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Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer—that last toddy, no doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache. Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s, and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads, chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in wild and dripping confusion.
That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his nose—cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”
It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of a walnut escritoire.
Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is now another’s.
CONSTABLE X.
WHOSE walk is so stately and grand round the beat?
What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?
What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,
Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?
Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,
Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;
The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,
Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?
How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,
As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,
And kisses the book with a resonant smack,
Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.
Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat
To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,
And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex
Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.
Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours
When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,
And he, even he, that great creature, has known
Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.
And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt
Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.
For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,
Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.
Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,
But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,
He has even unbended to laughter and sport,
And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,
Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!
Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;
Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex
Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.