CHAPTER IV.
“Th’ last Scene of all that ends this strange eventful history.”
Fra th’ Corrispondent o’ th’ Hoylus End Mercury.
Good folks you’ve inkwired at home an’ abroad,
Ha we’re gettin on wi wur famous railroad;
And when I’ve tell’d yo the disasters we’ve hed,
Yo’ve greeved monny a time wal yo’ve tain to yor bed,
But ha yo will gape when yo read farther dahn,
What famons big stirrins we’ve hed up i’th’ tahn.
I knaw yo’d be mad as soin as yo heard,
Abaht that oud kah at belong’d to Blue Beard,
For I like as I saw yo just hod of its tail,
And braying it rump wi’ the end o’ yor flail;
For I wisht monny a time at yo hed been here,
For swallowing the plan yo’d a geen it what cheer.
Ha ivver good folk I’ll try to be breef,
For I knaw you’re i’ pain and I’ll give yo releef—
So to tell yo the truth in a plain, honnest way,
The railroad is finish’d an oppen’d to-day;
And I’ve tain up my pen for ill yo’d a taint,
If I hednt a geen yo a truthful ackahnt.
Hasumivver this morning, as I tell’d yo before,
I wur wakken’d wi hearin a awful uproar,
What wi’ the prating o’ wimen and the shahtin o’th’ folk,
And the bells at wur ringin, they wur past onny joke,
For ivvery two minnits they shahted hurrah,
We are nah bahn to oppen the Haworth Railway.
So I jump’d up i’ bed, an’ I gat on the floor,
I slipt on my cloas and ran out at door,
And the first at I met, it wur one Jimmy Peg,
He cum’d up fra Bocking and brout a gert flag,
And just at his heels wur the Spring-headed band,
Playing a march—I thout it wur grand.
So I fell into the step for I knaw how to march,
For I’ve been stiffen’d up wi’ guvernment starch;
And first smell o’ music it maks me fair dance,
And I prick up my ears like a trooper his lance,
Hasumivver, I thout as I’d gotten i’ th’ scent,
I’d follow this music wharever it went.
Then I march’d up erect, wal I come to the grand stand,
And that wur a’ th’ stashun where the train hed to land;
There wur flags of all nashuns fra the Union Jack
To Bacchus and Atlas wi’ the globe on his back,
For the Inspector and conductor and all sorts o’ fray
Wur expected directly to land at the railway.