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"Oh well," says he, "

you flitting with us to

Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again.”

John. He left his wife behind: for so I heard.

James. He left her, yes. I met my lady once:
A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.

John. Oh yet but I remember, ten years back
'Tis now at least ten years - and then she was
You could not light upon a sweeter thing.
A body slight and round, and like a pear
In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin

As clean and white as privet when it flowers.
James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved,

At first like dove and dove were cat and dog.

She was the daughter of a cottager

Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride, New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd

To what she is: a nature never kind!

Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say. Kind nature is the best: those manners next

That fit us like a nature second-hand;

Which are indeed the manners of the great.

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John. But I had heard it was this bill that past,

And fear of change at home, that drove him hence.
James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall.
I once was near him, when his bailiff brought
A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince
As from a venomous thing: he thought himself
A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest a cry
Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes
Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs
Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you know
That these two parties still divide the world

Of those that want, and those that have: and still
The same old sore breaks out from age to age
With much the same result. Now I, that am

A Tory to the quick, was as a boy
Destructive, when I had not what I would.
I was at school a college in the South :
There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit,
His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;
We paid in person, scored upon the part
Which cherubs want. He had a sow, sir. She,
With meditative grunts of much content,

Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.

By night we dragg'd her to the college tower
From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,

And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
of prospect had the mother sow,

Large range
And but for daily loss of one she loved,

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As one by one we took them

but for this.

As never sow was higher in this world

Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?

We took them all, till she was left alone

Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,

And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.

John. They found you out?

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What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong.

What ails us, who are sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool the world,

Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,

As ruthless as a baby with a worm,

As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows

To Pity-more from ignorance than will.

But put your best foot forward, or I fear

That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes

With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand

As you shall see

three pyebalds and a roan.

ST. SIMEON STYLITES.

ALTHO' I be the basest of mankind,

From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold.

prayer,

In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,

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