THE USHER OF THE BLACK ROD.
Boys
go back
in coaches.
Thrashing
time
approaches.
♃ ♒ ♈
Now
School-storms
reign;
☌ ☊ ⚹
Begins
again
the
Hurry—cane.
The time of holiday is fled from little Master J.,
He's going to the school instead of going to the play;
His master is come home, his fate 'tis easy to forebode,
And heartily he wishes now the "schoolmaster abroad:"
He cannot love him, though he be sweet-temper'd, 'tis in vain,
Unable is the boy to see the sugar in the cane!
A chaise is waiting at the door, in which he's doom'd to go,
He knows and feels its very wheels will bear him to his woe;
The thing he rides in he derides, and there, for joy, would dance
If master, chaise, and all, were safe at Père la Chaise, in France!
To force a young and chubby boy to school, away from home,
'S like taking a young Regulus to Carthage, back from Rome:
Upon his bed, more like a board, he cries and lies awake,
His fruit is fruitless, and he feels he doesn't need his cake!
His bat is chang'd into a bawl, the rod'll never stop,
It's always whipping bottom, now, instead of whipping top:
Book'd for a flogging, whether book proclaim him dunce, or clever,
Kept from the playground, oftentimes upon no ground whatever:
Penned in from good hard exercise, hard exercise to pen,
And told that slaving present boys is saving future men!
School exercise.
23. Chinese Expedition blockaded Canton. Sailed for Chusan.
Picking and choosing.
Wooing in black and white.
Our British Bull, whom nothing well can stop,
Directed by Victoria Regina,
Went, right ahead, into a China shop,
And set himself to work a breaking China!
Be sure he didn't preach or Cant on there:
The expedition he had set his shoes in,
Kept fighting with an expedition rare,
And didn't stop for picking or for Chusan!
The town was well besieged; for Johnny took
Position up too strong to be evaded;
And, like the wood-cuts of this comic book,
Canton was soon most thoroughly block-aided!