--There's a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach, That is waiting for you in the church;-- But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech, And you leave your lost bride in the lurch. --There's a babe in a fit,--hurry quick! hurry quick! To the doctor's as fast as you can! The baby is off, while you stick, while you stick, In the grip of the dreadful Old Man! --I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore; The voice of the Simple I know; I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door; I have sat by the side of the Slow; I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend, That stuck to my skirts like a burr; I have borne the stale talk without end, without end, Of the sitter whom nothing could stir: But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake and I shake, At the sight of the dreadful Old Man; Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take, To my legs with what vigor I can! Oh, the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea! He's come back like the Wandering Jew! He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,-- And be sure that he'll have it on you! * * * * * THE GREAT EVENT OF THE CENTURY. A LETTER FROM PAUL TOTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 22,728 Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., New York, May 1, 1858. Dear Don Bobus,--Pardon my abruptness. _In medias res_ is the rule, you know, _formose puer_, my excellent old boy! Bring out the Saint Peray, if there be a bottle of that flavorous and flavous tipple in your extensive cellars,--which I doubt, since you never had more than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller, who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street, in Boston. We drank it, O ale-knight, _sub teg. pat. fag._ more than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then undisfigured by the New Chapel. That it did not kill us as dead as Stilpo of Megara (_vide_ Seneca _de Const_. for a notice of that foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my abstinence and your naturally strong constitution; for I remember that you bolted nearly the whole of it. You proved yourself to be a Mithridates of white lead; while I--but I say no more. I could quote you an appropriate passage from the tippler of Teos, and in the original Greek, if I had not long ago pawned my copy of Anacreon (Barnes, 12 mo. Cantab. 1721) to a fellow in Cornhill, who sold it on the very next day to a total-abstinence tutor. Episodically I may say, that the purchaser read it to such purpose, that within a week he rose to the honor of sleeping in the station-house, from which keep he was rescued by a tearful friend, who sent him to the country, solitude, and spruce-beer.