JINGLING AND JANGLING.
"Little Jack Jingle
Used to live single.
But when he got tired
Of that kind of life,
He left off being single,
And lived with his wife."
Your period's pointed, most excellent Moth-
er!
Pray what did he do when he tired of the
other?
For a man so deplorably prone to ennui
But a queer sort of husband is likely to be.
The fatigue might recur,—and, in case it
should be so,
Why not take a wife on a limited lease, O?
Grant the privilege, pray, to his idiosyn-
crazy,—
Some natures won't bear to be too closely
pinned, you see,—
And, at worst, the poor Benedict might
advertise,
When weary, at length, of the light of his
eyes,—
Or failing to find her, it may be, in salt,—
"Disposed of, indeed, for no manner of
fault,"
(To borrow a figure of speech from the
mart,)
"But because the late owner has taken a
start!"
I believe once before you have cautiously
said
Something quite as concise on this delicate
head,
When distantly hinting at "needles and
pins,"
And that "when a man marries, his trouble
begins";
But I don't recollect that you ever pretend
To prophesy anything as to the end.
Unless we may learn it of Peter,—the
bumpkin,
Renowned for naught else but his eating
of pumpkin;
Whose wife—I don't see how he happened
to get her—
Had a taste, very likely, for things that
were better:
Since, fearing to lose her, at last it be-
fell
He bethought him of shutting her up in a
shell;
By which brilliant contrivance she kept very
well!
What he did with her next, the old rhyme
does n't say,
But she seems to be somehow got out of
the way,
For the ill-fated Peter was wedded once
more,
To find his bewilderment worse than be-
fore;
"If the first for her spouse had but small
predilection,
Now 't was his turn, alas! to fall short in
affection.
And how do you think that he conquered
the evil?
Why, simply by lifting himself to her level;
By leaving his pumpkins, and learning to
spell,
He came, saith the story, to love her right
well;
And the mythical memoir its moral con-
trives
For the lasting instruction of husband*
and wives.