Hear the matron with her bills! Many bills, What a pleasant breakfast time their large addition kills. From our happy dreams by night, How we start with ghastly fright, And quick relapse with melancholy groan, Again to hear their notes From their grim fantastic throats In threatening tone. And the devils! Ah! the devils, And minutely he that revels All alone In the padding, padding, padding, In that dismal monotone, Feels delight as thus he’s adding Round the debtor’s neck a stone. He is neither man nor woman, But a junior clerk inhuman, Worst of lads. And his chief it is who pads, And he adds, adds, adds, Adds More figures to the bills, And his demon mind it fills With delight to view the bills, And he capers and he trills, Keeping time, time, time, In a Basinghall street rhyme, To the rustle of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, To the total of the bills, Keeping time, time, time, As he trills, trills, trills, In a Basinghall street rhyme, To the padding of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, To the adding of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills, Oh, the trying care, undying, of the bills! _The Corkscrew Papers._ London: W. H. GUEST, 1876. ――――:o:―――― THE SWELLS. Listen to the lisping of the swells―― Awful swells _Ennui_ in intensity each drawling accent tells, As they saunter in the “Row,” With _entourage comme il faut_, Far too _blasé_ e’en to speak, Save in childish pipings weak, Out of tune,―― In a mild expostulation at the want of something new, In a clamorous appealing at the dearth of aught to do,―― Looking cool, cool, cool, At all “get-ups” not by POOLE, As club scandal they retail Of the last connubial sale Of the day! How they leer, And peer, and sneer, At Saint John’s Wood broughams queer, In a charmingly debilitated way!