Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 / An Illustrated Weekly

'I'LL YOUR PARTNER BE,' SAID SHE. —Drawn by Sol Eytinge, Jun.
Oh, that winter afternoon, Such a merry, merry tune As the jolly, fat tea-kettle chose its singing to begin! 'Twas a lilting Scottish air, And it seemed, I do declare, As though bagpipe played by fairy was forever joining in. Then the bagpipe ceased to play, And another tune straightway Sang the kettle, louder, louder, till its voice grew very big; And the feet of laughing girls (Girls with shamrock in their curls) You could almost hear a-keeping time to that old Irish jig. Darling, smiling, cunning Bess Grasped with tiny hands her dress, And a pretty courtesy making, while the kettle made a bow, I'll your partner be, said she; Forward, backward, one, two, three; And pussy cried, Bravo! my dears, in one immense me-ow. And they danced right merrily Till 'twas nearly time for tea, The kettle tilting this way and then that way—oh, what fun! And its hat bobbed up and down On its moist and steamy crown, With a clatter falling off at last, and then the dance was done.
There was an old man of Montrose Who had a remarkable nose, So long and so thin, And so far from his chin, 'Twas always in danger of blows. One day the old man of Montrose Went out without muffling his nose; And it grieves me to tell That this organ of smell As stiff as an icicle froze. Soon after, in sneezing, ker-choo , His nose into smithereens flew, And left but a stump, A ridiculous lump, That even in summer looked blue. The frost-bitten man of Montrose Used words that were equal to blows; And so great his disgrace, He soon quitted the place, And where he has gone no one knows.
In the small but strongly fortified town of Saar-Louis, on what was then the borders of France, in Rhenish Prussia, there was born, a little more than a hundred years ago, a child whose future intrepid career earned for him the title of the bravest of the brave. His father's trade was nothing more warlike than that of a cooper; his home life and training were not different from those of many of his playmates; and yet before he was sixteen years old he had entered a regiment of hussars, or light cavalry, and before he was thirty had attained the high rank of general of division.