POPULAR SONG, _with a few slight alterations by myself, and which I was forced to make, for positively all the Maids spoken of in Ballads seem to have been such pinks-of-perfections, and to have come from Llangollen, and Athens, and Judah, and a pack of other such outlandish places, that it is very difficult to find any that will suit me._ I shouldn’t wonder but there are some bilious, discontented people, who will perhaps say that I have been devoting more time and space to Mr. Dick Farden than I ought to have done. But it’s the old fable over again; there was no pleasing everybody, whichever way the man treated the donkey, so of course it’s not to be expected that everybody will be pleased with the account of the way in which Mr. Dick Farden treated me. However, I was determined to do the man justice while I was about him; and now that I’ve come back to Miss Emma, I intend to do the same to her. Perhaps this may meet their eyes some day, and then I dare say it will be a nice blow to them. For, of course, _they_ never thought _they_ were in the wrong, not they, and will be rather surprised to find out what _I_ thought about it. But before beginning my account of that wretched half-witted girl, I should like the reader to understand that it is far from my nature to blame any menial for want of those intellects which are not in our power to command. Of course, poor servants can’t be expected to have had the inestimable blessings of a finished education, like ourselves, and, therefore, a deficiency of understanding in them should be rather pitied than blamed. Though with respect to my Emma, her abominable stupidity was _so_ hard to bear with, that at times, upon my word, it was as much as ever I could do to keep myself from flying out at her, and giving it her soundly. Often and often have I been forced to have a hard battle with myself, to prevent myself from shaking her well, and trying to knock something like sense into the stupid’s brain. It’s all very well for a pack of self-conceited men to say “that a good woman has no head.” I’m sure for the matter of that, my Emma had none at all, and she was bad enough, heaven knows! But what in my opinion, deprived the pitiable object of all sympathy was, that she wasn’t wholly uneducated, and had been taught to read and write, but la! the benefits of reading and writing were entirely thrown away upon _her_; and I verily believe that even if her education had extended to the blessings of the use of the globes, she would have been as little like a rational creature, after all. It’s all very well to talk about manuring the soil, but what are you to do, I should like to know, when there’s no soil to manure? As Edward very truly said, as for furnishing _her_ upper story, you might have put in the table of weights and measures and a complete bookcase beside, and even then her head would have been as empty as ever, for it