PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER. I. O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry! Friend of the Goose and Gander, That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander, Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry, About the happy Fen, Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen, For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!-- II. Friend to all Author-kind-- Whether of Poet or of Proser,-- Thou art composer unto the composer Of pens,--yea, patent vehicles for Mind To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive _Perry_grinations through the realms of Thought; Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive, An Omnibus of intellectual sort! III. Modern Improvements in their course we feel; And while to iron-railroads heavy wares, Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares, Mind flies on steel, To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance. Nay, penetrates, perchance, To Pennsylvania, or without rash vaunts, To where the Penguin haunts! IV. In times bygone, when each man cut his quill With little Perryan skill, What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade Appear’d the writing implements home-made! What Pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby, Stumpy and stubby; Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark, Or smudge through some illegible receipt; Others in florid caligraphic plans, Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans! V. To try in any common inkstands, then, With all their miscellaneous stocks, To find a decent pen, Was like a dip into a lucky box: You drew,--and got one very curly, And split like endive in some hurly-burly; The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade; The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made; The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail, Turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail; And last, not least, by way of a relief, A stump that Master Richard, James, or John, Had tried his candle-cookery upon, Making “roast-beef!” VI.