“I will!--as sure as I was christen’d John! A girl--well born--and bred,--and school’d at Ditton-- Accomplish’d--handsome--with a tail stuck on! And chuck’d, Zounds! chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten I wish I had been by when that was written!”-- And doubling to a fist each ample hand, The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton, As if in training for a fight, long plann’d, With Nobody--for love--at No Man’s Land! [Illustration: A FOWL WIND.] “I’ll pond--I’ll tail him!”--In a voice of thunder He recommenced his fury and his fuss, Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder, Like one of those great guns that end in buss. “I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!” But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others, His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus: “Men are not women--fathers can’t be mothers,-- Females are females”--and a few such others. So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly, She hustled him outside the chamber-door, Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly; And then she did as the Carinthian boor Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor! _Id est_, she shut him in the outer space, With just as much apology--no more-- As Boreas would present in such a case, For slamming the street door right in your face. And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept, What passed in that important tête-à-tête ’Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate-- So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late, In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks, In such a very waspish stinging state, But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks, Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks; Because that new fast four-inside--the Comet, Instead of keeping its appointed time, Had deviated some few minutes from it, A thing with all astronomers a crime, And he had studied in that lore sublime; Nor did his heat get any less or shorter For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water, Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter. At length, “Fair Ellen” sounding with a flourish, The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart: Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart, And soon upon the roof he “topped his part,” Which never had a more impatient man on, Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start Like lightning greased,--or, as at Ballyshannon Sublimed, “greased lightning shot out of a cannon.”