* * * * *
=Charles Sprague, 1791-.= (Manual, p. 514.)
From "Curiosity."
=334.= THE NEWSPAPER.
Turn to the Press—its teeming sheets survey,
Big with the wonders of each passing day;
Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks,
Harangues and hailstorms, brawls and broken necks;
Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek
An immortality of near a week;
Where cruel eulogists the dead restore,
In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more;
Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite,
And need no venomed dagger while they write.
* * * * *
Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst,
While still the more we drink the more we thirst.
Trade hardly deems the busy day begun
Till his keen eye along the page has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down.
To know what last new folly fills the town.
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things,
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings—
Nought comes amiss; we take the nauseous stuff,
Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff.
* * * * *
=Lydia H. Sigourney, 1791-1865.= (Manual, pp. 484, 523.)