The Bab Ballads, with Which Are Included Songs of a SavoyardGilbert, W. S. (William Schwenck)
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The Bab Ballads, with Which Are Included Songs of a Savoyard
Gilbert, W. S. (William Schwenck)
English wit and humor; Humorous poetry, English; Songs, English -- Texts
She was an excellent person in every way--and won the
respect even of MRS. GRUNDY,
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted
a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor;
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of
Sunday,
And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she
took all the bones and cold potatoes and broken
pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she had quite done
with them), and made them into an excellent soup
for the deserving poor.
I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE--that outcast
of society;
And when respectable brothers who were fond of her
began to look dubious and to cough,
She would say, "Oh, my friends, it's because I hope to
bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and
propriety"
(And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults,
was uncommonly well off).
And when MR. BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attention
to the frown or the pout of her,
Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to
savour of an unmentionable place,
He would say she would be a very decent old girl when all
that nonsense was knocked out of her--
And his method of knocking it out of her is one that
covered him with disgrace.
She was fond of going to church services four times every
Sunday, and four or five times in the week, and never
seemed to pall of them,
So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient
distance that had services at different hours, so to
speak;
And when he had married her he positively insisted upon
their going to all of them,
So they contrived to do about twelve churches every
Sunday, and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to
twenty-three in the course of the week.
She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into
the plate, and she liked to see them stand out rather
conspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns
and shillings,
So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any
extraordinary chance there wasn't a charity sermon
anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one
for him and one for her) into the poor-box at the
door;
[Illustration]
And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity
from the housekeeping money, and the money he
allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,
She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it
to interfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an
intolerable bore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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