A Hindoo Legend.

  1. There was a Hindoo maiden once on India's coral strand
  2. Who had some forty suitors for her coffee-colored hand.
  3. Her father was a Brahmin of aristocratic caste
  4. Who much internal revenue in dry goods had amassed.

  1. These lovers thought it would be nice the dusky maid to wed,
  2. And spend the rupees lavishly when her papa was dead.
  3. But she turned up her nose at them—a very pretty pug—
  4. Because clandestinely she loved an elegant young Thug.
  1. This Thug, in his profession, was a very active man;
  2. He strangled eighty men the year to practice he began.
  3. But as the maiden's father had no taste for art at all,
  4. He foolishly disliked the Thug, and wouldn't let him call.
  1. And then she loved him better still, as always is the case,
  2. And so she met him daily at a certain trysting-place.
  3. Hand in hand amid the verdant fields deliciously they strayed,
  4. Now culling flowers, now strangling little children as they played.
  1. And this young Thug, one afternoon, he kissed the maid and said,
  2. "It really seems to me, my dear, high time that we should wed.
  3. And as your guardians to me so seriously object,
  4. 'Twould be as well to kill them; I can do it, I expect."
  1. Then said the lovely maiden, with a sweet, confiding smile:
  2. "I go for chopping of them up in most effectual style.
  3. And as my marriage simply on my papa's death depends,
  4. Why, just for fun we'll butcher all my relatives and friends."
  1. The Thug procured a hatchet, and the maiden got a knife;
  2. They cut and slashed the Brahmin till he was bereft of life;
  3. Then they seized the loving mother, though she desperately fought,
  4. And crunched her aged bones beneath the car of Juggernaut.
  1. A consecrated lasso, thrown with admirable skill,
  2. Swiftly roped her brother in and choked him 'gainst his will.
  3. Her sister's fair young form was hooked upon the sacred swing;
  4. And flying 'round until she died, she screamed like everything.
  1. The maiden jabbed the knife into the colored coachman's brain,
  2. And stabbed her uncle William and her aunt Matilda Jane.
  3. The Thug he steeped his hatchet in the chambermaiden's gore,
  4. And with a skewer pinned the cook against the cellar door.
  1. The maiden cut her grandpa up in little tiny bits,
  2. And scared her grandma so she died in epileptic fits.
  4. The dry nurse with the clothes-line was serenely strangled, while
  5. They tossed the little baby to the sacred crocodile.
  1. And when the fuss was over, said the maiden to the Thug:
  2. "You'd better have a hole within the cemetery dug;
  3. And let the undertaker take extraordinary pains
  4. To decently inter this lot of mangled-up remains."
  1. And when the usual bitter tears were at the funeral shed,
  2. The lovers to the temple went, in order to be wed.
  3. The priest had barbecued a man that day for sacrifice;
  4. They cooked him with the cracklin' on; with gravy brown and nice.
  1. The chief priest asked the maiden, when the services began,
  2. If her papa had said she might annex this fine young man?
  3. "Oh no," she said, "my loving wish he foolishly withstood,
  4. So him and all the family we slaughtered in cold blood."
  1. "You shock me!" said the pious priest; "your conduct makes me sad;
  2. You never learned at Sunday-school to be so awful bad.
  3. I've told you often, when you killed a person anywhere,
  4. To bring the body to that old nine-headed idol there;
  1. "The great Vishnu is suffering for victims every day,
  2. And here you go and cut them up and throw the bones away!
  3. Extravagance is sinful; I must really put it down;
  4. I've half a mind to pull the string and make the idol frown.
  1. "I must punish you with rigor; and I order that you two
  2. Instead of getting married shall severest penance do."
  3. So on a piece of paper then he scribbled a brief word;
  4. The lovers as they left, of course, felt perfectly absurd.
  1. The Thug then read the order o'er, and bursting into tears,
  2. He said, "This paper realizes my unpleasant fears.
  3. Upon my word, my sweetest one, it really chills my blood;
  4. I've got to suffocate you in the Ganges' holy mud."
  1. And so he sadly led her down unto the river's bank,
  2. And like a stone into the cold, religious slime she sank.
  3. And there she stuck the livelong day, and all the following night.
  4. Until an alligator came and ate her at a bite.
  1. The Thug he felt exceeding hurt at her untimely fate,
  2. But his, though not so dreadful, was not nice, at any rate.
  3. The priest, in his fierce anger, had condemned him, it appears,
  4. To stand alone upon one leg for forty-seven years!