Hear the doctor with his bills, Horrid bills! What a world of medicine, of powders and of pills, How you sicken, sicken, sicken, When they burst upon your sight, While your very pulse will quicken, And your blood will seem to thicken, And throb in fearful fright, Keeping time, time, time, In an allopathic rhyme, To the merry little “guinea” that so very neatly fills Up the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills, That adds a portly total to the bills. Hear the tailor with his bills, Heavy bills! What a vast extravagance their money column fills, In the merry summer’s light, How they pall upon the sight, From the hard up debtors’ throats, In dismal tune, What a grumbling ditty floats, To the sanguine “Master Stitchem” as he gloats, Grasping loon. Oh, from out his sounding tills What a rush of chinking satirically trills, How it trills, How it spills. Hopes of Future! How it fills Up the cranium to “dils.” Oh, the adding and the padding, Of the bills, bills, bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills, Till we’re bilious at the summary of bills. Hear the butcher with his bills, Meaty bills! What a hearty appetite their money column fills, On the thoughtful mind at night, How they grin with blue delight, We’re too much annoyed to speak, But we shriek a dismal shriek, And out of tune, In a senseless, vain appealing to the mercy of the man, In a vain expostulation with the deaf and grasping man. Screaming man, man, man, Make them smaller if you can, And our sensible endeavour Shall be never, never, never, To pay the greasy, red-faced loon. Oh, the bills, bills, bills, What a cup their total fills, Of despair! How they come in more and more, Till the eye is nearly sore As it contemplates the culminating store. Yet the mind it fully knows By the ringing, They are bringing, A further lot which we must add to those, Yet the bosom quickly fills, By the ringing, By the ringing, With a dark foreboding fills, For it knows of many long outstanding unreceipted bills, Heavy bills! Oh, the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills, Oh, the torture we are put to by the bills!