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.