with a vaist like a gal; and though he
may have the art and curridge of a Bengal tyger, I'd back my smallest
cab-boy to lick him,--that is, if I AD a cab-boy. But io! MY cab-days is
over.
“Be still my hagnizing Art! I now am about to hunfoald the dark payges
of the Istry of my life!”
“My friends! you've seen me ither2 in the full kerear of Fortn,
prawsprus but not hover prowd of my prawsperraty; not dizzy though
mounted on the haypix of Good Luck--feasting hall the great (like the
Good Old Henglish Gent in the song, which he has been my moddle and
igsample through life), but not forgitting the small--No, my beayvior to
my granmother at Healing shows that. I bot her a new donkey cart (what
the French call a cart-blansh) and a handsome set of peggs for anging up
her linning, and treated Huncle Bill to a new shoot of close, which he
ordered in St. Jeames's Street, much to the estonishment of my Snyder
there, namely an olliffgreen velvyteen jackit and smalclose, and a
crimsn plush weskoat with glas-buttns. These pints of genarawsaty in
my disposishn I never should have eluded to, but to show that I am
naturally of a noble sort, and have that kind of galliant carridge which
is equel to either good or bad forting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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