To set our only friends agin us! That neither care to fat nor thin us! To boil, to broil, to roast, or fry us, But act like real Christians by us!-- A murrain on all legislators! Thin wash, sour grains, and rotten ’taters! A bulldog at their ears and tails! The curse of empty troughs and pails Famish their flanks as thin as weasels! May all their children have the measles; Or in the straw untimely smother, Or make a dinner for the mother! A cartwhip for all law inventors! And rubbing-posts stuck full of tenters! Yokes, rusty rings, and gates, to hitch in And parish pounds to pine the flitch in, Cold, and high winds, the Devil send ’em-- And then may Sam the Sticker end ’em!” ’Twas strange to hear him how he swore! A Boar will curse, though like a boar, While Bess, like Pity, at his side Her swine-subduing voice supplied! She bade him such a rage discard; That anger is a foe to lard; ’Tis bad for sugar to get wet, And quite as bad for fat to fret; “Besides,”--she argued thus at last-- “The Bill you fume at has not pass’d, For why, the Commons and the Peers Have come together by the ears: Or rather, as we pigs repose, One’s tail beside the other’s nose, And thus, of course, take adverse views Whether of Gentiles or of Jews. Who knows? They say the Lords’ ill-will Has thrown out many a wholesome Bill, And p’rhaps some Peer to Pigs propitious May swamp a measure so _Jew-dish-us_!” The Boar was conquer’d: at a glance, He saw there really was a chance-- That as the Hebrew nose is hooked, The Bill was equally as crooked; And might outlast, thank party embers, A dozen tribes of Christian members;-- So down he settled in the mud, With smoother back, and cooler blood, As mild, as quiet, a Blue Boar, As any over tavern-door. MORAL. The chance is small that any measure Will give all classes equal pleasure; Since Tory Ministers or Whigs, Sometimes can’t even “please the Pigs.” A FLYING VISIT. “A Calendar! a Calendar! look in the Almanac, find out moonshine--find out moonshine!”--_Midsummer Night’s Dream._ The by-gone September, As folks may remember, At least if their memory saves but an ember, One fine afternoon, There went up a Balloon, Which did not return to the Earth very soon. For, nearing the sky, At about a mile high, The Aëronaut bold had resolved on a fly; So cutting his string, In a Parasol thing, Down he came in a field like a lark from the wing. Meanwhile, thus adrift, The Balloon made a shift To rise very fast, with no burden to lift; It got very small, Then to nothing at all; And then rose the question of where it would fall?