Well--what shall she do?-- What's the course to pursue?-- "Try St. Peter?--the step is a bold one to take; For the Saint is, there can't be a doubt, 'wide awake;' But then there's a quaint Old Proverb says, 'Faint Heart ne'er won fair Lady,' then how win a Saint?-- I've a great mind to try-- One can but apply; If things come to the worst, why he can but deny-- The sky 's rather high To be sure--but, now I That cumbersome carcass of clay have laid by, I am just in the 'order' which some folks--though why I am sure I can't tell you--would call 'Apple-pie.' Then 'never say die!' It won't do to be shy, So I'll tuck up my shroud, and--here goes for a fly!"----So said and so done--she was off like a shot, And kept on the whole way at a pretty smart trot. When she drew so near That the Saint could see her, In a moment he frown'd, and began to look queer, And scarce would allow her to make her case clear, Ere he pursed up his mouth 'twixt a sneer and a jeer, With "It's all very well,--but you do not lodge here!"-- Then, calling her everything but "My dear!" He applied his great toe with some force _au derrière_, And dismissed her at once with a flea in her ear. "Alas! poor Ghost!" It's a doubt which is most To be pitied--one doom'd to fry, broil, boil, and roast,-- Or one bandied about thus from pillar to post,-- To be "all abroad"--to be "stump'd" not to know where To go--so disgraced As not to be "placed," Or, as Crocky would say to Jem Bland, "To be Nowhere."-- However that be, The _affaire_ was _finie_, And the poor wretch rejected by all, as you see! Mr. Oliver Goldsmith observes--not the Jew-- That the "Hare whom the hounds and the huntsmen pursue," Having no other sort of asylum in view, "Returns back again to the place whence she flew,"-- A fact which experience has proved to be true.-- Mr. Gray,--in opinion with whom Johnson clashes,-- Declares that our "wonted fires live in our ashes."[62]-- These motives combined, perhaps, brought back the hag, The first to her mansion, the last to her bag, When only conceive her dismay and surprise, As a Ghost how she open'd her cold stony eyes, When there,--on the spot where she'd hid her "supplies,"-- In an underground cellar of very small size, Working hard with a spade, All at once she survey'd That confounded old bandy-legged "Tailor by trade." Fancy the tone Of the half moan, half groan, Which burst from the breast of the Ghost of the crone! As she stood there,--a figure 'twixt moonshine and stone,-- Only fancy the glare in her eyeballs that shone! Although, as Macbeth says, "they'd no speculation," While she uttered that word, Which American Bird Or James Fenimore Cooper, would render "Tarnation!!"