THE ROMANCE OF A TEACUP.
SIP THE FIRST.
In England one man’s mated to one woman,
To spend their days in holy matrimony—
In fact, I have heard from one or two men,
That one wife in a house is one too many—
But, be this as it may, in China no man
Who can afford it shuts himself to any
Fix’d number, but is variously encumber’d
With better halves, from twenty to a hundred.
These to provide for in a pleasant way,
And, maybe, to avoid their chat and worry,
He shuts up in a harem night and day—
With them contriving all his cares to bury—
A point of policy which, I should say,
Sweetens the dose to men about to marry;
For, though a wife’s a charming thing enough,
Yet, like all other blessings, quantum suff.
So to my tale: Te-pott the Multifarious
Was, once upon a time, a mandarin—
In personal appearance but precarious,
Being incorrigibly bald and thin—
But then so rich, through jobs and pensions various,
Obtain’d by voting with the party “in,”
That he maintain’d, in grace and honour too,
Sixty-five years, and spouses fifty-two.
Fifty-two wives! and still he went about
Peering below the maiden ladies’ veils—
Indeed, it was said (but there hangs a doubt
Of scandal on such gossip-whisper’d tales),
He had a good one still to single out—
For all his wives had tongues, and some had nails—
And still he hoped, though fifty-twice deferr’d,
To find an angel in his fifty-third.
In China, mind, and such outlandish places,
A gentleman who wishes to be wed
Looks round about among the pretty faces,
Nor for a moment doubts they may be had
For asking; and if any of them “nay” says,
He has his remedy as soon as said—
For, when the bridegrooms disapprove what they do,
They teach them manners with the bastinado.
Near Te-pott’s palace lived an old Chinese—
About as poor a man as could be known
In lands where guardians leave them to their ease,
Nor pen the poor up in bastilles of stone:
He got a livelihood by picking teas;
And of possessions worldly had but one—
But one—the which, the reader must be told,
Was a fair daughter seventeen years old.
She was a lovely little girl, and one
To charm the wits of both the high and the low;
And Te-pott’s ancient heart was lost and won
In less time than ’twould take my pen to tell how:
So, as he was quite an experienced son-
In-law, and, too, a very wily fellow,
To make Hy-son his friend was no hard matter, I
Ween, with that specific for parents—flattery.
But, when they two had settled all between
Themselves, and Te-pott thought that he had caught her,
He found how premature his hopes had been
Without the approbation of the daughter—
Who talk’d with voice so loud and wit so keen,
That he thought all his Mrs. T’s had taught her;
And, finding he was in the way there rather,
He left her to be lectured by her father.
“Pray, what were women made for” (so she said,
Though Heaven forbid I join such tender saying),
“If they to be accounted are as dead,
And strangled if they ever are caught straying?
Tis well to give us diamonds for the head,
And silken gauds for festival arraying;
But where of dress or diamonds is the use
If we mayn’t go and show them? that’s the deuce!”
The father answer’d, much as fathers do
In cases of like nature here in Britain,
Where fathers seldom let fortunes slip through
Their fingers, when they think that they can get one;
He said a many things extremely true—
Proving that girls are fine things to be quit on,
And that, could she accommodate her views to it,
She would find marriage very nice when used to it.
Now, ’tis no task to talk a woman into
Love, or a dance, or into dressing fine—
No task, I’ve heard, to talk her into sin too;
But, somehow, reason don’t seem in her line.
And so Miss Hy-son, spite of kith and kin too,
Persisting such a husband to decline—
The eager mandarin issued a warrant,
And got her apprehended by her parent.
Thus the poor girl was caught, for there was no
Appeal against so wealthy lover’s fiat:
She must e’en be a wife of his, and so
She yielded him her hand demure and quiet;
For ladies seldom cry unless they know
There’s somebody convenient to cry at—
And; though it is consoling, on reflection
Such fierce emotions ruin the complexion.
FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE.
Yesterday Paddy Green honoured that great artist William Hogarth Teniers Raphael Bunks, Esq., with a sitting for a likeness. The portrait, which will doubtless be an admirable one, is stated to be destined to adorn one of Mr. Catnach’s ballads, namely, “The Monks of Old!” which Mr. P. Green, in most obliging manner, has allowed to appear.
William Paul took a walk yesterday as far as Houndsditch, in company with Jeremiah Donovan. A pair of left-off unmentionables is confidently reported to be the cause of their visit in the “far East.”
The lady of Paddy Green, Esquire, on Wednesday last, with that kindness which has always distinguished her, caused to be distributed a platterful of trotter bones amongst the starving dogs of the neighbourhood.
From information exclusively our own, and for whose correctness we would stake our hump, we learn that James Burke, the honoured member of the P.R., was seen to walk home on the night of Tuesday last with three fresh herrings on a twig. After supper, he consoled himself with a pint of fourpenny ale.
Charles Mears yesterday took a ride in a Whitechapel omnibus. He alighted at Aldgate Pump, at which he took a draught of water from the ladle. He afterwards regaled on a couple of polonies and a penny loaf.
THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL.
Jones, the journeyman tailor who was charged before Sir Peter Laurie with being drunk and disorderly in Fleet-street, escaped the penalty of his frolic by an extraordinary whim of justice. The young schneider, it appears, sported a luxuriant crop of hair, the fashion of which not pleasing the fancy of the city Rhadamanthus, he remitted the fine on condition that the delinquent should instantly cut off the offending hairs. A barber being sent for, the operation was instantly performed; and Sir Peter, with a spirit of generosity only to be equalled by his cutting humour, actually put his hand in his breeches-pocket and handed over to the official Figaro his fee of one shilling. The shorn tailor left the office protesting that Sir Peter had not treated him handsomely, as he had only consented to sacrifice his flowing locks, but that the Alderman had cabbaged his whiskers as well.
A CELESTIAL CON.
Why is wit like a Chinese lady’s foot?—Because brevity is the sole of it!